"We either hide those bastard fringe of yours with bobby pins; or brush your bangs to the side" Reb paused, "when all else fails, we'll just pixie cut your hair, Anne Hathaway style or go totally eccentric for a skin head!"
Cami remembered Reb blurting out while munching on a croissant the day she asked her best friend for a rescue on her new haircut. She ended up forcing her fringe to the sides, struggling every morning to coerce those bangs to go against their nature of hanging on her forehead freely; to be grouped together to the side politely instead.
Throughout the day, Cami had to consciously check those stubborn bangs as they constantly persisted to be where they were supposed to be, hanging freely on her forehead; or she would then have them contained at the top of her hair with bobby pins.
Until one day, Cami felt tired of it all and just let them fringe be where they wanted to be and just threw all the cares in the world. She went to her shift at the hospital with her bob haircut in all its glory on display, receiving long glances from other people; approvals from her co-workers and awestruck giggles from children for she reminded them of a cartoon character. She never felt liberated before as she did that night, like she had finally moved on from that bad break-up. She felt that she had finally stripped the traces of the break-up off her face and in its place, she put nothing but positivity instead;
"Where is that nurse with a non-expiring smile?" an old patient asked her dreadfully
"It is me, Mister. I just cut my hair short" she responded while intentionally shaking her head to cause her hair to sway from side to side
The old man was unconvinced and remained stoically staring at her. To this Cami felt obligated to prove herself by forcing her widest smile, the smile that she naturally had before her break-up;
"Look. It's me!" she claimed then flashed her smile along with her bulging eyes which caused the old man to loosen up;
"Oh, it is you, sweetie!"
Cami nodded her head in agreement still smiling forcefully.
Then she came to the fat little girl's room for the patient's medicine intake. The little girl frowned upon seeing her favorite nurse's new hair;
"Why are you not in your cute pony tail?" the girl enquired emotionally, her tears building up on her almond-sized eyes
"Honey, I did not need that any longer. Hair this short could not be tied up in a ponytail anymore" she responded calmly
"Can you at least try?" the girl's voice cracked
Cami shook her head gently in disapproval.
The fat little girl cried.
Lastly, Cami came to see the old woman with dementia for the lady's regular injections. This time she felt compelled to wear her knitted pink sweater as the patient was known to be fond of her in those hooded jacket.
"It's Cami," she greeted after a gentle knock on the door
"I know who you are!" the old woman shrieked, "now get in here and give me my shots"
The old woman was staring at Cami the whole time while she was giving her the injection. It was as if the old woman was studying the details on her face; her eyes and the dark circles around it, her longer than normal nose and finally her lips shining with strawberry-flavored lip-gloss. The old woman kept her eyes locked on her until the shots were finished
"You look better with your hair short," the old woman finally spoke with a smile
"Thank you, Ma'am" Cami ecstatically responded
"Now, will you please get my nurse here? The girl in a ponytail and with a fake huge smile!"
Cami was stunned.
The nurse on the mirror now had slightly longer hair yet hers still could not be tied up in a ponytail. She felt relieved as the ibuprofen that she took earlier must have taken its effect since the pounding on her head subsided. However, the dark circles around her eyes are still there, so were the recently healed pimple marks on her forehead. Evidently, it was still her post break-up self, Cami version 2.0 the broken and unhappy.
At the end of her shift, Cami had her chin up while walking towards the corridors of the hospital: an act that she had mastered while dealing with her break-up like it was her way of telling the world that she braved it all. At first it took conscious efforts for her to always have those chin up when facing the world, until the act stuck on her one day, flaunting it like a pro
On her final turn at the end of the corridor, Cami noticed a small commotion of other nurses near the hospital doors. One doctor dashed from her behind and rushed to where the nurses were as if he was in a marathon. Only then she saw the cause of it all; a stretcher was pushed over from the doors onto the corridors, a man was lying on it with blood all over his face, staining his white-buttoned down shirt. He appeared to be writhing in pain but was unable to scream of it, except for some audible squeals he was making. The man on the stretcher had his left arm extended and pointing back at the door, as if he was reaching for something, or someone at the hospital doors where he was just taken from. When Cami followed where the bloodied man's arm was pointing at, there she saw another man. Trailing behind the stretcher, behind the nurses, there walked a man.
He was dressed in a dark coat over a white-buttoned down shirt with three of its buttons undone. His hair was disheveled covering his thick browse, soaked in either his sweat or rain if it had it been raining outside.
His face was the calmest she had seen despite the heightened tension of his surroundings. He had masculine jaw line covered with short bushes of growing hairs that meet at his chin. His stubbles are complimented by an imperious nose seated dominantly at the center of his face while his pair of succulent lips sat below. It was his eyes though that trapped Cami's stare for a while longer for they were a pair of silent void fixed only on the man lying on the moving stretcher. Those eyes could be bright at some other days, a fuse of joy could even ignite life in those pair of eyes and permeate a thousand light bulbs inside them; but not on that day. Not on that tragic day; when the man who owned those eyes was trailing behind a bloodied man lying on a stretcher.
Cami was in obvious reverence while watching the commotion disappeared from her eyes and into the emergency room. She surely had witnessed so many tragic scenes as this in her career as a hospital staff, with some situation she even was the attending nurse and not just a spectator standing at a corner; yet there was something odd with what she had just seen. The peculiarity might be with the bloodied man lying on the stretcher, or the perplexing man with apathetic eyes walking behind, following the stretcher.