Page 30 of The Plus One
With a rattling breath, he started talking.
“The GHCO has sent me to a lot of places. Beautiful places. But places with… I don’t even know how to describe it. Just tremendous need.” Jude stared at the brick wall opposite them.
“And I was so arrogant going into it. I thought my one year of residency in a Philly hospital would teach me everything I needed to know… I thought it would be… I don’t know, simple. I’d go where they sent me, set a broken bone here, deliver babies there, stitch up wounds… I’d do whatever was needed without a hitch. All with this unwavering motivation to do it to save myself from student loans.”
He paused, eyes flicking to Indira.
“Isn’t that disgusting? I was so selfish in wanting to save a fucking buck that I really thought I’d go around the world playing God here and there. I hate myself for it.”
“Don’t say that,” Indira whispered. “The burden of what we face with those loans and interest can be absolutely debilitating. You aren’t a bad person for dedicating years of your life to serve in areas of need to reduce that burden.”
“I’m a bad person because my interest wasn’t in being some global humanitarian, it was purely selfish.” Jude arched his head back, looking up at the sky.
He blinked a few times, trying to unscramble the confusing strings of emotions and put them into words. Explain them to Indira.
This happened to him a lot lately. Trying to think would wrap his brain into knots, impossible to unravel. His mind used to be so agile, seeing steps ahead in conversations or action. Now, it seemed incapable of even completing the simplest of processes.
“Everywhere I went, I was losing someone. I wasn’t quick enough to cauterize a wound or smart enough to recognize the underlying ailment. I saw people lose their eyes. Their legs. I saw civilians bombed in the middle of a normal day or villages laid flat from a hurricane. Entire families snuffed out of existence in their homes… I saw people in the most primal states of pain, and more often than not, I seemed to leave them with just as much of it. It started to feel like I was the one that brought it to all those people.”
Jude was haunted by those bodies on his table, their pleading, pained eyes looking at him for salvation when he couldn’t deliver it.
“Jude,” Indira whispered, reaching her hand toward him. He didn’t take it. She left it hovering. “Doctors aren’t infallible healers. You’re put into impossible situations and all you can do is your best.”
“My ‘best’ resulted in people dying, Indira. How can I ever forgive myself for that? How can I ever erase the idea that I inserted myself into situations I wasn’t ready for, when someone else, someone more capable, could have been doing the job?”
Indira’s eyes flicked across his face. “I don’t understand what that means,” she said, a certain helplessness to her voice.
Jude fisted his hands in his hair. Fuck. Why was talking so hard?
“It’s like, I applied for this program, right? I submitted an application for the spot; I went through interviews. I painted the best version of myself to review boards for the sole purpose of getting money for school. Not for helping. Not for saving people. But to avoid all this debt. To unburden myself from a loan payment every month. But who’s to say I didn’t steal the spot from someone more capable? Someone who could have actually saved all these people? How am I supposed to live with myself when my shortcomings could be the reason people no longer exist?”
Great, Jude was crying again.
Indira chewed on her lip. “Jude, have you ever talked to a therapist about all of this?”
He let out a hard, bitter laugh. “Believe it or not, therapy isn’t often readily available in the places I’m stationed.”
“But have you approached anyone at the GHCO? Maybe a supervisor about protecting your mental health? Or maybe—”
“Indira, stop,” Jude said through clenched teeth, his head swimming.
He felt so much shame. So much embarrassment. So much plain fear at how unhinged he was. He didn’t have the tiniest clue who he was supposed to talk to about any of it when he was in the middle of areas of civil unrest or war. His inability to cope was so insignificant compared to the trauma civilians were facing every day just to survive. It would be another selfish act.
Indira pressed her lips together, but her eyes told Jude how much she wanted to push the issue. He’d caused those worried lines across her forehead, the tension in her mouth.
One more thing to hate himself for.
He wanted to reach out to her, hug her again, bask in her lightness—her goodness—until he could convince himself he was good too. But he couldn’t do that to her. He was feeling far too much around Indira for that to be safe. He’d only hurt her.
Jude ducked his head again, dragging the toe of his shoe into the cracks of the concrete.
“What about the moment in the bar triggered your reaction?” she eventually asked, moving to stand next to him against the wall.
“The noise, I think,” Jude said, pressing his hands into the rough brick behind him. “And the amount of people. A lot of the places I was stationed experienced frequent bombings or attacks. It… Sometimes I have trouble remembering that I’m not there when a noise surprises me.”
Jude saw Indira nod out of the corner of his eye.
“Thank goodness Collin and Jeremy are so low-key with their wedding events. Would hate for you to experience weeks of extremely loud and dramatic gatherings.”
