Third Degree

by Julie Cross

  I could come up with lists of pros and cons and conclude with a preference, but that doesn’t change the fact that all the options suck.

  Chapter 7

  @IsabelJenkinsMD: There are many things they don’t teach in medical school.

  The chat with my mom went a lot like the one with my dad—me asking why but not really asking. Not really wanting to know whose fault this is, who hates whom. Logically someone has to be more wrong than the other, right?

  Either way, I returned to school before dinnertime and cleaned myself up, all the while avoiding running into Kelsey or Marshall. Now Kelsey’s studying in our room and I’ve taken up residence in the common room, throwing darts for the last two hours. I’m hitting the board every time now, but nowhere near the bull’s-eye. Dr. O’Reilly, the chief of surgery, had a point when he claimed that my practical surgical skills were lacking the superiority of my textbook knowledge and rote memory.

  I reposition my hips and feet, hoping the adjustment in angle will help me get closer to the center of the target. If I can’t get a dart to hit a red and yellow circle only fifteen feet away, how can I expect to accurately perform a heart transplant?

  “I can help you hit the bull’s-eye.”

  My aim falters at the sound of a familiar voice, and the dart goes wild, sticking itself into the white wall three feet away from the board. Marshall walks over and plucks it from the wall.

  “Is that part of your RA duties?” I keep my eyes on the board, preparing to throw again. “Helping freshmen learn proper dart usage?”

  “Safety is important.” He walks up beside me and places the loose dart into my free hand. “You get wild with these things and you could put an eye out.”

  “That expression is extremely inaccurate.” I miss again, hitting the top corner of the board, outside the point zone. “Are you here to babysit me some more? Make sure I don’t create any more drama for floor two?”

  He ignores my questions and drills me with one of his own. “Where were you all day? Did you go off campus?”

  I hesitate, keeping my eyes on the dartboard. Part of me wants to tell him I left and then came back because the dorm sucks about two percent less than my house, but I’m not ready to say it out loud. “Shopping,” I respond without further detail.

  “Well, my help has nothing to do with RA duties. Just a friendly bet between classmates.”

  My arm falls to my side. “A bet?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s more of an exchange. I’ll get you to hit the bull’s-eye, and you have to answer one very important question for me.”

  I snort back a laugh. “Deal.”

  Questions I can handle. But bull’s-eyes, not so much.

  I’m a little startled when Marshall’s hands grasp my hips, turning me so that my side and not my front faces the board. “Turn your head but not your shoulders or hips.”

  His breath lands on my neck, causing a shiver to run down my spine. I shake it off and pretend to roll my shoulders. This is beginning to feel a lot like Becca’s ridiculous orientation game. I feel his front brushing up against my back. His blue flip-flops slide between my feet.

  Okay, talk about crossing the RA/resident line. I think those words first and then let them spill from my lips before I have a chance to stop myself. Marshall laughs but doesn’t move away or reposition himself. He raises my left hand, the one gripping the dart, and holds my wrist. “Shoulder height, no higher, got it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He releases my wrist and allows me to throw in this new position. The dart barely makes it onto the board. “I said not to move your hips or shoulders.” His hand snakes around my waist, his fingers splayed across my stomach, holding my midsection in place. I try not to let myself get distracted by our proximity and how nice his fingers feel against my shirt. “Now try again.”

  This time I get closer to the bull’s-eye, but not any closer than I’ve already gotten in the past couple of hours.

  Marshall places a new dart in my hand. “Stop thinking so hard.”

  Loose strands of brown hair fall from my bun into my eyes. I blow them off my forehead. “How can I do this right without thinking? I’m trying to improve my surgical skills. Thinking is kind of a must.”

  “Muscle memory,” he says. “Rely on muscle memory. Thinking is for when something goes wrong.”

  I glance over my shoulder at him, surprised. I’ve never really analyzed surgical skills that way before, but I’ve watched my dad perform numerous surgeries from the hospital gallery and every movement is precise, almost rhythmic. “But how can I rely on muscle memory if my muscles have never experienced hitting the bull’s-eye?”

  “You’ve been training them to do something for the past two hours, so now we need to clear your head and find out what that is. Might be good muscle training, but it could also be bad training. Only one way to find out.”

  How does he know that I’ve been in here for two hours?

  “Practice makes permanent,” I recite. That’s Dr. Rinehart’s favorite saying.

  “Exactly.” Marshall nods. “Perfect practice makes perfect.”

  I stand there for a long moment, still not sure how to change the course of my actions and create the results I want. Marshall lifts my hand again, aiming the dart. “Close your eyes.” I follow directions and squeeze my eyes shut. “Take a deep breath and release it slowly.”

  My lungs fill and then I let the air out, counting to five in my head. “Now open your eyes and aim.”

  His fingers are still wrapped around my wrist when the dart leaves my hand and zooms across the empty space, landing not squarely in the center of the bull’s-eye but still within the tiny middle ring.

  My entire body relaxes with relief as I gape at the red-winged dart, plopped into the exact place I’d wanted it to go. Finally, something has gone my way today. “That’s amazing. Thank you.”

  Marshall steps back and takes a seat on top of a table a few feet away from me. “You’re welcome.”

  I pluck the darts out of the board, leaving the winning one for last. “All right, what’s your question?”

  “You’re not the only one who observes people,” he says. “I’ve noticed several things about you in the last week, beginning with the fact that you really don’t seem to be enjoying all this making-up-for-lost-experiences stuff.”

  “That’s not a question.” I toss another round of darts, missing the bull’s-eye, but managing to land all but one right around the bull’s-eye.

  “Not bad,” Marshall says. “And I was getting to the question. I’m wondering what you’re really doing here. Obviously this isn’t for pleasure, since you seem completely miserable and unexcited by the whole experience. And we both know it’s not for academic gains …”

  Which should I answer? Why I came to NIU in the first place? Or why I’m here right now after deciding to call it quits mere hours ago?

  I sigh and turn to face him. “I didn’t get into a residency program. I flunked my emotional readiness test—it’s this stupid psych exam. And apparently I have the world’s worst bedside manner.”

  His forehead wrinkles. “Still not sure what that has to do with going to NIU and being a PE major when you’ve already got a biology degree and an engineering degree, not to mention the medical license.”

  “I can retest in six months, and the psychologist—who is not a real doctor, in case you were wondering …” I pause to see his reaction, but he simply waits for me to finish. “Anyway, Dr. Winifred James, Ph.D., thought that I might be using my career as an excuse to avoid important age-related milestones.” The look on Marshall’s face reflects all my fears. I’m not getting anywhere close to success in this area, and he knows it. I sink down onto a chair and scrub my hands over my face. “It’s hopeless, isn’t it? People can’t really change, can they?”

  “Maybe change isn’t the right word,” he says. “I think we just need to tap into an undiscovered part of you.”

  My eyebrows arch up.
“We? You’ve more than surpassed your RA duties, Marshall. Plus, I’ve done college with babysitters before, so that’s not really a new experience for me.”

  He shakes his head. “Not RA duties. I was thinking more of an exchange. I have an anatomy and physiology class this semester that’s already giving me hell—”

  “I’m a terrible tutor,” I confess before this can go any further. “I’ve made little kids cry doing community service hours.”

  Marshall walks closer and grips my upper arms, giving me a little shake. “Stop arguing with everything I suggest. I don’t care if you’re a mean tutor. I neeeeed your braaaaaiiiins.”

  I laugh and pull out of his grip. It feels good to laugh. It feels good to think about Marshall and his stupid anatomy class rather than my failing life and falling-apart family. “Okay, let’s have a trial run tonight. Tell me how to fix things with Kelsey.”

  A grin spreads across his face, and he nods toward the hallway leading to our rooms, “Step into my classroom and I’ll teach you the ways of the world. You and Kelsey will be BFFs by midnight.”

  I’m laughing again like he’s ridiculous, but really, I’m secretly hoping Marshall’s not just blowing smoke. Otherwise, I’m destined for a future of poking rats in a lab or publishing research reports. I need this to go right. I need something to go right.

  He did get me to hit the bull’s-eye. Maybe he’s got more tricks up his sleeve.

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” I can’t seem to leave Marshall’s room. Facing Kelsey right now is more daunting than three rounds of kindergarten booster shots. I screwed up. Marshall is going to lie for me on his form, or at least leave out some majorly important details, at the risk of his job, and now I need to have this conversation end in a civilized manner so that I don’t screw him over.

  “What benefit would I get from sending you into battle with a plan destined to fail?” Marshall digs through his closet, emerges with a blue plaid button-down shirt, then peels off his T-shirt, tossing it into the bottom of the closet.

  It’s hard not to stare at the muscles in his back as they flex in tune with the effort of unbuttoning the new shirt. After that task is complete, he slips his arms through the sleeves and turns to face me, shirt still open, abdominal muscles exposed.

  Damn.

  I force my gaze upward. “So it’s a battlefield now?”

  “In your mind it seems to be.” He shrugs, then unfortunately proceeds to seal off my view of his midsection by buttoning his shirt. “And you know, the longer you stall, the bigger this battle will feel.”

  “Right.” I knew that. And speaking my mind isn’t usually a skill I lack. The problem is that I know I was wrong, I crossed a line with Kelsey, and I also know that I was being myself, so how can I promise her that it won’t happen again?

  “You don’t have to be someone else in order to make this roommate situation work,” Marshall had said during our hour-long lesson. “You just need to tuck away those parts of yourself that aren’t compatible with Kelsey.”

  “I get that, but tucking things away for a while doesn’t help me down the road with figuring out how to approach other, similar situations.”

  “You’re looking at it all wrong,” Marshall had protested. “It’s like a chef with a famous recipe, but a customer at dinner has an allergy to one of his ingredients. There’re ways to produce a version of that dish without causing … what do you call it?”

  “Anaphylactic shock,” I supplied.

  “Yeah, that.”

  After replaying the remainder of his insight, I take a step toward the hallway, and Marshall gives me a big shove from behind. “Go. Now.”

  My slow shuffle down the hall to my room includes at least three glances over my shoulder to make sure he’s not ditching me or anything. What if Kelsey gets violent? I’ll need a witness and someone to rescue me.

  The door to our room is open, and she’s sitting at her desk, a textbook in front of her, her back to me. “Kelsey?” I say so quietly I’m not positive that I spoke out loud.

  She lets out a sigh, drops her pencil, and spins around. Guess she heard me.

  “Look, I’m really sorry about the—”

  She holds up a hand to stop me, and I brace myself for more shouting like she did in the early hours of the morning. “Marshall told me your deal. I get it.” Wait … what? “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you get away with crazy shit, but I’ll try to be patient. Make this an educational opportunity for both of us.”

  He told her my deal? As in my secret? How could he do that? My mouth falls open, and the words “What exactly did he tell you?” spill out.

  She leans back in her chair, propping her feet on the end of her bed. “The home-school thing. You’ve never been around normal kids or people your own age.”

  Huh. So Marshall told her I was home-schooled? Well, that’s partially true—I was home-schooled for several years—but I don’t remember telling Marshall that fact. “Right, the home-school thing.”

  “But you’re eighteen now,” Kelsey points out. “You can’t fall back on that excuse for much longer. According to one of the psych classes I’m taking this semester, socialization is often thought of as the most important component of education. Every living being desires skills that allow integration of functionality in a society made up of their same kind.”

  I hate psych majors.

  “True, that’s totally true …”

  She cracks a smile and eventually laughs. “You’re a terrible liar, you know? It’s fine if you don’t believe that. Yet. But we’ll get there. Between me and Marshall, you’re going to figure this shit out. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I repeat, my emotions bouncing between relief and anger. “Thanks,” I mumble before turning and heading back to Marshall. If I stay any longer, I’ll come up with scientific arguments and specific case studies to counter the ridiculous textbook theory she just recited.

  Marshall’s standing in the hall across from the bathroom. I grab his arm and pull him inside his room. “You totally cheated.”

  He runs his fingers through his hair and gives me that lopsided grin. “I don’t recall establishing any terms to our agreement.”

  “Well, we can fix that right now.” I snatch some paper and a pen from his desk. “And why would you prep me with that big apology speech if you’d already made excuses for me?” I spin around to face him, the paper now hanging limply in my hand. “When did you give Kelsey the weird home-schooled-girl story? You haven’t left my sight since before the dart throwing.…”

  He busies himself with sliding his feet into a pair of brown leather flip-flops.

  “You talked to her before we even made our deal, didn’t you?”

  “I may have run into her earlier while you were shopping, and I may have felt compelled to undo some of the damage. Especially with Becca riding my ass about the reports.” He takes the paper and pencil from my hand. “Let’s take this and my anatomy book and go get some dinner.”

  “Dinner?” I say, like it’s a foreign concept.

  “Dinner.” He tucks his book under one arm and opens the door for me. “I’m starving. I can’t concentrate unless I have food.”

  My stomach chooses this moment to grumble. “Okay, dinner it is.”

  Chapter 8

  Turns out that dinner for Marshall meant a triple burger—no cheese—at a fast-food place in the student union. And he admitted to having eaten in the dining hall at five, but now that nine had rolled around, it was time for his “second dinner,” apparently. Working on my social skills, I’d managed to not turn my nose up at the sight of fast food and instead selected a salad with grilled chicken and fat-free dressing.

  So far, I’ve lasted twenty minutes without commenting on Marshall’s dinner. Which is why I decide that it’s okay to break the ice right now. Just this once. I’ve been good and deserve a reward. “Why not get fries with that burger? You’re already aiming for clogged arteries thirty years from now.”


  He polishes off the last bite and wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Not really a fan of fried foods.”

  I open my mouth to respond but clamp it shut when I see his look of warning. “So … this should be a fun semester. My roommate’s taking me on as some kind of charity psych project. That’s exactly what I had in mind when I decided to work on being normal. And then my parents—”

  Shit. I totally didn’t mean to say that out loud.

  He leans on one elbow, facing me. “What about your parents?”

  My gaze falls to the salad in front of me. “Nothing. Just that they’re … you know, worried about me and that kind of stuff.” I pile our collective garbage onto the tray, organizing it and then reorganizing it in order to avoid his gaze. “How long have you lived in Evanston?”

  Marshall doesn’t move a muscle and instead studies me like my quick change of subject must mean something. Or maybe he’s evaluating my conversational skills. Finally he decides to go along with my direction. “Since right before I started high school.”

  The plastic containers, empty cups, and cardboard boxes are now perfectly balanced and ready for a successful trip to the trash bin. “Where did you live before that?”

  “Everywhere.” He still hasn’t moved a muscle, and it’s causing me to fidget even more. It feels intrusive, like I’m being X-rayed. “D.C., Korea, Colorado, San Diego …”

  I pull my hands back from the tray of garbage and turn to face him. “Wow, that’s …”

  “Interesting?” he suggests. “Weird? Suspicious?”

  “Surprising,” I finish.

  His fingertips land on my temple, brushing away a loose strand of hair, causing heat to surge through my whole body. “See? You’re not so bad at this.”

  I suck in a breath, trying to ignore my increased heart rate. He’s not touching any major pulse points, luckily, and won’t notice my reaction. “Why did you move so often?”

  Marshall rewards me with that infectious smile of his. “Military brat. My dad was in the navy. His last two years before retirement he was a drill instructor at the Great Lakes naval training center. My parents decided to stay in Evanston after that. My dad coaches high school football now.”