“I dunno, Doc, but I like the way it sounds. It sounds like I feel.”
“What does that mean?”
Weber, with all his words, couldn’t give me a good answer. And that drove me crazy. It still drives me crazy. Because that day, that long, weird, hung-over day, has deposited me here. And I don’t like here. I’m still mired in a fog that I can no longer blame on vodka and which I do my best to blame on Weber. I went to the hospital three days that week, and four days the week after that. I can’t explain why, but some mornings I show up at the hospital and I can’t make myself go inside. I stand in the parking lot and argue with myself. I tell myself that I’m ruining everything, throwing away my chance to show Gram that I can be a brilliant doctor. But the internal debate is of no use. I have to turn back and drive to Weber’s apartment. I don’t know how to explain my behavior. I am at a loss.
At first I told my attending that I was sick. I claimed fatigue, malaise, a general sense of illness. That was not lying, it was true, is true. But now, as the days I can force myself to walk through the hospital doors grow more sporadic, I am forced to come up with a lie. I claim to have been diagnosed with mono. I actually forge a doctor’s note and hand it in to the dean of the medical school. Because mononucleosis is infectious, I am officially excused from school for the next two weeks. I will be able to make up the missed rotation at some later point.
I have had to give up my new apartment before I even moved into it, as I cannot count on student loans being paid out to someone who is not behaving like a student. I now officially live with my visibly pregnant sister. We are both aimless. I spend my days at the library or driving around in my car. And to my confusion and dismay I continue to spend my nights with a man who says things to me, in the moments of what should be the greatest intimacy, that are meaningless.
CATHARINE
I walk around the corridors of the home every day for exercise. I have a route that I follow. I walk along the upper hallway, then down the stairs and along the lower hallway. If the weather’s decent I also travel the main path to the parking lot and back. I’ve tried to get a few of the girls on the hall to join me, but they say that they’re too old to exercise and that ladies shouldn’t sweat and why fight the natural aging process. I tell them that is all a bunch of malarkey. I have a college degree in nutrition, and I know that as bones age they grow brittle, so it is more important than ever to exercise and strengthen the muscles around the bones. And exercise keeps the mind fresh and alert. You don’t see dotty senior citizens out power-walking. I explain this to my friends, but do they listen? I remind them that I am only trying to help, and then I walk by their open doors on my daily rounds with my head held high, so I can show them the right way by example.
I think about this, my daily campaign for fitness and health, as I fall to the floor in the middle of my room. It is just after lunch, and as I stand up from the loveseat to get the remote control off the top of the television, my foot catches on something. I feel myself tip forward; my balance is lost. I reach out to grab anything that might stop my fall, but there is nothing to grab. In the next second, I am lying on my side on the floor. It happened so fast—standing, falling, fallen. My first thought from my new position on the floor is: If the girls on the hall find out about this little spill, they’ll think it’s my just reward after all my talk about the benefits of exercise.
I give myself a minute before I try to stand back up. The fall knocked the wind out of me, and my breath is choppy in my throat. I feel as if someone kicked a gate open in the center of my chest.