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It wasn’t a date with Jack, it was just drinks as friends, and it had become a fairly regular occurrence—one we both needed. We’d both head to Sweet Nell’s, down a couple of beers, and talk about anything that wasn’t the hospital. I cherished our times together because Jack’s friendship didn’t feel as tender and conditional as the one with Adrian felt.
Not that I saw Adrian all that much.
He was still friendly, and we still chatted at lunchtimes, but his free time had been mostly monopolized by a walking ad for shampoo named Melissa Heron. She was everything I had ever hoped to be: tall, successful in her field, effortlessly beautiful, and free to be with Adrian. The two of them had been going steady for a couple of months, while I slogged through my general surgery rotation with Jack and Smith (who it took me several weeks to remember was named Tommy). It wasn’t that I particularly hated the subject, but it was definitely not my area of interest. There was a lot more scut work for general than I had experienced in either orthopedics or cardiothoracics, and it was wearing me down. Sure, I’d known my first year was going to be like that, but it didn’t mean I didn’t still resent it a little.
Heading to another night out with Jack, I listened to him complain about the same issues I had with general surgery.
“There’s just so much...poo! And vomit! Just bodily fluids!” he cried, throwing his hands up.
I laughed and nodded.
“Hearts and lungs don’t generally put out poo or vomit, and if they do, you’re in trouble,” I agreed.
“Yeah, but you deal with phlegm—sometimes that’s even grosser.” He shuddered.
“And what about you with orthopedics?” I said, aghast. “If you think phlegm is gross, then how do you deal with all that bone marrow? There’s just something disturbing to me that our bones are filled with what is basically sponge.”
“Nah,” he argued, “it’swaycooler than that! Think about all the stuff bone marrow does! The stem cells alone are just fascinating! All phlegm does is pick up germs and shit.”
“It does a lot more than that and you know that!”
“Oh yeah, I forgot, it also makes my lunch try to reappear.Reallymagical.”
I punched him lightly, and we entered Sweet Nell’s. It didn’t escape my attention every time we arrived that it was where I’d first met Adrian. I made a mental note to ask him what he’d been doing in the pub, since I hadn’t seen him there since.
The Adrian from that night was a different entity to the one I now knew. The one I’d met that night was an enigma that had some hidden resentment about my father and had allowed me to share my misery for one night. Then he’d become something else. He’d become a beating heart under my fingertips, a memory engraved on a drunken palette that I would return to in the quiet hours of the night when I was alone.
Sweet Nell’s wasn’t the place I had met Adrian anymore though; now, it was the place Jack and I went to escape. The bartender, Dylan, was there and had learned our names and would pass us beers without waiting for us to pull our cards out. Sometimes, he’d walk by whatever table we found and offer his opinion on the topic of the evening.
We chose university tuition.
“It’s just so ridiculous that you have to pay so much to get what society thinks is a good job, and then you spend all your years at that good job paying off the loans!” Jack protested.
I nodded, only able to agree with him. Jack would usually get going about something he felt strongly about, and I would only interject when I thought he was wrong.
Given our increasingly growing friendship, he had very few views that contradicted mine—we were products of our generation.
He ranted for a little while about the cost of education, before settling down to sip at his beer.
“Have you ever been in love, Stevie?” he asked suddenly.
I startled and looked at him. The question was out of the blue, and I was completely thrown. How did I answer that? It wasn’t an easy “no”, but I wasn’t sure it was a “yes”, either.
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully, “why?”
“Because being in lovesucks,” he replied and morosely took a gulp of his drink.
We were on our second beers, and he was clearly a little tipsy.
“Lightweight,” I accused, like I wasn’t feeling a similar buzz.
“I love her, but I can’t tell her; how much does that suck?”
I sighed—clearly this was not going to be a topic that could be dropped.
“And why can’t you tell her?” I probed.
Jack looked at me dolefully.
