“And you’re still your own worst enemy.”
“Fine, then. Since you’re giving me no choice, I have to be there by ten.”
“I’m glad you’re finally seeing reason. We’ll leave at nine. It’s going to take at least a half hour to get uptown to Temple. Why the hell you choose to live so far from everything and everybody is beyond me. You live thirty minutes from work, an hour from home and you still refuse to learn how to drive.”
I’m petrified of people and their road rage. I don’t want the responsibility of being a defensive driver out on these mean streets.
“Is there anything my parents didn’t blab to you about me?”
“They didn’t have to tell me anything. You don’t have a car when your parents can definitely afford to give you one and the Uber app is on the home page of your phone. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why.”
“I’m supporting people who need to feed their families when I order an Uber.”
“Just be ready at nine and fair warning, Gigi, I’m not that nice in the morning.”
I pretend to be an officer paying respects to her dictator-like leader and give him a salute.
“Warning received, sir.”
Little does he know, I won’t even see his grumpy ass in the morning.
I'll be long gone.
Ten
Gigi
* * *
It was a long day at work today and mostly business as usual. Because I work as an independent contractor and not as a full-time employee, I don’t work every day, but when I am scheduled the days can be tough.
Today I worked with three different medical students. The first student had not familiarized herself with all the terms she needed to know for today's session, so she received a subpar evaluation by her professor and left the room in tears. The second one is an international student from Sri Lanka and while I think he has a great bedside manner, we often have difficulty understanding each other's accents. So when we do our patient scenes together, we have to take a lot more time than I would normally take with the others. My last student is my favorite student to work with. He's always worried that he will forget crucial information for our scenario work, but that is never the case. He's always prepared, enthusiastic about the scenes we do, and I think he's going to make an incredible doctor once he finds his confidence.
The people who work as standardized patients come from all walks of life. Most of the time, they’re people who need secondary income or folks who are in between jobs and have families to support. I'm probably the youngest one here with the least amount of responsibilities. I rarely go out for drinks or dinner with my coworkers for a lot of reasons, but tonight I may agree to go because I'm looking for any excuse not to go home and deal with Knox's wrath.
He's been texting me all day with angry messages because I tricked him this morning and left by myself at seven-thirty instead of nine. The truth was, I had to be at work by nine and not ten, and I didn’t want him as an escort, so I took matters into my own hands.
* * *
8:30 am
Jackass: Real cute what you did. Call me now.
9:30 am
Jackass: Ignoring me isn’t helping.
11:45 am
Jackass: You’re going to have something more to worry about than a shoe hitting your head when your ass walks through this door!
I admittedly have a great laugh as the texts come in. To me, they are worth the reprimand I know is coming when I return home tonight. I realize that leaving early was a one time “gotcha” trick, but at least for one more day I still have my independence and got one over on him.
“Did you see Carla crying in there?” my coworker Bernadette says to a group of us. “How is she going to be a doctor if she can’t memorize any of the presenting symptoms?”
Bernadette is a thirty-something mother of two who is always a little hard on the students because of what I think is a dream deferred. She was a nursing student ten years ago but had to quit school and work to help out her mother at home. I don’t know all the details, but I know that she never went back to college, and I think she resents everyone who was able to.
“I know, girl. I was doing everything I could to keep my composure when I heard her over there stuttering,” another coworker named Casper chuckles in agreement. “A complete mess.”
Casper refuses to share his age, but I’m pretty sure he’s in his late thirties or early forties and works as a patient actor to fund his life as a drag queen at night. He can be catty sometimes, but out of all the actors here, he’s the most fun.
“Y’all, I thought we could grab some appetizers and a drink at that new bar around the corner. It's a new Mexican place, and I heard they’ve got bottomless margaritas.”
“You down to go too, Gigi?” Ben asks.
He’s a relatively new hire who I’ve barely had a full conversation with, but he seems nice enough.
I check my phone and see that Knox hasn’t sent me any more threatening messages since this morning. Maybe he’s cooled off. But then I think about fish tacos and margaritas and my stomach growls and figure that a few more hours out can’t hurt anything. A girl’s got to eat.
“Sure, I’m starving,” I say.
Casper’s mouth widens in exaggerated surprise. “You’re coming with us, Miss super-secret Sally?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe it’s because Ben asked.”
“I’m just hungry.” I blush at Bernadette’s insinuation of some sort of love connection. “Would it be okay if I invited someone to meet us?”
It might be a great time to see Matthew without the pressure of explaining why I’ve been missing in action.
“The more the merrier,” Casper says.
I send a brief text to Matthew telling him when and where to meet me for dinner if he can but am disappointed when he doesn’t respond to my text. He’s either still angry with me or done with me.
Gah!
Knox is already ruining my life, and he’s only been here a few days.
“Let’s split the Uber. I’ll order it,” Casper suggests.
“I’m just going to check in with Janet and I’ll be right there,” I tell them.
After reviewing the rest of my schedule for the week with my supervisor, Janet, I pack up my things and head out the door with Casper, Bernadette and Ben. As we walk toward the corner of the street to wait for the car, a call comes in to my phone from an unknown number and my guess is that it’s Matthew wanting to talk before he commits to having dinner with me.
“Hello?” I answer optimistically.
“You're making this whole protection thing difficult.”
Ugh, it's Knox.
“What phone number are you calling me from?”
“Never mind that. Where are you?”
“Listen, I had a full day at work. I'm tired, and I'm getting something to eat before I come home. I'll see you later.”
“Gigi-“
I click the home button to end the call. I’m not in the mood for our usual repartee right now. I’m exhausted, hungry and hoping that I can finally explain my sudden distance to Matthew.