On Rotation(24)

Marisol had been in a hospital a total of 788 days (“But who’s counting?” Mercedes said) since her birth. When she was well, she was a delight. Being mostly nonverbal didn’t stop her from attempting to sing along to her favorite song, “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen, or pulling pranks on her older brother. When she was sick, well. She was like this. She didn’t take any food by mouth. Attempts to overcome her oral aversion in her infancy had been thwarted by her Marisol-level stubbornness, and it had taken a year to find a feeding tube formula that she could tolerate. Because of this, she’d never learned how to swallow. Her baby cousins didn’t understand that, especially three-year-old Sammy, who had only wanted to share his birthday cake and thought the best way to do it was to slam a chunk of it into Marisol’s mouth. The cake had most likely gone down the wrong pipe, considering her tenuous oxygen saturation levels and the presence of crackles in her right lower lung fields. Many efforts were under way to help her cough out the offending particles, including chest physiotherapy and all sorts of nebulizers. She was also on antibiotics.

“Good,” Dr. Berber said after I finished my presentation. Then he turned into the room without pimping me at all.

“Wow,” I mouthed to the open air, and trudged into the room after him.





Eight




Marisol did get better quickly. Aspiration pneumonitis, Shruti called it, and I scrawled that in a corner of my notes because until that moment, I hadn’t known pneumonitis was a thing. Dr. Berber switched off service and Dr. Mallort, whose questions I actually understood, came on. I spent the next few days presenting patients, studying for my pediatrics shelf, ignoring my parents’ phone calls, and parsing through studies for my literature review. I got a little bit better at being a peds third-year student, a little more helpful, a little less annoying. Shruti called me by my name.

I got comfortable, and I forgot to watch my back.

We could hear Marisol’s laughter from outside the door. After four days of treatment, she had perked up considerably, an impressive improvement, considering we’d been throwing around the concept of intubation* when she was first admitted. Marisol laughed at most things, though, and so I didn’t think much of it, until my feet crossed the threshold of the room and I heard his voice.

Of course, there Ricky was, sitting in a chair across from Marisol, paintbrush in hand, finishing off what appeared to be a pink butterfly on her cheek. Doing his job. Volunteering for Child Life, like the saint he was pretending to be. Looking, to my chagrin, very good in his paint-splattered white T-shirt and jeans. And Marisol was beaming at him like he was the most interesting, amazing person in the world. My wretched loser heart still skipped a beat.

“Hey, team,” Mercedes said, blissfully unaware of my internal conflict. Ricky turned to glance at us, then did a double take. I shrugged his way, keeping my eyes pointedly on Dr. Mallort and Marisol as I presented her case. I could feel Ricky staring, like he always did when we ran into each other. Didn’t his grandma teach him better? Still, I talked through all the ways that Marisol had improved since admission, her rock-solid vitals, and ended with “I think she’s ready for discharge today,” without breaking a sweat.

“I agree with student doctor Appiah’s assessment,” Dr. Mallort said. “You’re looking good, Marisol.”

“You mean we can go home?” Mercedes said. “Thank god. She’s starting to get antsy.”

“You can go home. Just give the team a couple of hours to get everything together,” Dr. Mallort said. Marisol laughed, her pink glasses glittering with the movement, and I took that as my cue to leave.

We hadn’t gotten far from the room before I heard the patter of footsteps behind me.

“Angie, wait,” Ricky said.

I swore under my breath, then swiveled to face him.

“Oh. Hi,” I said, plastering on the smile I reserved for annoying parents.

Ricky scooted to a halt in front of me. Behind me, Dr. Mallort and Shruti stopped too, and my ears burned with embarrassment.

“I’ll meet you at 4062?” I said to my team, hoping desperately that they would leave and not bear witness to my third and most unfortunate reunion with Ricky.

Dr. Mallort opened her mouth to protest, but Shruti, bless her, spoke first.

“Okay, see you there.” She looked pointedly at Ricky, then at me, and smirked before walking away.

Once they were out of earshot, I could drop the nice-girl act.

“What’s up?” I said. He still had his paintbrush in his hand, like he hadn’t thought to put it down before taking chase.

“I . . . Look, I just wanted to apologize.”

I scoffed.

“Apologize for what?”

“Well, for crashing your brunch for one,” Ricky said. “I knew when Diamond offered that I was intruding. It was clearly an ‘old friends’ thing—”

“Apology accepted,” I said. “I’ll see you around.”

“Angie, come on,” Ricky said. “Look, I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea before. I just . . . I thought we were getting to be friends. But you’ve been weird since, and—”

And there it was. Friends. My mind shuttled back to that day in the garden, a day that felt like eons ago. To the press of our thighs together, the hungry pressure of his gaze. The bashful smile he’d given me when he confessed that he’d felt compelled to talk to me. I’d made out with guys before and not felt that level of heat. And today, he’d practically taken flight in pursuit of me. He’d even left a child behind to do it! There was no mistaking it; Ricky was on me like a dog on a bone. I wasn’t a stranger to friendships with straight men; Markus and I had been tight since freshman year of college and had none of these theatrics. I didn’t know what Ricky wanted, but friendship wasn’t it.