Rule 16: Be interested in things that interest him!
Rule 37: Learn to listen! Do not just talk about yourself!
“Hey, Sydney?” Quin said from the doorway to the media room. “Can you grab me”—he looked at a sheet of paper in his hands—“Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers, Peter Pan, and anything Care Bears?”
“Sure,” she said and went to the movies lined up neatly on the shelves. She scanned the spines of the movie cases and found the Scooby-Doo one quickly. Peter Pan was a harder find—it was all the way on the bottom shelf next to the Bob the Builder movies. What was it doing there? Maybe someone needed to alphabetize so the movies were easier to go through.
A project for another day? She’d have to talk to Quin about it. He might think she was a huge dork for enjoying something so methodical, but if it’d help the West Wing, who cared?
Movies in hand, Sydney went to West Two and found Quin in room 412 with the new patient staying overnight after surgery.
“Boo Brothers right here,” Quin said, turning on the TV.
The little boy, Seth, clenched his hands into fists and waved them about in the air excitedly. “I love this movie,” he said. “It’s my favorite,” he said to Sydney.
“Oh yeah?” She handed the case to Quin, and he put the disk in the DVD player.
Seth hit the button on the bed to bring his head up. “Yeah. This is the funniest Scooby-Doo one. Probably. Well…I like Zombie Island, too.”
“Cool,” Sydney said.
Quin hit the PLAY button and a movie preview came on. “My favorite Scooby-Doo,” he said, “is the one with Johnny Bravo.”
Seth laughed. “Oh yeah! Johnny is such a dork.”
Quin nodded emphatically. “Right on, dude.” He dimmed the overhead lights. “Enjoy your movie. If you need anything else, let us know.”
“Okay,” Seth said, snuggling into his blankets.
In the hallway, Sydney turned to Quin. “You watch Scooby-Doo?”
He cleared his throat. “Well…you know…Scooby is pretty cool.”
Sydney grinned.
They passed out the other two movies and officially ended their shift.
“Want to grab something to eat with me in the cafeteria?” Quin asked after they’d punched out.
She was rather hungry. And she’d been planning on getting something fast-foodish anyway. Her mom was in Hartford for the night, and her dad was going to some dinner for work, leaving Sydney to fend for herself. She’d talked to Drew earlier on her break in hope of making dinner plans with him, but he had already agreed to go to the movies with Todd.
“Sure,” she said to Quin. “I’m starving.”
The cafeteria at Children’s Hospital had the best salad bar ever. Sydney hadn’t checked it out before, instead going with something quicker like a pre-made sandwich, but was she going to change that.
She’d gotten a Styrofoam container full of lettuce, grilled chicken pieces, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, sunflower seeds, and croutons. And they had their own brand of ranch dressing that—as Kelly might put it—made it awesome.
Quin had gotten a club sandwich and now sat across from Sydney in one of the booths along the huge floor-to-ceiling windows on the back side of the cafeteria. The sky was dusky outside and smoke-gray clouds covered the sun, turning it into a white glowing orb off in the distance.
“I wish I had my camera on me,” Quin said just as Sydney was thinking the same thing.
“You’re into photography?”
He looked at her, furrowing his brow. “You are, too?”
“Yeah. I actually won the amateur photo contest that the hospital put on.”
“Yeah!” Quin pointed a finger at her and smiled. “I thought my sister said you won, but I was talking to her on my cell at the time and she kept breaking up. Congratulations.”
Sydney couldn’t help but grin. “Thanks.”
“That contest is a huge deal around here,” Quin said. “I couldn’t enter it because my sister works here. You should be proud of yourself.”
Sydney hadn’t talked about it much, but she was proud of herself. The feeling she’d gotten that day was better than any feeling she’d had from passing an academic test.
“So, how long have you been a photographer?” he asked.
“I just started this year, but I have hundreds of photos already. I haven’t yet mastered the art of distinguishing between good and bad, so I’ve kept them all.” She shrugged. “But I think eventually it’ll be good to have them around. Then I can see how much I’ve learned and changed.”
Quin nodded. “You’re right, there. We are our own worst critics, but after a few years you’ll look back and see that you’re better than when you started. That should count for something.”
Sydney took a bite of salad, then a drink from her Coke. “So, do you do photography on the side or—”
“No.” He smiled. “My sister would love for me to go to medical school, but I’d rather be a starving artist than a starving resident. I’m actually going into my sophomore year at the Brooks Institute in California.”
Sydney’s mouth dropped open. “Serious?”
He nodded. “I know, it’s big. Sometimes I think it’s bigger than I can handle.”
“Yeah, it’s only like the best photography school in the country. And also extremely hard to get into.”
A blush fanned across his cheeks. “Well…”
“Are you into any other art, then? Or just photography? Because I know the Brooks Institute offers degrees in graphics and film, too.”
Quin nodded. “They do, but I haven’t taken much of them. I’m into almost all kinds of visual art, so I wouldn’t close myself off to the idea of something different. I mean, I like all art. Including the less accepted forms.”
Sydney frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Let me show you.” He unbuttoned his white Oxford shirt. He had on a plain black T-shirt beneath it.
Sydney wondered what he was getting at when he pulled the Oxford shirt off and she gasped.
His arms, from the line of his short sleeve all the way down to his wrists, were covered in black tattoos.
“Oh my god.”
Setting the Oxford shirt aside, he said, “I’m not supposed to let my tattoos show here, for obvious reasons.”
Sydney grabbed his hand and held it up, turning his arm so that she could see every angle of it.
There was a lotus flower on his forearm and a Buddha above it. There were Latin words and dates, stars and strict linear patterns.
“I never would have guessed.”
Well, he did have the long black hair, which was sort of odd coupled with the formal dress he wore to work. Still, Sydney had figured the long hair was something he liked. If he’d never taken his shirt off, she never would have known he was covered in tattoos.
Now that he was in a black T-shirt, several strands of long black hair hanging along his face, Sydney felt she really saw him, that she was looking across the table at the real Quin, and she respected him even more.
“How was work tonight?” Drew asked, stooping down to kiss Sydney’s forehead.
She stilled, wondering if she should tell Drew about Quin. She felt she should be honest with him. If he was hanging out with someone at work, she’d want to know about it because keeping it a secret made it seem that much worse. Even if the situation wasn’t like that. Which it wasn’t.
Sydney grabbed two spoons out of the dishwasher and handed one to Drew. He slipped it into his bowl of ice cream.
“It was good.” Sydney and Drew went into the living room to sit. She went into a big explanation about how she met a young mother who seemed to know everything about the hospital and the machines in her daughter’s room and how Sydney was impressed with her. Drew nodded his head at all the right moments, but Sydney could tell he’d started to tune out most of her long-winded explanation.
She ran through the Crush Code in her head, trying to think of a rule to use for this situation. There was one about listening. Maybe she was talking too much, making the conversation only about her.
“So how was the movie?”
Drew shrugged. “It was pretty good, but nothing really that you’d like.”
See, she thought, Drew is used to you not giving a crap.
“Tell me about it anyway,” she encouraged.
He looked at her oddly, then, “Okay. Well, the main plot point of the movie is that it’s set in 2100 A.D., right, and robots have taken over…”
What followed was a fifteen-minute conversation about the difference between robots and alien movies and how CGI was bringing sci-fi into the next generation of movies. Sydney hadn’t heard Drew so excited in a conversation since…well, since he’d adopted Bear.
Sydney asked questions when she needed to, nodded her head when she was supposed to. For the most part, she just listened, despite the fact that she wasn’t, like Drew said, interested in anything sci-fi.
Did that matter, though? She could sacrifice fifteen minutes if it meant making Drew happy.