The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(10)

Jack laughed and said, “Oh, that Willy.” Then he abruptly went quiet.

“Do you?” I pressed, silently saying the end of the question in my head:… have a girlfriend?

“Though it’s true that I do visit a female person, otherwise known as a ‘lady,’ here, and we are, indeed, friends, she would probably kick me in the balls if I ever called her my ‘lady friend.’ Besides, I’m a monk, apparently.”

Hmph. Monk, my ass. The only guys at school who were this particular combination of persistent and beautiful were players. I backed up and pointed to my wrist. “Seriously have to go.”

“Give me something, please. Don’t make me wait out here in the cold stalking you like a creeper.”

I took a few more backward steps and opened the door, heart racing. “Body-O-Rama. It’s an anatomy illustration blog. I’m one of the contributing artists. If you can pick my art out of the lineup, you’ll find my contact info there, and you can stalk me online.”

He grinned and pulled his leather jacket closed as the wind picked up. “Challenge accepted.”

5

My meeting with Dr. Sheridan was strangely unsatisfying. Maybe that’s because I was still holding a grudge about her leaving me hanging at our first meeting, or maybe it’s because I spent the entire ten puny minutes she gave me struggling to keep Jack out of my thoughts.

This wasn’t me. At all. I’m the serious girl with straight As. Well, except for the Bs in calculus and that C in freshman PE, which I earned for my “bad attitude” toward Mallory Letson—who happened to be head of the varsity pep squad and Coach’s favorite. Never mind that she was talking crap about Heath, who was a senior that year. (For the record, I think Mallory was behind the whole Morticia thing.)

Still.

All Dr. Cold-as-Ice Sheridan said was that my portfolio showed “remarkable talent,” and after questioning why I wanted to be a medical illustrator, she just went on to explain that the university was one of the top medical schools in the country and had (standards and practices) or (board members’ expectations) or (insurance regulations) to uphold. And that their actual students came first. She promised to consider my request and run it by her colleagues and students. She said she’d have an answer in a week or two.

In a week or two, the summer would be half over and I’d barely have time enough to come up with something else for the student art contest. But what could I do, argue with someone who was doing me a favor? She gave me her business card, so at least I had her email address. I wasted no time writing her the cheesiest, most polite thank-you email in the history of sucking up.

After that, I’m ashamed to say that I spent my entire night checking my artist profile on Body-O-Rama, hoping that Jack had gone straight to his computer and searched me out. Granted, my profile pic was an inked self-portrait with half of my face drawn as exposed musculature. But only twenty artists were featured on the site. How difficult was I to recognize? Then again, Jack really didn’t know anything about me. Maybe he’d mistaken me for the much cooler girl who painted brightly colored Day of the Dead sugar skulls. In a panic, I read through all the comments on everyone’s recent posts, just in case.

Nothing.

And nothing the next day. And the next. But it was the day after that when his lack of response was more disappointing than it might’ve been if it was just another Saturday. Because it wasn’t: It was my eighteenth birthday.

And yet, no Jack. Had he given up? I’d even made it easier on him by posting about my birthday plans the day before. It practically screamed, Look! Here I am! It was just weird that he was begging me for my name and supposedly waiting for hours to see me, and then boom, nothing.

Was he just busy? Or maybe there was a reason I didn’t want to face: that he’d seen my art and decided I was too morbid. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, and even if we were both artists, maybe Cadaver Girl and Vegetarian Graffiti Boy were oil and water. I guess I needed to stop pining away for something I didn’t even really know if I wanted.

I mean, hello! I was eighteen, baby. I could finally … vote and buy all those cartons of cigarettes I’d been pining for. Yippee.

So Mom spent her only weekend day off from the hospital schlepping Heath and me around the city for Beatrix-approved birthday activities. We waited in early-morning fog for forty-five minutes to have milk shakes for breakfast at St. Francis Diner (my favorite) before nerding out at Green Apple Books (where Heath ponied up for a 1960s coffee table book about medical oddities that he’d had on hold for me). We finally ended up at the Legion of Honor, which, in San Francisco, is an art museum—not a brotherhood of knights, or whatever it is in France.

I know a museum may not be everyone’s idea of Super Birthday Funtimes, but I really wanted to see this exhibition called Flesh and Bone, and it featured one piece in particular that had me salivating: a Max Brödel diagram of a heart. I’d posted a link to it on the Body-O-Rama site when I’d blogged about my birthday plans, and, holy smokes, seeing it in person didn’t disappoint. Brödel is pretty much the godfather of modern medical illustration. He was a German who immigrated here to draw diagrams for Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the early 1900s. His illustrations were beautifully detailed and had this weird, surreal quality.

I’d studied his stuff in books and had even copied a few for practice. But seeing the actual carbon-dust-on-stipple-board drawing was breathtaking.