by Julie Wright
Dr. Niles checked his watch when we entered his office. “You’re late, Stone.”
“Yes, sir. I know,” I said. Explaining that it took me that long to find Adam would have been useless. Dr. Niles likely already knew that’s what I was doing. And explaining the situation just made me look like a tattletale who couldn’t take responsibility for anything. I’d seen enough unprofessional people in the short rotation week in the geriatric department to know I did not want to emulate any of them in any way.
Dr. Niles nodded as if understanding my situation. We both paused for a moment to allow Adam time to step forward and also take responsibility. Big surprise that he didn’t. So we got to work on what turned out to be a long day. I kept notes on each patient—writing down everything I learned about them. When we were finally released to go home for the day, I considered that Adam had been right about that part, too. We left when we were told. We arrived when we were told. Our lives no longer belonged to us.
But we knew all of that going into the profession. Complaining only served to make us look stupid. Besides, I liked the work and didn’t mind the schedule. Each new patient offered me a chance to take my knowledge from big picture to detail work. I tucked my notebook into my bag, kind of looking forward to going home later on when they finally released me for the day. Researching some of the patients’ conditions would help me understand better how to serve them while doing rounds.
But the time to leave for home didn’t come soon. I was asked to intubate a patient to prep him for surgery. While checking the cart to make sure the ventilator and anesthesia equipment were all prepped and ready to go, Everett entered the room with Shara, the anesthesiologist.
“I was sent to help,” Everett announced.
“Great.” I moved to the side to allow them room to wheel in the patient. “Everything looks good,” I informed Shara as she looked over my work. “There aren’t any leaks in the gas delivery system and the backup systems and fail safes are all functioning properly.”
“Fabulous. Good job, Andra,” she said.
I felt a great deal of pride in knowing I set the operating room up accurately.
“New necklace?” Everett asked.
I touched the place where the diamond heart pendant hung at my collarbone. “Yes. A graduation gift from Grams. It’s a family heirloom. My great grandfather gave it to my great grandmother when he graduated from medical school to thank her for helping him get through it.”
Everett held the laryngoscope in his left hand and shot a quick smirk at me. “A heart diamond . . . . Fitting for a woman who wants to be a heart surgeon.”
I flashed him a smile back. “Yes, it is. As soon as she gave it to me, I realized I’d never actually owned anything that meant so much to me.” I opened the patient’s mouth and tilted his head back. We both focused on the task at hand instead of idle chit chat, but every now and again, Everett’s gaze fell on me in a way that warmed me.
Dr. Miles had come in to monitor our work. “Advance the laryngoscope further into the vallecula.”
Everett did as directed.
“Nicely done,” Dr. Niles said.
The praise, so seldom received, made both of us stand a little taller.
We celebrated the good end to a long day by going to dinner with a few other students. One of them, Tamara, spent half the night smiling too wide at Everett and glaring too hard at me. Adam joined the group unexpectedly halfway through the meal. He plopped himself down next to me and scooted his chair close enough to make Everett do the glaring. During the dinner, I reacquainted myself with people who’d been in my study groups at varying times over the past two years. Jason, Charles, Angie, Frank, Tamara, and Samuel. As we all laughed and compared notes on patients, nurses, and doctors, I realized what I’d been missing out by not allowing myself to socialize with everyone. I’d been mistaken in thinking I didn’t have time for people. I had missed real human relationships.
With dinner winding down, Tamara fake-yawned and checked the time on her phone. “Oh! Look how late!”
“Yeah guys. It’s definitely time to hit the sack. I was on my feet all day and need to sleep,” Everett agreed.
“I’m on your side. Sleeping sounds like a great idea,” Tamara agreed. “Hey, Evs, will you take me home? I’m going to need a ride.”
Everett’s slight jolt showed how her question took him by surprise. “Um . . . Right.” He shot a glance my direction as if asking for advice or help. But what could I say? Tell him he wasn’t allowed to take other girls home because the very idea sent my insides into spin cycle?
We’d reset on friendship. He promised not to kiss me. I didn’t own him.
“Sure,” He said when I failed to give him any advice one way or another. “Sure. I’ll take you home. Andra, do you need a ride too? Anyone else?” He added the anyone else as an afterthought.
“I have my car,” I said, declining the offer of a ride and feeling not very happy about it. My not getting a ride from him meant that the all-too-interested Tamara would be alone with Everett in his car.
I tried not to let myself ponder too deeply as to why that bothered me.
Before everyone dispersed to their various destinations, Everett tugged my arm and pulled me into a hug.
“I thought we were just resetting the friendship, not anything else,” I said.
I felt his mouth move against my ear in a way that made me imagine him smiling. “This is just a friendly hug goodbye to someone who can intubate a patient like a pro.”
I laughed, squeezed him back, and tried to not imagine kissing him. Tamara would definitely not like that, and I had to work with her for the next two years. I also had to work with Everett and kissing complicated everything, even if I did like kissing, even if I did like kissing Everett better than I'd liked kissing anyone.
I drove home feeling annoyed and uncertain as to where all that annoyance came from.
Emily texted me to let me know it would be a little longer on the apartment I wanted.
The evil roommates were having another party.
***
The next two weeks were filled with days too busy to worry about social activities or evil roommates. Between keeping notes on the patients assigned to me and studying all that ailed those patients so I could drill from big picture to details, more than enough existed to occupy my attention.
Although Everett stayed busy as well, I noted that Tamara worked hard to keep him even busier. She invited him out several times, and Everett had gone with her. Part of me said it was because he was too nice to say no. Part of me said it didn’t matter since he was only my friend, and I'd been the one to break things off with him after all. Another part of me felt nothing but animosity toward Tamara and irritation toward Everett for not saying no to her.
To rub salt into the wound, Adam popped up everywhere I was. He kept asking questions about things I liked and my family. He actually tried to be helpful when we were assigned to work together. He asked me out and asked me out and asked me out.
He must have worn me down because I finally agreed to go to a concert of one of my favorite bands: Remember the Ladies. The concert was several weeks away, but once I accepted, Adam talked nonstop about how much fun we would have and how great the night was going to be. I almost regretted agreeing.
In spite of that, things were going well. Third year really did feel like a payoff year. This was what I’d trained for, what I’d wanted while doing pre med at Boston. Working on real live people to make those lives better. I learned not just about what ailed my patients, but I learned about their lives, their families, their dreams, their fears. Knowing them personally made it easier to want to do my best for them.
And then everything changed.
It started when Mrs. Bennion went from doing well to not doing well.
And then, when I went in one morning, Dr. Niles pulled me aside.
“I wanted to be the one to tell you before anyone else could. I thought you should hear it from
me since I know you’ve taken a particular interest in her . . .”
“Tell me, sir?”
He cleared his throat, leaned on the side of his desk, and tightened his lips together before finally telling me the news.
Mrs. Bennion died.
“I didn’t say goodbye.” The words were foolish, infantile, especially coming from someone working on becoming a doctor, but they fell out of my mouth anyway.
Foolish words were often the exhaust of great shock.
Dr. Niles didn’t chastise me for saying something foolish. Instead he leaned forward from his desk. “You’re a hard worker and a smart woman, Andra Stone. You will be a great doctor someday. I’ve no doubt you will save many lives and make them better while you’re saving them. But you can’t save them all. This is going to be hard to hear, but you need to hear it, and hear it from someone who has your best interest at heart. Do not allow yourself to get too close to your patients. Their lives have value and meaning, but they can’t get personal to you, especially in the geriatric unit. People die, and you lose your objective ability to save them if your heart is bleeding out all over the surgery floor. Do you understand?”
I nodded, feeling numb from my heart bleeding out all over his office floor.
I understood, but I hated it.
I agreed with him, but almost hated him for imparting this horrible advice.
A friend.
I needed a friend.
Not just someone who was a colleague, mentor, or teacher. I needed a real friend, someone who knew Mrs. Bennion and who knew me and who could maybe plug up some of the holes in my leaky, traitorous heart.
Only one name, only one face, only one person could possibly be that friend for me. I fled Dr. Niles’ office as soon as he felt I was composed enough to carry on with my duties. Everett usually made rounds at this time of day and so I went to where he would most likely be found.
But he wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere, no matter how hard I looked. One of the residents told me he’d gone home early due to an emergency. I moved to text him, to tell him to come back and handle my emergency too, but my fingers never swiped the phone on. Instead they slipped it back into my pocket.
I would have to handle Mrs. Bennion’s death like an adult.
No. I would have to do better than that.
Like a doctor.
Chapter Ten
I took a deep breath before opening my front door once I arrived home. The entire day had been sort of awful. I needed some peace and hoped that my home would provide me that peace. “They won’t be that bad today. They won’t be that bad today. They won’t be . . .” I opened the door.
“I’m sorry, Andra!” Evil-Roommate-Anne said before I even got the door closed.
“Sorry?”
“I told Becky to stay out of your room.”
“Which should have been easy to do since it was locked,” I said, feeling an intense wariness I've never had with my roommates, evil or not.
“I’m sure it wasn’t locked.” she said but looked guilty enough to verify that they had forced their way into my room in spite of the fact that it was, in truth, locked.
I didn’t argue the point, not when I needed to know the bigger picture problem as to what exactly Evil-Roommate-Anne meant when she decided to apologize. My heart rate increased to the point of panic. “What happened?”
“Becky really wanted to borrow your necklace . . .”
The feeling of panic turned to severe dread. She didn’t even have to say which necklace. Evil-roommate-Becky only ever complimented me on one thing ever in the year I had lived with her: the diamond heart necklace my grams had given me when I graduated Boston University. The one that had belonged to my great grandma and had been given to her by my great grandfather after he graduated medical school. The diamond heart meant the world to me and now it was. . . . What? What had Evil-roommate-Becky done to my family heirloom?
“She didn’t mean to, Andra. You have to know that.”
“What did she do?”
Evil-Roommate-Anne actually gulped. I’d never seen an honest-to-goodness gulp before. But here Evil-Roommate-Anne was, gulping and wiping her palms on her jeans as though they were suddenly sweaty.
“She was just trying it on.”
“Get it for me. Whatever she did to it, I’ll fix it.”
Did she gulp again?
“That’s the thing. I can’t get it. I was blowing my nose and then threw the tissues into the toilet. She turned to me to tell me I made disgusting noises when I blew my nose and dropped the necklace at the same time I flushed the toilet. It was accidentally flushed down.” The whole sentence came out in a rush as if it was all one word.
I shook my head trying to wrap my mind around the concept of such a thing. We’re those spots in my vision? “You flushed my necklace? How is that even possible? You got it back out, didn’t you? Where is it now?”
Evil-Roommate-Anne began to cry. Real tears. “I called a plumber. He pulled the toilet off in case it was stuck in the little swirl shape, but it wasn’t. He said the fact that it got dropped at the same time as the initial force of water was going down meant that it made it all the way to the sewers. There’s no way to get it back now.”
I stared at her and tried to process the pieces of information that didn’t fit together no matter how hard I jammed them into the same space of my mind. “Where’s Becky?”
“She’s on her date.” Evil-Roommate-Anne sniffled quite pathetically. I would have felt sorry for her if it hadn’t been for the fact that they broke into my room to intentionally steal the only real item of sentimental value I owned.
The fact that Evil-Roommate-Becky had still gone on her date rather than face the situation directly proved her to be more evil than even I had imagined. She’d abandoned Evil-Roommate-Anne to face the music all on her own.
“It’s really gone?” I had to ask. Had to know. Had to hope for one second that this was all a joke, that they really hadn’t taken something so important to me and lost it forever.
She nodded.
I pressed my lips together and nodded.
Then I went to my room and pulled out my suitcases. Living here could not happen anymore. I filled the first one then texted Emily. Is the apartment available yet? I have got to get out of here NOW.
She texted back almost a few minutes later. Ummmmm about that. The original guy has moved out now and it would have been yours but something happened. The owner is choosing between you and someone else, but the other guy had some circumstances that swayed the owner in his direction. We don’t know yet what exactly happened. But there apparently was some sort of fight and the apartment is now in flux. I will keep you posted.
You don’t understand Emily, I texted back. I have to get out of this place now. If I stay another day, I might find myself killing someone. Murder does not look good on a doctor’s resume.
A long pause settled between my plea and her final response. I will check into it.
With nothing left to do, I hefted my two suitcases out into the hall and to the front door.
“Where are you going?” Evil-Roommate-Anne asked.
I fixed here with a glare and opened the front door instead of answering, thumping my bags over the threshold and down the stairs.
“Andra!” she called out the door. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”
I tossed my bags into the back seat of my car and went back into the house.
She followed me, repeating the questions several times. When my closet had been emptied and I’d stripped my bed of my comforter and sheets and dumped all the contents of my drawer in the kitchen into a box and hauled that to my car, she stopped asking and stopped following.
My car was packed tightly enough that I barely had room to squeeze in behind the wheel. I finally broke my silence when I felt pretty sure I’d emptied the place of my belongings. “You can keep the stuff in the fridge. You guys were just going to eat it all anyway. At least now you have m
y permission.”
Once in my car and on the road, I had to deal with the fact that I didn’t know where to go. I pulled over to the side of the road and texted Emily. Can I have the owner’s information? If I can just explain my situation, he’ll know why this is so important to me.
You know he’s funny about who has his information. Let me just see what I can do, she texted back.
I wanted to tell her that I was homeless and wandering the streets on a day that had been epic when it came to bad news. But instead I texted, Fine. Please try. This has become too toxic to bear any longer.
I will try. Keep your chin up.
Thank you, Emily.
Her return text of, Stay strong, Andra, made me want to cry.
I closed my eyes and held my phone over my heart praying for a miracle that would remove me from this nightmare, opened them again, kicked the car into drive and drove until I arrived at the hospital. I parked in the parking lot, locked the car doors, and dropped my seat back as far as it would go considering all the stuff I’d crammed into the back. I allowed myself to cry a little and sleep a little and check my phone for a message from Emily a lot.
When she finally did write, it was six am.
I’m so sorry, Andra! The apartment’s gone. You know this guy’s reputation. He’s a total misogynist prat. He always favors the guys over the girls. He found out a male med student wanted the place and gave it to him without blinking an eye. The new renter is a med student named Everett Covington. You probably know him. He’s a third year, too. I guess he had some pretty major dispute with his roommate and stormed out of his old place without making a plan first. I am so sorry.