Page 6 of French Kiss

3

True North

Year One - July

San Francisco

Joshand I met on a foggy July morning a few days into our residency, when we both arrived to work an hour early. To me, being anywhere on time really meant being there well before the designated hour.

It also meant I had time to grab breakfast at the hospital, and since I couldn’t be sure when or if I’d have a break during the day, I decided to eat something hearty. My go-to food had always been a tuna sandwich, and it didn’t matter if it was the crack of dawn or midnight.

The cafeteria had an assortment of cold cereals in small boxes and a display of baked goods, but I beelined to a refrigerator case that stocked sandwiches. A tall, dark-haired guy nearly collided with me as we both arrived at the display and looked over the labels. I felt suddenly self-conscious reaching for a fishy-smelling sandwich for breakfast and considered the other options. I didn’t want turkey. Or roast beef. He, too, seemed paralyzed at the choices.

Finally, he stuck a hand out and reached for tuna. “I know it’s weird,” he said apologetically. “Don’t worry, I’ll eat it far away from people.”

I laughed. “I wasn’t judging.” He nodded his head in thanks and walked to the cashier. Freed from feeling strange about my food choices, I went to grab my own tuna sandwich but realized he’d gotten the last one. I took an apple instead and got behind him in line. He turned and looked at my austere selection.

“No sandwich?” he asked, smiling.

“Eh, if it’s not tuna, it’s not worth it.”

His grin widened. It was so inviting. Patients must love this guy, I thought. Then his expression grew concerned. “Wait, did I get the last one?”

“Oh, no, I’m sure there are more—”

“We can share this one. I insist.”

“You’re sweet, but I’m good. Really.”

He looked guilt-ridden, but I assured him I didn’t want it. “Well, I insist on buying your apple, then. It’s the least I can do… Josh Weitz,” he said, extending a hand.

“Hannah Stein,” I said. I thanked him and figured that in a big hospital, I might not run into him again.

As it turned out, I ran into him fifteen minutes later, because we were the first two residents in our program to show up for our first general meeting with the attending physicians who ran our program. Josh and I learned that in addition to a love of tuna sandwiches, we shared a need to be punctual that extended sometimes to sleeping in our clothes to make sure we got an extra three minutes of rest and still arrived at work with time to spare.

“Decisions made before the sun rises are rarely good ones,” Josh noted that day, proudly showing me that his outfit of khaki pants, blue-striped button-down, and navy-blue tie all matched. “Last night, this all made sense.”

“And here I chose medicine so I wouldn’t have to make fashion decisions. When do we get to wear scrubs all the time?”

“Once we’re done getting our egos busted in residency. It’s important to look nice when learning that four years of medical school actually taught us nothing.”

I discovered another important thing about Josh that day—as long as he wasn’t required to wear work clothes, he would show up in shorts. It didn’t matter if he was headed to the gym or out to dinner. He’d vowed to celebrate every day that he had the good fortune to live in California by wearing knee-baring attire.

“It’s a reminder that I could be doing my residency in Denver.”

“I guess that’s one way to think about life,” I said, not sure why he was dissing that particular city.

Later, I found out that Josh had been all set to move to Denver when a spot opened up in our program. And even though Northern California could get way colder than it appeared from the blue skies, Josh was undeterred in his commitment. “Gratitude doesn’t take a break on a chilly morning,” he said on one particularly frosty day when I noticed goose bumps on his legs.

I respected his display of worship of the cold winter sun.

At the end of that day, I got home feeling beaten up by the reams of medical facts I’d put into practice and overwhelmed by the three years of the same that lay ahead. When I got home, I saw a small brown bag on my doorstep. Inside was a can of tuna with a silver bow stuck on top, a bagel in a zip-lock bag, and a note: Just making sure you get your sandwich tomorrow morning. Your friend, Josh

For small kindnesses like those and his even temper when work got stressful, Josh immediately became one of my favorite people. More than that. He kept me honest, he kept me pointed in the right direction. My true north. Our similarities made us a natural pair. We acted so much like highly responsible parents to our partially responsible cohort of residents that our friends soon started calling us Mom and Dad. As in, “If Mom and Dad say we should get gifts for the attendings before the holidays, we should do it. Otherwise, I’m just writing a card.”

At heart, I tended toward the reasonable, and having a partner in crime made me feel less like a controlling buzzkill. We were destined to be friends.

In those early days, I had my boring long-distance boyfriend and Josh had a girlfriend, so our friendship had the luxury of developing without any of our late-night study sessions ending in fumbling awkwardness about the possibility that we might hook up because… why not?

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