I'd say I'd been quite oriented with the responsibilities and routine. We'd learned mechanical phrases, prompts, gestures, and questions through time. But until we would meet some facilitator with impossible standards, leadership in an SGD hardly stirred us.
It was the first week of the bimonthly. My turn came. Two hours to class, we were simmering under the glare of the Pacific sun; but deep within, my blood had been running cold. Leading a group was a living nightmare.
Four friends and I decided to eat at Dan Erie across school. The second story offered some kind of refuge from the heat, the hustle and bustle of a regular weekday. We had the floor, the tables, chairs and electric fans all to ourselves' the advantage of privacy lifted our spirits save for mine.
Reese first broke the unusually solemn lunch. "Kim, she didn't make it in The Voice last night. It's totally unfair," she said, her eyes glued to her smartphone.
Kim and Mary chimed in agreement. Then, the three of them had a hearty discussion of their idols, the latest in popular music, and fashion. When they would digress to foreign movies and celebrities, Joana sometimes threw in a gossip or two at a time.
My mind floated in a faraway desert, rehearsing repeatedly algorithms that should help me find the right questions at the right time. I couldn't afford to screw this week up. It was Hematology - my banner, my brand. But somehow, I was prepared to lose it all for the nth time. What difference did it make if our group did well or not? We'd come to a point where most of us had become robots, devoid of substance. Routines kept us moving. Over time, the little lights that constitute our own unique constellations would go out one by one. Eyes would dim; genuine smiles wear off. Our hearts would grow tired each day, until only flesh and bone would remain when the blankets are finally drawn over our romantic youth.
I lost track of the time since I left their company. I felt a question burning at the back of my head. And then a tiny voice borrowed the words. They rang in my ears as they clung to me like dismembered sets of fingers burrowing into the skin of my arms. When the question, the voice, and the appendages swirled into an abstract vision, colors bloomed; a face appeared. Mary pulled me out of the dry sea, and then I could feel the fresh air rush in and out of my chest again, stinging my airways like acid.
The most natural emotion that comes right after a threat to life has been banished is probably relief. I saw the reflection of my smile in theirs, but theirs had been tainted with another motive.
"So it's a yes?"
"Did you already say 'yes'?"
"Oh my gosh!"
"I could totally cry right now."
Puzzled and alarmed, I rose. They stopped. "What were you guys saying?"
Joana gave me an incredulous look, hesitated for a moment before handing me my phone. Instinctively I searched my messages. There was one thread, very recently updated - and read - certainly not by me. It was a text message from Anton. I didn't need to repeat my question to them. I wasn't the type to turn ruddy at the slight agitation of the heart. But I felt my skin effacing, stretching to eternity in a futile attempt to escape acute embarrassment. My eyes welled with tears. The winter stormed my bowels and peppered ice shard on my feet.
"I could totally cry right now." We'd never heard Reese talk more emphatically than that noon at Dan Erie.
As Kim grinned, her heart swelling with the innocent love of a child, her small black eyes buried themselves under the fond protection of her cheeks. She purred, "This is wonderful."
In my mind I screamed louder than a thousand roaring lions. But my volatile anger could not overcome the resistance in my throat as I watched my companions try to pry my mind open. I stifled a cry, sucked back the brewing storm in the bags under my eye, and breathed deeply. Then I sat and said with some finality. "It's not what you think it is, people."
Joana's right eyebrow shot up dangerously. Laughing thinly, she said, "I would not - for all the world - text you something like that if I'm not head over heels for you. And I know exactly what I'm talking about."
I knew I'd never win against here. I raised my palms in surrender. "Hey, look, we're not having this conversation right now."
Joana Ang, the master equestrian, held my gaze like reins. "Oh, yes we are."
"Yes, we are!"
"Agree."
"Please tell us more."
Before I cam to medical school, relationships and careers had equal footing in the workplace and at home. My colleagues and friends would treat the subjects with as much fervor and importance as either can be psychologically, emotionally, spiritually and economically profitable for a lifetime when properly managed, and disastrous when done otherwise. In those days when we struggled our way into the real world - taxes, violence, injustice, corruption, and betrayal - we prayed and hoped for good luck in career and relationships.
The longer we spend our days in medical school, the more it seems like a prison. We will virtually be cut off from reality, suspended in a vacuum or immersed in viscous existence, as if in a dream, (After all, out of the thousands of dreamers, aren't we the cut who made it to medical school to live this dream?) We age in body and mind. But in truth, if we have not gone so far off from puberty before serving our sentence here, the chances of reverting back to the stages of early or late adolescence increase.
As I was telling Reese, Kim, Mary, and Joana the half-truth about Anton's yet-unconfirmed infatuation, I could not dispel the red cloud behind my eyes. It reminded me of that distant time when relationships weren't discussed as an optional extracurricular activity for those who could and would multitask, but an end that must be carefully planned and invested on.
Every extracurricular activity has its advantages and disadvantages. And every day, my busy smartphone affirms them. Every reminder added there adds to the tangle of strings attached to my body. Every deadline pulls a cord. And every day, deadlines meet like roads, repel like enemies, and put me at the core of a tug-o'-war.
"Shane, will you please read the final handout for today?" My voice might not reach across the room where he was sitting. I nodded and he understood.
Our group did it quickly. We filled the last spaces on the whiteboard. We completed the four columns. Although the algorithms in my head had not materialized and our arguments in the support or demurral of our differentials had been wanting of power, we at least came up with a straightforward plan for the management of our case. Despite my preparations, those random minutes spent practicing in front of a mirror or wall, I still sounded like a programmed machine. Few people were willing to risk an exam for a brilliant (absolutely) spontaneous SGD. Yet everyone was able to speak, contributing pertinent bits of information. As a leader, that was enough for me.
After class, we dispersed like seeds in the wind, adding to the growing swarm just outside the school library. At four o'clock in the afternoon, the second floor of the campus became like the eye of a storm. We have very little, if any, time to chat with friends we met in the way. Almost everyone would scurry or leap to their departments, bags in arms, and stethoscopes on shoulders. At our destinations, we would blend again with a different crowd, before finally meeting another, smaller, duty group.
If compatibility among members in an SGD group were only fair at best, frustrations and quarrels are inevitable. I'd learned as much. Although we'd been taught that the details are as important as the bigger picture, sometimes the best we can do is to ignore the fuzz on the threads and focus more on the intended pattern or the ultimate design.
I rested my writing-hand and pen. My wrist ached after the first four pages of my history. One more formulation to go, and I was done for the day. Waiting for the pain to subside, I tried to think of the last time I felt happy doing the same thing.
Two weeks ago, I became part of a gig. We'd been preparing for it for days. That time, I was so hyped, I didn't mind doing seven pages of history - my longest ever! Collaborations gave me a sense of family. Our goals (and peeves) would bind us with other members until we'd reap the benefits of our labor. Then we'd celebrate together our pain and success.
How swiftly the days change us. It's be another number of weeks to the next event. I wondered if the same people would still show interest in participating, which was seldom the case. In medical school, one didn't really make long-term contracts for companionship with others unless they return his commitment.
My eyes wandered to the darkening footpath outside the wards. A familiar figure was heading for my direction.
"Hello," I said, tentatively smiling.
"Hello," Anton grinned. Finding me alone in the cottage, he frowned for a moment, then smiled again but more radiantly than the flickering light overhead. "Where's everyone in your group?"
"Done."
He looked pained.
Seeing that he couldn't decide the next question, I offered to explain the unspoken agreement of the group. "We don't hold each other here. We don't even have to write the same things."
He agreed to my every notion. Then when I'd complained enough, he told me to save the rest till I finish my history.
As the last trails of the sun had gone under the rising blue-black curtains of the evening, tiny lights fell over the dome above, as if sprinkled by an invisible hand. Some of them simply sprouted and grew. Then a susurrus sheet of translucent gray clouds draped the sky. And they were ever moving, brushing past the twinkling lights and the spot where the moon would surface when the ripe hour came.
He waited until I got out at almost eight o'clock in the evening. We took our stories to a barbecue place, exchanging our heartaches and frustrations in and out of school. After we've exhausted our minds and mouths, we agreed how sick we might appear to people who'd hear our frivolous troubles.
"Or how lonely we must be," he added.
I was trapped. He told the truth. He furnished the dagger that precisely cut through my pride. Lonely people wade together in the flood created by their weeping hearts. Medical school can rob one of the lights of his eyes, heart and soul, leaving a robot polished to succeed in society but not necessarily in personal battles. And that is why we weep in our imprisonment: we weep miserably because we expect emotional reinforcement from our SGD or duty groups yet do not find it. But it's not completely hopeless as it may seem. Pain can blind. Pain can bind. But pain can unmask and reveal the truth. Above all, pain can teach us by demonstration what books can only describe in words.
"We sit here complaining about our exams, our teachers, our classmates, when out there in the real world, real people are dying of hunger, of violence and lack of justice," I said. "Every time I take an exam, I remember my foolishness for not studying hard enough and for shutting out the world when the world needs me the most."
"You're very idealistic."
"I know." My smile became sad. "Someday our ideals are going to catch up with us, and torture us to give them up for our comforts of life."
"I don't quite get you."
"Anyway, Anton, don't look for the perfect love; you'll end up like me. Learn to love her imperfections that she may learn to love yours."
"We're going somewhere, aren't we?" He laughed hard. But when his eyes didn't tear off mind, I knew he understood. "So, what was the bad joke you wanted to tell me about?"
I took my phone out and brandished it in front of him. "I had lunch with friends today. They'd read your messages and thought you were in love with me."
We laughed. For a moment I thought I saw the sky in the immeasurable depths of his eyes. And I saw tiny lights making the sounds of tiny bells as they dance to our chorus. His eyes became familiar territory, but there was still something lacking, someone needed, and something that can be done.
"Wait," I said. When we stopped laughing, I knew it was the right time to ask the right question: "When I agreed to help you by role-playing through text, were those messages really for Kim?"
