Chapter Nine
Jo
It was foolish of me to underestimate Mal. I’d identified him as complex, and yet I’d tried to proposition him with a simple
arrangement, as if he were just some guy. No. This was not my run-of-the-mill, self-satisfied straight-male creative. I couldn’t
manipulate him by appealing to his ego or set him off-kilter with disarming questions aimed at his intentions. When I’d said,
“Well, I’m not planning on seeing anyone else. Are you?,” he’d answered unflinchingly, “Great. Me neither.” When I asked him
why, he’d smirked, and informed me that he was “lazy” and “tended to fixate.” There were easier questions too, about where
he was from (“Missouri City, just outside of Houston, but my family moved around a lot.”), when and why he’d moved to Chicago
(“Three years ago, because my ex-girlfriend’s family is from here.”), how he felt having his work out on display for the world
to see for the first time (“Terrified, most of the time. Like all the inner workings of my mind are just out there for people
to dissect. Like they’ll assume the wrong things about who I am because of it.”).
People normally fit neatly into the boilerplates I developed for them in my mind. A man like Mal—handsome, well built, intelligent—was supposed to expect adulation. His humility was supposed to be a cellophane-thin facade meant to make him seem more noble, and his “honesty” was supposed to be a farce, his truths selected to depict himself alternately as a hero or a victim, depending on the circumstance. When I told him that I had feelings for Ezra, he was supposed to either be offended that I expected him to take up another man’s discarded goods, or delight in the prospect of screwing a girl who could have screwed America’s Boyfriend.
He was not supposed to turn me down because he wanted to get to know me better, then make good on that declaration by actually
asking me questions about my life.
“I know you’re taking a break right now, but do you think you’ll ever go back to medicine?” Mal asked, after I recounted a
story from residency that I remembered as hilarious but, in retrospect, was probably traumatic.
We’d lingered at the restaurant a little later than the other guests, leaving only when Emiliano loudly announced that he
would be retiring for the night. It being a temperate Friday night, every twentysomething with a functional liver had spilled
out onto the streets, which meant I had a twenty-minute wait for my Uber. Mal, ever the gentleman, offered to drop me off
at home, but I declined, and he refused to leave ahead of me. I gave him back his sneakers, and we settled on the bench outside
the restaurant, watching cars whiz by and listening to clubgoers in Y2K-chic argue about which bar would have the strongest
drinks.
I winced, waiting for the judgment that invariably accompanied this question—the insinuation that I was wasting my degree, that I owed society a debt that I had yet to pay back, that it was deceitful to call myself a physician when I’d never practiced independently—before remembering that Mal had offered his opinion on this before, and that it had been gracious.
“I think so,” I said slowly. “I just keep waking up every day hoping I’ll finally be ready to restart. I’ve got a few recruiters
in my inbox right now. And one of my old attendings... he really wants me to come back and do additional training. But
I haven’t been able to get myself to respond to any of them. I’m still exhausted, somehow.”
Mal nodded. His expression was perfectly neutral, neither critical nor supportive.
“Do you miss it?” he asked.
I pondered his question. “I miss a lot about it,” I confessed. “My primary care patients, especially. I had to transfer their
care to an intern when I graduated. She still sends me updates sometimes. Things like, ‘Ms.X got her surgery! Mr.Y wanted
me to tell you he quit smoking!’”
“You’re smiling,” Mal noted, smiling too. “Makes me think you actually enjoyed it.”
“Yes, well, I actually like medicine,” I said.
Even the intensive care unit, like Dr.Makinen noted, had once called to me. The high of snatching a person from the jaws
of death, using nothing but my understanding of their body and the skills in my hands, had been unmatched. Knowing that I
wasn’t just useful, but pivotal, necessary , in the course of an entire family’s life.
But the rest of it? Acting as a stewardess for society’s ills? Hearing my colleagues who’d grown up with two doctor parents refer to poor patients as “not wanting to help themselves” when they showed up in our Emergency Rooms worse for wear? Spending my days off duking it out with insurance companies who refused to cover vital prescriptions and procedures? The endless stream of paperwork and messages and phone calls from desperate patients whose questions I couldn’t answer and ailments I couldn’t cure, their need for help necessarily superseding my own for sleep? The rush of repressed memories that consumed me the second I got rest, the way the horrors I had witnessed always managed to reconstitute, months later, in my nightmares?
“So much of medicine isn’t taking care of people,” I continued. “It’s being pushed past all of your human limitations and
still being expected to overfunction, to be empathetic and kind and make zero mistakes on two hours of sleep and a diet of
ginger ale and peanut butter cups. It’s knowing that you can do everything within your power to help your patients, but that
it’ll change nothing, because outside of the hospital no one gives a shit about them. It’s having to answer to people who
care more about a bottom line or their own egos than they do people. And besides that, the money isn’t always as good as people
think, especially in primary care—”
I clamped my mouth shut, suddenly ashamed to be caught mid-vent, more ashamed of what I was going to say next. It was all
well and good to claim that I was just tired or burned-out or ethically conflicted. But that I was greedy?
Next to me, Mal’s silence was expectant. I realized that he was waiting for me to continue, that, unlike the many who’d inquired
about my hiatus before, he was more invested in hearing my response than he was in crafting his own.
“Are you worried that I’ll judge you for talking about money?” Mal prompted after a moment.
“Most people would,” I said, stretching my legs out on the sidewalk in front of us, studying the way the headlights of passing cars reflected off my shins. “Doctors get paid well compared to the general population. No one wants to hear me complain about a six-figure salary, even if it comes at great expense. Really, I’m not supposed to care about the money at all. Being a physician is a calling, or whatever.”
“Is it?” Mal said. He shifted closer, his shoulder bumping into mine, and when I turned to him, his expression was gentle.
“It doesn’t have to be. It can just be a job.”
I winced. “See, that’s why I’m confused,” I said quietly, “because calling it a job doesn’t feel right either.”
A crowd of college students ambled by us on the sidewalk. One of them stumbled, giggling, into her friend’s back, and they
held on to each other, as if their four tangled legs could better keep them steady on their feet. Mal cleared his throat,
his gaze following the students as they crossed the street.
“You know, I’ve always heard the saying that life is short. And I used to interpret that to mean that I had to figure myself
out as fast as possible. That I didn’t have time to waste. That if I wasn’t careful, my clock would run out before I could
make something of myself.” Someone drove by blasting Bad Bunny, and Mal waited for them to pass before continuing. “But now
I think it means that I should try to live authentically. To be true to myself whenever possible, to be okay with the fact
that what is true for me might change over time. And I think... to get there, I have to know myself, know what I want,
know what I’m working toward.
“Like—here’s a question for you: When you imagine a world without limits, without bills, without duty and expectations, what
do you see yourself doing?”
A breeze blew by, and I shivered, watching Mal’s face in profile, trying to learn it.
“You go first,” I said.
Mal turned to me fully, his features outlined in a soft yellow glow from the streetlamps.
“I would keep writing,” he said. “But I’d be more nomadic. Write a book in a villa in Bali, then the next on the coast of
Spain. And... I’d pick up my camera again. Go to thrift stores and get stuff to create sets. Shoot more places, more people,
just for the love of it.” He nudged me, gently, in my side. “Your turn.”
I stiffened. Even though I’d asked for a head start, I still wasn’t sure if I had an answer.
“I don’t know,” I confessed in a small voice after a few long seconds.
“Jo,” Mal said, stunned, “you have, like, three hundred thousand followers—”
“Four hundred and ten,” I corrected.
“Okay, four hundred and ten,” Mal clarified, rolling his eyes. “Four hundred and ten thousand followers. How do you get to
that without an agenda?”
Because dreams , I wanted to say, are a luxury. When you were sure you could eat, sure you had a place to sleep, when you knew that your place in the world was secure, you
could have dreams. And maybe I had access to them now, but, like my tendency to add water to empty bottles of dish soap, pragmatism
was a habit I’d yet to break.
“I needed money,” I said truthfully. “I worked through undergrad. Got a full ride to med school, but on matriculation, they make you sign a document saying you won’t get any other jobs. I didn’t have a car, and they wanted me to do some rotations on other campuses. Rent within walking distance of the hospital was out of control. All of the study materials cost hundreds of dollars, and none of that was factored into my living stipend. One of my upperclassmen was making five hundred dollars a post promoting Sleepytime tea on her blog, and it seemed like a good gig, so I tried it out. As it turns out, I’m very good at being exactly who people want me to be, so I blew up. And now here we are.”
I folded my arms around myself, suddenly cold. I could feel Mal’s gaze on me, his pity. He’d grown up differently than me,
with two loving parents and a financial safety net sturdy enough that he could pursue an artistic career without the pressure
of providing for himself. I wondered how he saw me now, if the quick glimpse I’d given him of the person who existed behind
the glitz and glamour of my platform and of my friends in high places had lost me my luster.
“You know, my friend Kelechi is obsessed with you,” Mal said. “She just discovered your page last week, and she’s watched
basically all of your content. Was just telling me that she wished she’d had your page as a teenager. That you take a lot
of shame out of difficult topics.”
I blinked up at Mal, but his focus had drifted to the bodega across the street, his face perfectly placid as he spoke.
“I’ve been following you for years. In that time, my dad’s been diagnosed with high blood pressure. My mom has sleep apnea. I’ve had about a hundred sore throats. And when I had questions about why the minute clinic didn’t give me antibiotics, or my dad wanted to know why he had to take meds when he felt fine, I could go to your page and find an explanation that made sense. And you were always humble about it. Talked about things in a way that helped me understand, or at least gave me a place to start. You aren’t going to convince me that all of that was a fluke. That you aren’t at least a bit passionate about it. If it was just about the money, you wouldn’t bother putting in the effort. You would just, I don’t know, do what everyone else is doing, and sell yourself. Post pics of your face, or your body.”
“I do a little bit of that too,” I said.
Mal looked directly at me. Under the shroud of night, his eyes were dark.
“Oh, I know,” he said.
I shivered, and this time, it wasn’t from the cold.
“Social media is how most people get their information,” I said, ignoring the stammering in my chest, the way it felt like
I was losing hold of invisible reins. “I like that I can teach people through it. I feel like I might be doing something...
good. Filling in gaps in medical knowledge. Meeting people where they are. So in a world without limits, I’d probably keep
doing that, but make it bigger. Create courses, maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it like you have.”
Mal nodded, satisfied.
“There’s a lot of value in that,” he said. “And honestly? You’re probably closer to it than you think. You already have the
platform. And clearly, the charisma. The sky’s the limit for you. You can go anywhere you want to. You just have to point
to your destination on the map.”
I bit back a smile. Mal sounded so earnest, so matter-of-fact, that I couldn’t help but believe him.
“You know there’s no need to butter me up, right?” I reminded him. “I’m the one trying to get in your pants.”
Mal laughed, then placed his hand over mine and squeezed. His hand was large, its hold as firm as it was familiar.
“I know that too,” he said. “And I’m not trying to butter you up. I’ve just admired you for a while and wanted to make sure you knew.”
The temperature had cooled to a crisp sixty degrees, but my body buzzed with warmth. Not from the wine we’d drunk earlier,
or even from embarrassment, but from the balmy sensation that came with being properly perceived.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?” Mal said. “I didn’t do anything.”
I chewed on my inner cheek. For listening , I wanted to say. For seeing me, even before we met, even when I was just one of a hundred physician-influencers and you a picture of a crushed
juice box, but especially now that we’re both flesh and blood.
“For imparting your wisdom,” I said instead. “You are wiser than I expected, you know. Considering all of this .”
I gestured down his muscular frame—which looked even better outside of a suit jacket—and Mal ducked his head as if to hide
his face from view.
“Just because you think I’m cute doesn’t mean I can’t have important things to say,” he grumbled.
“I mostly think you’re greedy,” I teased, delighted by his sheepishness. “Your inner monologue is supposed to be all protein, macros, gains , not sage life advice...”
“Come on, now you’re just being mean—”
“It’s okay, Malcolm, you can talk to me about your max reps or whatever. I speak gym bro—”
I was interrupted by a ding: a notification from my rideshare, informing me that my driver would be arriving any second.
“My Uber’s almost here,” I said, still laughing. “So if you’re going to kiss me, you should probably do it now.”
Mal chuckled, shaking his head, then bounced to his feet. A true gentleman, he held out a hand, and I took it, cataloging the fizzy sensation that rose up in my throat as he helped me up. Then, holding my gaze, he pressed soft, lingering lips to my knuckles.
I wobbled in my heels, shocked by how easily he’d stolen my upper hand.
“That’s not what I meant,” I managed.
Mal smiled. “I know,” he said, just as my driver pulled in front of the restaurant. His thumb swept over my knuckles, and
I thought of what he’d said earlier, how a touch like this could be better than sex. Then, after confirming the identity of
my driver, he opened the back door. “Have a good night, Jo.”