Page 93 of Love Sick

He nods in encouragement. “What are your hands protecting?”

The perineum.

“The clitoris!”

Chen clears his throat. “Okay. But what are you trying to protect in the delivery?”

The perineum.

The girl’s tears pour. “The clitoris?”

A tiny uncomfortable laugh emerges from Chen. “Yes. Okay. But what are your hands protecting?” He motions how we protect the perineum during a vaginal delivery.

Say anything but “clitoris.”

Cheeks wet, eyes desperate, the girl whimpers. “The clitoris!”

Out of the corner of my eye, Lexie snaps a subtle picture of the girl and the Horned Frog, and I lose it. I shouldn’t condone it. Shouldn’t feed into it. It’s terrible. Unkind. But it’s medicine. Can’t take the heat? Kitchen’s not for you.

I’m far too tired to put a wrench in the malignant cog of medicine today. Instead, laughter bubbles from deep inside, and no matter how I try to suppress it, it breaks the surface. A snort rises first, followed by a series of unattractive chuffs as I press a hand over my mouth.

Chen turns to me, understanding in his eyes. “You may be excused, Dr. Rose. Get some sleep.”

Ah. He has a heart! Who knew?

“Thank you, sir,” I gasp around my laughs. I am so unprofessional. So mean. So tired.

Ilaughedat her, and I’m too tired to even care.

Is this what medicine has done to me? Has it made me callous?

Ugh.

In my car, my phone buzzes, and I pull it out. Lexie has group texted all the residents with the picture of the girl with her face scribbled out. She’s captioned it, “PROTECT THE CLITORIS!”

I don’t care that I’m an asshole. I’m still laughing when I fall into my bed.

Julian

NOVEMBER, YEAR 2

St. Vincent is the busiest L&D in the region, and for reasons no one can adequately explain, only one resident covers each shift with a single OB hospitalist attending. Half the year, an intern is also assigned, but there’s enough work for at least three upper-levels. Covering it by myself as a second-year is like drowning beneath a tsunami while a horde of people on silver surfboards complain about my inability to swim.

Errors often occur—not only mine—and prior to this month, I had vastly underestimated the hospitalists’ ability to make me feel guilty for their mistakes.

Grace has been an ideal night resident the entirety of the month. When I arrive each morning, she’s bright-eyed and smiling with the patient list in hand, color-coded from her rainbow pens. Sometimes, she even has black coffee waiting for me, so I’ve taken to bringing her a chocolate donut every morning just to make her smile.

Her sign-out is pristine—far better than mine in the evening. I’m pretty sure she spends the first hour of every shift combing the charts to revise all my mistakes. I read my notes twice before I sign, yet errors persist.

The glory of electronic medical records is that they all have shortcuts for charting—dot phrases and saved templates. Dr. Narayan, the most unfriendly hospitalist to ever grace these sacred halls—and perhaps the worst human on the planet—has removed my “template privileges” in an effort to improve my charting. It forces me to write all my notes from scratch, taking triple the time it normally would.

Grace’s notes are flawless, and she rounds on at least half the list each morning, including all the discharges. It significantly lightens my workload, and if I wasn’t halfway gone for her already, this would have tipped the scales.

She’s my savior.

Four weeks since Halloween. She still has no clue Drunk Grace admitted she wants me. Sober Grace is as reticent as always, but her smiles have grown dreamy and she blushes when I touch her. This has become the longest game of foreplay in history.

I’m desperate for her to let her guard down. I want her to confess her desire, unclouded and sober. And she will.

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