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“Smelly Elly? I seriously can’t believe you forgot about that.”
I’m back at the cafeteria having lunch with Eliot, aka Dr. Jamison, the oncology resident. I decided it was time to come clean and apologize for how mean I was to him when we were kids, except he doesn’t remember half of it.
“Ok,” I laugh. “What about the time I hid your inhaler in a tampon box? You can’t have forgotten that one.”
Eliot’s smiling at me, but his eyes are soft. Maybe it’s the white coat and official nametag, but he looks like he could be ten years older than I am. “Actually, there’s a lot about those days I don’t remember.”
I bite my lip. Of course. It should be the golden rule of foster brats. Don’t bring up the past. What was I thinking?
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. When he called up to Natalie’s room to invite me to lunch, it had sounded like such a good idea. Now I’m not so sure.
“Hey, don’t apologize. If what you did to me was really that bad, there’s no way I could have forgotten it so easily, right?”
We both know this is a lie, but I pretend to agree with him.
“So, tell me about your daughter,” he says. “Her name’s Natalie, right?”
It’s ironic, really. Here I am wanting to talk about the past to forget all the pain that’s going on now, and he’s the exact opposite. Is there any safe ground between us?
I give him the sixty-second summary of Natalie’s condition. Tell him the doctors think she got a lung infection from breathing in so much of her drool.
“Poor little thing,” he says.
I still can’t believe he’s already a doctor. If I remember right, he was only three or four years older than me. Of course, he’s a genius. Probably graduated early and all that. But still, he’s already got his MD? Meanwhile, what do I have to show for myself? A sick baby, a marriage license that may or may not be valid come summer, and a trailer in the middle of nowhere that I doubt I’ll ever see again and isn’t even in my name.
I pull out my phone to show him a picture of Natalie.
“She’s a cutie,” he says as he takes my cell, and I want to kiss him for being so kind.
“Yeah, she is,” I agree.
My phone beeps from an incoming text, and he hands it back to me. “Oh, this must be for you.”
Mom’s at the Omak hotel. Having a buddy drop me off there this afternoon.
“Everything ok?” Eliot asks.
“Yeah, it’s just ...” I find my cheeks warming up and I don’t know why. “It’s Natalie’s dad. He’s trying to find a way to get here from central Washington. Kind of crazy.”
I shouldn’t be embarrassed, but I am. Eliot Jamison, my asthmatic foster brother from a dozen lifetimes ago, now probably makes enough money in a single day to get a private flight from Orchard Grove to Seattle. Ok, so maybe not that much yet, but once he’s out of his residency he sure will. Meanwhile, my husband’s stuck four hours away because his car’s a piece of trash and won’t make it over the North Cascades without burning the engine.
There’s karma for you right there.
Eliot and I make some small talk while we finish our lunch. I find out he went to Yale on a full scholarship for his undergrad, got accepted into some posh med school in New York City right after that, and has been doing this oncology residency for about six months now. He doesn’t mention a wife or a family, and I don’t ask. When we’re done eating, we promise to connect again soon even though I wouldn’t be surprised if I never hear from him again.
I get back on the elevator to the peds floor, and I find myself wondering if Eliot Jamison’s is the one soul in this world who’s as lonely and lost as mine.