She just reached for the emesis pan. "I just don't know how you can always be so calm about it," a fair-skinned brunette named Tracy once told her in the nurse lounge. "Sometimes I swear their guts are gonna come flying out when they start that projectile shit."
The bus ride home, just after four, was always crowded. College students or high schoolers would flood the bus along with professors and maintenance men plus a scattering of other nurses. Many times she would stand and have to hold onto the hanging rail. A few times a rowdy student would look at her in her crisp uniform and say "You're a nurse! What are you doing riding the bus? Nurses make a lot of money, don't they?"
Linda had smiled and pleasantly ignored the young man with the unkempt afro, but to herself she thought: just because I make sort of a lot of money doesn't mean I like to spend it! Still, Seth's recent visit had gotten to her. Would it really hurt her to enjoy the fruits of her labor a little more? That weekend at the mall she treated herself to new blue jeans and a cute new top and she ate dinner at her favorite Chinese restaurant.
To gain some semblance of a social life, she started going to church again, at St. Michael the Archangel, the church where the funeral services for Jeannie had been held. Linda would drive over there immediately after work on Saturdays, so she could go to the evening mass.
She joined the singles group there. They would meet at different member's houses for parties and sometimes they all banded together for an outing to a Reds or Bengals game or to King's Island during the summer. If the outing was held on a Friday or Saturday night, Linda was always tired and looking ahead to getting up the next morning at four. "Can't you just call in sick one time?" Tony, one of the more playful, amiable guys said, but no, she could not.
She was happy, but still, there was something missing.
On a Saturday, Linda rode the bus to work at her usual, ungodly early time. Sometimes only three other people rode the bus with her, such as maintenance people for one of the university buildings, or people leaving for an early opening of a store. The weather was drizzly, but warm for late February. Upon leaving her little row house apartment that morning, she considered wearing a light jacket, but in Ohio in winter, cold winds could blow in at any time.