The Beach

by R.S. Grey

  “C’mon. This is how you’re going to treat me after five years? What about all those laughs we shared?” There were no laughs. “And the inside jokes?” Again, none. “I know I was your favorite resident, even if you didn’t say so.”

  She slowly raises her gaze back to me, and her tough exterior gives way a fraction of an inch. She’s a glacier thawing in spring when she speaks again. “Honestly, what are you still doing here anyway? Isn’t it your big night tonight?”

  I check my watch. Shoot. Sneaking around the hospital took longer than expected.

  I have to be at the hotel in an hour.

  That’s not much time. Panicked, I lean forward to get a better look at the patient chart she’s working with. My feet dangle off the floor. “Can’t you just tell me what they decided for Camila’s treatment? Did an attending lead afternoon rounds? So help me, if those fourth years forgot to—”

  She rips the chart out of my grasp.

  “Dr. Martin, they’ve got it covered. And even if they don’t, we do,” she says, nodding toward the nursing staff behind her. “I promise. Now go, and I’ll see you on Monday.”

  Right. Well.

  I slowly slide off the counter, knowing I’ve been defeated. I have no choice but to leave the care of these patients in the hands of other people, at least for one night. I have somewhere to be.

  I tip my head to Lois and turn to sluggishly trudge out of the unit, knowing it’ll be the last time I do it as a fifth-year general surgery resident. Come Monday, I’ll begin my year-long fellowship in pediatric burn surgery. The power is already rushing to my head. I’m daydreaming of all the grunt work I’ll pass on to the interns when I hear my name called across the hallway.

  “Natalie! Nat-a-lie. Earth to Natalie!”

  I shake myself out of my stupor just in time to avoid a collision with my closest friend, Dr. Lindsey Brooks.

  She works in the hospital’s OB/GYN department. Though we graduated medical school together, she’s already an attending because her residency was only four years. Now she spends her days delivering babies and playing the superhero. Instead of red and blue Superman spandex, she wears bubblegum pink scrubs. Her hair is naturally pale blonde, and even now—after a full day at work—it’s pulled up into a high sleek ponytail that swishes when she walks. She gives off the perpetual hyperactive energy of someone who’s had too much caffeine. On paper, we shouldn’t be friends, and yet we’re soulmates.

  “I was coming to find you.” She looks deeply concerned. “Someone said they saw you hiding behind a plant down in the lobby.”

  “What?” I try to sound incredulous. “No. That wasn’t me.”

  To save me from further embarrassment, she pretends to believe me.

  “What are you still doing here?”

  I shrug and glance away, feeling defensive. “I wanted to come check on my patients.”

  “Seriously? They give you a weekend off and you aren’t even going to take it? You should be getting ready right now, dolling yourself up.” She glances down at my clothes. “Tell me you aren’t going to wear your scrubs to the ceremony.”

  Honestly, I thought about it, but I still act deeply affronted by her accusation. “Of course not. I have a dress and heels in my bag.”

  It’s the same dress I wore to my college graduation, my white coat ceremony, my medical school graduation, and now my graduation from residency. I thought about ordering a new dress the other day, but I was on call and it slipped my mind. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with Ol’ Faithful. It’s simple and black and sleeveless. It hugs my figure and cuts off below my knees. It’s acceptable for any occasion. I’ll probably be buried in it.

  “I really wish I could be there tonight,” Lindsey says, looping her arm around my shoulders.

  I see right through her. She’s acting chummy, but really, she’s maneuvering me away from the BICU knowing I might turn around and find my way back there if she doesn’t force me away.

  Lindsey’s on call tonight. She tried to get one of the other attendings to swap shifts with her, but no one was available. Good friend that she is, she’s been beating herself up about it all week.

  “Linds, it’s fine. Noah will be there.”

  She frowns. “Just Noah? Your parents didn’t fly in?”

  “I didn’t even tell them about it. It’s not a big deal.”

  She narrows her eyes reproachfully. “It is, Natalie. It’s a very big deal.”

  It doesn’t feel that way. It’s just one more step on the way to my end goal: Dr. Natalie Martin, premier burn surgeon, best in the world. Natalie, the surgeon general is calling again, asking for advice! will be a thing I hear often. This whole ceremony isn’t necessary. I’d prefer if they just handed me a Xeroxed certificate during rounds, stamped my forehead with a gold star, and let me get on with my work.

  “If nothing else, you’ve paid for this night, so enjoy it. Have a drink for me.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  She forces me into a hug—oh God, make it stop—before she has to run to check on a laboring mom. Down in a stall in the lobby bathroom, I take extra care with my white coat, sliding it off and folding it up neatly, brushing a stray piece of lint off the collar before I rip off my hospital-issued navy scrubs.

  Once it’s tugged on over my head, I realize my dress is tighter around the bust than it used to be, but it still fits fine. I take my hair down from my ponytail and know without looking in a mirror that the medium-length brown strands are curly (genetics) and crinkled (ponytail holder), so I smooth it into a low knot at the base of my neck and call it a day.

  I don’t worry about makeup. Lindsey curses my olive skin and dark lashes, swearing she’d swap her features for mine any day. I don’t think much about it, honestly, but it is nice to not have to worry about smeared eyeliner or caked-on foundation when I spend my days in a burn unit that’s heated to a balmy 85 degrees to keep the patients comfortable.

  My tennis shoes are replaced by slightly outdated chunky black heels—the only pair I own—and then I’m out the door of the hospital, opting to walk the few blocks from the Beacon Hill University Medical Branch complex to the hotel on Charles Street. I’m glad I didn’t wait for a cab or an Uber as downtown Boston is bustling with after-work traffic and Beacon Street is barely moving. The sidewalk is busy too, but I can easily slip around tourists meandering slowly on the red and black patchwork bricks. I’m a fast walker, even in heels. On the last day of June, the weather outside is as perfect as it gets in Boston. Even though it’s well into the evening, the sun is still hanging in there, painting the sky in Starburst shades of pink and orange and yellow. I’d almost appreciate my summer evening stroll if I weren’t getting urgent texts from my brother.

  Noah: The hospital won’t crumble if you’re gone for a weekend. C’mon, hurry up and you can still get a drink before the cocktail hour ends.

  Noah: The cocktail hour is almost over. If you don’t get here soon, I’m eating your dinner and accepting all the awards and accolades they’re planning to give you. You’ve been warned.

  Natalie: I’m on my way! Don’t eat my food!

  I hurry inside and garner a few curious looks. My dress and heels say I’m heading to a swanky party, but my backpack says I need to hurry home and study for high school geometry.

  I glance around the lobby of the upscale hotel lit with a dozen twinkling chandeliers, trying to find anyone I recognize from the hospital, but it’s too crowded with tourists in sensible shoes. The lobby has a dozen offshoots, and there are too many possibilities to know in which direction I should head. I ask the concierge to point me toward all the nerds with stethoscopes (or something like that), and she smiles and sends me down a side hallway. Following her directions, I reach a small antechamber outside a banquet room. There’s a cocktail bar set up in the corner, and that’s where people are hovering. Thank God. My fellow graduating residents and their invited guests as well as some staff from the hospital mix and mingle with their drinks. I s
igh with relief, comfortable now that I know I’m not late.

  In total, it’s a small group. There were only three other fifth-year general surgery residents in the BHUMB program, all men, all a few years older than me. At twenty-eight, I should be in the middle of my residency, not completely done with it, and my age hasn’t gone unnoticed in the program. Neither has my aptitude for surgery. My first few years were tough. Proving myself was a battle I wasn’t sure I’d win in the end, but here I stand, feeling like an equal in a room full of brainiacs.

  My brother is among them. An attending in the plastic surgery department at BHUMB, he’s the one who pushed me into medicine in the first place.

  He’s standing in a circle of doctors, looking far more put together than I do. I’ve always thought Noah looked like a moody French model. He should be backlit by the Eiffel Tower, smoking a cigarette and complaining about lazy Americans. His cheekbones are sharply cut and his eyebrows are as dark as mine. His hair could use a trim on top, but I might be in the minority with that line of thinking. He sees me and grins, cutting through the crowd to get to me. Ignoring all proper protocol, he loops his arm around my shoulders and crushes me against him. At 5’7”, I’m no pipsqueak, but he still towers over me.

  “Noah, let go!”

  This is highly unprofessional. My colleagues and mentors at the hospital are all in attendance, no doubt witnessing his teasing. I should be extremely annoyed, but I’m not. I can’t help it—I’m smiling, happy to have the praise of a big brother I’ve always worshipped.

  “You did it,” he says, releasing me and holding me at arm’s length. His dark eyes crinkle at the edges, and without missing a beat, he takes the backpack from my shoulder and loops it onto his. “Come on, you deserve a drink.”

  I’m happy Noah could make it tonight, especially since our parents live overseas. Nowadays, they rarely make it over to the States. Our dad is a photojournalist, born and raised in France. He met our mom while he was on assignment in Spain, and they both moved to America shortly after. My brother and I are American citizens, and though we sound like we grew up here, we never stayed in one place for very long. Our dad was always on the move, and my mom, brother, and I trailed after him, hardly able to keep up.

  We traveled from school to school, country to country, suffering through stints of private tutors, but mostly we had to keep on top of our studies on our own. We both graduated from high school and college early. When Noah settled in Boston for medical school, I followed him a few years later, and we’ve both lived here ever since. We’re all the family we need.

  Noah passes me a glass of champagne from the bar and starts to toast my achievements.

  I roll my eyes and tell him to stop, feeling uncomfortable, as I always do in these situations. I belong in the OR, not in a swanky hotel sipping bubbly champagne. My feet are killing me in these heels, and I’m probably not wearing the right bra for this dress. Most of the women in attendance have gone all out with their hair and makeup, and I self-consciously brush a few loose tendrils away from my face.

  Soon after I arrive, a wave of elegantly dressed servers start to usher us into the small banquet room where a handful of circular tables are arranged in front of a stage. This is the part I’ve been dreading. I’ve been to these ceremonies before; I know how they go. As a resident, I was all but forced to attend every year, not only to congratulate my colleagues, but to suck up to our attendings and the hospital department heads. It was an easy way to show my commitment to the program.

  On cue, the younger residents fill the back tables, here as a formality more than anything. No doubt they’re grumbling about how much studying they could be doing right now—at least that’s what I used to complain about.

  Up front, I find the place setting that reads “Dr. Natalie Martin” in gilded cursive, and I feel embarrassed when I realize my table, which is big enough for ten, will only be filled by two people: Noah and me.

  The other residents are joined by their parents, aunts and uncles, friends, spouses, and even young children. I’m the only one who’s still single.

  Noah pulls my chair out for me and I sit down.

  “Did you invite Lindsey?” he asks, looking worried.

  “She couldn’t come—on call. Babies wait for no one, y’know.”

  “Ah.”

  He takes the seat on my left and I stifle a groan.

  “Don’t say it. I already know this is awkward. At least at your graduation, your table was filled with friends.”

  My cheeks burn when the volume in the banquet hall grows even louder. I wish I had thought ahead and paid good money to desperate people so they could fill these vacant seats and pretend to be my loved ones. I would have given them a script and everything. Yes, you, tell me you’re proud. And you, you’ll play the tone-deaf uncle. Make more bad jokes.

  “You have it wrong,” Noah points out. “Connor was the one who needed two tables. I think he set an all-time record.”

  That name does funny things to my already on-edge nerves. I reach for my drink.

  “Just let me down this champagne and then I won’t even notice that I’m basically sitting here all by myself.”

  I raise the glass to my mouth and take a sip just as a heavy hand hits my shoulder. I sputter and choke. Champagne dribbles down my chin.

  “Ah, sorry, Natalie.” The jovial voice of my mentor is accompanied by a few gentle pats on my back, as if he’s trying to dislodge the sparkling wine from my lungs.

  I finally regain control of my breathing and smile up at him as he takes the open seat beside Noah.

  “I hoped you’d have room for me at your table,” Dr. Patel says. “Mind if I join?”

  It’s an honor, really. Dr. Patel is a vice chairman of the surgical department and someone whose ass I’ve kissed regularly for the last five years. He’s also the doctor who revoked my log-in privileges this weekend.

  “Please, join us,” I insist with a welcoming smile.

  His grin is half-hidden behind his salt and pepper mustache, and his round glasses barely conceal the twinkle in his brown eyes when he asks if I did anything fun with my free afternoon.

  I blanche, knowing from the cheeky lilt in his tone that he already knows the answer.

  “Did Lois rat me out?”

  He chuckles. “You know I’d never reveal my source, especially when the source inspires as much fear as Lois does.”

  I’m slightly embarrassed to have been caught. I give him a small smile. “I swear I’ll stay away until Monday. How’s that?”

  He nods. “I’ll consider it a win.”

  Noah laughs and shakes his head, not quite relating to my desperate need to stay married to medicine. Noah has a life. I don’t.

  Even worse, Noah has friends and regular dates and is still really good at his job. Case in point, he’s leaving his post at BHUMB for the next few months to go on sabbatical. Part of his time will be spent setting up and running cleft palate clinics in underserved communities. The remainder of his time will be spent training surgeons at other programs on the surgical techniques he presented at the ASPS conference earlier this year. Yes, Noah is so damn good at what he does, programs like Baylor and Johns Hopkins and Columbia want him any way they can get him, even just for a week or two on-site.

  Did I already mention the cheekbones? The French model vibes?

  My brother should be a total tool, but he’s not.

  He aims a smile my way just as the salad course is placed in front of us and Dr. Patel launches into the story of the first time he supervised me in surgery.

  My brother is brimming with glee to hear it. I squash myself lower in my chair, knowing where this is headed.

  “As a first-year intern, she should have been standing back and observing her superiors with her mouth glued shut. Maybe—maybe—it would have been okay if she’d asked if there was anything she could do to help. Hold an instrument, run a message, that sort of thing. You know what she was doing instead?” At this point,
his smile takes over his whole face. “Correcting the fellow on the way he was stapling the xenograft. Apparently, she thought she could do it better than someone five years ahead of her in the program. The fellow chewed her out in front of everyone in the operating room before kicking her out. Then he proceeded to do exactly as she’d instructed him to do.” He laughs and shakes his head. “I’ll never forget it.”

  I blush and fidget in my chair, uncomfortable. Looking back, I was totally out of line, walking into another surgeon’s OR and giving unsolicited feedback. I’m surprised the doctor didn’t permanently ban me from his OR.

  “She’s always been a spitfire,” Noah agrees with a shake of his head.

  Dr. Patel laughs, and then I steer the conversation toward him and his family. A doting father of two girls—both of whom are currently in med school—he’s more than willing to carry the conversation through dinner.

  After the final course is removed and desserts are being distributed, Dr. Patel excuses himself to take the stage. Thanks to attending in previous years, I know how this next part goes. Since there are so few graduates, Dr. Patel will go through a short summary about each of us and our time spent in the program, as well as our plans now that we’re graduating.

  Luke and Richard are going into private practice, Andreas is entering a surgical oncology fellowship, and I will be here, continuing on as a burns fellow at BHUMB. It makes sense for Luke and Richard to go into private practice. They’re both in their early thirties with a wife and kids, ready to settle down and start earning the big bucks. While Andreas has a partner he’s serious about, he isn’t ready to ease off the gas, so he’s happy to prolong his training in a specialty he loves.

  As for me, there was never really a choice. I’ve always wanted to be a burn surgeon, always wanted to work with children. To do that, I had to be extremely dedicated, and I had to make sacrifices. It’s why I’m twenty-eight and single, why my phone gets more action on the nights I take call than on a Saturday when I’m actually free to go out and have fun.