Chapter 2
Lo
A flying bedpan narrowly misses my head, striking the wall behind me with a clatter and a splatter.
“Get fucked by a fish!” the ancient patient shouts in Spanish from her hospital bed. Well, that’s an insult I haven’t heard before. Instead of the Irish lilt belonging to most of the staff and patients here, I recognize her lispy accent as Castilian. “I told you I never want to see you again.”
The nurse pulls me into the hallway. “I have four other patients to tend and it’s going to take ages to calm her down.”
“I’ll clean it up,” I offer. Environmental Services isn’t permitted to actually clean hazardous waste at our teaching hospital. Unfortunately, that means the worst of it falls on the already overextended nursing staff or students like me. “Really. I’ve got this.”
“Your funeral.”
A nasty fall explains why Mrs. Serrano is in the Accident dementia explains her explosive reaction to a nurse coming in for vitals.
Breathing through my mouth, I reenter her room with absorbent pads and sanitizer.
Medicine isn’t for the faint of heart. People have been telling me that since the day I announced I was becoming a doctor at seven years old.
“Good morning, Mrs. Serrano. I’m going to take your blood pressure now,” I tell her in Spanish. Bilingual people with memory issues often revert to their first language and lose everything else.
She examines me with filmy, cataract-covered eyes. “Where are you from?”
“I’m American, but my dad is from Oaxaca, Mexico.” Although it’s a different dialect, the familiarity of Spanish seems to soothe her as I’d hoped. She offers me her arm and I slip the cuff on quickly while she’s agreeable.
“She thinks she can just walk in here?” She goes back to muttering about the nurse she confused for her sister. “I’d rather rot than accept her help.”
Contradicting a memory care patient only makes them more agitated, so I nod empathetically.
“And I don’t like people bothering with me. I can take care of myself,” she adds, sounding a little more lucid.
Looking at this woman feels like getting a peek at a possible future version of myself: a fierce sense of independence, colorful use of insults, the ability to hold a grudge for decades.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t leave the room immediately after cleaning up.
Combativeness is common, and there are plenty of other patients to see as I shadow the attending physician, but something about her flash of anger made me approach her instead of moving on.
“I understand it’s frustrating to be here,” I tell her with a soft smile. “We’re doing our best to get you back home soon.”
“My whole life, I lived on my own. Independent,” the old woman grumbles. “I feel so helpless now.”
I can relate to the unique restlessness of being stuck in a hospital bed. I never want to experience it again. “We all need to accept a little help from time to time.”
Her frown softens just a bit.
“I heard about your Code Brown earlier.” Oisín runs a hand through his endearingly fluffy hair. The hospital’s cafeteria thrums with the lunchtime rush. Physicians, family members, and patients who are well enough to sneak away from their rooms form a line that snakes through the bright space.
Code Brown actually means disaster. If Mrs. Serrano had better aim and had hit me with that bedpan, it certainly could’ve been.
Oisín stabs a grilled zucchini. “The nurses all said that patient was calmer after you spoke to her in Spanish.”
“I read that speaking a memory patient’s first language helps comfort them.”
“Well, she’s only asking for you now. Congrats on making a friend.”
“Hey, I have friends. Don’t you count?”
Oisín waves the fork between us. “I thought this was a ‘keep your enemies closer’ situation.”
“Ass.” I flick a purple Skittle at him, which bounces off the lapel of his white coat and lands in a pile of orzo.
The purple ones taste different here. European food standards probably make these candies a better product than their American counterpart, but it doesn’t matter.
They’re slightly off to me, even if Oisín insists they all taste like pure sugar.
“Just because I’ve never passed out friendship bracelets in our lectures doesn’t mean I’m enemies with anyone. I’m just…competitive.”
As a woman of color in a male-dominated field, I have to continually prove my place and battle my own impostor syndrome.
All with a non-confrontational smile on my face.
Oisín and I have been neck and neck in our cohort for the past three years.
While he enjoys the opportunity to be a dickhead from time to time, I’m the one who has been told to work on my bedside manner.
Curt was the word on the A&E rotation feedback form—although the handwriting was messy and that r could’ve been an n .
My phone vibrates with an incoming text.
I raise a brow at Oisín. “See? People love me.”
When I pick it up, there’s a message from my mom:
You need to schedule your checkup.
A groan escapes my mouth. “Okay, maybe someone loves me a little too much.”
“Clingy Tinder date?” Oisín asks.
“My mom, actually.”
“Yikes.” Things are rocky between him and his parents, too. He digs out his phone and scrolls through videos in between bites as I consider my reply.
Although my mom is a petite white woman, her contact photo in my phone is Godzilla. She has no idea. Before I can tell my mom that I called the cancer center this morning, she follows up with another text.
I called the oncologist to schedule for you, but they wouldn’t let me
Twenty-five, with a biology degree from UT Austin, in med school on the other side of the world, and she still treats me like a child.
I shove a few Skittles into my mouth, concentrating on the sweetness instead of typing out a flurry of annoyance.
My mom’s never much respected American medical privacy laws like HIPAA, so it’s no wonder she’s trying to take over my care here in Ireland. But this is embarrassing.
Just got off the phone with them! Scheduled for next week , I reply. My checkup has been carefully timed for me to give her the all clear in person when she comes next week for Lark’s wedding.
It’s not on the family calendar
Another Skittle crunches under my molars.
I’d tagged it in my personal schedule and not the shared one.
With a few strokes, I open the calendar app to correct the tag to our two-person family calendar that she insists on to keep tabs on me.
It’s populated mostly by my clinical rounds and study groups, with a few of her hair appointments and oil changes sprinkled in.
There’s also a standing Monday slot for when my mom and I give each other a full rundown of our week over video chat.
If I skipped it, she’d probably hop on a plane immediately.
The two-hour allotment for catching a show at the Hare’s Breath tonight is tagged in my personal calendar, under a reminder to pick up Lark’s dress from the bridal salon after clinicals today.
Her bachelorette party is in there, too—a booze cruise I planned for the end of the week.
After a moment, another bubble pops up. I see it now.
Ten minutes remain on my break. The bag of candy crinkles as I stash it in my pocket. Mom stressing me out is nothing new. She keeps a close eye on my health. There’s always a chance of recurrence with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which my mother makes sure to remind me of frequently.
When I was diagnosed in middle school, she pulled me out of competitive swimming and public school to put me into a homeschool bubble.
Then Dad became a traveling consultant for a tech company, leaving me home alone with a mom who became more and more protective.
As I got sicker, our family broke apart.
She clung on to any shred of control. It got worse during the divorce, especially for a teen ripped away from her social life and tethered to an IV half the time.
When I left for UT Austin a year after I went into remission, my mom insisted on having a spare key for my off-campus apartment in case of emergencies.
She would let herself in when I was in class and raid my kitchen, tossing out the emotional-support junk food and replacing it with large containers of organic kale and vegetables, then stick articles to the fridge touting their antioxidant properties.
I couldn’t even gain the “freshman fifteen” in peace.
I could have enrolled in a med school out of state instead of across the Atlantic if I’d just wanted to cut down on my mom’s unannounced visits.
But then I vacationed with Lark in Galway and fell in love with the seaside city, too.
I applied for the Atlantic Bridge Program and shocked my mom by announcing I’d study medicine in Ireland.
Moving to another country felt like the closest thing I could get to rebellion, while still staying on track with my goals.
“Everything okay?” Oisín asks, glancing up from his phone, which is faintly playing “Come Here to Me.” It was Ireland’s unofficial song of the summer.
I may have blocked Aidan O’Toole on Spotify, as well as the hashtag of his name on socials, but that hasn’t kept me from hearing his music playing in boutiques and cafés, and as the background music to every other social media video, it seems.
Belatedly, he realizes who is playing and shoots me an apologetic look as the song cuts off mid-chorus.
“Yeah, it’s fine. You don’t have to do that.”
“Listen, hearing my ex-boyfriend sing love songs would piss me off, too. I count myself lucky that at least mine is a talentless gobshite.”
“Honestly? It still fills me with molten rage every time.” It’s only a slight exaggeration. How dare Aidan get famous for singing about how much he loves me, when I was so easily thrown away for the sake of that fame.
Oisín’s laugh bubbles up over the din of the cafeteria. “I swear fealty to you—”
“Didn’t you just call me your enemy?”
“—but it’s criminally catchy!”
“Traitor.”
“We all have problematic favorites.” Oisín throws up both palms in a placating gesture. “Please don’t pelt me with more sweets.”
“I can’t believe I’m gonna have to spend three days with my ex and my mom,” I grumble, brushing my bob off my shoulder and watching a few dark strands stick to my white coat. “Look, I’m already stress-shedding and it’s two weeks away.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me as your plus-one? I’m an amazing dancer. We can make Aidan so jealous.”
“I’ll be too busy with maid of honor duties and family stuff all night, anyway.
I wouldn’t want to leave you by yourself the whole time.
Thanks, though.” I stand, grab my tray. “Hey, want to go to the Hare’s Breath tonight?
Blow off some steam? I don’t know who’s playing, but they always have a band on Fridays. ”
He crinkles his nose. “Not my scene.”
I end up going to the Hare’s Breath alone…
if one can say that about a pub packed with hundreds of people and my own memories.
Lark and Callum have been busy with work and wedding planning, so when I invited them to accompany me to the pub, Lark said they needed a quiet date night to reconnect before the festivities.
But I still rushed to the bridal salon to grab her dress and veil before they closed today.
Cheerful lacquered yellow paint and green trim cover the pub’s exterior, and mums fill the window boxes.
A crowd spills out of the glass vestibule already stuffed with gourds and pumpkins, topped with garlands of autumn foliage.
The only other time I’ve seen it this crowded was during World Cup finals.
The Hare’s Breath has the best music in the city. I’ll be damned if I let a six-month relationship with some dimpled, mandolin-playing fuckboy ruin it for me forever. I just make a point to avoid the cozy wooden snug where we had our first kiss.
I elbow my way to the bar, practically diving on a freshly vacated stool.
A little Guinness toucan decorates the end of the bar, the finish on its beak worn away by hundreds of thousands of pats.
I give it one more pat. Although I’m even more exhausted than usual lately, my soul needs some decent live music tonight. Call it self-care.
The guy beside me offers to buy my drink, but I decline. Flirting is the last thing I want tonight. One or two drinks to unwind and I’ll go home, shower, pass out, and do the whole thing again tomorrow.
Hooray.
When the patrons erupt in shouts and whistles, I follow their attention to the small stage, tucked in the corner.
Oh. Fuck. Off.