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Stories
by Vincent Lam
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“What do you mean, me?” she said.
“Telling me this. Did you feel . . . interested?”
“I thought you might be.”
“You might say that I’ve noticed you, but I accept the
situation. Priorities.” The imperative of medical school
applications carried the unassailable weight of a religious
edict.
“Very well,” she said, as if they had clarified a business
arrangement.
The bill came. Fitzgerald tried to pay and Ming
protested. He said that she could get the bill next time
and she insisted that they should share.
She said, “See you in January,” and left. He had not
even put his coat on, and afterwards she felt badly,
decided she should have been calm and walked out into
the street with him. Not just should have. She wanted
to have done that, to have at least allowed herself to
pretend, for the length of a city block, that there was
something between them. Except that her cousins and
family’s friends were numerous on campus, and might
notice her and Fitzgerald walking together without any
academic justification for each other’s company. Not
that those of her own age would disapprove, and not
that they would do anything less themselves. They
would be enthusiastic about such gossip, and it was the
talk that could be dangerous.
Fitz struggled into his sweater, took it off again, sat
for a little while, and then ordered a pint. There came
the relief and ease of the first drink. With this sense of
mild well-being, and having abstained completely over
the exam weeks, and with no more tests to write and
Ming having fled, why not have another? So another
beer, and with it the open hurt of feeling sorry for
himself. This was the part he liked least, when he
wanted to cling to something. This feeling was a lingering
shadow of what he had felt when his mother
went away, and reminded Fitz of how his father had
become cold except when morose in drink. This was
the worst part of it, both familiar and unhappy. What
was new to Fitz was that he felt a pain at not having
Ming. The pain of rejection was a significant shade
different from the longing of desire, he noted,
although drawn from the same palette. This somber
phase could generally be gotten through with a few
more, and therefore justified the third drink. A washroom
break. With the third pint came the brink
between anger and the careless release that could
sometimes be achieved and was the goal of the drinking.
Fitz tried to will himself into this easy release, to
tip over the meniscus of anger that grew like water
perched higher than the rim of a glass, but it didn’t
work today. It didn’t spill over so that he could relax,
and instead he grew angry at his mother for crashing
her car, at the doctors for not saving her, at his father
for being his father, at himself for drinking, at Ming
for being scared. After a fourth pint, the waiter
brought him the bill and Fitz paid it with no tip, angry
at the waiter for presuming that it was time for the
bill. He told himself not to think about Ming because
the anger didn’t help him deal with the hurt of rejection.
He let himself out into the street where it was
still snowing, that drifting quiet veil that sometimes
persists after a storm.
—
During the previous month, Ming and Fitzgerald had
studied at the same table in the library. For self-identified
“med school keeners” (the label was inherently selfdesignated
even for those who publicly denied it), study
tables were the monks’ cells of exam time. Adherents
arrived early in the morning and sat silently except for
whispered exchanges. There was a desperate devotion
to the impending sacrament and judgment of the
exam. The faithful departed late at night, and returned
upon the library’s opening. At first Ming and
Fitzgerald sat at the same table coincidentally, but
gradually the third table from the corner window
became their table. One day they courteously acknowledged
that they were studying for the same examinations,
and then later that day murmured about
phosphorylation reactions.
The above excerpt is the complete text of the short story "How To Get Into Medical School, Part 1" , pages 1-30 of Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures. Copyright (c) Dr. Vincent Lam, 2007. Reproduced with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
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