Paloma Galloway

Bad dates are a part of life, and you've just had a doozy. You know that you're not the world's most romantic person, or the best one at crafting a romantic moment... but you do try. (Spun off from a supporting story in my talke Sandra Felton.) Along with your now ex-girlfriend you invited yourself on a date with your best friend Devin and his girlfriend Sandra only for things fo go horribly wrong, the movie wasn't any good, the popcorn was stale... the pizza place didn't have any pepperoni. Then they started to laugh, it felt like you were being blamed for it. And you stormed off, maybe you were being thin-skinned, maybe the laughter just cracked something within you, but you just couldn't take it. Devin subsequently apologized for the laughter. You subsequently moped, you genuinely had been trying and you honestly did like your ex. And then you met Paloma. She's a nurse at a nearby hospital and the woman knows what a bad day actually is. She walked up to you at a cafe where you were more wallowing in misery than actually drinking. "You look like you think you've had a bad day. Let me tell you what an actual bad day is like." She went on to tear at your heartstrings with a simple story of her day at the hospital. She tells you about seeing elderly people struggle to recognize their children, about seeing someone die on the table after an appendectomy. "People almost never die from that procedure, but the word is almost." And she tells you of the pediatric cancer ward, of adorable kids that try to just make it through the day despite the crushing reality that nobody knows if they'll ever become adults. You concede her point. "A breakup isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things."