I push into the break room and snatch a piece of pizza on my way out. Using my shoulder to prop my phone against my ear, I tell my father, “I’ll call you back—”
“Wait.” He stops me from hanging up.
“Hold on,” I say and wait to speak again until I’m outside, sun beating down on the pavement. Sirens blare as an ambulance speeds towards the emergency entrance, and a couple women in teal scrubs smoke on a wooden bench.
I put the phone on speaker to free my hands. “Okay.” I bite into my pizza, the first thing I’ve eaten in over twelve hours. The food sits like lead in my empty stomach.
“Listen to me, Farrow. I’ve been where you are.”
No shit. I check traffic before I cross the street to the parking lot.
“I know being a med intern is hard,” my father continues. “You work long, excruciating hours, and you leave a shift exhausted. But whatever you saw and did today, don’t bring it home with you. Don’t let it torture you.”
He assumes that I’m emotionally unavailable to handle his call. I may’ve had a fifteen-year-old girl code seven times in the past five hours, but I’ve never let any of that affect my job.
The problem: if I plan to quit medicine someday soon, then I shouldn’t be setting myself up to be a concierge doctor.
It’s that simple.
I approach my black Yamaha motorcycle in the parking lot. “I’m not that spent,” I tell my father. “I’m just not exactly excited to take house calls and check a little kid’s flu symptoms.”
“The call isn’t about one of the little kids, and it’s not an illness.”
My brows arch, and I find myself frozen in place. Not an illness.
I can’t ignore this call. No part of me wants to sit on the sidelines when I have the ability to help. But it’s making walking away from medicine that much harder.
I kick up the Yamaha’s stand. “Who’s hurt?” I ask for details, subtly agreeing to what my father wants.
He knows it too. “We’ll talk more when you’re at your apartment. Call me back.” He hangs up first, but only after he dangled a giant carrot in my face.
I pocket my phone and put on my helmet, flipping down the visor.
And like a stupid ass, I hunger towards the temptation.
When I graduated medical school, I decided to save on rent and room with other doctors from Philadelphia General. I live a little north of Center City in an old gothic school that was converted into lofts. I don’t really give a shit about the “original chalkboards” or the dark walnut paneling or a city view.
Basically, it’s cheap with three roommates and close to the hospital. Good enough for me.
Inside my apartment, I set my motorcycle helmet on the kitchen counter next to a Post-it note and then dial my father’s number.
The note is for me, the same one I see every other day. I barely skim the scribbled words:
Farrow, tell your friend that he needs to leave.
~ Cory
Leaning on the cupboards, I bite off the cap to a pen and then push my phone to my ear with my other hand. I fill up the Post-it with two large letters.
No.
I’m rarely at my apartment. Someone else staying here in my place shouldn’t be a problem, and to be honest, I doubt I’ll even be living in this apartment long anyway.
The phone line clicks.
“I’ll email you the patient’s medical history over a secure server,” my father starts right where we left off, “and then—”
“Back up,” I interject, not wanting to read anyone’s medical files if I don’t have to. Because I’m quitting on them soon. Flipping through their med history is invasive. “Who and what am I treating?” I tear open a packet of oatmeal and grab a paper bowl in case I need to leave in a hurry.
My father must be moving around, his loafers click clap on the floor. “Excuse me,” he says faraway to someone else. “Thank you…okay, perfect. I’ll be out at the cliff site in fifteen minutes.”
I pour oatmeal powder in the bowl and turn on the faucet.
More loudly, my father says, “Farrow?”
“Still here.” I hold the bowl beneath the faucet.
“The patient is Maximoff Hale.”
My brows furrow, and my face scrunches in motherfucking confusion. “Moffy really called you for help?” I ask.
It would take two seconds around Maximoff to understand how much the guy dislikes needing to be saved. For any reason. Even if he were in cardiac arrest, I can’t see him phoning my father.
But say Moffy did, then it’d have to be serious.
“Yes, he really called—”
“Shit,” I curse as water overflows my bowl of oatmeal. Quickly, I shut off the faucet, and I overturn the watered oatmeal mess into the drain and wash my hands. Rarely does anything distract me like this.
“He was asking for instances where he should go to an emergency room,” my father explains.
I dry my hands on a dishtowel. “I don’t know Moffy that well, but he seems like the kind of person who’d make lists to prepare for things that haven’t happened yet.”
“You do know him,” my father refutes. “You know all of the Hales, the Meadows, and the Cobalts. We both do. Getting to know your patients is why we’re able to provide the best care.”
I roll my eyes.
I’m used to the daily medical lectures, but I don’t need or want one right now. My father never removes the white coat. Metaphorically and literally. It’s who he is, and shit, I don’t want it to be who I am anymore.
I can’t only exist as another name in the Keene dynasty. It means that my life isn’t mine, and that scares the fuck out of me. Life is finite; we all die, and when you’re dead, you’re dead.
I couldn’t wish my mom back. I have a single memory of her and a handful of pictures. I know that I have only one life, and I need to live for what I love.
Not what my father loves.
Not what the Keenes need me to be.
I have to live for me.
I quit medicine.
I quit.
But I picture Maximoff Hale hurt, alone. In need of someone.
And I know I’m not quitting today.
Still, my father hasn’t convinced me that this isn’t just wolf scout earning a “preparedness” merit badge. I pass the phone to my other hand and say, “Okay, but this could still be Moffy over-preparing like he always does.”
“If you heard his voice over the phone,” my father says, “you’d know he wasn’t calm. He was tense. And you know Maximoff. So now what do you think?”
There’s a reason for concern.
I rub my jaw, my pulse hiking a fraction. No more delay, I leave the kitchen for the hall closet. “Did you narrow down the problem or am I going to have to pack a bag with everything?” I gather my black canvas trauma bag and check supplies: gauze, sutures—shit, if he needs an IV…
“It could be a fracture, maybe possible head trauma.”
I hurry. “Did he sound disoriented?”
“He sounded worried and distracted.”
I remember the last time I saw Maximoff. I can still smell the salt water and feel the heat from the torches. July, just last month. His family threw a summer party on a yacht, and I talked to Moffy for a minute.