None of the Above(46)

A tiny black-haired nurse’s aide named Lisa led me around the back hallways, and taught me how to wipe down the counters in each exam room and change the paper covers on the tables. I tried not to imagine a scared teenage girl lying there, wondering why the lights were so bright, and why the stirrups felt ice-cold, even through her socks.

When I was done, I went out to the front desk to see if they needed any help with mail or copies. The waiting room was starting to fill up with people. All women, which made sense, of course. Dr. Johnson had told me that she only ran her ob-gyn clinic twice a month. The other days, a family doctor staffed the clinic.

I hadn’t prepared myself for how many children would be there. Most of the women had kids with them—a majority of them had more than one. A weary-looking woman in a black shirt and jeans had a baby wrapped around her stomach with a beach towel, a toddler in a stroller, and a pair of twin boys that looked to be around four or five. The boys were fighting over a worn copy of Parenting magazine. I gave a little laugh when one of the boys finally won the tug-of-war and cried out in triumph. Then I just felt sad, and went back to turn over some rooms.

At dinnertime, Jessica invited me into Darren’s Dungeon to eat. The clinic’s heating had broken down the night before, and it had only gotten fixed a few hours earlier, so I welcomed the heat coming from the computer’s CPUs. I wedged myself onto a bench next to the main computer tower, meaning that I got an earful of the funky soul music blaring from the speaker.

“What band is this, anyway?” I asked.

Darren staggered back and put a hand to his mouth. “You can’t say that this is the first time you’ve been exposed to the genius which is The Concept?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Well, prepare to have your life changed,” Darren said.

“Just in case you haven’t noticed yet,” Jessica stage-whispered, “Darren here uses the terms genius and life-changing very, very loosely. The Concept makes my little sister’s garage band sound like the Rolling Stones.”

“Hey, Riley,” Darren said, pretending to act annoyed. “First of all, don’t dis Becky’s band. They kick ass. And second: don’t yuck my yum. I have my tastes, and you have yours. If you want to listen to something else, you can go back to Antarctica.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “Can you at least turn it down? Not everyone wants to feel like they’re at a rave when they’re eating dinner.”

Darren sighed and moused down the volume. I was surprised that, once I could actually hear the lyrics, the music didn’t suck. After the first track ended, the second track was so quiet and introspective that I asked Darren to turn the volume up. He did, grinning triumphantly at Jessica.

I munched on my turkey sandwich and nodded my head to the music. Jessica wolfed down her hummus wrap and took it upon herself to give me the inquisition. “So, I didn’t know you were interested in medicine,” she said, sounding kind of like a teacher trying to get to know a student better. “It’s nice to have more people around, though. There’s always work to do somewhere.”

“It seemed like a worthy cause,” I said lamely. Darren wasn’t really involving himself in the conversation, taking bites of his tuna sub in between some work he was doing on the computer. While Jessica crunched on some carrot sticks, I mustered up something polite to say. “How about you? I always thought you were going to end up on Broadway or something. Don’t they have a project volunteering at the theater?”

“Nah, I’m planning on nursing school. My mom’s a midwife, and I think I want to be one too.”

That got Darren’s attention. “I really don’t get why anyone would want to do that. My uncle said that watching my mom’s childbirth video scarred him for life.”

Jessica opened her mouth for a rebuttal, but I kicked Darren’s chair with my boot. A lecture on the Miracle of Birth would just be more salt in my wounds.

“Don’t yuck her yum,” I said.

“What?” He stared at me like antlers had just popped out of my head. It felt like the first normal look I’d gotten from him all day.

“Hmm,” was all the brilliant Darren Kowalski could think of to say.

But Jessica grinned at me, and despite my suspicions about actresses and their sincerity, I grinned back.

Make that two normal looks.





CHAPTER 26


“Thank God you’re here,” Dr. Johnson’s physician assistant said the minute I walked into clinic the next week. “We’re going to need you to help with the next two patients. We have two add-ons, and Jessica is coming late today.”

Dr. Johnson hadn’t been kidding when she said they were short staffed. A maternity patient meant there’d be a pelvic exam. I felt a little queasy. “I haven’t been fully trained for that yet.”

“All you have to do is give her the instruments she needs.” He handed me a bag full of plastic speculums and pointed me toward Exam Room 1, where Dr. Johnson stood reading the patient’s chart. When she entered, I followed close behind but hugged the wall when I saw the patient, a tiny Asian girl with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. The one-size-fits-all gown hung on her slight frame like a muumuu. She looked about fifteen.

“Kristin, this is Vong,” Dr. Johnson said. Vong gave me a tired look, and I stared at the floor.