Page 3 of French Kiss

1

First Year Residents

July - Three YearsEarlier

San Francisco

It was hard notto notice the new guy. The moment he entered the dark pub on Haight Street, the atmosphere changed. His presence moved the room like a butterfly flapping its wings, sending a breeze across the sticky, lacquered four-tops and the dusty pool table whose felt had long ago worn thin.

Sitting on a barstool, I turned, and there he was, all six feet one of him, pecs and abs visible through his tight grey T-shirt, dirty-blond hair slicked back like he’d just showered after amazing sex. Even in his mid-twenties, he looked like a Division I college soccer star who played classical guitar and set the curve in all his premed classes.

Well, even if he hadn’t looked like all those things, I’d later discover he was all those things. He was also a mess. Emotionally, mentally, logically… a mess. And no one held it against him.

He was that kind of guy. A charmer.

Even the bartender who was sliding a coaster under my pint of beer stopped momentarily to take him in. “Well, that guy looks like trouble.”

“Like the kind who’ll start a fight or something?” I asked, figuring that’s the kind of trouble a bartender worried about.

“Nah, the other kind of trouble. He’ll flirt with all my waitresses and no one’ll get shit done all night.”

“Ah, yeah, I know the type. Had my heart broken by a few too many of them.”

“Never again, right?”

The bartender gave me a knowing nod like we were both too sensible to be fooled anymore, but if I was honest—that guy was exactly my type. The body, the face. I was a sucker for that kind of eye candy, and I’d dated more than a few guys like him in college, enough to know they were generally bad news, too impressed with the longing stares from other women to stay loyal for long. Every break up made me an emotional mess and derailed my studies until I could pick myself up and start again.

After four years of that same pattern, I finally got smart. I couldn’t afford to sideline myself during medical school, so I made a decision: no more gorgeous, distracting bad boys. I could daydream about them all I wanted, but I’d never date them. It had worked out beautifully and I graduated at the top of my class.

Continuing the trend, I’d saddled up with a safe, dependable, long-distance boyfriend a month before starting my residency program. He’d be just enough of a distraction over a few long weekends to keep me interested, but I could focus the rest of my energy on medicine and harmless daydreams about guys like the one who walked into the bar. It seemed like a failsafe plan.

From the doorway of the bar, the new guy’s eyes scanned the room and quickly moved past me. We didn’t know each other, I reminded myself, and I was just a single face in a crowd. There was no reason for him to smile at me or even acknowledge my existence. But that didn’t stop me from wishing for a smoldering, hungry stare, just to keep my self-esteem afloat.

Instead, the guy glanced around Michael Collins Irish Bar, a muscle in his jaw clenching, the tiniest indication that he wasn’t as sure of himself as his confident smile suggested. Those minuscule tells in seemingly perfect people reassured me that they were actually a tiny bit like me—far from perfect.

I’d never been a morning person, I ate sugary cereals and other useless carbs, I killed any plant that had the misfortune to be in my apartment, and I was endlessly hard on myself. I could recite the complete list of my flaws at will.

I could name a few of my good qualities if I had to. I never forgot birthdays, I didn’t freak out under pressure, and I never took my friendships for granted. I’d also made it through four years of medical school and gotten admitted to a top residency program in internal medicine, which meant I’d done something right in my academic life but also meant that everyone around me was a superstar.

And sometimes it felt exhausting to live among people whose flaws barely registered.

Maybe that was why I gathered them up and catalogued them in my memory for the times when I needed a reality check or a confidence boost. In other words, most of the time.

The life of a med student had been a nonstop barrage of learning curves, older doctors telling us how much we didn’t know, and endless memorization of medical facts, all of which I experienced on very little sleep. Residency was designed to break us down, make us feel dumb, and force us to build ourselves up again before we were sent out into the world to work as doctors.

After all, who wouldn’t want to know that the person anointed with the job of operating on a heart or diagnosing a life-changing disease had run the gauntlet, and survived?

For every moment I’d spent glued to a medical textbook, learning unalterable truths about human physiology, my mind had spent even more time spinning off into equally interesting romantic scenarios that would probably never happen, but there was always a chance.

I called it optimism. Other people called it delusion.

The debate over the most fitting catchall term was wasted on me. Some people watched movies or munched edibles. I imagined the possibility for toe-curling seduction even where there was none. I had enough reality in my daily life—sickness and worried families and the potential for disease to end in death.

It was no mystery why I’d come to rely on the chance appearance of a handsome face or a gym-honed body to make all my real-life concerns disappear. Those images gave me something to think about on a dark night before I fell asleep, pleasant ideas that might end up in my dreams. And in them, I was a quick-witted, captivating, beautiful version of myself.

In my waking life, I didn’t move with effortless grace and I didn’t care. My brown hair was long and wavy, but it was easier to throw it up in a knot or a high ponytail than worry about styling it. And I’d endured years of orthodontics so at least I felt confident my teeth were straight when I smiled. That was how I’d come to be at our neighborhood bar wearing jeans, a hoodie, and no makeup.

“Who am I dressing up for?” I’d asked my friend Heidi, who stopped by my apartment so we could walk together. We were about to start our medical residency at UC San Francisco Hospital, so it only seemed natural to have one last night of carefree fun before we got slammed with cases and pressure and stress. There was no way I was going to ruin it by worrying about whether my platform boots were on point or my layered necklaces were the right length.

---