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Someone in the background of Mom’s call began plucking a bass string. “Oh, Frank’s turned the record on again. Hold on, Adam.”
I’d already reached my building, a glass behemoth a mere eight minutes’ walk from the hospital. “I’ll let you go, Mom. I just got home.”
“Oh, alright. Bye, son!”
I ended the call and swiped my key fob to enter the building, then rode the sleek, decades-younger elevator to my apartment on the eighth floor.
The sight of the furniture still surprised me. I’d gone four years with no more than a desk, a bed and a barstool, and a month wasn’t enough to accustom me to my new living and dining room sets. I’d ordered them all from a young woman at an expensive furniture store in Midtown Village, hoping to impress a certain doctor when she’d come to my apartment to celebrate the conclusion of her fellowship.
I wasn’t sure how Cassidy felt about my furniture, but I thought she’d liked me. She’d always been friendly, and we could talk for hours about infectious disease. I’d been planning to ask her to come with me on the cruise just as soon as her fellowship officially concluded at the end of June. Since I’d technically been supervising her, I hadn’t wanted to engage in even the slightest unethical behavior. But I’d waited too long, and Cassidy had ended up dating Davis Hardcastle, another former hospital employee I hadn’t even known was a rival.
It was all for the best, as my infatuation with Cassidy had clouded my clinical judgment. The same day I’d invited her to my house to celebrate the end of the fellowship, I’d caught myself recording three typos in a patient history. Unfathomable.
I’d almost convinced myself that I was experiencing true love, a notion that my logical faculties had already refuted years ago. Love was merely a product of attraction or attachment, a cascade of chemical reactions dictated by evolutionary biology. Though the intensity of such emotions was undeniable, there was no magical force that possessed people and compelled them to behave in irrational ways.
Still, I couldn’t help but wish Cassidy could come on our family trip, if only for Grandma’s sake. Cassidy had seemed excited when I’d mentioned the cruise, but maybe that was how normal people felt about vacations. Eager with anticipation, not dreading five days in close proximity to one’s family and all the ensuing drama.
I went to the fridge and picked through boxes of takeout until I found a salad from earlier in the week that wasn’t too wilted, then paired that with some camembert and salted pepper crackers I’d picked up the last time I’d bothered to go to the store.
I bit into a cracker and almost spit it out again when the stale texture hit my tongue. Then I remembered that that last shopping trip had been three weeks before, in preparation for Cassidy to come over.
I tossed the box of crackers into the garbage, shaking my head in disgust. I could barely manage the basics of adult life, such as feeding myself. Professionally, I’d never been better, but personally, I was a mess. Stale food and even staler thoughts about a woman who likely hadn’t given me a second thought after her last day at the hospital.
Abandoning my disappointing meal, I made my way to the guest bedroom I used as an office so I could comb the hospital database for salmonella cases. My home office was a near mirror image of the one at the hospital: one desk and two chairs, as well as three bookshelves lined with medical texts. The only difference was that my home office walls were bare, while my hospital office was decorated with framed degrees and awards. They were my sanctuaries: the two places I was most efficient and comfortable.
I opened the hospital database, but unfortunately, the threat of an outbreak wasn’t quite enough to distract me from my fears about Grandma. I understood every time I saw her could be the last. And I didn’t need Mom to tell me that Grandma longed for me to find a life partner. I’d heard her extol the virtues of true love often enough over the years. Grandma would be delighted to think I was in a relationship, and the whole cruise was meant to celebrate her birthday.
If it made her happy, maybe I should find someone who wouldn’t mind pretending to be my girlfriend for a few days. I wasn’t likely to find a real one in two weeks. Charm wasn’t exactly my strongest suit, and my ability to flirt was non-existent. No, I needed a woman who understood she was entering into a sort of contractual agreement.
I could try a dating app to find someone, but in my experience, the women on those were interested in either a quick hookup or marriage. Too bad there wasn’t an app to find friends.
Okay, that was exactly what Cassidy’s new boyfriend had invented. But there was no way I was using anything Mr. Davis-Golden-Boy-Hardcastle was involved with, even if he had sent me an invite to beta test the app.
Where did people meet potential dates? Bars, maybe, or perhaps sporting events. Problem was, I never went anywhere except for work. And then there was the fact that I was abysmal at making conversation. Most women seemed to find it a turnoff when I gushed about an interesting paper on intestinal parasites.
Maybe someone else at Beaufort would want an all-expense paid trip? Amy—the nurse who stopped by my office tonight—had tried to discover my nonexistent interests in popular culture and even offered me a sandwich. Grandma would probably like her. I didn’t know if Amy had a boyfriend, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.
As long as she understood that I was asking platonically and not looking for an actual relationship. Shouldn’t be that difficult for her to believe if she’d already picked up on the fact that I had the bedside manner of a piece of dry toast.
I was going to find a woman to come with me on the cruise and make Grandma’s ninetieth birthday her best one yet.
It took me the entire weekend to prepare to ask Amy to come on the cruise and approximately one second to abandon the plan.
Finding Amy was easy enough; she was sitting in the nurse’s station right off the ICU next to the patient monitors, perusing a glossy magazine.
Modern Bride magazine.
I didn’t need my MD or my PhD to know what that magazine signified. Either Amy was engaged or she was the kind of person who enjoyed planning a wedding to a person she hadn’t even met yet. Both would seem to eliminate her from my selection process.
Before Amy could see me, I spun around and retreated.
Once I made it back to my office, I sat at my desk and dropped my head into my hands. If Grandma’s wellbeing depended on me finding a woman to go on the cruise, I had to find a way.
I looked around the room, but none of my diplomas or certificates provided any guidance for what I should do next. How had I made it to this point in my life without someone I could ask on a cruise?
Then again, the TV spot I’d seen said Davis had gone months in Philadelphia without making friends—the whole reason he’d invented his app. If someone like Davis had a difficult time with relationships, maybe I wasn’t a complete loser.
Of course, Davis had struggled for a few months compared to my entire life.
