“Not mad yet, but they’re definitely getting impatient,” Denise confessed. “I bought you forty-eight more hours. But forget Tanaka. I’m mad! What the hell happened?”
Oh, Denise. Four years ago, when she’d approached me via DM to offer to manage my Dr.Jojobee influencer platform, I’d been impressed enough with her gumption to give her a try. She was unaffiliated, her agency’s single-member LLC only recently incorporated, and her client list had featured only one other physician-influencer, a dermatologist-slash-fashionista who turned out to be one of Denise’s old high school friends. But Denise was hungry and no-nonsense and constantly on the hunt, and I liked that about her. It meant she got me paid. Her ability to monetize my platform was the reason why I could survive without my residency salary. And critically, she minded her business and only got heated up when someone tried to sabotage it.
And right now that someone was me.
“Nothing happened. I got a little behind,” I said. It was technically the truth. Nothing had happened. I’d dragged my feet because I was tired. Of twirling around in gifted dresses that overstuffed my closets; recording pithy, unrelated “inspirational” voice-overs; and selling myself to four hundred thousand onlookers when I probably should be getting off my ass and taking care of patients.
An email from my old pulmonary critical care mentor, Dr.Makinen, echoed my sentiments.
Have you considered applying to fellowship next year? You would have the full support of the department. And you wouldn’t have to make your living making ticky tocks anymore.
I didn’t respond to Dr.Makinen. The truth was, the concept of walking back into the hospital filled me with bottomless dread, matched only by the concept of putting together another video/ photoshoot/ promotional campaign for a company that wanted to take advantage of my sizable following and the letters after my name to sell people shit they didn’t need. Alas, I needed to eat, and to pay rent, and I was lacking in skills that could be used outside the wards. Check, meet mate.
“Tanaka doesn’t have to wait forty-eight hours,” I said. “The video’s done. I’m sending it to you now.”
The woman in the video I played back to myself looked up at the camera coquettishly over an ornate painted teacup, the puffy periwinkle-blue tulle sleeves of her Tanaka Couture gown billowing around her like plumes of smoke. Her teeth were bright white (Crest Whitestrips; $8,000 for a video post, six-month ad rights), lips a romantic crimson (ColourPop; $3,000 for the feed), and hair plaited into passion twists that draped down her back and over the swell of her chest (-$350, because Fatou, her humorless Senegalese braider, could care less that her favorite client had a social media following nearing half a million). She was giving Black Girl Luxury. Black Girl Opulence. Black Girl with Expensive Taste.
But that was two weeks ago, and that same woman was now sitting cross-legged in her office chair and giving Black Girl in Crisis. Black Girl in Desperate Need of a Shower. Black Girl Trying Her Best to Convince Her Agent Not to Drop Her Like a Hot Rock.
I clicked “compile” on my video editing software, then dragged the finished file into Denise’s and my shared drive.
“I’ll check it out in a minute,” Denise said, mollified. “But, my dear Dr. Miracle? This can’t happen again. Seriously.”
She hung up, and I leaned back in my office chair. Light streamed through my blinds, streaking across my lap in bright stripes, and I squinted at the window, marveling at the passage of time. It was almost eleven in the morning, seven hours after I’d crawled out from under the stifling heat of my comforter and onto my desk chair. I’d never been a good sleeper, and the beating my circadian rhythm had taken during the shifting schedule of residency had only made things worse. But since Ezra’s party, sleep had eluded me completely. Putting my phone away hadn’t helped. Melatonin didn’t touch me. Even the fifty milligrams of Benadryl I’d downed last night in a moment of desperation had only bought me a few hours of fitful rest before summoning my sleep paralysis demon. (Daisy, I’d named her. She liked to ogle me from the ceiling.) At the moment, I was about one more sleepless night away from concussing myself just to give my consciousness a break.
A sharp sound, too loud to be blocked by state-of-the-art manufactured silence, forced me out of my thoughts. I popped out my earbuds, my heart ratcheting up to my throat. I was supposed to be alone. Dahlia wasn’t getting back from her travel nurse contract until the twenty-eighth, and—
I checked the date on my phone. It was the twenty-ninth.Christ.
“When’d you get back?” I said, walking into the kitchen.
Dahlia twirled to face me, clutching a blue owl mug to her chest. Her silk floral robe was open to her navel, exposing a curling sternum tattoo and the arcs of breasts that had no business sitting so high on her chest. Even from ten feet away, I could hearpop music blasting through her headphones. She nudged them off her ear with her shoulder, placed her mug on the counter, and launched herself into my arms.
“Youstinkstink,” she said lovingly, holding me tighter when, self-conscious, I tried to pull away. “And I mean that in all the ways. Left me on read for two whole days. Gave me absolutely zerointel about the Adelman shindig.Andyou smell like Fritos.”
I winced. I still wasn’t totally used to having my absence routinely noted by anyone other than the Adelmans, and between Dahlia and Denise, it was almost stifling. Almost. Mostly it was nice.
“Sorry,” I said. “You know. Had a bit of a slump.”
One thing I appreciated about Dahlia was that she never performed pity. There were no upturned eyebrows, no protractedawwws, no empty claims ofWell, if you need to talk about it, I’m here.When Dahlia and I had first met, the ink on her divorce papers barely dry, the ink on her arms hardly healed, she’d made it clear that she had no intention of being the sort of woman people felt sorry for. I liked that about her, liked even more that she insisted on extending the same courtesy to me.
“You been taking your happy pills?” Dahlia asked matter-of-factly, settling onto the cushioned seat at our kitchen bar.
“Yup,” I said, popping off thepas I dug through the cupboard for our French press.
“Okay then. Anything set it off?”
“Adelman shindig, probably,” I answered simply. “You want any?” I asked, shaking a bag of coffee grounds.
“I was going to do tea today. Preserve my stomach lining.” She tapped long coffin-shaped nails against our granite countertop. “Speaking of tea. Are you going to spill?”
I sighed, stirring the mixture of grounds and boiling water with a chopstick, watching the rainbow slick of oil form at the top.
“Well, for one, Ezra’s dating my childhood bully,” I said plainly.
Dahlia placed her mug on the counter so firmly I had to check to make sure the ceramic hadn’t cracked.
“What?” she said, all the mirth draining from her face. Then: “Tell me everything.”
