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“Yeah.” Beulah searched her face. “You headed to our place? I have to finish out the shift, but tonight we could...” She trailed off at Les’s expression. “You’re not staying.”
“I’ll go by to pick up some more things, but I’m going home for Easter. Dr. Portland recommended it. Said I should come back next week.”
“Are you going to?” The question proved how much Beulah knew about her.
“I’m going to go home, be with my family, and think about it. This was incredibly hard, Beulah.”
Beulah’s expression showed her dismay over the qualified response, though she nodded reluctantly, squeezing Les’s shoulders. “Just promise me you’ll call to talk if you need it? Anytime, day or night. I wish you’d hang around for the night at least. Everyone wants to see you.”
“I miss them too. But my mom is expecting us. You know she’ll be cooking for us.” Les managed a weak smile. “Thomas and Marcus will be there.”
Beulah rolled her eyes. “Girl, why didn’t you say so? I’ll pack myself in your suitcase and come along.”
“You know Marcus is gay. And married to my brother.”
“Thomas can have his heart. I just want his body. Tell him I can suck a golf ball through a straw. A man has a use for that, no matter his sexual orientation. The three of us will do a fun, no-strings-attached orgy.”
She had missed her outrageous roommate. Even if the spurt of humor felt like a cherry bomb dropped inside a crystal vase. And Les was the vase.
“Before you get all judgy,” Beulah continued, “I’m not the one who brought a hunky-assed fireman as your chauffeur. Like I didn’t notice the Henry Cavill lookalike risking the structural integrity of that chair.” Beulah didn’t turn in Brick’s direction as she tweaked a lock of Les’s hair. “He was there when we slipped into the back of the auditorium.”
“He’s pretty determined.”
“He doesn’t look like much would stand in his way. Unless it wanted to be squashed peas as he rolled over it. Okay, well, let me do this.”
Beulah enveloped her in another hug, holding her even longer. When she drew back, her dark eyes were intent and close. “I know you need to do what’s right for you, but I have this selfish dream. We both become doctors, me in DC amid all the crazy fast pace and glamor, and you down in North Carolina, with your backwoods clinic.”
She drew a breath. “I call you when I have something I can’t figure out, because you’ll ask me the right questions. And you’ll call me for things, too. We’ll confer, we’ll be colleagues, and we’ll visit each other, drink, hang out, have fun. Be on this journey together, from now until we’re old. Become gray-haired role models for the up-and-coming think-they-know-it-alls.”
“I like that dream.” Les just didn’t know if it could be her dream, or if she would end up being the cheering section as Beulah realized it for herself.
The emotions she was bottling up rose with the thought, choking off further reply. Brick saw where she was at. He moved toward her, but she couldn’t make herself let go of Beulah until he got there.
“I don’t look like Henry Cavill,” he told Beulah. “Cavill looks like me.”
“Look at you with the superhero nosy hearing,” her roommate said, unabashed. She’d shifted to a tight hold of Les’s hand, but her shrewd glance moved back to Les. Les expected they could see the cracks forming in her brittle mask. Les kept her gaze on Brick’s steady one, trying to use what she saw there as a glue that might hold until she could make it out of here.
“We need to go,” Brick told Beulah.
“Yeah, I can see that.” Beulah gave Les one more hug, so close the triple studs in her ear, a caduceus, a diamond and a pink quartz, scraped against Les’s cheek. “You come back, you hear?” Beulah murmured. “Take the weekend, but come back. I can do this med school stuff without you, but I’d much rather not.”
She turned her gaze to Brick. “Take care of my girlfriend.”
“Count on it.”
Though Beulah looked like she wanted to say more, she squeezed Les’s hand and left them. She’d be headed back to the Pediatrics area, her current rotation.
It was a poignant reminder of what it felt like to be a part of this. Not to be standing on the outside. The excitement of meeting new patients, reviewing their information. Feeling a sense of accomplishment when she rose to the challenge of presenting to attendings and residents. All things that had convinced Les she was on a fast track toward graduation and her residency. And ultimately being an attending, capable of instructing students and residents herself.
For one blissful moment, that reminder, the reward at the end of the journey—or its beginning—was stronger than the anxiety and exhaustion, or facing the consequences, the agony of fucking it up. She’d been sculpting herself into someone who would come back to her hometown as the same but also vastly different person who’d left. She’d have more to contribute, more value to give back to the community she loved.
To the family she loved. Even if Brick was right about her motives, so was she. It wasn’t wrong to want to give back to your life, your community.
But when she went home at Easter, would she abandon that resolve, let the comfort and safety of home convince her to cop out? Take the life her mother had painted for her? Or would it remind her why she’d been trying to paint a different picture for herself?
There was only one way to find out, but it told her why she’d been dragging her feet about going home. Having to talk to her family about what had happened was just the smoke screen. She’d just faced one incredibly difficult thing, but the seemingly less difficult one might hold greater sway on whether she came back or not.
“Les.” Brick drew her attention. “What else do you need to do before we head for Fairhope?”
