by M. K. York
They did all right on it. Neil’s scores were good, although not as good as they’d been before.
Kristi and Neil went out for drinks after work one night, and they mostly sat in silence punctuated by shoptalk, except when Kristi said, “I’m still worried about Mark.”
“Me too.”
“Do you think he’d see a therapist?”
“Maybe. Not yet, I don’t think.”
She sighed, pushing some of her hair behind her ear. “I wish he’d take care of himself.”
Neil found himself laughing a little at the irony. She raised her eyebrows at him blankly. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “Just, it feels like we’re all constantly saying that. Nobody takes care of themselves around here, do they?”
She shrugged. “It’s surgery. I can’t say they didn’t warn me.”
“Mama never told me there’d be years like this.” Neil took another long drink of his beer.
* * *
The meeting that Neil had agreed to go to finally rolled around. It wasn’t in their usual conference room, because that would have been too small. They’d been bumped to someplace on the third floor that actually had windows and was vaguely nice. There was enough room for everybody from the joint work groups, Nephrology and Cardiology both. It made him feel fidgety.
Neil came in late, just a minute before the meeting was scheduled to start, and sat down as far from Eli as he could manage. Eli was doing a terrible job of pretending that he hadn’t noticed that Neil had come in. His whole body was angled toward where Neil was, and his eyes kept darting Neil’s way, though never to his face. It made Neil ache. This is your fault, he wanted to say. You made this choice.
Eli cleared his throat at the hour. “All right. We have a lot to make it through today, so we should get started.”
“No coffee?” complained Dr. Liefers.
“No, sorry, Jim. So I wanted to start off today by thanking everyone who’s agreed to share stories about their personal experiences. I know that can be painful and it’s contrary to the general climate of medicine, but I think it’s important, because if we don’t talk about what happens to medical trainees and practitioners, we’re not going to be able to make a good case for why we need to change it.”
Neil noticed that Mike from Internal Medicine (well, he was on to a Nephrology fellowship now) was there, frameless glasses and all, sitting next to Dr. Blatch.
“So I thought we could strategize a little about how to get tandem coverage for these stories in multiple venues. If we present them to the administration, that’s great, but it doesn’t put pressure on the administration to maintain the push for diversity. We need to make things more public. Rebecca?”
One of the nephrologists Neil didn’t know stood up. “Thanks, Eli. My niece is a reporter for the campus paper, and I thought it would be helpful if we could get some of this into print. One thing that comes up immediately with that is who’s comfortable putting their story out there like that.”
Chaudry waved a hand. “I am.”
Neil raised his hand too, as did Mike, across the wide oval table, and a couple of residents and attendings Neil didn’t know well—a black woman, the only one in the group; Dr. Iglesias, the new hire; a few others.
“Okay, great.” Rebecca smiled at them. “That is so good to know. My niece is pitching the piece to her editor, so I should be able to let the group know in a couple of days whether we can expect any coverage or not.”
“It’s a story about the administration being a bunch of stuffed-shirt assholes and screwing people over,” said Dr. Sisk. “Ten bucks says those hippies at the paper love it.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Eli.
They went on to talk a little more about coordinating a social-media notification; the department that was responsible for the medical center’s Twitter and Facebook accounts was balking, but might give.
“Elias,” said the black woman, who Neil knew he’d met at least once but whose name he just could not remember, “are we going to have any kind of control over how this goes into social media? I don’t want it to turn up with headlines about what whiners we are.”
“Through the school, yes. From individual accounts—it’s less clear. The main thing will be to present ourselves as a united front. We’ve all got radically different stakes in it, but we need to look cohesive.”
“So what you’re saying is, don’t get into any fights with assholes on the internet,” said one of the Nephrology fellows wryly.
“I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but yes. Blocking is going to be a lot easier on us and the narrative than engaging. If you must engage, no profanity, no insults. Just stick to the message.”
“If anyone even cares enough to try to start a conversation,” said Mike. “I’m not sure we’re going to see any response at all.”
“Well, if we don’t, we’ll regroup. But if we do, we should be prepared for the negative commentary as well as the positive.”
“This is going to be a shit-show,” said Dr. Sisk.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” added Dr. Liefers.
* * *
It was a long meeting, and by the end of it, Neil felt drained. He had Pete’s address from texting, and he plugged it into the navigator and headed over, unbuttoning his shirt and letting it hang open over his undershirt as he drove, rolling up his sleeves to his elbows.
When he showed up, Pete let him in, clapping him on the back. “Wings on the table, beer in the fridge. I DVR’d the game so we can start it whenever.”
“Good thing I didn’t listen to the radio on the way over.”
“You never listen to the radio.”
“Not true. I listen to it sometimes. When I want to feel like I have no idea what bands are popular, or if I feel like hearing something terrible that’s happening to trees, NPR.”
Pete’s condo was nice, modern, not too sprawling and full of light everywhere—it seemed like a better fit for a single man than the mansions some of the attendings delighted in showing off. Of course, those attendings had a bad habit of also having a trophy wife at all times. Only one that Neil knew of had made it to a fourth wife, but several were on a third.
He was just settling down in front of the TV when the doorbell rang.
“Ah,” said Pete. “Good.”
“Pete?” Neil twisted around to look back over the couch as the door opened. “Pete? What did you do?”
He heard Eli’s voice a split second later, and he had to take a deep breath to keep himself from yelling.
“—not such a good idea?” Eli was saying.
“Bullshit,” said Pete cheerily, and bodily ushered Eli into the living room. “Hey, so the Blazers are playing the Nets, it turns out. I figured we could all enjoy a nice game together.”
“Sorry about this,” said Eli to Neil. “I was not a part of the planning.”
Neil put his hand over his face for a long moment. “Nah, you know what,” he finally said, “it’s fine. There’s wings.” He gestured at the table, his voice sharp, but he couldn’t help laughing at himself a little, too. “And beer.”
Eli looked at him for a moment, clearly turning this over in his head, and then he visibly loosened up, like he was forcing himself to relax.
“All right.” Eli went to get himself a plate and a beer.
Pete grinned expansively at Neil. “Nothing some manly sitting in silence in front of a game for a couple of hours can’t solve.”
Pete went to the kitchen with Eli, and when they came back, Eli settled into an armchair and Pete took the other side of the soda, groaning as he eased himself down comfortably.
Eli said, without taking his eyes off the screen, “Back acting up again?”
“Yeah, you know, I’m starting to think about trying g
abapentin.”
“I keep telling you, you’ve got to get into swimming now while you still can.”
“Swimming is for people who like being wet in public.”
Neil snorted into his beer. Eli’s eyes flickered to him and then away.
“So, how’d the meeting go?” asked Pete, picking up the first of the wings. The game was getting started with some decent play by Portland.
Neil and Eli started to answer at the same time, then stopped at the same time.
“Sorry.” Neil gestured for Eli to go ahead.
Eli looked at him, then over at Pete. “Well, I think we talked out some good ideas. Strategies.”
“Warned people not to be asses on the internet?”
“Warned people not to be asses on the internet.”
Neil said, “Ten bucks says if we have trouble on that front it’s somebody over forty.”
Pete raised his eyebrows. “Care to elaborate?”
“Older people,” Neil said, “haven’t spent as much time learning how social media works as younger people. Less of a handle on norms. And how to use the block button.”
“Fair point,” said Eli, who was clearly trying to hold in a sour face.
“Not like most of these people even have Twitter accounts,” said Pete. “God knows I don’t. No time. Oh, shit,” he added. “Did you see that basket?”
The game ended up being pretty tight—Portland edged out the Nets. Neil had a buzz that highlighted the parts in the middle where he was cheering for Lillard, but by the end, it had worn off.
Eli hadn’t had another beer after that first. He was leaning back into the armchair, looking drowsy and comfortable. Somewhere around the half he’d stopped looking tense, stopped constantly glancing over at Neil.
“I’m just going to put away the wings.” Pete stood up. “It might take me a couple of minutes.”
Neil had his head tipped against the back of the couch; he rolled his head toward Eli. “I think that asshole thinks he’s being real subtle about giving us time to talk.”
“I agree,” said Eli in a carrying voice. “Shame he’s so obvious about it or it might have worked.”
Neil shook his head a little. “I’m pretty sure you said everything already,” he said quietly; that part wasn’t for Pete to overhear.
Eli sighed, grinding the heel of his palm into his forehead. “I just...I don’t see any way around it. Believe me, it’s not for lack of thinking about it.”
Neil barked out a laugh. “If you’re looking for sympathy, you’re in the wrong place. I still say this is your fault.”
“Of course it is,” said Eli crisply, sounding short and a little embarrassed. “If I’d been—”
“Oh, no, for God’s sake, don’t be like that about it.” Neil raised his eyebrows. “At least we’re not still stuck in that...that pas de deux anymore.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Eli was staring at his hands in his lap. “At least we’re being honest now.”
“I hear it’s a virtue.”
“I’m sorry. For what it’s worth.”
“I’m sorry too,” said Neil. “I thought I was going crazy.”
That startled a laugh out of Eli. “Really? Because I thought I was—”
Pete made a tremendous rattling noise of beer bottles in the recycling to announce that he was coming back into the room. Eli and Neil glanced up at him.
“Jesus, you’re in sync again.” Pete frowned at them. “That’s creepy.”
Neil waved a hand in his general vicinity dismissively. “Whatever. I’ve got to get going. I’m on tomorrow.”
“I’d better go too,” said Eli.
“It was fun, though,” added Neil. “I would do this again.”
Pete smiled at him. “I’m glad.”
On his way out the door, Neil got a massive hug from Pete, complete with a firm double back pat. Eli got a hug too, and the two of them left together to head to their cars, walking side by side.
It had gotten dark out, and the evening was cooling rapidly. In the silence of the street, Neil felt bold enough to say, “You thought you were what?”
Eli gave a brisk little shake of his head, smiling faintly. “Too obvious.”
“Not quite.” Neil could feel a laugh bubbling up.
“When I saw—” Eli stopped, and then took a breath and started again. “You and Justin. I thought I was going to have a heart attack, right there.”
“Jealous?” asked Neil, a small smile on his lips in spite of himself.
“Horribly,” said Eli without hesitation. “No right to it. At all. But God, it was terrible.”
“Good.”
Eli laughed ruefully. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you have a vindictive streak.”
“Have you ever met a surgeon without one?”
“Not in my life.”
“There you go.”
They’d reached Eli’s car, which was parked closer than Neil’s. They stood by it for a minute.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” said Neil.
Eli wasn’t quite meeting his eyes. “Yes?”
“You’re so concerned about me being a resident. But that’s—only six more months. Less. What happens after that?”
Eli turned to his car, running one hand over the curve of the roof absently.
“You’re going to find a job somewhere,” he said, back over his shoulder. “And it should be—somewhere you really want to be. Something you love. That should be the only thing that goes into the decision.”
“Was it that way for you?” Neil tipped his head to one side as he watched Eli.
Eli paused. “No, not really.” It couldn’t have been; he’d gone straight to McGill with Tricia.
“And was it so bad?”
There was a longer silence.
“No.” Eli’s voice was low. “It wasn’t.”
“Well.” Neil rocked back on his heels, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Good night.”
“It was good to see you today.” Eli hadn’t picked his hand up off the car. He was staring down at it.
“You too.”
Neil took a step backward and, when Eli still didn’t turn around, finally turned and walked away, toward his car.
It was a few more beats before he heard the sound of Eli’s car door shutting.
Chapter Twenty
The worst part about hope was what it did to his sleep. Neil kept finding himself awake, at home or on call, trying to keep his eyes shut but finding them springing open.
Pete called him to ask if he wanted to grab dinner the next week. Neil stared out the window of the empty patient room he’d ducked into for a minute’s peace and said, “I’m not off until nine. If you can wait that long, sure.”
“I think I can,” said Pete. “You want to get Thai?”
“God, do I ever.”
“Okay if I invite Eli?”
“Sure,” he said, maybe too quickly.
Pete didn’t laugh at him. “Good. You guys—you get very pissy and sad when you’re fighting.”
“Am I pissy and Eli’s sad?”
“No, he gets snippy too.”
“I’m having trouble picturing it.”
“You should have seen his residents. They were trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with him.”
“Thanks.” Maybe it didn’t make sense to say, but Pete seemed to know what Neil meant.
“Did you drive in today?”
“No, I biked. God knows why. I’ll die on the road home.”
“Nah, I’ll give you a ride. Meet me at the parking garage at nine. Bring your bike, we’ll chuck it in my trunk.”
“Will do.”
N
eil did manage to make it out at roughly the time he was supposed to, which was nice, and when he got to the parking garage he was only about ten minutes late. Not bad for a surgeon.
Pete was leaning back against his car, talking to Eli. When he saw Neil, he waved. “Carmona! Get your ass over here.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Neil jogged over to the car, saluting with his free hand as he dragged his bike along. Pete flipped him off casually.
“Who wants shotgun?”
“I was going to take my car, actually,” said Eli. “I drove today.”
“Okay, that’s great, why don’t you take Neil, then?” Pete clapped Eli on the shoulder, and before Eli could say anything, Pete was climbing into his car.
“Pete—oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Eli. “Well, do you want a lift, or should I keep standing behind his bumper?”
Neil laughed. “I think I can ride with you without either of us dying.”
“Good to know.”
He wrangled his bike into Eli’s trunk. The car was chilly when Neil slipped into the front seat. Neil turned to get his seat belt, listening to Eli start the car.
“Do you want to listen to the radio?” Eli asked.
“Maybe a little music,” said Neil. “It might keep me awake.”
He reached out to thumb the most obvious button on Eli’s stereo, as Eli said, “Wait—”
The music from his mix started to play. He looked across at Eli, who put his elbow on the steering wheel and hid his eyes behind his hand, laughing.
“You’ve got it bad, Newcombe,” said Neil.
Eli was silent for a moment, the lyrics burbling happily out of the stereo. Finally he said, “Never claimed I didn’t.”
Neil turned to look out the passenger window, as Eli put the car into Reverse and pulled out of the space.
“I’m just saying,” said Neil, about halfway to the restaurant—they’d picked one that was only a couple of minutes away, and it barely made sense to drive.
“Oh, please don’t,” said Eli.
“You don’t even know—”
“I think I do.”
