Usually, when writing about the past, one always tries to paint it in beautiful colors, but my past is both simple and somewhat complex, so it was difficult for me to go on arranged dates.
It wasn't shyness or a reluctance to meet new people, but rather that these meetings always followed a familiar pattern.
At first, the conversation would be light, simple questions about studies or work. Then, after a short while, the part I never liked would begin.
Questions about family: Who are they? What do they do? How many are they? When it was my turn to answer, I would simply say I was an orphan, and the tone of the conversation would shift slightly—not necessarily outright pity, but that small moment when you sense your story has deviated from the usual framework others expect.
Then came the other questions: income, future plans, stability… as if the meeting gradually transformed into a kind of unspoken evaluation.
What bothered me most was the location itself. These dates were often in popular restaurants or well-known places, places people go not just to eat or sit, but also to project an image of luxury.
Perhaps that's precisely why going on organized dates became so tiresome for me—not because it was impossible, but because it often made me feel a little out of place in the way those encounters were supposed to go.
So, for a while, I put dating aside. It wasn't a dramatic decision or a firm promise never to love again; it was more like a quiet weariness that made me distance myself a little.
I didn't close my heart, and I didn't declare that I was done with that part of life.
People passed by me—new faces, brief conversations, fleeting smiles—but that feeling that truly stirred my heart never occurred.
I lived my days normally: work, talking to colleagues, sometimes laughing, sometimes thinking.
The idea of dating didn't occupy my thoughts like it once did.
I realized that not liking someone doesn't mean your heart is closed; sometimes it simply means you're waiting for something genuine enough to make you feel like it's worth trying again.
On a very strange day, a day I didn't expect to be any different from the others, I arrived at the emergency room for a patient requiring immediate resuscitation.
The atmosphere was charged with tension from the very first moment, that kind of awkward silence before the storm.
As I drew closer, the scene became clear: a man was bent over the patient, pressing with all his might on the chest, trying to keep the pulse alive, as if each compression was a stubborn attempt to wrest life from the brink of death.
His movements were quick but deliberate, repetitive and rhythmic, as if time itself were measured by the number of compressions.
His clothes were covered in blood, not just small stains, but clear traces, as if everything that had happened before that moment had clung to him. Yet he didn't seem confused or afraid, but completely focused, as if everything around him had vanished and only the body lying beneath him remained in the world.
He didn't move away for a moment, he didn't back down, and he didn't allow exhaustion or the surrounding chaos to stop him. He kept pressing on the patient's chest repeatedly, monitoring the pulse, waiting for any faint sign that the body hadn't yet given up.
As the effort continued, things slowly began to change. The pulse returned, weak at first, then stronger, until finally the danger had passed. Only then did the tension ease slightly, as if the entire room had taken a deep breath after a long wait.
The doctor on duty in the emergency room finished the treatment, and the patient's condition stabilized. I stayed with the patient, so I didn't see that person still there.
When I left the patient and went outside, I asked the head nurse about the person who had been performing CPR.
He said he had something to do and left.
I asked her if he had left a name for me to give the patient when he woke up.
She said no.
Did he sign anything or any admission form for the patient?
She said no.
I said in a low, almost inaudible voice, "Damn it."
I still remember the bewilderment on the head nurse's face when she heard me say that.
And I remember what she said: that she never thought she'd see me care about a man.
My face turned red, as usual, and I went looking for him in the hospital corridors and outside.
And that was the end of my first encounter with my Michael.