The third person who asks if she knows where Micah is has also found his pager, so Emily decides it is finally time to investigate. On instinct, she heads to the roof and finds him in a relatively secluded corner staring off into the distance, an intense look of concentration on his face. She guesses immediately that he is trying to keep his emotions in check, and she knows exactly how he feels.
They have had to deliver devastating news to their patients today, news that additionally hit close to home for both of them. While this sort of a case on any day is hard, the significance of today's date makes it seem like an impossibly cruel trick of fate. Maybe they should have taken the day off after all.
She walks over and sits beside Micah, glancing at him once before also turning her eyes to the horizon and conjuring up in her memories the same person she knows he is thinking about too. As clearly as if they had all been together only yesterday, Emily hears the sound of Joyce Barnes' laughter and sees her motherly smile.
It's been exactly a year since they said goodbye. They see death regularly at the hospital, but the experience of close personal loss had been something else entirely. Micah had tried to be impossibly strong, especially for the sake of his sister. "It's your mother, not a patient" Emily had had to remind him gently. "It's okay to cry."
They had hardly slept during those weeks. Amid the regular rigor of her duties at the hospital, Emily had helped the family as much as she could with errands and the constant stream of visitors and phone calls. Then, there had been the long and emotional hours of waiting for death followed by even more visitors, stacks of paperwork, funeral planning, and another endless round of phone calls.
At the funeral, Micah had clenched her right hand so tightly she had nearly lost feeling in her fingers, his other arm wrapped tightly around the shoulders of his sister who had sobbed openly through the whole service with a box of tissues in her lap. As much as she loved Joyce, Emily had questioned her right to sit in the front row with the immediate family until Micah had put an end to her concerns about etiquette.
"You ARE family. And I need you there." he had said firmly with a heartbreaking tremor in his voice. And that had been the end of the conversation. She was glad, really. She feels the same way. Micah is her family. Joyce had been her family. Emily still misses the older woman with all her heart.
Emily's audible sigh as she gazes at the view from the hospital roof seems to startle Micah, and he turns to her as though only now realizing she is there.
"You dropped your pager" she says, holding it out to him with a gentle smile in answer to the question in his eyes.
"Thanks" he says, coming further out of his trance as he takes the pager from her hand and sticks it in his pocket. "Do they need me?"
Emily shrugs noncommittally. "If so, they'll page you again." She says simply.
Micah gives her a wan smile, taking her hand in his own before turning again to stare into the distance.
"What a day, huh?" Emily asks quietly.
"I just needed a minute."
Emily leans her head against his shoulder, willing to stay there with him as long as he needs. And for the moment, in the fading light, they grieve together, quietly remembering.