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MARIA

I checked my results three times before I believed them. Then I checked a fourth time just to be certain. Passed. For several seconds, I simply stared at the screen while students moved around me in every direction, some celebrating, some crying, some already making frantic phone calls.

My pulse hammered against my ribs.

Months of lectures, placements, and assignments had come down to a single screen in front of me. I thought about the endless revision sessions, the flashcards covering Riot’s coffee table and the notes spread across every available surface of his apartment, and suddenly it didn’t seem quite real.

Smiling, I pulled out my phone and typed a single word.

Me: Passed.

The reply came so quickly, it was almost as if he’d been waiting for it.

Riot: About fuckin’ time.

I laughed and looked at the pass again.

A second message arrived immediately after.

Riot: Proud of you, Nurse.

For some reason, that one hit me square in the chest, and I stared at it for a moment before locking my phone.

Jenna appeared beside me seconds later, carrying two coffees and enough excitement for both of us. “Tell me that’s your happy face because if you’ve failed after all that studying, I’m transferring clinics.”

I held up the results page without saying a word.

Jenna looked at the screen, blinked once, and then let out a scream loud enough to turn half the corridor in our direction. Holding up her own phone for me to see she had passed too. Several students looked over in alarm, but Jenna didn’t seem to notice as she threw her arms around me.

“Oh my god, you did it.”

“We did it.”

“No, absolutely not. I copied half my notes from you.”

I laughed as she dragged me toward the nearest coffee shop. “We’re celebrating.”

Three hours later, Jenna had upgraded from coffee to cocktails and was halfway through explaining why one of our lecturers was secretly in love with anatomy textbooks. The theory made absolutely no sense, but she presented it with complete confidence anyway.

The bar buzzed around us with students celebrating the end of exams. Glasses clinked together. Laughter drifted between crowded tables. Somebody in the corner had started singing, badly and should probably have been stopped.

I sank back in my chair and glanced around the crowded bar. Every table seemed full of students celebrating the end of exams, their conversations blending together beneath the music playing overhead.

For the first time in months, I wasn’t mentally calculating how much revision I still had left to do or worrying about whether I’d forgotten something important. The constant knot of anxiety that had lived somewhere beneath my ribs for weeks had finally loosened, leaving behind a strange sort of lightness that I wasn’t entirely used to.

Jenna watched me over the rim of her glass before narrowing her eyes suspiciously. “You know what your problem is?”

Experience told me there was no correct answer to that question. “Go on then.”

“You never celebrate yourself.”

I laughed. “I’m sitting in a pub having cocktails.”

“Because I dragged you here.”

Unfortunately, she had a point. I had spent so long focusing on the next thing that I rarely stopped to appreciate the thing I’d already achieved. There was always another shift, another deadline, another problem waiting around the corner. Even during exam season, I’d been more concerned with the possibility of failure than the possibility that I might actually succeed.

Sitting across from Jenna, listening to her ramble about absolutely nothing important, I realized how long it had been since I’d allowed myself to enjoy a moment without worrying about what came next.