“Sam, what is it?” Eva asked as the waiter was pouring the wine.

“Oh, everything. Chambers is talking about staff cuts. The head of nursing keeps harassing me about a nurse he thinks has a drug problem. Galen is acting erratic again and IT thinks they’ll have to take it offline again, which will leave us with Hippocrates and Avicenna and Infectious Diseases has been tying up Avicenna for three months, we might as well only have one machine. And Dr. Stevens thinks there’s something weird about the cryo we revived last month but I have no idea what he’s on about… What?”

She held her glass halfway between her mouth and the table as if she’d forgotten whether to drink or put it back down.

“What?” he said again, but he could feel a lift dropping in his gut before she answered.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Sam. Why do we even do this?” She didn’t leave any room for an answer. “We go out to a nice restaurant and you might as well still be at work.”

It took him a moment to realize she was getting up to leave.