“I’m in such a bad mood that I think I’m better off on my own. I’d rather be alone.”
“Okay.” She tried to sound okay about his decision. “Bye.”
He hung up.
She looked at the dead phone and started crying again. No one cared about the best interview she’d ever had in her life. Her tears stopped after a couple of minutes. Mendra slept on contentedly in her lap. She woke her up by lifting her so that they were eye to eye. “The best interview of my life and he’s too busy saving lives to care.” Mendra blinked back at her, then struggled to escape. Meredith let go and she scrambled down to the floor and reseated herself a safe distance away. “Yes, I know I’m selfish.” Meredith told her. “So what? Those people will be saved, whether I like it or not. So who cares?”
Mendra turned and left the room.
She was painting the next day when Ben called.
“Hey. I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“Day from hell?”
“It felt like it.”
“Well? Did you get a good night’s sleep?”
“I got home at eleven, so I can’t really complain. I was back here at 5.”
“Five a.m.? Are you there now? It’s Saturday.”
“I know. I’ll be here till probably two. Do you want to drive up to Santa Fe for dinner?”
“Oh yes! I’d love to.”
Ben paused. “So is this dinner going to be a celebration or a ‘you didn’t want that bleeping job anyway’ meal?”
Meredith smiled. “A celebration.”
“Oh,” Ben said, with real feeling. “Oh boy. Good going. You nailed it. I figured you would but it’s nice to hear it for sure.”
“Yeah. I’ll give you the blow by blow at dinner.”
“Great. Let’s do the Coyote Cafe.” His pager went off while his was talking. “Would you mind making the reservation?”
“Sure.”
He clicked off and Meredith sat back in front of her painting. Tonight, she’d finally get to tell someone about her interview. Mendra was sitting across the room, watching her in a laid-back sort of way. She made no attempt to walk across the wet palette or rub up against the painting. She was definitely not a needy animal. I love this cat, Meredith thought. I love her personality! She looked across the room at Mendra. “I love you!” She told her aloud. Mendra continued to watch from afar. I need to expand my circle of friends, Meredith realized. The three I have are not enough to fulfill my needs.
Dinner was wonderful. Ben listened as she replayed every line in the interview.
“You waited them out. They crumbled.”
“It was an accident. I just didn’t want to give away how poorly I was paid at UNM.”
Ben held up his wine glass. “To you. And your nerves of steel. And your new job.” They clinked.
Meredith took a sip. “So. Rough rotation?”
“Ugh.” Ben rolled his eyes. “Burn and Trauma.” He shrugged. “I’m learning a lot.”
“So it’s burn victims?”
“And trauma. They come from all over the state. We’re the only Level One trauma center in New Mexico. But it’s not the patients that make it a rough rotation. Though they are in bad shape.”
“What is it then?” Meredith took a sip of her ice water.
“It’s the medical hierarchy. As a Family Practice resident, I’m at the bottom.”
“Bottom of the totem pole?”
Ben laughed. “Bottom of the feeding chain is more appropriate. The surgeons will tear you to shreds for making a mistake. Or just for standing nearby when they’re in a bad mood. They live for it. Yesterday I made a mistake with the amount of fluid I set up for this knife wound patient. I was giving her too much. The chief resident caught it and told me. But she mixed up the names and said I’d given too much fluid to the interstate rollover patient.” Ben took a bite of bread and chewed. “I told her I hadn’t given him fluid. This was during morning rounds, which starts at 5 a.m.,” he added with an eyebrow raised. “I’d been up all night, with less than thirty minutes of sleep.”
The waiter came by, refilled their wine glasses and left. He returned with ice water and Meredith put her hand over her glass. “None for me,” she told him. One of her teeth was reacting painfully to the cold.
“In front of the attendings, residents, and students, she accused me of lying to cover up my mistake. It was a tirade. It probably lasted seven minutes.” He sighed. “‘Ripped me a new butt hole,’ is how Pederson described it.”
“Mike was there?”
“Yeah. In fact, Mike’s the one who finally interrupted and told her that the truck driver didn’t have any fluid and that she probably meant the stab wound.”
“Did she apologize?”
Ben laughed. “No. God, it’s funny to hear an outsider’s perspective. Apologize? Not in a million. She said, ‘Why did you let me keep referring to the wrong patient when you knew exactly who I was talking about?’”
“Can’t you just walk away, when people get abusive? I would never stand for that sort of treatment.”
“No. It’s better to stand and take it. Then it blows over. And as bad as it was, it’s important to remember that I’m not alone. It happens to everyone. You just suck it up. Life goes on.”
“Aren’t glad you’re not in Surgery?”
“Oh, yes. For a variety of reasons. That’s just one of them.”
Their dinner was long and leisurely. Ben had slept for two hours before they drove up. The circles under his eyes were less prominent.
Over dessert, Meredith asked, “So, does your residency end in July?”
“June thirtieth.”
She felt a jolt. “Wow. That’s soon. What next?”
“Well, a job.” He resumed eating.
Meredith made her voice casual. “In Albuquerque?”
“I’m trying.”
“Oh. Are you?”
“Yes. There may be a slot at UNM. And I’ve been talking to doctors at two of the private hospitals. They’re both supposedly looking. The problem is that there are thirteen of us finishing up and eight want to stay here.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Some with families and spouses who work as doctors here already.”
“Who?”
“Ricardo’s wife is an Internist at Lovelace. Jack’s wife is in medical school. And Sherrie’s fiancée is an ER resident.”
“Ah. The competition’s stiff.”
Ben reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “There’s no point in worrying about it at this early point. A lot can change in three months."
For three days Meredith couldn’t get a hold of Kira. She left messages at Kira’s home. Her work line would ring four times and rollover to Lourdes, whereupon Meredith would hang up and stare pointedly at the phone. She sent telepathic messages (“call me, call me”) that were never returned. She rang at odd hours. Then she’d go back to her work. Day One on the job involved a two-hour meeting where they explained her first project, merging an old database into a new one. They presented her with a brand new, fully loaded laptop and printer and sent her home. The phone company came by later the same day to install an internet connection. (“I cannot believe that you haven’t got the internet,” Peter had said, half scornfully, half admiringly.) Meredith used a kitchen timer to track her hours. Each time she called Kira, she paused the timer.
When Meredith still hadn’t reached her by Tuesday afternoon, she stayed on the line as it rolled over to Lourdes.
“It’s Meredith Love.”
“Meredith! How are you?”
Meredith suddenly remembered she was supposed to have called Doug when she got a job. “Fine. Just fine. Has Kira been in today?”
There was a pause. “No. She called in sick yesterday. Today, nothing. But when she didn’t show up, we just assumed she was still sick.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll give her a call at home, then. Listen, is Doug still in?”
“He went home already. He’d be
en here since five this morning.”
“After we talk, will you throw me into his voice mail?”
“Sure. How’s unemployment?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Meredith told her, brushing aside the weeks of dark, tunneling depression, “I have a job.”
“Get out! So fast? Did you have to take a pay cut?”
“No. In fact, I’ve almost doubled my salary.”
“Shut up. Where?”
“It’s an Internet company in Rio Rancho.”
“Anywhere away from here pays more. God, the University pay scale rots.”
Meredith was starting to feel annoyed. Simply leaving the U didn’t guarantee more money. Certainly not almost double the salary.
“But,” Lourdes continued, “You can’t beat the vacation. That’s why I stay.”
“I get a week more vacation at this job.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s true.”
“Damn. I need to get me one of those jobs.”
Good luck, Meredith thought. Like just anyone could walk out and into her job.
The phone rolled into Doug‘s voice mail. “Doug. Sorry I missed you. It’s Meredith Love. I wanted to let you know I’ve got a job. It’s with an Internet company, Consumers, Inc. I think it’s a better match for me than the one at Family Practice. I started yesterday. Thanks again for everything. Talk to you later.”
She tried Kira again after hanging up with Doug’s voice mail. No answer. She contemplated her choices. With a sigh, she shut down her laptop, hid it in case her house was broken into, logged in her hours, and left the house. Mendra followed her outside and disappeared around a corner.
Kira’s beat-up orange Ford sat in the driveway. No one answered Meredith's knocks. She peered in the living room windows. There was no movement. Half expecting the police to pull up, she trekked around the house to Kira’s bedroom window. A trellis with vines was placed across that side of the house. Squeezing between the brown wall and the trellis, she inched up to Kira’s window.
“Kira? Are you home? It’s Meredith.” She started calling before she got to the window, so as not to startle Kira. “Kira?” The window was mud spattered and cobwebbed. Kira wasn’t the most demanding housekeeper. Putting her hands up to block out outside light, Meredith peered through the glass. It took a few seconds to reorient herself to this new perspective of Kira’s room. She was behind the TV now, and the bed was flopped around. Finally, though, she was able to pick out Kira, sleeping on the bed.
She knocked of the glass. “Kira? Kira!” She felt like an idiot. “Kira!” The eyes finally opened and Meredith was surprised by the relief that flooded through her. “Kira, open the door and let me in.”
After staring for a few seconds, Kira stood. Meredith watched her unsteady progress and waited till Kira had left the bedroom before wrestling herself free of the trellis and sprinting to the front door.
The locks were turning as she stepped up to the porch. The wooden door creaked open and Kira went through the same slow process with the locks on the iron gate.
“Are you okay?” Kira asked her, with concern.
Meredith paused, unsure what to say. Kira’s eyes were so swollen that they looked like they hurt. Her hair was unwashed to the point of being greasy. She wore flannel bottoms and a t-shirt stained with some sort of orange gunk. “I’ve been worried about you. You didn’t go in to work. You didn’t answer your phone.”
“Oh.” Kira turned away and walked into her living room. “I just got sick with the flu. That’s all.”
Meredith shut the door and waited. Kira brushed the air as if to swat a fly. “I’m fine. Really.” Kira sunk into the sofa. “God, I’m exhausted, though.”
Meredith went to Kira’s bedroom closet and pulled out some clean clothes. Her bedroom smelled not so good, so she stripped the sheets of the bed, too. She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. When the water was hot, she walked back to the living room. “Go get in the shower.”
Kira didn’t move. “I don’t feel up to getting wet, right now.”
“The water’s running. Go get into it.”
Like a good New Mexican, the thought of the waste, of water running with no one in it, was enough to spur Kira into heading into the bathroom and stripping down. When she was in the shower, Meredith exchanged clean clothes for the dirty ones. She put all the laundry in a pile by the washer. Then she headed into the kitchen to make some food. The pickings were slim, but she finally found a large can of minestrone. She heated it up and dug out some crackers and a bruised, but edible, green apple.
When Kira was showered and dressed, they sat down and ate. Kira ate almost everything. Meredith just took a small bowl to keep her company.
Sitting back in her chair, Kira closed her eyes. She picked up a strand of her hair and smelled it. She sighed. “I guess I wasn’t doing a very good job of taking care of myself.”
“You’re grieving. You’re depressed. Anyone would react the way you did.”
“Yeah. I am grieving.” She started crying. “Sorry. I’m so sorry.” She wiped at the tears. “I just can’t seem to stop. I cry and cry. Then, for like, a minute, I get distracted and stop. Then I remember and it all starts again. I’ve been doing it non-stop for days.” Her voice reached a high note of panic. “I’m exhausted. But I can’t stop it.”
Meredith handed her the box of tissues by the coffee table.
“I don’t think I can stand this anymore,” she continued. “I know it will disappear eventually, but I can’t endure the time between now and then.” She wiped her face and blew her nose. “I keep thinking, ‘if I could drive off a cliff, I could stop the pain.’” She looked up and saw Meredith's face and quickly explained, “It’s not that I want to kill myself. It’s just that I want this pain to end and I can’t live through the interim until it’s gone.”
“Hey. Let’s go to a movie. That always helps distract me from my life.” Meredith jumped up. “I’ll drive,” she added jokingly. Kira laughed. Encouraged, Meredith continued. “We’ll do the whole thing. Popcorn, candy, soda. I’m going to keep you occupied until the pain goes away.”
She hated leaving Kira that evening. On the way home, Meredith ran into the video store and picked out three comedies while Kira sat in the car, suffering through bursts of weeping.
“Watch these movies tonight.” Meredith ordered.
“I will.”
“Should I come in with you until you get settled?”
“I’m fine. Thanks so much for hanging out with me. I’m sorry I’ve been such a crybaby.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to just come and stay with me? You could stay up all night watching movies and crying.”
Kira laughed. “I’ll be fine. Thanks.” She climbed out of the car and slammed the door.
Meredith unrolled the window. “Call if you need anything. Even if it’s 4 a.m.”
Kira nodded and waved. The last sight Meredith had of her was as she balanced the three movies in the crook of her arm to unlock her doors. Then she disappeared inside.
“Think not only about the brush mark, but the shape of the brush mark on your canvas.”
Meredith was attempting a realistic portrait of Dendric this week. Rachel was standing behind her as she made her comment. Meredith studied the brush stroke she’d just made. A stroke like any other. She was painting indiscriminately. Consider each stroke, she coached herself. Her internal voice was tearing her to bits. She should have stuck to abstraction. Her portrait was juvenile and cliché. She’d had an art teacher at Pratt who’d always say about figure paintings, “You can’t give them away; they’re a dime a dozen.” He was right, in her case. What would she do with this portrait? The back closet, her internal voice said.
Last week she’d gotten a good critique. Everyone would expect it again. But she’d just been lucky. Now they’d see what she was really like: just another predictable artist. She added a little olive green to her flesh and began the dark shadow th
at ran up Dendric’s underarm.
The three Neat Palette men were still working on their pieces from last week, with their scraped down palettes beside them. Meredith’s brand-new palette was already covered with dried scabs of color.
During a model break, Meredith strolled around. Pink Sweats had her same painting up too. Her colors were starting to get muddy. Probing Intellect was sitting on the floor at the base of the model stand. She had a brand new canvas. This time she was painting half of Dendric’s face, particularly his nostril. Behind him was the yellow cactus again. She had managed to squeeze his nipple into the lower left-hand corner, too. The teenager was doing Dendric’s hands this week. Watercolor was doing another classic pose, from a different angle. Some of the painters were outside smoking with the model. Meredith stood in the dark, just past the doorway, looking at the moon. It was bright orange tonight.
“I just feel like it’s not very three-dimensional.” Neat Palette One was speaking quietly to Rachel. “That’s why I put those shadows in. To add roundness.”
“While the class is still on break, go take a look at Meredith's piece,” Rachel told him, matching his volume. “She’s got the sculptural quality you’re going for, but she does it with just the smallest variation of Dendric’s skin tones. There isn’t much difference between the skin in light and the skin in shadow. She’s being extremely subtle and it comes off very successfully.”
When the break was over, Meredith took a fresh look at her piece. Subtle. She smiled. Her internal voice had no comeback.
Meredith attended meetings at work twice a week. “Any more than that,” Peter told her in the hall one day, as they waited for the meeting ahead of them to finish up, “and you’d be wasting time instead of getting things accomplished.” His blond hair had a freshly cut look. He wore Levi’s and a sports jacket. “I think that meetings are a great place to interact and share ideas, but studies show that creative problem-solving is done more effectively alone than in a group. And if people like to hear themselves talk, we waste even more time.”
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