Bambi at the frat party

                My watch said 5:06 when I walked through the doors of the hospital’s walk in clinic. The clinic isn’t exactly an emergency room, but isn’t exactly an urgent care center either. People who go there usually don’t have health insurance, but have maladies that range from the sniffles to broken bones. The sad part is, most of these people have let their illnesses and injuries go for some time. They ignore them, hoping they will go away because they can’t pay for the treatment. It’s a sad place to have to work, and an even sadder place to visit.

                I made my way over to the reception area and signed in to the system. The time card said I started at 05:09. Just as I turned around, Jill practically shoved a chart in my gut.

                “Morning Dr. Mettlen, nice of you to make it. There is a lady in room two, complaining of abdominal pain, fatigue and nausea. Twenty bucks says she’s prego. Anyways she needs an exam.”

                Jill had the bedside manner of an old, miserable cat. If you really made her, she would be nice, but she always made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want to be. The rest of the time she was sarcastic and borderline rude, but for some reason patients seem to love her.

                Jill and I had known each other since elementary school. We had actually grown up in the same little coastal town in Virginia. After graduating high school, she married a guy in the Navy who later would get assigned in Boston, which is where I went to Medical School. By some twist of fate, we ended up at the same hospital. The two of us were never particularly close growing up, but we had mutual friends. Since working together we had developed a working professional relationship, with plenty of room for crude jokes and after work drinks, but we had never really gotten much farther than that.

                I am only about six months into my residency, but I feel comfortable and competent.  I just turned twenty five two months ago, making me the youngest resident here. Most of the others graduated med-school at twenty five, then had their internship, putting them at about twenty six when they entered their residency. I was twenty four when I started mine. I graduated high school a year early, and my birthday wasn't until November. When I graduated high school, I went straight to a big state school for undergrad, so for the longest time I never felt like I was on the same page as everyone else. Either they were my age and I felt a year ahead scholastically, or they were a year older and I felt a year behind socially. That’s where Jill helped me find some sort of normalcy in this place, she was my age, went to high school with me, and we could relate to each other. We could gossip about friends from back home, and talk about normal, everyday things. Jill is a nurse, and I am a doctor, so there is no competition. I can be friends with her without having to worry that she is going to try to out perform me. I always felt at ease around her. Even though we weren’t super close outside of the hospital, it’s nice to have a work friend like that.

                  I have always felt like I have been playing catch up with my peers.  I was only sixteen when I started college, turning seventeen in the November of my freshman year. When I arrived on campus for the first time, I was even more naïve than the average freshman girl. It was in my youthful, sixteen year old freshman state that I met Sean.  The first time I met him was at a frat party that was being thrown at the house he was pledging. When I walked in, he was frantically picking up the pieces of an empty liquor bottle someone had thrown down the stairs, while some active member was shouting at him and two other freshman boys to go faster. The same active member came over to the group of girls I was with and started flirting. He ordered Sean to bring us all drinks, and when Sean returned, he had a dining hall tray with plastic cups full of some lethal concoction.

Sean handed me mine and whispered “For the love of God, If you want to wake up in the morning with pants on, do not drink this”.

 I had heard so many stories during orientation about girls getting drugged and raped, that the thought of drinking whatever was in that cup made me nauseous. My paranoid, sheltered, roofie-fearing hands dropped the cup to the floor, the red liquid splashing everywhere. The senior frat boy didn’t have to say a word before Sean and three of his pledge brothers began cleaning the mess up. I turned on my heel and sped-walked away to avoid any further embarrassment. Later, while hiding with my new friends in another crowded room, I felt someone tap my shoulder.

 When I turned around, I saw him again, except this time he wasn’t nearly as pathetic. He actually looked like a person instead of an abused butler.

“Sorry if I am interrupting, but I was instructed by the active members to follow you around and make sure you don’t spill any more punch” He said, looking me up and down like he was a cop and I was a teenage boy out past curfew.

“You said it was drugged. I’m not drinking that shit” I shot back at him, Trying to sound confident by swearing. I never used to swear.

  “I didn’t say it was drugged, I meant it was strong so be careful. You look like Bambi walking around here. Like you are so innocent and don’t know what’s going on. I was trying to help you out, not make a mess for me to clean up"
 “Well you could have worded it better.” I said, feeling a little embarrassed. I was a little fish in a big pond here. I was anxious and insecure, and apparently everyone there could see it.

Just like he said he was going to, he followed me around all night. We even struck up conversation, talking about our majors and our classes so far. It turned out that our hometowns were only about a half hour drive apart, and that we both love professional baseball, except he was a Rays fan while I was a Red Sox fan. The fearful, self-protective part of my personality would like to say I had no idea that he would play such an important role in my life, but I would be lying.

I knew from the minute I met him that long after that night he was still going to be there, right beside me, making sure I didn’t embarrass myself and keeping me company while I tried to figure this whole “life” thing out.