Dating Dr. Dil (If Shakespeare was an Auntie #1)(16)

She stormed over to her seat to pick up her clutch and her Pedialyte. As she turned away from the pitying, horrified expressions of everyone in the studio, rage began to consume her.

How dare he? How dare everyone?

She uncapped her Pedialyte and in a moment of spontaneity, tossed it at Dr. Dil like a grenade.

A collective shriek filled the room.

“And that’s for ruining my sweater vest, fuckboy!”





Interstitial




Indians Abroad News

Dr. Prem Verma, a cardiologist and host of the TV talk show The Dr. Dil Show on Jersey City’s South Asians News Network, found himself in a very public argument during a commercial break last weekend

when a woman named Kareena accused him of making promises of love and romance in his personal life while also preaching unorthodox

views on love marriages. Dr. Verma is a health-care advocate for the South Asian community working toward building a clinic

supporting South Asians in Jersey City. However, many residents in the area aren’t too pleased with the altercation aired

on the Mann Your Business YouTube channel by his guest, Bindu Mann.





Chapter Five

Prem




Prem rubbed at the tension in his temples as he collapsed on the edge of his bed to unlace his shoes. It took him a few minutes before he was able to get back up and stack them in his closet. His suit coat went next, along with his tie and slacks. Whatever needed to be dry-cleaned was put in a separate wicker basket, which he’d have to remember to drop off on Saturday.

He’d never looked forward to something so mundane as dry cleaning before.

After dressing in athletic shorts and a Columbia T-shirt, he walked through his apartment to the kitchen. He immediately headed toward the corner cabinet, where he took out the ibuprofen bottle and swallowed three pills dry.

Regretting his life choices, Prem called out to his smart home device. “Google, play Dudes’ Night playlist.”

“Playing Dudes’ Night,” Google replied.

Taylor Swift’s album Reputation slipped through his wall speakers, filling the open space up through the exposed beams and ducts.

After one of the worst weeks he’d had since Gori’s death, a night with his friends was exactly what the doctor ordered. He’d been twisted up inside for so long that this was hopefully going to be the release he needed.



“Sometimes I think that we, as the first ones born in the U.S., feel so much pressure to excel because our parents don’t know if their intercontinental move was successful until we are successful,” Kareena said. “We are the reward to their sacrifice.”

Prem nodded, fascinated by the way the dim lights at the bar flickered over her face. “I think that’s why we’re so forgiving when they push us, too.”

“Do your parents push you toward their dreams, or are you doing what you want, Prem Verma?”

“Soon,” he said. “Hopefully, I will be soon.”



Prem bristled with anger all over again. How could he have a life-altering conversation with a woman, a woman who he felt so connected to for the first time in . . . well, in ever, who would turn out to be the same person to throw a bottle of Pedialyte at him the next day at his studio?

Granted, he was the idiot who left her in a precarious situation, but still.

Prem put a couple highball glasses and a bottle of whiskey in the middle of his round dining room table. Three mats went next, along with plates he’d ordered off an Instagram ad at three in the morning the year before.

After grabbing a huge stack of old textbooks from the kitchen island and placing them on one of the chairs in front of one of the mats, he logged into his laptop. The familiar ding of a video chat request popped up on the screen. He rolled his eyes before accepting the call from his mother.

An older Punjabi woman with coiffed hair and thin lips painted in red filled his monitor. “Hi, Mama.”

“Mama ka bachcha,” she snapped. She was using her doctor voice, the same one that she pulled out when she was really upset. “Do you know how many times your father and I have tried to call you this week?”

He’d stopped counting after sixteen. “I’m sorry, I’ve been busy.”

“My son, a cardiologist, went viral on a TV show. It’s all over the WhatsApp groups!”

Great. The Aunty WhatsApp groups. The fastest way now to disseminate gossip and false information. The last time he’d checked the family chat, his physician parents were telling his cousin that drinking turmeric milk every day would increase his sperm count.

“It’s not like I intended it to happen, Mama.”

“You know, if you had just taken that job at Einstein Medical and become a surgeon like your little twat of a cousin—”

“Oh my god, we’ve had this conversation. You can’t say that word in the U.S. Stop watching Bollywood Wives. I thought you were going to try to do something productive during your early retirement instead of learning inappropriate curse words.”

“I am being productive! I’m trying to find a wife for my stubborn son, but he’s busy making a fool out of himself. You know what young girls call you now? Fuckboy.”

Prem had to school his features. His mother would come straight through the screen and smack the shit out of him if he rolled his eyes at her. “You know what? You can’t say that word, either. And stop comparing me to that t—that jerk. Also, this is entirely your fault.”