The Celebration Clause

My name is Zelda Higgins, I'm twenty-three years old, and I've been a nurse at Mercy General for two years. I want to state that up front because everything that happened after this party makes me look like a lunatic, and I want at least one sentence on the record where I sound reasonable.

It started on a Tuesday. I was sitting on my bed in my East Village one-bedroom, eating cold pad thai out of the box, when my phone buzzed. It was Tara Latham from my unit.

Hey Zelda! My birthday Saturday plus I passed my boards, double whammy. You in? My place, 7pm. Bring booze.

I typed back sure, sounds fun, and then I sat there staring at the ceiling. Because Tara's best friend on the unit is Mariah Santos. Mariah. The woman who has gotten every good shift, every easy assignment, every pat on the head from our manager since the day she walked in. And now the charge nurse position was opening up, and it was going to be me or her.

So here is the thing about Mariah. She's twenty-four, she's good at her job, I'll give her that, but she's also the kind of person who volunteers for things so she looks good, not because she cares. Everyone on the floor worships her. She gets away with everything. Two years I've watched it. And I had decided, somewhere around my second cup of coffee that morning, that Saturday night was my chance to finally make her look bad in front of people who weren't already blinded by her smile.

My plan, at this stage, was vague. Vague plans are how you get in trouble, as it turns out.

The next day at work I found Hazel Farnsworth in the break room, eating yogurt and reading a drug handbook like the nerd she is. Hazel is a new grad, twenty-one, fresh out of school, and she follows Mariah around like a duckling. She also tells people things. I've seen her do it. She can't keep a secret to save her life.

"Hey Hazel!" I got my coffee going and leaned against the counter all casual.

"Oh hi Zelda!" She lit up like I'd handed her a diploma. People like being noticed by the scary senior nurses. I know this because I used to be the duckling myself, once.

"You going to Tara's thing Saturday?" I asked.

"Um, I think so? Tara asked me. Is that weird? Am I allowed to be there? I don't want to intrude on family stuff." She stirred her yogurt around like it needed her help.

"No, it's open, everyone from the floor is coming." I took a slow sip. "Heads up though. Mariah's going to be there, and she's been drinking at these things lately. Like really drinking. Just, you know. Keep your distance. Don't get roped into anything with her."

Hazel's eyes went wide. "Mariah? Really? She doesn't seem like..."

"Well." I shrugged. "I'm just saying, you're new, you want to be careful who you're seen with. That's all I'll say."

And that was it. That was the entire seed. Plant a rumor with the unit gossip, let it grow. By Monday everyone would have some version of a story about Mariah getting sloppy at a coworker's party, maybe crying, maybe hitting on somebody she shouldn't have. Managers love a rumor with legs. I know, because I've watched rumors walk right past me and hand promotions to other people.

Hazel nodded a lot and said okay like four times. I felt great about myself for about nine hours.

Then Wednesday happened, and Wednesday is where I need to explain what Mariah actually does to me, because I hadn't figured it out yet myself. Mariah works nights sometimes to cover for people who "owe her favors," meaning she banks brownie points. Wednesday she floated over to my hall to help me turn Mr. Delgado, who weighs about four hundred pounds and hates everyone. She didn't have to. Her assignment didn't include him.

"Lift with your legs, Higgins," she said, and she was grinning at me over this enormous man's back, and her scrubs were doing that thing where the collar gaps and I could see the curve of her chest, and something in my brain went to static.

"Shut up and push," I said.

We got him turned, and she clapped me on the shoulder, and I felt that hand on my shoulder for the next hour. This is a new development, by the way. Somewhere in the last three months my hatred of Mariah Santos developed a complication. I kept telling myself it was just that she was annoyingly attractive and I resented that on principle. That's what I told myself. I'm not saying I believed it.

Saturday came. I put on a black dress that fits me the way I like and I brought a bottle of wine that costs more than I should spend and I walked to Tara's apartment rehearsing my plan. Step one, get Mariah alone. Step two, well. Step two was going to reveal itself. Schemes are like that. You need a little faith.

The apartment was loud. There were maybe fifteen people, music going, a folding table of food. Tara hugged me and pointed me at the wine and I did a lap of the room saying hi to people from the floor. Hazel was there already, standing near the chips, looking like a person who had been told to be careful. Good.

Mariah arrived twenty minutes in. She came in with her hair down, wearing a red top, and the whole room turned toward her like flowers toward the sun, and I stood there holding my wine and thinking, everyone in this room is proof of my problem.

"Zelda!" She spotted me and came straight over, which she does, she always comes straight to me like we're friends. "You came! Oh my god, you look great."

"You too." I said it flat and she laughed like I'd said something charming. She does that. Everything I say, she acts like it's the best thing she's heard all day. It used to make me want to bite through my own lip. Now it makes me want things I'm not writing down in a work email.

Tara came over with the cake situation and a bunch of us clustered around. I stood on my toes to see over Hazel's head and caught Mariah's eye across the room and mouthed, can I talk to you? She nodded. So far the plan was going perfect, if you don't count that my hands were sweating.

I found her by the window a few minutes later. Outside there was the usual hum of the street, someone yelling about a cab, the neighborhood doing its thing.

"Hey, so this is going to sound like a weird party topic," I said, "but I need your advice on a patient thing. It's about Mr. Kowalski."

Mariah made a face. We both hate Kowalski, the man has called every nurse on the floor a name I won't repeat and the managers keep letting him because he's old. "Ugh, what did he do now?"

"He's refusing his meds again, but this time he told the on-call doc that I never offered them. Which I did, twice, charted both times. And he's telling everyone I'm hostile." I lowered my voice. "I don't want it getting back to the manager. You're good at handling him. He actually listens to you, which honestly drives me crazy."

"Well, that last part I can't help," she said, grinning. "Some people just have a touch."

"Mariah."

"Okay, okay." She steered me toward the little hallway by the bathroom, away from the party noise, and I followed, and I remember thinking, step two just invented itself and I didn't plan any of what came next on purpose, whatever it turned out to be. "Here's what you do," she started, and she was standing close, closer than the hallway needed, one hand on the wall next to my shoulder.

"You document everything the day it happens," she said. "Same shift. Then you ask the charge nurse to witness one med pass. He'll behave for a witness. And Zelda, you stop letting him see you get rattled, because that man collects rattled."

"That's it? That's your whole advice?"

"That's it. The rest is just you not letting an old crank live in your head rent free." She was looking at me in this way she does sometimes, like she's reading something over my shoulder. "You okay? You seem wound up tonight."

"I'm fine. I'm always fine."

"You're wound up," she said, and she did not move her hand off the wall, and we were both just standing there in Tara's hallway with the party going on without us.

From the kitchen Tara yelled something about the cake, and Hazel's voice came out of the crowd, too loud, saying something I couldn't quite hear. I should have gone back out there. My scheme was sitting in the other room wearing my name.

Instead I heard myself say, "Do you want to see Tara's balcony? It's the only quiet spot."

"Lead the way," Mariah said.

Tara's balcony was a joke, four feet of concrete with a dead plant in the corner. The actual usable space was the fire escape. I climbed out first and sat on the grating one step down, and Mariah came out after me and settled beside me like she'd done it a hundred times. Her knee touched mine. She didn't move it.

The street noise was louder out here. Somewhere below, a guy was arguing with nobody about a parking spot. The window behind us still carried the party, muffled now, someone laughing too hard at something.

"You smoke?" I pulled the pack out of my jacket. I don't even smoke. I'd bought them that afternoon, which should have told me something about where my head was.

"Only when people offer," she said, and took one.

I lit hers, then mine, and we sat there. Her shoulder was against my shoulder. The cigarette burned and I mostly forgot to smoke mine.

"So," she said after a while, and turned to look at me. She had that look again, the reading-over-your-shoulder one. "Kowalski. That wasn't really about Kowalski."

"It was about Kowalski."

"Zelda." She said my name like she was setting it down on a table between us. "You came to a party for a woman you barely know. You hate parties. You told me once you'd rather chart for twelve hours than make small talk. And now you've got me alone on a fire escape." She took a drag and blew it out sideways, away from my face, which was considerate, which was annoying. "You're up to something."

My stomach dropped, then caught itself. I had a whole next step, and here she was, three steps ahead, smirking at me with my cigarette in her hand.

"Okay," I said. "Say I'm up to something. What do you think it is?"

"I think you wanted to talk to me without an audience." She shrugged. "I think whatever it is, you've been chewing on it for a while, because you've been weird for like three weeks. Weird for you. You've been weird since the Harrison thing in October."

"The Harrison thing was you taking my admission."

"See, that. Normal people let that go." She was smiling. Not mean. That was the problem with Mariah, she never did me the favor of being mean, it gave me nothing to hold onto. "So what is it? You can tell me. I don't spook easy."

I looked out at the street. A cab went by with its light on, going somewhere on purpose. I had a speech in me somewhere. I'd been building it for two years, actually, a whole case file of every break she ever got and every one I didn't. And sitting there with her knee warm against mine, I could not find one word of it.

"You want to know what it is," I said. "Fine."

I kissed her.

I need to be clear about what I thought was going to happen, because I had it worked out. She'd pull back. She'd do the shocked blink, the little step away, and then the party would end for me right there on the fire escape, and Monday I'd walk in knowing exactly where I stood, no more limbo, no more of this wanting thing gnawing on me. It would hurt like hell and at least it would be over. That was the plan. That was the plan the way Kowalski's charting was my plan, that is to say it existed and then reality walked through it.

She didn't pull back.

She kissed me back. Her free hand came up and got a fistful of my jacket and she pulled, and I went, and her mouth opened under mine and I let out a sound I'm not proud of. The cigarette in my hand burned down against my fingers and I didn't even notice until later, when there was a little blister I couldn't explain to anyone at work. She tasted like wine and smoke and something sweet from the cake, and her hand moved from my jacket to the back of my neck, and I stopped thinking in sentences.

When we finally broke apart I was breathing like I'd taken the stairs at work, all nine flights, which I have done exactly once during an