The phone started ringing to the tune of “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen. I groan loudly. Ugh. Who in their right mind would call at this ungodly hour? Then it stops. I sigh happily and close my eyes. Right when I was about to doze off, the phone starts to ring again. My eyes snap wide open. I snatch the phone off from my nightstand and press the ‘accept’ button without even bothering to check the caller ID.
“Hello? Who is this?! This better not be a prank call or I swear-” I’m interrupted by a woman crying hysterically. She talks so fast that I don’t understand a single thing she’s saying.
“Hello? Are you alright? Do you need any help?” I ask. She takes a deep breath and exhales.
“Saoirse, please you’ve got to help me. It’s me, Bridget. There’s been a terrible accident. Meet me at the hospital. Second floor. ”
With that, she hangs up the phone. My mouth opens and closes. It had been years since the last time either of us spoke to one another. And now out of the blue, she calls me at midnight and asks for help. But I knew that it must be something big or Bridget wouldn’t have called me.
So I haul myself out of bed and quickly slip on a jacket over my favorite lace front sweatshirt. Then I grab my car keys and my coffee mug and hop into my black Cadillac. Once I put my seatbelt on, I step onto the accelerator and grip the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles turn white. I probably went past the speed limit, but I didn’t care. I was too worried about Bridget.
In 10 minutes flat, I arrive at the hospital’s parking lot. After parking the car in the ‘staff only’, area, I rush out the door and press the button for the elevator. When the elevator finally arrives, I run inside and accidentally walk right into someone. A tall man with dark shades falls down onto his bottom.
“Oof!”
“I wasn’t looking where I was going! I am so sorry!” I apologize, offering him a hand. When he gets back onto his feet, he just stares at me strangely.
“S-Saiorse? Is that you?” The man asks with his mouth hanging open. My eyebrows furrow. How did this stranger know my name? Maybe he worked at the hospital like me and just happened to hear about me from the other employees. But why did he look so familiar?
“Yep, that’s me. But how do you know that? I mean, I don’t believe we’ve met before.”
He chuckles and removes his shades. Now it’s my turn to stare. His blue eyes twinkle with amusement.
“Now do you remember me, Saoirse?” He asks, grinning.
I’m very ashamed to say that I let out a very girly squeal.
“Nate!”
“Saio!”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Stop calling me that!” He mimics me, in a high-pitched voice.
“I don’t sound like that!” I yell.
“Yes, you do!”
“No I don’t!”

We both exchange a look, and then we burst into full blown laughter. Even though it wasn’t that funny. The people around us look at us as if we were crazy. Which we were, by the way. But hey, you can’t blame us. After all, we hadn’t seen other since college graduation day. Nathan and I were actually best friends since we were in diapers. Our mothers had coincidentally met at the hospital where we were born. I, of course, was the mature and older one, by 10 minutes. And I never let him forget that. I really don’t know why we didn’t keep in contact. I really had missed him. He and I were inseparable; we did practically everything together. If someone hurt me, Nate would beat the daylights out of the bully and vice versa. He was like that annoying, yet irresistible younger brother that I never had.


“So Nate, what brings you to the hospital? Someone hurt?” I ask curiously. His body slumps a little forward, as if in defeat. He runs his fingers through his dark, unruly hair frustratingly. I frowned. Something was wrong. What wasn’t he telling me?
Finally he opens his mouth and says “I have pancreatic cancer and the doctor said it’s not curable.”
It takes a few moments until the words hit me with full force. He had incurable pancreatic cancer? What?!
Right at that moment, my older sister walks into the room and throws herself at Nate. She kisses Nate passionately on the lips; leaving a bewildered and emotionally distraught me standing there, off to the side.
**********
“You guys are m-married?!! WHAT??!!” My eyes nearly bulge out of my head. I look back and forth from Bridget to Nate, and then back again. How could I not have noticed? These two were always flirting with each other, back in high school. We (as in our mutual friends and even our families) knew that they genuinely liked each other. Maybe even loved, but eloping? SERIOUSLY??!!
I pace back and forth, my thoughts all jumbled up. I try to calm myself down, by processing the new info. First, my sister calls me, saying that there was an emergency and then all of a sudden, my best friend that I hadn’t seen in years, pops out of nowhere and tells me that he has incurable cancer. And then BOOM! I find out that Nate and my sister, Bridget are married. Apparently, they had eloped a few months after college.
Bridget looks just as shocked and depressed as me, yet here she was currently snuggling with her hubby. All of a sudden, anger boils up inside me. How dare they not tell me about their secret marriage! I clench and unclench my fists as I chant from 1 to 10. It doesn’t work. No surprise there.
“Saoirse?” Asks Bridget softly. She tentatively reaches out to me, as if she were worried that I’d bite her hand off. Which didn’t sound bad at the moment.
Instead, I brush off her hand and start screaming at them, “How dare you!!? How dare you guys keep TWO MAJOR secrets all to yourselves!!! You could’ve at least told me! I thought the three of us were best friends and- “
I’m interrupted by Bridget.
“I’m sorry. I really am.” She chokes out.
I look at her, caught off guard. Fresh tears were streaming down her tear-streaked cheeks. And her violet eyes were blood shot while her slender nose was running profusely. This shocked me. I mean, I know anyone wouldn’t care about their appearance in these circumstances. But she looked like a complete mess or a zombie. I mean, I know anyone in these circumstances wouldn’t care about their appearance but this was my Miss. Perfect model sister I’m talking about. She was always well dressed and polite when we were younger, with not a strand of hair out of place. Just like our late mother.
Nate steps beside me and envelops us into a bear hug. Before I could stop myself, a sob escapes my lips. Soon, I’m bawling like a newborn infant. Bridge and Nate join me. After what feels like forever, we stop crying and just hold each other tightly, afraid to let go. We may not have known what the future would behold for us, but there was one thing we knew that’d never change, not in the past, not now, and definitely not in the future. We would always love and care for each other, no matter what.