Three Day Summer(34)

“You’re a doctor?” He takes the cigarette out of his mouth and glances over at me incredulously, as if I’m going to back him up. I try to keep my face neutral.

“My volunteer.” Cora indicates me and then snaps his attention back to her. “We’ve just got news of a cardiac arrest on-site, and I was told by the organizers to come to you so you could get me there as soon as possible. We’re wasting valuable time here.” She folds her arms across her chest and stares him down. Just a few minutes ago, I watched as she took off her apron and took her hair down out of its braids, tucking its long strands behind her ears. She stands tall and assured in front of the pilot now, looking imposing.

Twenty minutes later, we’re touching down right near the main stage again and I can’t help thinking that Cora is a genius.

I wait until we’ve disembarked and are far enough away from the pilot before turning to her. “Good thinking. She’s not just a pretty face, folks.”

“Why, thank you,” Cora says, straightening out her trusty medical badge. “Good thing this thing doesn’t actually say ‘candy striper.’”

“Though really, couldn’t I have been the doctor? Instead of the volunteer?”

“Doctor or Daltrey,” she retorts. “You can’t have both.”

“I could totally be a doctor,” I say, grinning.

But she’s not smiling. “You weren’t the one with the badge,” she says softly, almost to herself. She moves a little bit away from me. She’s fiddling with her hair, swiftly putting it into a long braid again.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she responds flatly.

“Pretty and transparent,” I say, keeping up with her quickened pace.

“What?” Now she’s unfolding the candy striper apron she’s been clutching.

“Your face. I can tell something’s wrong.”

She shrugs as she methodically puts her apron back on. “It’s nothing.”

I’ve been with Amanda long enough to know what “it’s nothing” actually means. But I don’t know if I should push it the way I always know for sure I should push it with Amanda so that she can yell at me for whatever is pissing her off and get it over with.

“So who’s that?” Cora stops walking and points to the stage. A lean, olive-skinned guy in a leather vest is playing one hell of a guitar solo, while around him bongos, drums, a bass, and maracas retaliate.

I grin. “That should be Santana.”

We watch him play for a bit, close enough to see his face clearly in the afternoon sun. His eyes are closed, and his face is scrunched up in concentration. It’s like he’s channeling a force from another planet to create the sounds that are coming from his strings.

And then, suddenly, whatever possesses him seems to get hold of the drummer, too, who goes into a long, complicated drum solo. The drummer looks young, with shaggy, light hair that’s flying all over the place. He kind of looks like me, actually. I would give anything to switch places with him right now.

“Wow,” I say. “They really are amazing.”

“Yes?” Cora asks.

I nod. “This is all improvised. They’re just bouncing off each other.”

“What do you mean? They’re not just playing a song they wrote before?”

“No, ma’am. They’re just listening to each other and making it up on the spot.”

“Wow,” Cora says, and I can tell she’s genuinely impressed.

“They’re fantastic.” We take advantage of our unbelievably close viewpoint for a little bit longer before someone with a staff T-shirt finally comes over and asks us what we’re doing there. We are in the artist area, after all.

“Just on our way to the medical tents,” Cora says, quickly pointing to her badge and then turning away before we get questioned further. I follow her.

She abruptly stops and I almost bump into her. She turns around and looks at me, a decisive gleam in her eyes. “The thing back there,” she says. “The reason I was upset is . . . I actually want to be a doctor.” She says it emphatically and then waits, as if for some sort of reaction from me.

“Okay . . . ,” I say slowly. “That’s great,” I add, hoping it’s the right thing to say. I don’t see how it couldn’t be. It genuinely is pretty great, and I’m sure she’d be good at it, doing something she so clearly loves.

But Cora just laughs bitterly. “Yeah. Pretty great. Unless you’re anyone in the medical profession. Or my dad. Or Ned.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you see that helicopter guy’s face when I said I was a doctor? He was thinking, ‘A woman doctor?’ You just don’t see that around here so much. . . .”

I pause for a second. “Yeah, but in the end, he believed you, didn’t he?”

“I guess. . . .” She looks down at her apron.

“Honestly, he was probably more thinking, ‘She’s too young to be a doctor. . . .’”

“That could be true,” Cora admits, looking a little embarrassed.

I think back to the encounter. “But you know what? If he was thinking what you said, screw him,” I say emphatically. “We live in the age of Gloria Steinem. You can be anything you want to be!”