Chapter 15
DIVA DOWN!
I, for one, have never been a fan of the ‘hidden curriculum.’
I think life is far more enjoyable when you antagonize the trainees to their face.
So let me offer you a piece of the so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ that all young doctors must learn: Doctors don’t get sick. They don’t get tired. They never show weakness.
Clinical pearl #15: You will regret using even a second of free time to rest. After all, depression can’t hit a moving target. Isn’t that why you became a doctor?
THANATOS
Ping! Ping! Ping!
I twist over in my messy bed, reflexively reaching for my phone, and immediately gasp, white-hot pain lashing up my sides.
Burning agony whips across my waist, doubling me over.
Fuck.
I gingerly lift the bottom hem of my camisole, eyeing the pus-filled blisters that burst across the dermatome of my back and belly. Despite taking my pills, the pain still singes, piercing my side with each croaking breath.
I debated whether I should stay home today, but when Ginny saw me wincing during morning rounds, she banished me from the hospital halls.
God bless residents who don’t make us come in while ill.
And Satan smite the man stressing me out so much I got shingles.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
I wobble inch by inch to my dresser, grabbing my phone off the charger.
In the window, blankets of white coat the ledge, dusting off the cars in my lot with a blinding shawl of fresh snow.
My stomach clenches when I see the texts.
Unknown number
Come now, Stephanie
You didn’t even give the relationship a chance
We should go to therapy, together.
If we went, you would understand why I acted the way I did.
I gag, fighting vomit. Why would I go to couples therapy for his infidelity?
PERCY
Aren’t you with Calypso now, genius?
Unknown number
Calypso and I are on and off again, usually off. We’re off right now.
I think back to him screwing her in the on-call room, and furiously type back,
percy
I don’t believe you for a second, asshole.
My mood, already low, darkens further. I’m mad at everything and everyone.
Furious at myself for going to medical school and wasting my emotional health on dating.
Frustrated with my mother for being such a FaceNeverReadABook anti-vaxxer that I never received the chickenpox vaccine and now suffer the consequences as an adult.
Enraged that David is attacking me in my time of illness.
And I’m most exasperated at myself, but right now, I’m so exhausted I don’t even know why.
I’m just seething, and my side is scalding.
I glower at my computer.
I should be using my time off to study. Because that’s all time is worth to a doctor, right? An opportunity to work as much as humanly possible, to never falter, to push through even unbearable conditions as a testament to the strength of the doctor’s will.
Because that’s what makes a great resident. A self-starter. The most disciplined disciple, still doing Anki on her deathbed. A girl who practices interview questions even while writhing in pain.
I needn’t worry about leaving my family behind on the interview trail. I won’t have a man holding me back from my career. And I don’t need to impress anyone but myself.
But, I think with bitter satisfaction as I drag my computer onto my lap and click through the last of my interview invites, despite living in abject agony, I am so successful.
I take a rueful screenshot of the Ivory Towers inviting me to interview, too tired to even grin at my accomplishment, and send it to Hyacinth, who sends me an assortment of dancing celebration memes. And then I email my parents. And send a hideous picture of my blisters to my family group chat.
Love and hate are parallel emotions. I’ll always love my parents for raising me, but I’ll also bitterly guilt-trip them for my current situation.
If I have to suffer, we all have to suffer.
And, I’m just petty.
Then I turn off my notifications before they oscillate between telling me they’re proud of me for ‘infiltrating the ivory tower elites’ and ‘it’s not our fault you have a weak immune system’ that gets ‘elderly-people diseases.’1
Sometimes letting family talk themselves into circles instead of draining me is a form of love, too.
Mumbled chatter echoes from the other side of the wall as I hobble out of bed, throwing a cardigan and sweats over my welts. Hyacinth must have gotten off early, and it sounds like she’s talking to someone on the phone—
I push open the creaky hinges, and gleaming dark eyes with a diamond-cutting smirk wink at me.
My heart halts.
“Percy,” Kane says breathlessly, like he ran to be here, “I haven’t gotten a day off for a family emergency all year. You should get sick more often.”
My legs give out from under me.
Hyacinth darts over, arms extended, but I teeter back up on my own.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
Hyacinth winds her arms around me, holding me steady.
Kane Goodyear is here.
Kane Goodyear is here, in my kitchen, leaning over my plastic counters, wearing dark wash jeans and a teddy bear sweater while he beams at me.
Dr. Demon has escaped the hospital!
His lips curve up.
He’s never seen me in normal clothes, either.
Both of us stare at each other, daring the other to make the first move, while Hyacinth’s three cats pace the countertops, watching the new human with ravenous interest.
It’s only then that I notice the sweat on his brow, the near-frantic look in his eyes.
Hail pummels our shoddy windows, and the roads in Rusty are notoriously icy. Did he race through a snowstorm to get here?
“I have a family emergency too,” Hyacinth says, breaking our stalemate, pointing at the tiny strip of exposed blisters under my cardigan.
“Hyacinth!” I yelp.
Kane’s cocky grin vanishes.
“Unlike some people,” she says, glancing at Kane, “I am not risking my life on those roads today. Let me live.” She looks again at Kane, then pivots back to me, smiling mischievously.
“Anyway, what a wonderful coincidence. Both of us get to hang out with you today,” she says, gaze morphing to quizzical.
It’s the face she makes while studying, while dissecting a multi-layered case study.
But why would she be focusing so hard unless…
No.
My stomach lurches like I just dove headfirst off a cliff.
I know exactly why she invited him.
It was her idea for us to fake date, and now she’s trying to parse whether it’s real.
Leave it to Hyacinth to hear magical words like ‘engagement’ and think something authentic is brewing.
One of her cats swipes at—what looks like chicken?—and Kane spins around, shooing it away from the stovetop.
Kane wrestles away sharp, gleaming silver knives from the curious cats, continually checking my now-covered side of blisters, while Hyacinth grills me with her eyes.
They glint with mischief.
She doesn’t believe us.
But not in the I think you’re fake-dating way.
In the, I know you’re real dating way.
This isn’t a friendly get-together. It’s an interrogation.
And she picks now? When I’m at my weakest? I love Hyacinth, but what happened to a normal conversation? Does she want me to profess my love in front of him? In front of her?
Kane loudly tosses food into a pan, as if sensing my distress, then turns, dimples returning. “Do you like spicy food? I learned to cook from Jade, who learned from Omma, our mother, and she put gochujang in everything.”
My heart, which had skittered to a stop, now kicks back into action, nodes firing off beats like sparks.
He spent time preparing food to cook for me? With his mother’s recipes?
Hyacinth bites her lip, glowing with excitement.
Ah, shit.
I can’t break her heart and tell her the truth.
“Heat is fine,” I answer Kane. “My family puts hot sauce in everything.”
Please, I beg with my eyes, recognize what Hyacinth is thinking for me.
He grins, eyes crinkling ever so slightly in the corners. “Good,” he says, spooning red paste in, “because I stole an extra container of it from Jade to leave with you. Technically, she told me, and I quote, ‘just throw it in and let the witch burn,’ but I decided it would be more polite to ask.”
I can’t help but grin. He imitates Jade’s sarcastic tone perfectly.
But did he understand what I was trying to tell him?
Hyacinth hops onto the counter, petting one cat languidly, while I shuffle to meet him in the kitchen.
I don’t even have to say anything; our gazes meet.
Kane answers my question before my mouth has formed the words.
“You took care of me after my car accident,” he says, “so Hyacinth called me to return the favor.”
I swivel around to her. “How do you know about that?”
“The cats told me,” she answers sarcastically, and then seriously, “I asked why he had stitches on his arm. He got so flustered by his own storytelling, I figured it had to do with you.”
“Oh,” I say, drifting to Kane, who’s throwing vegetables and strips of chicken thigh into a wok, performing a culinary miracle like that’s a totally normal thing for him to do in my kitchen.
“Hyacinth told me you wouldn’t mind,” he says, eyes careful as he gauges my reaction.
“Of course not,” I respond, drawing my cardigan tighter as he makes our tiny counter look like an industrial kitchen. We don’t even have a cooktop, just a little square that heats.
Whenever I see this man at the hospital, he looks… haunted. Weary. Like his thoughts are stolen by another dimension, locked into the wards by sheer spite and student loans.
But today he’s growing so at ease in my cramped apartment, tossing around sauces and veggies while a rice cooker chirps at him in Korean.
When he’s relaxed, the dark sickles of exhaustion under his eyes morph into crescent moons, fat pads dimpling in a way that makes his eyes sparkle with joy. Excitement.
“Do you cook often?” I ask dubiously.
He continues sauntering about my kitchen, barely glancing at the stir-fry as he flips it.
“After my mother passed, Jade had to take over the kitchen, but she complained about it so much I took on cooking duty twice a week,” he says.
“Oh,” I respond.