Tossing and turning around two in the morning, he sat up unable to take it any longer. They had been the best of friends. When she suddenly went on the night shift, it was as if she dissappeared off the face of the Earth. There was no more chats over coffee, no more just being silly at the club. She moved in to an apartment close by but would never answer the phone. Was it something he did? That was it for sleep, the rest of the night he pondered what to do.

   The next morning, as he was driving into the hospital, he passed by her apartment complex and saw her car parked in its usual spot. He pulled into the lot and scribbled a hasty note tucking it under a windshield blade before hurrying off, so as not to be late.

   That night he had to stay late. He was up to his neck in patients. They just kept coming and there was no end in sight, and he sat down.

   Suddenly a strange feeling caused him to look up. There she was, and immediately his heart reached out. "I meant what I said."

   "That was kind of a strange way to tell me."

   Perhaps he was just tired, but at that very moment, that critical time-stopping moment, her face suddenly took on the appearance of a girl he knew in college. It was unexpected and threw him back. The young girl was someone else's girlfriend, and he hadn't given her a second thought, but face over face at that critical moment.

   She must have felt his sudden revulsion and turned walking away quickly.

   His boss working on the next bench had seen everything. "Go to her", he said like a father to a son.

   But the vision had shaken him. He fell into a chair unerved by what had happened.

   The next day for some reason he bought a paper. He never bought a paper, Why today?

   A small article caught his eye. The article was about a fatal car accident. The girl he had seen the night before in the face of a girl he was trying to say he loved had been killed seven hundred miles away.