“They’re good. They want to meet you.”
She smiled at that thought. The last woman he’d tried to introduce to his family ended up breaking his heart. “I’d like that.”
“When the hospital drops the case, can I convince you to come here for a visit?”
She curled her feet under her. “You can convince me to visit even if the hospital doesn’t drop the case.”
He hesitated and Monica could hear the smile in his voice. “All right then.”
“All right then,” she repeated. They talked for a while longer, both of them reluctant to hang up. When she heard Trent yawn for the second time she told him she missed him, and that she’d call him the next day.
As she hung up she realized that missing him was simply her way of saying she loved him.
And that made her smile.
The day of the protest started early. Monica and Katie put the finishing touches on the posters and arranged for a last-minute permit to be approved so the protest wouldn’t get them all arrested. Strategically, the protest was scheduled one hour before the end of the business day. If the lawyers of the hospital, and the administration itself, decided to drop the case, they could minimize the damage of the protest by calling a stop to all the attorneys. Goldstein had told her not to expect a call from him until after five. Even if the hospital decided to drop the case as the first picket sign went up, he’d conveniently get the call to Monica after five. “Make ’em bleed,” he’d told her.
She was quite happy to have Goldstein on her side.
Monica staged with off-duty employees, nurses, doctors, union reps, and more members of the fire and even police department, in a park across from the hospital. As four o’clock rolled around, they took the short walk down the street like a flash mob.
Katie held Monica’s hand as they approached the sidewalk in front of the hospital. Media vans were already there and Monica noticed the cameras swing their way as they approached. They no sooner touched the public sidewalk than the union reps began marching with Monica’s friends and colleagues and shouting through their bullhorns about wanting justice. About unfair practices. It grew loud in a heartbeat.
Katie pulled Monica over to a reporter and facilitated the interviews. Even if the hospital made the call, the damage would have been done. None of which bothered Monica in the least. They wanted to make an example out of her, and instead she’d make an example out of them. Pick on someone your own size was the theme of the day. The posters were heartbreaking and the media was all over the story.
Monica told the reporters what she could, all practiced words Goldstein had told her to say. All true, but nothing that would keep her from countersuing the hospital.
The crowd grew with faces Monica didn’t even recognize. Between interviews, she thanked people for coming and often found tears on her face as they offered their support. Katie’s husband, Dean, had shown up with Savannah in a stroller. On the stroller was a picture of Monica holding Savannah as an infant. The picture had been taken right before Monica had gone to work so she was wearing her scrubs. A thought bubble above Savannah’s head said, LEAVE MY AUNTIE ALONE, BULLY!
Cars drove by honking in support, there were discussions of hospital politics, and there were many nurses who mentioned that it could very well have been them that had fallen prey to the hospital’s actions.
It was all so very overwhelming. Monica thought of calling Trent, to share the moment with him, and was pulling her phone from her back pocket when a man approached her from behind.
“Nurse Mann?”
Monica turned around and smiled. The stout clean-cut man was terribly familiar, but recognition didn’t come instantly. “Hello.”
“I wanted to say thank you.” As he spoke shock rolled over every inch of her.
“Oh, my God. Gary? Gary Owens?” How was that possible? He looked sober, healthy. Even a little attractive maybe. What he didn’t look like was the man she’d read the riot act the last day she’d worked in the ER.
A coy smile passed over his mouth and he nodded confirming his identity. “Almost four months sober.” He held up his wrist, which had some kind of charm bracelet denoting his sobriety. “I wouldn’t have tried if you hadn’t pushed me.”
There was no stopping the tears in Monica’s eyes. In her peripheral vision she noticed a camera on the two of them.
“You look great.” And he did.
“I feel good. When I saw this on TV, I had to come.”
“Wow, Gary. I’m not sure what to say.”
He shook his head, had tears of his own he was brushing away. “You don’t have to say anything. Sometimes it only takes one person to make you realize what’s important. You did that, and I’ll always be grateful.”
“I’m so happy for you.”
He shuffled for a bit, then asked, “Can I hug you?”
Monica opened her arms and hugged a man she once thought she never wanted to see again. “Best of luck to you,” she said before he walked away and picked up a picket sign.
Another voice interrupted her thoughts. “Was that Gary Owens?” John asked.
“Yes. Can you believe it?”
“Some people do change,” he said.
She turned toward her ex and grinned.
“I heard you were with the guy from Jamaica.”
They hadn’t really talked about the two of them since she returned. He’d called a few times, tried to get her to go out with him, but she never said yes.