Love Sick
Julian
JUNE, YEAR 1
What torture-loving freaks burn bonfires for pleasure in the muggy heat of a Texas June? We don’t do this back home—and I’m from Florida, the land of the crazies. The conversations around me hum as I stare into the flames. My thumb rubs a slow trail along the neck of my beer bottle.
I take a swig and frown.
Warm IPA.
Yum.
“Yo, Santini.” Maxwell DeBakey offers me a cold bottle. “You need a refill?”
I pour out the dregs of mine and take the new one. “Thanks.”
Maxwell settles next to me, the firelight flashing gold over his dark sweaty skin. “No problem.”
“Why are we having a bonfire in June?”
He shoots me a smile. “BrOB-GYN tradition.”
A flicker of amusement stills the bottle halfway to my mouth. “BrOB-GYN?”
He chuckles and shrugs one massive shoulder. “Male residents stick together. Otherwise, the women would eat us alive.”
Hmm. Would they, though? Would they really?
My lips press together to keep the instinctual sarcasm tucked neatly inside. Probably unwise to make waves before I’ve even started, but I can’t quite stop the sardonic grin at the irony clattering through my head— beware the assembly of females, for they will destroy the world!
I take another swig, and cold hops bubble down my throat. Maxwell starts his fourth year—his chief year—in a few days, whereas I start at the bottom. The lowly intern. My first year of residency, and one of only five admitted to the small Texas University OB-GYN program at TUMC.
I’m still not sure how I scraped by with a spot here. It’s a good program, and I wasn’t a shoo-in. Not only did my scores leave something to be desired, but the initials after my name aren’t the revered MD.
Santini, DO.
Doctor of Osteopathy. The redheaded stepchild of the medicine world, thought to have chosen osteopathy because we couldn’t get into the more traditional allopathic schools.
I’m the only DO in the program. One of three in the entire hospital.
Back in March, thirty-five hundred doctors vied for fifteen hundred OB-GYN spots across the country, and somehow, I got one. Was it my interview? My letters of recommendation? Blind luck? Regardless, the stark awareness that I don’t deserve this means I need to tread carefully.
I have a lot to prove and very little faith that I can do it.
“You ready for next week, man?” Maxwell asks. “Labor and delivery is hopping. July first comin’ fast.”
My gaze strays to the fire. “I think so. Who decided to punish the runt of the litter by putting me on L Alesha Lipton, who had higher scores than any of us; or Sapphire Rose, the girl whose name could be plastered on a Las Vegas cabaret marquee.”
An inward wince follows that description. The same thought ran through my mind when the names of my co-interns made it to my inbox. I shoved it into the far reaches of my brain where the things I’m ashamed of live, like the time I ripped up my sister’s fancy art project because she told me my new haircut looked like thirteen-year-old Justin Bieber.
But really, what type of parents name their daughter Sapphire Rose and expect her to be taken seriously?
If this stripper-intern truly screwed someone for her spot, I might lose my goddamn mind.
Except…what if it isn’t true?
What if it wasn’t even her?
There’s always more to the story.
“You’re serious?” I glance at Dr. Levine. “She slept with someone to get in?”
Levine shrugs. “Told to us by a credible source.”
How credible?
A few days ago, Alesha Lipton invited me to a group chat with the other interns, and we’ve talked for days. The Sapphire in that group barely contributes, so I have no frame of reference, nothing that tells me to believe one way or another.
Despite the injustice boiling in my blood, I tell myself to hold out judgment. Wait for facts. Even though my attending basically confirmed it.
Ugh.
Does it matter in the end? No. This doesn’t concern me. It’s not my business.
Head down. Stay the course. Four years and you’re done.