Free Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid Page A

snoring for at least twenty minutes. I, myself, would love to fall asleep, but I’m too wired, too restless. I haven’t moved or stood up since I was standing in front of LACMA four days ago. I want to get up and move around. I want to move my legs.
    But I can’t. I can barely lift my arms above my head. I turn on a small light by my bed and open up one of Sarah’s magazines. I flip through the pages. Bright photos of women in absurd outfits in weird places. One of the photo shoots looks as ifit took place in Siberia with women wearing polka-dot bikinis. Apparently, polka dots are in. At least in Europe.
    I throw the magazine to the side and turn the TV back on, the volume low. No surprise to find that Law & Order is on. I have yet to find a time when it isn’t.
    I hear the show’s familiar buh-bump just as a male nurse walks into my room.
    He’s tall and strong. Dark hair, dark eyes, clean-shaven. His scrubs are deep blue, his skin a deep tan. He has on a white T-shirt underneath.
    It only now occurs to me that Deanna probably isn’t working twenty-four hours a day. This guy must be the night nurse.
    “Oh,” he says, whispering. “I didn’t realize you had company.”
    I notice that he has a large tattoo on his left forearm. It appears to be some sort of formal script, large cursive letters, but I can’t make out exactly what it says. “She won’t wake up,” I whisper back.
    He looks at Gabby and winces. “Geez,” he says softly. “She sounds like a bulldozer.”
    I smile at him. He’s right.
    “I won’t be too long,” he says. He moves toward my machines. I’ve been hooked up to these things all day, to the point where they are starting to feel like a part of me.
    He starts checking things off his list just as Deanna did earlier today. I can hear the sound of the pen on the clipboard. Check. Check. Check. Scribble. He puts my chart back into the pocket. I wonder if it says in that file that I lost a baby. I push the thought out of my head.
    “Would you mind?” he asks me, gesturing to the stethoscope in his hand.
    “Oh,” I say.“Sure. Whatever you gotta do.”
    He pushes the neck of my gown down and slips his hand between my skin and the cloth, resting the stethoscope over my heart. He asks me to breathe normally.
    Deanna did this earlier, and I didn’t even notice. But now, with him, it feels intimate, almost inappropriate. But of course, it’s not. Obviously, it’s not. Still, I find myself slightly embarrassed. He’s handsome, and he’s my age, and his hand is on my bare chest. I am now acutely aware of the fact that I am not wearing a bra. I turn my head so I’m not looking at him. He smells like men’s body wash, something that would be called Alpine Rush or Clean Arctic.
    He pulls the stethoscope off me when he’s satisfied with his findings. He scribbles something on the chart. I find myself desperate to change the mood. A mood he’s probably not even aware of.
    “How long have you worked here?” I ask, whispering so as not to wake up Gabby. I like that I have to whisper. At a whisper, you can’t tell my voice is shot.
    “Oh, I’ve been here since I moved to L.A. about two years ago,” he whispers as he stares at my chart. “Originally from Texas.”
    “Whereabouts?” I ask.
    “Lockhart,” he says. “You wouldn’t have heard of it. Small town just outside of Austin.”
    “I lived in Austin,” I say. “For a little while.”
    He looks up at me and smiles. “Oh, yeah? When did you move here?”
    It’s hard to answer succinctly, and I don’t have the voice to give him the whole story, so I simplify it. “I grew up here, but I moved back last week.”
    He tries to hide it, but I can see his eyes go wide. “Last week?”
    I nod. “Last Friday night,” I say.
    He shakes his head. “Wow.”
    “Seems sort of unfair, doesn’t it?”
    He shakes his head and looks back down at the chart. He clicks his pen. “Nope, you can’t think about that,” he says, looking