It took some doing, but I eventually mustered the will to find out what exactly I’d done the night before. I dragged myself out of the car, over to the elevator, and up to Koels’ office with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner approaching the electric chair. And lo and behold, standing in front of Koels’ secretary’s desk, was Faith. She looked at me and instantly turned a bright, bubble gum pink. I came to a stop about three feet away from her.
“You got the summons too?” I asked, tossing up my pager and catching it one-handed with a lot more confidence than I was feeling. She nodded, her gaze following the pager’s parabola up and down and then returning to stare resolutely at the floor. Faith’s dark eyes flashed around the parquet flooring like she was looking for a crack to hide in.
“Yeah,” she said eventually. Faith wasn’t exactly being forthcoming this morning. After a moment, I resigned myself to waiting with her in silence. Koels’ secretary, Anya, got up from her desk with an empty coffee cup. As soon as she was out of earshot, Faith turned to me, although her eyes were fixed on my feet. “I can barely remember anything that happened last night,” she blurted. Her already-pink blush deepened.
You can’t?
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m right there with you.”
She finally looked up from the floor. Faith crept over towards me, closing the distance between us. She stopped right in front of my chest, looked me in the eye, and seemed like she was evaluating my truthfulness. “Really?”
It was my turn to nod, even though I was now partially distracted from the situation by Faith’s hypnotic beauty. “Really. Just like I really have a headache right now.”
Faith smirked. “Me too. I never drink that much.”
“Me either. Now I remember why.” I grimaced, then remembered that I had something that belonged to Faith. I fished it out of my pocket and extended it to her. I left her panties in my pocket, along with the ring. We’d figure that bit out after dealing with Koels.
Faith grinned in obvious relief. “Oh, thank god. I thought it was gone forever.”
Faith took it from my hand, and even the smallest amount of physical contact provoked a flash of memory. In the fragmented memory, Faith lay beneath me, naked, lips parted and with both her tiny hands buried in my hair. I swallowed hard at the memory and the sudden rush of desire that accompanied it. Someone who got blackout drunk didn’t deserve a woman like her.
“I’m sorry if I—” I began.
At the same moment she asked, “What do you think—”
But neither one of us got an opportunity to continue asking our questions. Aimee Ford—Dr. Ford— swept out of Koels’ office. She was his second-in-command, a genius medical wunderkind that was only my age but had apparently skipped a half dozen grades because she was already running a department. This morning she was wearing a big smile.
“You two can go in now,” she told us. “He’s waiting.”
Faith and I exchanged a nervous glance and I swear Dr. Ford winked at us, but it must have been my imagination. My hangover was making me delirious.
“After you,” I offered. I received the world’s weakest smile in return, but it was enough to lift my spirits at least a little bit. Maybe after we both got fired for making out half naked on the dance floor, or dry humping in the chapel, or whatever the hell we did, Faith and I could get coffee. I followed her into Koels’ excessively cushy office.
Inside, Dr. Koels sat across the enormous desk from Fr. Wheeler, the hospital’s priest and chaplain. The two were laughing as we walked inside, although they quickly stopped when they saw us. Dr. Koels gestured to the two handsome armchairs next to Fr. Wheeler.
“Have a seat, kids,” Koels offered.
For reasons unknown to every member of the hospital staff, Dr. Koels insisted on calling everyone younger than him (which was everyone) kids. Perhaps he thought it made him seem avuncular and cool. It didn’t. If anything, it only heightened his stern, grade-school principal aesthetic. Faith and I sat down on the proffered seats, stealing glances at one another and waiting (at least in my case) for the storm. At least I’d be fired while sitting in a very, very nice chair.
“You wanted to see us?” Faith asked, proving that although she was shy around me, she had no problem being bold when it suited her. Perhaps she just wanted to get this over with. I respected any patient that ripped off the Band-Aid in one go, and I respected Faith for the same reason. There was no reason to waste time with pleasantries with Koels, anyway. He didn’t have many pleasantries. He wasn’t generally a very pleasant person.
But Koels was nodding like he was a perfectly pleasant person. “I did indeed. I’m excited to announce that you’re both being promoted.”
I blinked.
Promoted?
Yeah right. There was no way. Nobody gets promoted after getting blackout drunk at a party in front of all your colleagues and big donors. At least in my experience, that’s not a promote-able behavior for a bar, let alone a hospital. This was some kind of cruel Koels joke. Although I hadn’t witnessed it myself, he was said to have a twisted sense of humor. Apparently, it was true.
“I’m sorry if I did anything last night that embarrassed the hospital,” I ventured into the silence that Koels’ pronouncement had created in the lavishly appointed room.
“Embarrassed?” Koels repeated, a grin starting to peak out of the ordinarily scowling collection of frown-wrinkles that he called a face. “Whatever for?”
“Well, I was pretty drunk last night,” I admitted. I was man enough to own up to my behavior.
“I have it on good authority that it’s allowable to drink at your own wedding,” Koels replied. “Isn’t that right Fr. Wheeler?”
Fr. Wheeler nodded solemnly. “Yes.” His voice was a bass rumble.
Fr. Wheeler was a bit of an odd guy. A former boxer who’d found faith later in life, he was enormous, built like an ox, and perpetually serious and deadpan. It made it nearly impossible to know when he was joking, and you didn’t want to get it wrong because collar or no collar, the guy looked like he could punch you through a wall.
“Wedding?” I stuttered.
“Well I’m sure you’re going to want to have another ceremony with friends and family,” Koels was saying happily, “but yes. In the eyes of Church and state, you two are very much married now.” He grinned. “We were all witnesses, so no taking it back!” He laughed at his own joke like it fucking hilarious.
At my side, Faith had frozen over like the painting I always imagined she’d stepped out of. She was totally and completely motionless. Her skin was paper white. I’d seen livelier corpses. I wasn’t even sure that she was still breathing. I knew I wasn’t.
Years of medical training kicked in that point in the conversation. Like was so often the case in medicine, it wasn’t possible to emotionally digest what was happening around me while still doing what I needed to do. It seems like an impossible skill when faced with a gunshot wound or a seizure, but with enough practice it is possible to simply refuse to panic. So, like any good clinician, I compartmentalized. I took a big step back from the situation, put a neutral expression on my face, and got ahold of my racing thoughts and pounding heart.
“And why are we being promoted?” I managed to ask in a perfectly conversational tone of voice. I sounded so chill that I could have been asking about the weather.
“Because I’m feeling generous,” Koels said. He must have read the skepticism on my face, because then he added, “and because I’m retiring soon, and it makes me happy to see the next generation of this hospital marrying and settling down. And also, because all the donors and the local bigwigs, including the Bishop, liked seeing you get married and it’s all bought me at least three months of good will.”
His eyes skimmed a photo on his desk, and a little inkling of what might actually be going on pinged through me. From the hospital gossip mill, I knew that Koels was estranged from his own son. His son, who apparently was quite the black sheep, was a cons
tant source of disappointment, complaint, and derision. With Koels staring down the barrel of his retirement, packing the hospital full of ‘the right sort’ of people was probably important to him. He always said we were his ‘kids’ after all.
The bit about the donors and the Bishop was probably real, too. Keeping them happy was probably sixty percent of Koels’ job. If they enjoyed our drunken display of holy matrimony, that was good publicity for him.
“What, um, what are we being promoted to exactly?” Faith asked, speaking up from the depths of her shocked silence.
Good question. Koels and Wheeler both grinned like a pair of Cheshire cats.
“Do you want to tell them?” Koels asked the gigantic priest.
“No, no. You should do it,” Wheeler replied.
“It was your idea.”
“I insist you be the one to share the news.”
One of them needed to spit it out. Koels cracked first.
“I’m excited to announce the formation of our new pediatric cardiology unit,” Koels finally told us. “This unit will be a bridge between what each of you already have interests in. Eric, since you’re a resident, we would have lost you in just a few short years. But this unit presents a new opening for your second residency, and I’d like to put you on track to take that spot and stay here long term. Faith, I know how much you enjoy working in the neonatal and obstetrics units. This will be right up your alley, and we can finally get you into the management role you deserve and into a position that has the tuition reimbursement you need for your APN.”
Um, what?
It took a few moments for what Koels was saying to sink in, not the least of which was because I was only one year into my residency. One of the many fun things about becoming a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon is that it takes forever. First, I had to graduate at the very top of my undergraduate class. Then, four long years of medical school. Next, a five-year general residency program, a three-year cardiothoracic surgery residency program, and then an additional four years of training in pediatric cardiothoracic surgery (basically the same thing, only much, much smaller).
Given that I was twenty-nine years old and barely halfway through with my two-decade educational program, I never thought there was a chance of staying at this hospital for long. That sort of stability didn’t exist for people like me, and most physicians in my specialty jump around a half dozen times in their careers whether they wanted to or not.
Stability—the idea that I’d find a hospital and stay there for ten or fifteen years— that was a fantasy from yesteryear. It was something that happened to physicians in the fifties, but not today. It was a dream.
Only now, it was within my reach. I gaped at Dr. Koels who smirked back at me with a self-satisfied expression on his face. At my side, Faith was just as nonplussed. The blankness of her expression had become, somehow, even more blank. She had a negative amount of expression on her face.
I could only imagine that she felt an identical amount of disbelief. An APN, or advanced practice nursing credential was the Rolls-Royce of nursing degree. The programs were also nearly as expensive as medical school to fund, and nearly as competitive as medical school to attend. APN’s could prescribe medication, deliver babies, diagnose illness, interpret diagnostics, and do virtually everything else a doctor did. Many went on to become doctors, or at least rule over all the other nurses and make twice as much money.
If becoming an APN was Faith’s goal, and it sounded like it was, then her ship had just come in. Big time. But I was only distantly paying attention to Faith, or Koels, or anything at that moment. There was something more important I needed to know.
“You’re giving us these jobs because we got married last night?” I heard myself asking. I’d now fully disassociated from the conversation taking place in Koels’ office. Like someone having an out-of-body or near-death experience, I was hovering several feet above myself and watching events take place in the third person.
Koels’ head bobbed up and down, flashing his shiny, pink bald spot.
I was married to Faith? I looked over at her in disbelief. She was beautiful, and I thought she hung the moon, but… married? As in, permanently a legal unit under god and everybody? I didn’t even know Faith’s middle name. I glanced at name badge that was now clipped to her scrubs pocket. It was Ann-Margaret, a hyphenate that sounded as Irish as she was.
Faith Ann-Margret McNamara. No. That wasn’t even right. It was Faith Ann-Margret Carter. My wife. My head started pounding. Little bits of memory were starting to come back together in my brain, and the pieces knit together with what I already knew to create an actual narrative of the night prior. I remembered, for instance, looking into Faith’s big dark eyes and saying ‘I do’ with perfect sincerity.
But here’s the thing, I don’t like marriage. The whole concept is weird, unrealistic, antiquated, and sexist. If someone had asked me yesterday before I started drinking whether or not I ever expected to marry anyone in my entire life, the answer would have been a big, fat, resounding ‘no’. It would have been a ‘hell no’ and a ‘not for me’ and a ‘marriage is for chumps’.
“But we didn’t have time for the marriage license,” Faith stuttered after a moment. A huge wave of indescribable feelings shook through me.
Right. Of course. The waiting period. Marriage licenses require waiting, so you don’t get drunk and married in one night like idiots. For once, the politicians of the great state of Texas had my back.
“Oh, I’m glad you brought that up, Faith,” Fr. Wheeler said, tapping his forehead. “My friend at the courthouse came through for me with the judge on the waiver of the waiting period for your expedited license. Of course the bishop waived his side of things too so you could get married too.” He produced two slips of paper, one read ‘United in Matrimony’ in huge, blue letters. “Don’t worry,” he added, “it’s all perfectly legal, just like I promised.” He looked proud of himself.
He did what?
He promised what?
Faith blinked her big dark eyes and took the papers from Fr. Wheeler with surprisingly steady hands. Mine were shaking, and I was supposed to be the surgeon. She looked at them with huge eyes and then held them up, so I could see. I wasn’t capable of reading at the moment. I did stare though.
“Thank you,” she said to Fr. Wheeler after a moment. She aimed a glance at me that I didn’t know how to interpret. “This wasn’t what I expected when I came in here this morning,” she said after a moment, putting on the professional smile I knew all too well. I knew at least a little of what she must be feeling, and it was a thousand times worse than the hangover I knew she’d had walking in.
Koels and Wheeler laughed and then high fived, which ranked highly on the list of things I thought I’d never see. They looked at the two of us like we were a particularly adorable pair of morons. Which wasn’t too far off the truth. Faith was adorable, and I was a moron. A married moron, no less.
4
Faith
My ringtone was ‘Single Ladies’. That was going to have to go. Oh, and I was going to need to change my driver’s license for my new name. And the monogram on my towels was all wrong. My brain was filled with all sorts of ridiculous thoughts when Eric and I stumbled back out of Koels’ office.
Without even really discussing what we were doing, Eric and I made our way downstairs and across the street to a coffee shop. I’m not even sure if we spoke a word, but somehow we got there. I melted down into a molded plastic seat, grateful that I no longer had to hold myself upright. Eric settled across from me with a thousand-yard stare.
“Can I see those papers again?” he asked after a moment. I produced them from my pocket and slid them across the table. He lifted them up and examined them as if looking for a legal loophole. After a long minute he set them back down—face down on the tabletop like they were shameful.
“We can get an annulment,” I told him. “That’s a thing, right?”
I was pretty sure that Henry
VIII created a whole religion one time because he couldn’t get one from the Catholic church, but he hadn’t been drunk. We’d been very, very drunk when we said, ‘I do’. Surely that was grounds for an annulment.
“Do you remember getting married last night?” Eric asked after a moment. His expression was guilty. “Because now I do.”
I nodded at him warily. Now, after being reminded, I definitely did. Actually, as soon as Koels said it, I’d remembered everything in a big, confusing jumble. I was still sorting through the pieces, but there were parts that were coming into focus. “I remember being really happy about it.” I rubbed my temples. “God, I’m such an idiot.”
We’d been up on the stage, with the band still clutching instruments behind us. Eric had been holding both my hands in his while the Bishop himself performed the ceremony. It had been remarkably dignified, all things considered. And when he kissed me, I’d felt blissful. I’d thought I was marrying the man of my dreams, and we were going to live happily ever after. I’d also thought I wasn’t drunk though, so clearly my thinking wasn’t to be trusted.
“Me too,” Eric admitted. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring I woke up wearing this morning. “Do you remember this?”
I nodded. “It’s your grandmother’s ring.” I frowned at it. “I woke up wearing it this morning.”
Now that I was seeing it again, I couldn’t believe that I’d ever thought it was fake. It was absolutely gorgeous. It was hard to look away from it and my eyes just kept creeping back when I tried to focus elsewhere. The emerald seemed to glow from within.
I remembered Eric sliding the ring on my finger after extracting it from a huge safe in his closet when we stumbled into his apartment, and then both of us stripping out of our clothes in a flurry of hands and mouths. We’d messed around in his bed enthusiastically until I told him I was a virgin.
“I’m sorry, Faith,” Eric was saying to me now, in the coffee shop. He’d said he was sorry last night too, in bed. The memory turned sour, merging with the present moment.
A Bad Case of You Page 3
