“So what? I like him,” I said, seeing red. I’d seen Ricky shut down only once before, the time that I yelled at him in the halls of Rogers Children’s. Ricky had thick skin, a trait I took advantage of often when I was ribbing him, but Tabatha’s line of questioning had clearly struck a nerve. “You don’t get to insult people I like just because you think you’re doing me a favor.”
The air thickened with tension. I whipped away from my sister, trying to quell my anger. After all, I knew that it was misdirected; I was most angry at myself. My impulse decision to demonstrate to Ricky that I was serious about him had led to him being hurt, and he’d deserved exactly none of that.
After a moment, Tabatha sighed.
“I get why you like him, you know,” she said. “He’s smart, and you two have this ridiculous vibe. Whatever spark you didn’t have with Frederick—you definitely have it with him.” She tapped her fingers rhythmically on the table. “And he clearly likes you. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be spending his Sundays in a library listening to you drone on about social determinants of health. It’s just . . .” Tabatha exhaled, and her expression changed, her insolence giving way to concern. “Angie, it would be different if you told me that he was serious about you. If you were moving toward something, you know? But right now, he’s just some guy you’re messing around with that you’re making me meet for some reason.”
“He’s not just some guy,” I insisted. Then I sighed. “We just haven’t gotten around to . . . that conversation yet.”*
“Well, you should,” Tabatha pressed. “Because we both know Ricky’s not an easy sell. This thing with his dad . . . It’s a lot.”
I bristled, knowing where she was headed. For the first time during this entire disaster of an afternoon, Tabatha had the decency to look ashamed. I’d known that telling my kid sister about Ricky’s parentage would come back to bite me in the ass, but I hadn’t anticipated that it would come up now, or like this. I understood then what she’d meant last week, when she accused me of always doing the “hardest thing.”
“Ricky isn’t his father,” I said softly. The opposite, actually, I wanted to add. Loving. Thoughtful. Deliberate.
“I know that,” Tabatha said. “But he’s his family, and if you’re trying to do this right, you can’t separate him from his people.” She sighed. “You’re right. I do sound like Momma.”
“You do,” I said, but I understood. Mollified, I leaned back in my chair.
“I just want you to be careful,” Tabatha repeated. “I don’t like seeing my big sis get hurt.”
“I won’t,” I promised, and left it at that.
Nineteen
I had not been looking forward to internal medicine. With every new rotation came a drastic paradigm shift, a change in culture, presentation style, and unspoken expectations for medical students that we frequently and summarily failed to meet. On pediatrics and ob-gyn, I’d felt a need to kowtow to my residents and attendings in an effort to bump up my clinical grades, and the months of sniveling had left me feeling unappreciated, exhausted, and annoyed all at once. And thus, I approached my internal medicine rotation with half of my usual allotted fucks . . . and it was working in my favor.
“Hey, hey, Angie,” my senior resident, James, said, as I walked back into the workroom shortly after finishing my pre-rounds. He gave me a fist bump. “How’s your lady in 35?”
I smirked. “She’s hanging in there. No fever overnight.”
“Good for her,” James said. “You think she can go home today?”
“Probably. Want to switch her over to oral antibiotics? Her susceptibilities are back, and it’s sensitive to Bactrim. Oh, and I asked her if she needs any refills for her meds at home. She said she was good.”
“Peeerfect,” James said. “I’ll pend her discharge orders. You’re the best!”
Against all odds, I felt like I was finally getting ahold of this whole third-year gig. The wards were a much friendlier place than the lecture hall for a girl like me, who was more motivated by the personal than the material. Here, no one cared if you got a 95 percent on the second-year Micro exam or what your Step score was. In internal medicine, the bodily fluids were abundant, but so was the conversation. Better than peds, where the former was always true and the latter very dependent on developmental age.
My good work on my clerkships hadn’t gone unnoticed. Dr. Wallace sent me an email congratulating me on my ob-gyn grades, and Dr. Reed responded to my edited presentation with genuine excitement. （“This is awesome, Angie,” he said. “I’m confident we’ll get this funding.”） From my very first anatomy lecture, medical school had felt like an uphill climb, but it seemed that I was finally strengthening my core.