Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

They met on the worst night of her life.

She was sitting on the kerb outside the hospital at 3 a.m. because the corridor was too full and the night was too long and she needed to breathe. He was sitting on the same kerb because his father was in surgery and he also needed to breathe.

They didn’t speak for a while. The parking lot was quiet and orange-lit and neither of them had anything useful to say.

He offered her a sandwich from a paper bag. Hospital vending machine. She took it without question.

“Thank you,” she said.

“How long have you been here?” he said.

“Nine hours. You?”

“Six.” He unwrapped his own. “Who’s yours?”

“My mum,” she said. “You?”

“My dad.”

They ate in the hospital-orange silence. She didn’t know his name. He didn’t know hers. In the way of people stripped down by long nights, they didn’t perform for each other. She told him she was frightened. He said he was too. She said she wasn’t sure how to do this. He said he wasn’t either.

His father died at 5 a.m.

Her mother made it through.

She found him in the corridor afterwards, and she didn’t say: I’m sorry, because she’d heard it all night and knew how hollow it was. She just sat beside him and stayed.

He looked at her and she understood: she had given him the only useful thing, which was her presence, and there was no adequate accounting for that.

They exchanged numbers because both of them knew something real had happened, even if neither was in a state to name it.

He texted three weeks later. Just: how is she?

She told him. She asked how he was.

They talked for two hours.

They met for coffee — tentatively, in the specific way of people who have already been through something together and are now starting over. The beginning felt strange after the middle. But they had the middle, and that was not nothing, and from the middle they were able to build.

A year later she was telling the story at a dinner party and a friend said: “You met outside a hospital at 3 a.m.?” and she said: “That’s right,” and he looked across the table at her and she looked back, and neither of them laughed, because it was not a funny story. It was the thing that had happened. It was where they had found each other.

It was, she thought, enough.

So you made it to the end… which probably means you’re the kind of person who enjoys a little romance with their coffee ☕. If you’re in the mood for more stories about messy feelings, stubborn attraction, and women who absolutely refuse to settle for boring love, you can find all my books here.

Fair warning though. One story tends to lead to another. I’ve seen it happen. Repeatedly.