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George was ecstatic when I mentioned I had signed up for the “friendship study.” He immediately moved the conversation to our group chat, where I was bombarded with exclamation marks and emojis.
Me: I’m coming.
He sends back a clock emoji. He’s not mad, I remind myself. He’s nervous. It’s the first day of this new study and one of the participants is late. That would drive him nuts even if he didn’t know me; the fact that he does know me just makes him more irritated. It doesn’t help that since his intervention two weeks ago, Pop’s mental state has deteriorated, I’ve been scheduled on almost constant night shifts, and my leg has been stiff and achy. I’m not trying to be slow as I finally make my way up the steps to the pysch department. My doctor suggested I use the cane they gave me after my surgery, and I have not mastered the rhythm of it.
George is waiting for me as I step out of the elevator, his hair standing on end and a clipboard in his hands. The frown on his face crumples when he sees me. Like he was ready to ream me out for running late until he saw me leaning against the glaring reminder of my accident. He’d been white as snow when he’d visited me in the hospital after. Quiet and unsteady in a way I had never seen from him. He’s like that now, a moment where his face goes blank, all his breath leaving him in one gust.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I shrug. “Nothing.”
He glares at my leg like he has X-ray glasses, like he’s mad at the limb for its structural failure when I slid my SUV into the middle of an intersection on an icy early morning after work. Like the truck that hit my driver’s side was at fault instead of a combination of bad weather and my fatigue. I’m pretty mad at my leg sometimes, too; and mad at myself. I almost killed someone with my stupid decision to drive exhausted. I was supposed to be the guy using the Jaws of Life, not the one having them used on me, watching the recognition roll across my colleagues’ faces when they saw through the smashed glass and mangled metal to who was underneath.
“I had to move your intake interview to the end of session,” George says, clicking his pen and writing something on his clipboard. He’s all business again. “Remember that I can’t guarantee your participation in this study,” he says.
“I know. Can I go in?”
He sighs, glancing over his shoulder. “Yes, but...”
“George, I’m fine.” And I can’t keep the edge out of my voice. It’s hard enough to sign up for something like this, to admit that I’m a grown man and I can’t do something as basic as meet new people. And now I am walking into this room full of strangers and having them all clock my cane with their preconceived notions about assistive devices and people who use them. I can’t manage his emotions right now, too, on top of all the rest.
His jaw clenches. “Fine,” he says tightly. And he turns his back.
Shit.“George,” I say but he waves me off, turning to the next person coming down the hall. I shuffle into the room, my head down, to contemplate my life choices and avoid eye contact. The sound in the room quiets as the door shuts behind me.
“What areyoudoing here?” a high voice asks.
I stop when a pair of paper-white shoes come into view. I follow the bare legs up to a pair of jean shorts. My stomach sinks. I have never seen those legs, bare, but I know who they belong to. The hair on her thighs looks soft, almost white. Maybe it’s their shape or maybe it suddenly makes sense, that George was trying to tell me something, to warn me, out in the hallway. And I’m the dumbass who snapped at him.
She swims in an Oxford shirt that’s about two sizes too big, pink and white seersucker. Lulu looks around the small seminar room that’s been appropriated for this study, at all the people—other potential participants, I assume—who are now staring at us as we stand off like it’s high noon. She pulls her sleeve down over her arm, trying to cover her hand, but I see the bruise around her knuckles. She catches me staring and glances meaningfully at the cane. So, I say nothing. I’m not about to start answering questions in front of strangers.
A range of emotions pass over her face in the span of seconds: confusion, embarrassment, understanding, finally hurt before she shutters it away behind a false smile. It’s strange to think that I already know her real smile; it doesn’t seem possible after spending only one evening with a person. But I do. Her real smile has the power to blow me over, which makes it hard to accept this forgery.
“What,” she says again, quieter, her words controlled. “Are you doing here?”
“I like your hair,” I say.I like yourhair?What the hell is wrong with me?
She rocks back on her sneakers, pressing her hand to the side of her head where her long blond hair is now wavy and shoulder length.
“It looks...shorter?” Panic grips my vocal cords at her continued confused stare. Itisdifferent, right? What if she hasn’t changed it at all?
“I got it cut,” she says flatly.
Another person enters the room behind me, and our captive audience divides its attention between the three of us for a moment before deciding that we are definitely the more entertaining ones. I nod to a pair of empty desks and chairs in the corner of the room and she grumbles but sits. I ease into the chair beside her, keeping my leg stretched out under the desk. She is rigid, one hand curled over the other. Now that we are no longer the entertainment, the rest of the participants are scrolling their phones or chatting quietly with each other, sending awkward smiles around the room. No one speaks above a quiet murmur and Lulu matches their volume when she asks, again, “What. Are. You. Doing. Here. Jesse?”
“What do you think?” I answer calmly when I really want to say, I’m sorry and what happened to your hand and I really do mean it your hair looks lovely and I’ve masturbated to the thought of you more than once I know that makes me disgusting but I can’t get the smell of you out of my head. Most importantly, what areyoudoinghere?
Lulu seems like the type of girl who was friends with everyone in high school, the one who has to decline Friday night plans because she has so many. Lulu is a social butterfly, and I was voted most likely to take a vow of silence in our senior yearbook. I peek at her from the corner of my eye. The more that I think about it, the more it doesn’t make any sense that she’s here at all.
“George never mentioned it,” she mutters.
I shrug. “To me either.”
We both glare at the door, where George stands on the other side intaking participants, when it opens and George enters with four other people in varying degrees of academic garb. One in a lab coat, one with elbow patches, another in a blazer, and, finally, a cardigan. George launches into introductions. As the administrator he’s been integral to the planning of this and other studies run by the psych department. He complains in private about the workload, dealing with self-important academics, but I can tell that he loves this, the way that none of this could happen without him. Booklets are passed around with scheduling information and waiver forms that essentially state:
If chosen, over the next eight weeks, participants will consent to have their blood pressure taken once a week, wear heart rate monitors for the duration of the study, and an MRI scan at the beginning and end of the period so that neuroscientists and cardiologists can collect physical data on the effect relationships and connection can have on us. Participants must also agree to group and individual therapy sessions.
“Participants must join at least one preplanned group activity a week, but are also free to create their own activities within the study. However, those events must be logged in the tracking app,” he says, flipping through the pages of the booklet. “Finally, participants must sign this waiver form.” He holds it up for everyone, like we don’t have our own copies. “And you must also read the rules clearly,” he says, speaking slower. “If you cannot follow the rules outlined within this booklet you might be removed from the study, which would remove you from the lottery for the financial compensation.”
