IDEA - 9-18-2020
by
Patrick Ryan
1,618 Words
It's one of the greatest love stories ever told; a 2003 Iraq War officer was injured and sent back to the United States, where he was cared for by a caring nurse who worked extra shifts so that the officer would survive his injuries. He may not have survived if she didn't care for him around the clock. They fell in love, but when he was healed, and he had to go back to war. She was worried day and night that he would be killed, and he missed her and would message her always. They could not wait to see each other again. But she got ill and had kidney failure; she was afraid to tell him because she didn't want him to worry. The condition became severe, and she was hospitalized. On leave from Iraq, he immediately found out that she was in the hospital, went there, and offered to donate a kidney without hesitation. It was a match, and the transplant saved her life. It turned out that he did not have to return to active war duty after surgery. They decided to marry and start a family. This isn't their story; this is the story of their son, Nick, who's been hearing this heart-warming story all his life. When he was a little kid, he wanted to share in a relationship similar to what his parents had, such that two people would be so committed to each other that they save each other's lives. Unfortunately, he didn't have a lot of luck in love. A handful of high school girlfriends all turned out to be shallow and dissolved quickly. He wanted to join the military, but he had minor hearing loss in his right ear when he took the hearing test, just enough to disqualify him. He went to college and tried to find his soulmate there, but his expectations were still too high, and it never ended up happening. College women were career-focused and saw the talk of marriage and sacrifice as a red flag. When he started work, he worked a ton of hours, never finding time to seriously take a relationship. Eventually, he concluded that he would never be able to live up to the past, and he returned to his pedestrian love life of sporadic hook-ups and sliding into DMs. The reality was, Nick was jaded on the concept of love. That was until Madison started at the office. He was keeping it casual, trying to learn his lessons. It turned out that she had a boyfriend, but they could become friends. But secretly, the pull of the past was still inside him. He was infatuated with Madison, but is he already friend-zoned? Madison keeps talking about how horrible her boyfriend is, but she never speaks about leaving him. Nick's rose-colored glasses are at it again; he feels that a grand gesture would convince her to leave her boyfriend and be with him. It's a losing situation, and this could be the one that sends Nick spiraling.
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