I don’t bother answering beyond repeating, “Friday,” and hanging up. I have a backup of texts al basical y wanting the same thing. Parties I’m invited to, parties someone wants entrance to, requests to go out, people bored out of their minds and everyone wanting to score the next high to escape it. After making sure none of the texts or missed cal s are from George, I toss the phone on the table next to my bed and turn up the volume on the television before clicking it off again and walking around my room, clinking the ice at the bottom of my glass.
I’m restless, and I never get restless. At the first hint of it, I’m usual y out the door, not stalking around my room like a prisoner in a cel . What am I staying in for, anyway? So I don’t have a hangover tomorrow morning that Dorcas wil disapprove of? Why would I even give a shit what she sanctions as acceptable behavior—she’s probably at home knitting for chrissake.
I grab the phone and cal John, who’s on his way before I can change my mind.
A couple of nights ago I wanted to find the opposite of Dorcas Cantrel , but that didn’t exorcize her from my head.
Tonight I’m searching for her twin, as impossible as it wil be to find someone so plain in the hangouts we frequent.
Once I find her, I’l be damned if she isn’t begging me to screw her up against the bathroom wal before me and the guys take off.
*** *** ***
Dori
“Hey, baby girl. When do you leave for Ecuador?” Deb must be exhausted, but she always makes time for me. I guess she could tel in our last few texts that I’m stressed. She can always tel . It’s like she’s had a wireless connection to me since I was born.
“Twenty days.”
“Got it down to days, huh?” I hear the smile in her voice.
“Are you counting down ’til you go to Quito or ’til you leave LA?”
“Both.”
“So… I hear you’ve got a daily celebrity sighting at Habitat.”
I sigh heavily and moan, lying back on my bed. “Let’s not talk about him.”
Deb laughs. “Oh, come on. You don’t want to talk about him even a little? Hmm.”
“What?”
“I was eight when you were born, Dori; I know you pretty wel . If you don’t want to talk about him at al , he must be frustrating you in some profound way.”
“Trust me, there’s nothing profound about him. He’s as superficial and vacuous as you’d assume.” Great. I’m almost sputtering.
“Al right, al right, I’m just teasing.” Deb is rarely unkind.
She’s one aspect of my life that gives me the most joy and the most guilt. I have a loving and supportive family, always enough money for necessities—food, clothing, books—
while others have poverty, neglect, il ness, and the constant hunger of never enough. For some reason this line of thinking makes me think of Reid, which is absurd. He has every advantage and more, with no excuse for forcing his egocentricity on people who have so much less.
Pushing him from my mind, I ask Deb about her residency. After four years of col ege and another four years of medical school, she’s final y Dr. Deborah Cantrel .
To become the pediatrician she’s always wanted to be, she’l be working crazy long hours for the next three years, making barely enough to feed herself and begin paying back her student loans.
“You wouldn’t believe how many ER cases are drug seekers.” She sighs, frustrated. “They’re desperate for a fix, so they come in with phony symptoms. The more experienced doctors assume that everyone who gives
‘pain’ as a symptom is a fraud. We keep a list of the repeat offenders.”
I try to imagine my sister in that environment, with her social idealism and her ambition to help people. “Maybe you’re just what those other doctors need—a balance to the pessimism.”
“Wel , it’s going to be a contentious three years.”
“So… met any cute doctors?”
She laughs at my change of subject. “Yes, actual y—one of the attending physicians. But as luck would have it, he’s also the most cynical. Last night, he almost missed a possible placental abruption because the mother-to-be is a known addict. She claimed severe back pain, and he was about to send her out the door with Tylenol. I convinced him to let me do an ultrasound on her, for practice, and we had to do an emergency C-section. If she’d gone home, the baby would have died and the patient could have bled to death.”
“Wow.” I’m not sure exactly what she’s talking about, but it sounds intimidating. “You saved their lives, Deb.”
“Yeah, wel . She swore she hasn’t used since she knew she was pregnant, but to him, once an addict, always an addict.” She breathes an exasperated sigh.
“We know that’s not true.” Our parents have helped dozens of people kick al types of drug addiction through the years. Though a depressing majority start using again, some stay clean. Dad says he has to keep fighting for those few, because you never know who’s capable of kicking it for good.
“Bradford was brought up in a different environment than we were. He didn’t know much about addicts or poverty until he became a doctor. I got him to talk about it a little bit today. He grew up in an upper middle class suburb, and the worst thing he encountered was other kids who smoked pot or did a little X. To him, someone who’s hooked on cocaine or meth is forever hopeless.”
I think of Reid, and how I told him he was hopeless. How angry he was that I deemed him unworthy of my time or attention. I don’t know if he’s addicted to any particular substances, though he’s certainly addicted to his hedonistic substances, though he’s certainly addicted to his hedonistic lifestyle. But is he hopeless? Maybe he’s right. Maybe my snap judgment concerning him makes me a hypocrite.