This Is Us
When I tell people how Dre and I became partners in this life, most people say something to the effect of, “Oh my gosh! That sounds like an episode of Grey’s Anatomy!” I just have to take people’s word for it, because I’ve never watched a full episode of the show.
Whether you’re a Grey’s fan or not… here’s a little background story on how we became Mr. and Mrs. Dr. Dre!
I graduated with my Associate’s Degree in nursing in 2012, and started my career working on a surgical-step down unit. During nursing school, I had my first child and ended my first marriage. It was a difficult but transformational time in my life to say the least. I was so eager to begin my practice, and truly couldn’t have stepped into a better opportunity to learn and grow than I did with my first job. I casually dated here and there, but I was so content with Aiden being the only man in my life and busy trying to become the best RN I could… I didn’t feel moved to pursue romantic partnership.
That first year of my nursing practice will always hold a special place in my heart. It was the first time I felt God using my pain with divine purpose. Although I was weary and wounded, I was able to lessen the suffering in this world, tangibly, one shift at a time. It was more healing for me than it was for any of my patients. My experiences that year shaped me and positioned me in ways I couldn’t understand at the time, but in hindsight, I see that much of it was in preparation to become a partner to Dre.
July 1st is a day that lives in yearly infamy in the medical community- the day a whole new class of resident physicians step onto the scene and try to do no harm. In July of 2013, one of the surgical interns stepping onto the Youngstown scene was none other than Dr. Dre! Because interns are not trusted to manage critically ill patients, they spend a lot of time rounding on surgical step-down units. It was in the conference room of good old 4500 that I saw the 6’3” scrub model that would become my husband for the first time. If memory serves me correctly, the first words we ever exchanged involved orders for a topical antifungal treatment for a patient. Is that a thing that would happen on Grey’s?!
The first month-or-so of our encounters were super business-oriented, but a lot of fun. Dre was always so good-natured and polite… words I had never spoken about another resident. He was so kind to patients and families, and to every other member of the care team. He looked so darn good in those baby blues, but the smile he wore each shift is what made him stand out. If you know Dre, you know his smile. We were both actually seeing other people when he moved to Youngstown. By “seeing someone” in my case, I really mean I was unilaterally interested in a kid who delivered meal trays to patients at the hospital who honestly wouldn’t have given me CPR to save my life. I was so sure the slinger of strawberry shortcake was going to like me eventually that I wasn’t even upset Dre’s med school girlfriend had matched in Cleveland.
Good news: neither of those relationships panned out. During the month of September, Dre and I were working really closely together caring for a patient. I know it was September because the Cleveland Indians were having a great season. Anyways, this little patient was just my favorite and a tiny bit demented. She was a candidate for a feeding tube, and I would sit with her during my lunch break and help her eat to prove she didn’t need one. She ate slow- but she ate well. No one listened to me and she ended up with a PEG tube. I’m almost sure it was Dre that put it in too. It was the first of many times we disagreed about how to manage a plan of care- both personally and professionally.
Any nurse who has worked the floor knows the pain of lugging around a CISCO phone. Six inches of bulky plastic straight out of the 1990’s whose sole purpose in life is to annoy you until it falls into a puddle of bodily fluids. The only time I didn’t mind hearing that godforsaken ringtone was when I knew Dre might be on the other end. He would call a couple times each shift just to check on our mutual patient. I remember hanging up one time and my coworker saying, “Amanda, he’s flirting with you!” I assured her he was deeply invested in the patient’s calorie count and that was it. The next day, after stopping by the unit to say goodbye at the end of his shift, Dre called my work phone. From outside of the hospital. HE WAS FLIRTING WITH ME! Clear as a bell I can still hear his voice, “If the Indians make it to the playoffs, I’ll take you to a game. If not, you owe me dinner.” I can still feel the way my cheeks flushed and my stomach turned upside down. I agreed. We ended up going to dinner, as any Cleveland sports fan will understand.
We went on our first and second date at the end of September. Just casual dinners with delicious conversation for dessert. I remember the red cardigan he wore on the first date, and the blush-pink blazer I wore on our second. He was so gentle with his questions surrounding my son. I still hear that gentleness in his voice as he speaks to both of our children now. We quietly exchanged stories around the loss of a parent. The first time I remember ever touching Dre was to find his hand under the table when he told me the story of his mother passing away, days before he was granted admission to Howard University College of Medicine. Those first encounters were not sexy or glamourous. They were raw, and they were real. Our companionship was formed over shared suffering and breadsticks. Is that a thing on Grey’s??
I so enjoyed my time with Dre. He was incredibly warm and truly different than any person I had ever spent time with. I cherished his friendship so much. Despite feeling the sparks flying- I also felt a huge shift in the way we were both treated by our peers at work. People might be happy for us now- but very few have been in our corner since day one. I don’t know precisely what the offense was- but it was uncomfortable enough for me to break it off with Dre. I remember going over to his apartment one Sunday afternoon to help him assemble a desk, and I told him it just wasn’t working for me. It was so sad, because it WAS working for me. It just wasn’t working for everyone else. He was so sweet about it. I remember him asking, “So I’ll never get to kiss you again?” (Insert knife into heart.) Even from what little I know about the world’s McDreamiest medial drama… that does sound about right.
During the time we spent apart, I made moves on a career aspiration that I had been holding onto since nursing school. I really, really wanted to work in the surgical ICU. I knew that it probably wouldn’t be appropriate for me to work there if I was dating a surgical resident. Obviously it’s happened before- but the ways I heard people talking about those couples… I didn’t want that for myself, or for Dre. We remained on good terms at work, but there was always a subtle quality of sadness in our exchanges. We missed each other, is what it really was. Work wasn’t as fun. The people who treated me differently when Dre and I were dating treated me differently when we weren’t dating too. It became a lose-lose situation.
Dre went back to Haiti that November, and I remember missing him so much at Thanksgiving. Shortly after the holiday, I remember bringing Dre a Panera sandwich to his call room, (Grey’s??), and sticking around to talk. I don’t recall precisely what was said that day over carbohydrates, but whatever the exchange was, it resulted in us being together from that day forward. Nothing profound. Just a retreat back into that delicious conversation that bonded us from the start. We never put a formal label on our relationship. We made no announcements. I just knew I had a key to his apartment with a Cleveland Indians skin on it, and that he came over, uninvited, to my home to introduce himself to my mother and son. That year, for Christmas, he bought me a ton of makeup to replace the set my then-three-year-old had flushed down the toilet. Dre and Aiden have always had each other’s backs.
We celebrated New Year’s Eve together that year in D.C. In January, I interviewed for a job on that intensive care unit- and got the job. I remember getting the email saying I was hired when we were on a trip together in Haiti. I was so excited! To be in love and to be employed! That trip was a pivotal experience in our relationship. I feel like I know Dre more fully after spending those hours together on that perfectly natural Caribbean beach. If I close my eyes, I can recall the feeling of the breeze dancing over our skin, and the curves around Dre’s face, smiling at me from behind his sunglasses. It was on the plane ride home from this trip that I knew for sure we were a forever thing.
It wasn’t long after that trip that I started working on the intensive care unit, and then quickly made my exit. It was strikingly apparent to me that it would absolutely never work for Dre and I to be in that space together. I had made the mistake of choosing my profession over my person before, and I knew better. That decision, still to this day, is something I struggle with. It would have been such a blessing to my practice to work and learn with those nurses- but it would have ended my marriage before it began. My decision to leave was largely unpopular and mocked by people we both worked with. It was the kind of thing people would whisper and make passive aggressive jabs about. People didn’t want to see us working together- and they also didn’t want to see us work separately to save our relationship. Do you know how many of those people who had so much to say are still in our lives today, though? Precisely zero.
After the ICU exodus, we got engaged and moved in together. I worked on my old unit for a while, and eventually started floating to telemetry units and worked my way up to non-surgical ICU floating. It was a different way of stepping into critical care nursing than I hoped for, but it was perfect for me! I worked with so many different nurses and teams- it was great for our relationship to be spread out at different campuses and to have a little bit of space between us. Every now and then, our paths would cross and I would be reminded of what a joy it was to provide care in the company of a doctor with a kind heart and a smile from Heaven. I savor each of those memories. I know that Dre is still out there beaming at patients from behind his mask every day, and I feel like a part of me is there with them too.
We were married in November of 2014 in the most low-key ceremony you can imagine. No guests, no drama- just the two of us and the ocean, and a really nice officiant named Olga. Since then, we have been through hell and high water, but we’ve been together. And that’s the only place I want to be.
These days, that 6’3’ scrub model makes a pot of coffee before he kisses me on the forehead and slips out the door into the operating room. He calls me once or twice a day, just to check in on our kids- who are a lot like our mutual patients. I get the same grin across my face when I see his name pop up on my phone now as I did when he used to make my CISCO phone ring. And when he comes home, beaming from ear to ear in that same shade of baby blue, I feel the excitement I once felt for my nursing practice spill over into my passion for this life we share.
Some days, I deeply miss the bedside. I long for the purpose, and the human connection, and the cerebral symphony we conducted. I am so grateful, however, that my person and I will always have a morsel of that practice woven into our relational framework. Just like the other recollections of our love story, the memories we made in scrubs feel like a place I can return to, and touch gently as we look for ways to walk this earth in love and confidence. After all, our mission still remains to mend the broken, lessen the suffering, and to shine a little light into this often-gloomy world.
It doesn’t look like it used to, but the work we do together now is the most valuable I will ever do in my lifetime. It doesn’t make us a dime- but you can bet that we are richer for it.
I can neither confirm nor deny the similarities between our narrative and the plot of Grey’s Anatomy… but I sincerely thank you for taking the time to be here with us. Our family continues to outstretch our hands in hopes that we might reach those who are in search of community. Through telling our own stories, and listening to the stories of those around us, we become more connected as a human family. Today and always, you are invited to be a part of The Romain Family.
