Once again into the breech.

Going on another date in ten minutes. I am getting pretty good at guessing how the relationship will end within ten minutes of meeting the person.

This guy fell out of tree last weekend because his roommate dared him to climb it.

Evolution might take care of this one.

I sing you to me

I decide to convince my co-worker to watch my patients while I "run downstairs real quick." Actually I'm going to run down three flights of stairs and three blocks away from the hospital to suck down an American Spirit, run back three blocks and up three flights of stairs, brush my teeth and berate myself for being a smoker.

On my way down the stairs a familiar head of dreadlocks looks up at me, holding his mop inside its bucket.

"Our energy is strong today."

Like always, I blush immediately, look at the ground, and doubt his sincerity. "Why is that?" I say.

"I thought you to me." I stare at him openly. "I was standing here cleaning these steps and I thought about you so hard that you came right to me." He is grinning ear to ear.

"Yeah right," I laugh a little too loudly and it echoes in the stairwell.

"You don't think I'm for real, but I am. Feel my heart beating right now," he gestures for me to put my hand on his chest. I reach out and put my hand on the right side of his chest. I then realize the human heart is on the left. We laugh. I look away and turn red.

"I know that I will see you again today," he smiles as he starts mopping.

I walk outside no longer craving a cigarette. I smoke one anyway.

I could never! Could I?

"You know that I see you, right? I see how you are with people and what you say. I know what kind of person you are even thought we haven't spoken."

His words snapped me out of my trance-like focus on organizing my patient's room. I turned to the doorway to see the man I've noticed many times but never spoken with. I am at a loss for words as he speaks to me. I haven't had such direct communication in a very long time.

"All day long I clean and I listen to everything that is going on around me. I see how people treat each other here. I know how kind you are. I know how much you love. I see you."

He is beautiful. Beautiful enough for me to walk slower when he's mopping the hallway and stare long enough to get teased by the other nurses. So beautiful I find it hard to respond to him as he's talking to me because I'm afraid I won't make any sense.

"You know me, huh?" I can feel the heat in my face.

"Yes. And you already know that you are beautiful, but I have to tell you anyway. I cannot stop looking at you. I think about when I'm going to see you again everyday. You are a goddess."

I am smiling, slouching and looking at the ground. He is staring steadily at me. It suddenly crosses my mind that maybe he has a bet with his friend that he can convince me to sleep with him. Maybe he has ten other girlfriends on other floors of the hospital. Maybe he has a wife and kids at home.

I stop smiling and look up. "I have no idea if you are for real," I tell him.

"I will prove this to you, then." He walks away carrying a bag of trash from my patient's room.

When sister goes Ninja

All I know for sure is one day it just stopped. My brother got out of the hospital and didn't have to go back in right away. My mom stopped being so ashen colored every morning after the phone rang. My parents didn't abruptly stop talking when I walked down the stairs anymore.

The death of a baby is horrifically complicated. Babies themselves can take none of the blame for their own death, so the grown-ups are left blaming each other. Each trying to make some sense out of the fact something so precious was taken from us.

My brother was taking care of him when he drown. My brother said it was only a minute and he realized the baby was nowhere to be found. Only a year old and he scrambled out into the backyard, fell face first into the pond, and drown. A matter of minutes and his light faded out.

The CPR, the 911 call, the ambulance to the hospital, the intensive care unit, the respirator, the medication, and especially the local news coverage of the incident didn't make a difference. The baby died.

Within a month, signs were posted on my brother's apartment door by the maternal grandmother and aunt. "Baby Killer" was scrawled across a picture of him in his blue jumper with the trains on it. Within a month, my brother was hospitalized for suicidal ideation at an inpatient psychiatric facility. He didn't want anyone to visit but mom. He was discharged and readmitted two times. He just couldn't readjust to life without his son. The signs kept being posted fresh on his door whenever he took them down.

Then, it all stopped-- abruptly, perfectly.

"Sister had to go ninja to get the shit to stop," Bev told me on the phone years later. "I left the kids with their dad, dressed in all black, drove five hours through the night to those assholes' house, and told them they were going to stop trying to kill my brother with guilt. 'What are you going to do?' they said. I told them I would cut them and not cry. I told them they would die if they ever hurt a member of my family again."

Death sure is complicated. Everyone deals with it differently.

Handsome boy/Nervous girl

At the pub, moderate noise of happy drunk people, his sister and cousins are coming soon.

Handsome Boy: "So, how many siblings do you have, again? You never really tell me anything about your family."

Nervous Girl: "Oh, really? Well, gosh, I guess it's just a long story, that's all. But, the short version is that I have a lot of brother's a sisters and I'm the youngest."

HB:"How many?"

NG:"Seven in total if you include my step-siblings."

HB:"Are your real siblings all tall with red hair like you?"

NG:"Uh, no, actually. They are all adopted. Uh, long, you know, story."

HB:"Wow! Your parents adopted four children?"

NG:"No-- I'm not adopted, the other three are, my parents weren't supposed to be able to get pregnant, but when my mom was forty she got pregnant. So, it's just kind of a long story."

HB:"That's pretty incredible, she must miss you with you all the way over here in New York."

NG: "Yeah, I'm sure she does. Well, actually, I guess it's me that's missing her. See, she's dead. ...And I try to tell myself that if someone is dead then you never have to miss them because then they are with you all the time no matter where you are and all that, but mostly I think that's all bull shit. I just really fucking miss her all the damn time and it's nearly impossible for me to convince myself I'll see her again in some magical land filled with ferries and possibility and joy and all that. So, that's pretty much it, um, I am the youngest of my siblings and... Yeah. It's a long story.