The Queen of Hearts(18)
Like many teaching institutions, Christ the Redeemer Hospital and the affiliated medical school campus were not located in a posh section of town. I was unnerved to hear clomping footsteps behind me in the creepy garage. The only illumination came from a dying streetlight located on the corner of the structure; the cars and pillars inside cast long shadows from its feeble tangerine glow. I glanced over my shoulder and made out a hulking shape moving toward me. I stifled a shriek. What ghastly irony it would be to survive an attack in the parking garage and wind up as a patient on the trauma service. An abhorrent visual image came to mind of my naked body on full display in the trauma room while a faux-somber Clancy topped off the assault with a chest tube. I was about to break into a panicked run when an arm reached out and gripped my shoulder.
I turned, and was barely able to make out the name on the white coat behind me: DR. XENOKOSTAS.
It was Dr. X.
Chapter Seven
EVERYONE THOUGHT HE WAS DANCING
Late Summer, 1999: Louisville, Kentucky
“Are you okay?” asked Dr. X. Solicitously, he placed a hand on my shoulder, sending a thrill from the tip of my clavicle directly to that mysterious part of the abdomen that clenches up with sexual tension. The last little surge of energy I possessed eclipsed me. How could another person’s touch do that to you?
“I’m fine,” I said with fake perkiness, “aside from you scaring me witless. You’re lucky I didn’t scream and bash you on the head.” I considered this. “Then you’d be the trauma patient.”
Dr. X smiled. “You don’t strike me as the murderous type, Zadie.”
I started to protest, but was derailed by fatigue. “That’s true,” I acknowledged, slumping. “I’m actually kind of a pacifist.”
Dr. X’s grin widened. “Fortunately for me,” he said.
I made my wavery way to my car. Dr. X opened the car door for me, but then appeared to reconsider. “You look like you’re about to topple into a face-plant,” he observed politely. “Can I drive you home?”
“Absolutely not,” I said, waving my otoscope around for emphasis. “I’m great. I’ll see you . . . in a few hours.”
“Be careful, Zadie,” he said, and closed the car door.
—
I was watching Graham watch Emma.
He sat in a booth at the Rooster. Kicked back, beer in hand, a languid half smile lighting his face, his sleepy doe eyes locked on her, he seemed oblivious to the escalating stupidity around him. In turn, Emma was equally oblivious to the smoldering gaze of her on-again, off-again boyfriend; she stared straight ahead at the spectacle of our other friends as Landley magnanimously distributed a round of 107-proof Old Forester.
Despite our near-constant exhaustion, my friends and I had survived the first weeks of our third year intact. Clearly, this required a depraved celebration. We’d packed ourselves into a decrepit Toyota Camry, referred to as the Caminator, and we’d tried to avoid the elderly bits of food festooning the floorboards. It was highly probable that the Caminator had never, even once, been cleaned by its owner, a shaggy-haired beast in our class called Rolfe. It reminded me of an archaeological dig: over here, one of Rolfe’s term papers from college, era early 1990s; over there, registration items from the first year of medical school, circa 1996; near the top, a proximal layer of sediment containing pilfered items from the hospital.
We’d caromed down Bardstown Road, windows open to the night air, leaving in the Caminator’s wake the carbonaceous odor of burned rubber and the sound of receding shrieking. We passed bar after bar after bar. Louisville was up there in terms of alcohol-serving establishments per capita, maybe even top five among US cities, with plenty of stylish places to choose from. Rolfe, however, had veered off toward a humbler destination: the Rooston Bar and Grille.
This was our fallback zone. “Unpretentious” would be a kind depiction of the Rooster, and if you were less charitable, it could be described as vile. Low-ceilinged and dim, the interior existed in everyone’s mind as an amorphous hazy blob; whether because of its general nonnoteworthiness or because of the mind-erasing aspects of its beverages, or both, no one could really ever describe it later. You just retained an impression of dingy squalor.
In contrast, we were a good-looking lot. This wasn’t lost on my loopy friend Georgia, who complained, “What the hell, Rolfe? The Rooster? Look at my clothes!” She bounced on her heels with a vigor usually reserved for meth addicts. Georgia was afflicted—or blessed—by a manic personality topped off with a bunch of oddball quirks, such as an insistence on dressing like a seventies-style pimp. Tonight she wore a vintage shirt with wide, frilly lapels in a screaming shade of orange, which fought with her shiny high-waisted purple pants.
“Take some off,” offered the ever-lecherous Landley, setting Georgia’s bourbon in front of her. He attempted a bra snap.
“Hands off me, bastard. I am too hot for you.”
“How’m I going to pick up any chicks from this dump?” groused Landley, sweat dripping from his handsome blond head. “There’s never anybody here except you asshats.”
“Please. The last time you hit on a girl she looked like she would’ve slapped an infant to get away from you.”
“Dude, no. You guys ruined it when you offered me a hundred bucks to fake a seizure, and—”