Little Known Facts A Novel - By Christine Sneed Page 0,28
used to before the insurance companies took over and made everything so bureaucratic.”
“Those insurance companies are your bread and butter,” he said. “Or they would be if it weren’t for, well, if it weren’t for me.”
If Dr. Glass knows who her father is, he isn’t interested, or else he refuses to show it. She can’t see him asking her the usual questions: What was it like to grow up with a movie star as your father? Why didn’t you go into acting too? Or did you and it didn’t work out? Which of his movies is your favorite? Is he a decent guy? For real? Come on, you can tell me.
She does know that Dr. Glass likes movies, that he sees them when he has time, though he has said that he stays away from films about doctors because they often contain errors, or else some important element in them has been altered in order to keep a mainstream audience happy. “Contrary to what Hollywood might tell us, there are no perfect doctors,” Anna remembers him saying the day he appeared at work with his very short new haircut. “Just like there are no perfect people. You’ll make mistakes; everyone does. Thankfully, most of them can be corrected. Your duty, however, is not to make the same mistake twice.”
“What if we do make the same mistake twice?” asked Jim Lewin, who, despite having the highest grade-point average in the class, had confounded many of his professors and classmates by declaring, like Anna and a dozen or so others, a family medicine concentration rather than a specialization like oncology or neurology.
“You could lose your malpractice insurance,” said Dr. Glass. “Because you’re likely to get sued, if you haven’t been already. Small mistakes. Those are the kind you want to make.”
“I don’t want to make any, big or small,” said Jim.
“Of course you don’t. No one does. That’s the spirit, Dr. Lewin.” Dr. Glass looked at Anna and smiled. “What about you, Dr. Ivins? Are you planning to make any mistakes?”
She hesitated. “No, but I probably will. I keep wanting to knock on wood, but I’d feel embarrassed if anyone saw me.”
Dr. Glass shook his head, still smiling. “You’re superstitious. Almost every new doctor is. A lot of older doctors are too.”
She felt her face redden. “I wish that I weren’t.”
“It’s perfectly normal. We know how fast things can change for any one of us. Aneurysms, heart attacks, strokes—they happen to healthy people too.”
“We have such a hard job,” said Jim, his brown-eyed gaze unnerving in its directness. His upper lip was sweating, something that happened whenever he was excited, which seemed to be most of the time. For the first two years of medical school he had had a crush on Anna but had never found the nerve to ask her out. She is glad that he didn’t because she would have said no and felt bad about it. She does not find him attractive, despite his pleasant face and lean, tall body. If he weren’t so earnest and so intent on knowing all of the answers, she is sure that he would do better with the available women in their class.
Dr. Glass regarded him. “Yes, we do, and not everyone can handle it. You’ll know a lot more about yourself by the end of the summer.”
The first time her path crosses his outside of the hospital is pure coincidence. She is walking past a sandwich shop in Marina del Rey after visiting Jill at her new apartment, her friend having moved from North Hollywood where she had lived since college because, she said, only half joking, that she had used up all of the interesting straight men there. Her new place has a view of the Pacific and is so pleasant and spacious that for a few minutes Anna thought about looking at a unit for sale on another floor, but the effort required to move when she is already so busy makes the idea too daunting. Dr. Glass is sitting by himself at an outdoor table, eating a salad and reading a book, one whose title she can’t see. She isn’t sure if she should bother him and timidly turns her face away, but he looks up at the same moment and calls her name. Her heart begins to beat so forcefully that she wonders if he will see it pounding beneath the thin fabric of her blouse. With her denim miniskirt and hair in two long ponytails, she