Chapter Eleven
Josie
Bowman’s capsule of the human nephron…countercurrent multiplier system…chemiosmotic gradient…
I yanked my glasses off my face and they hit the tabletop with a soft clack as I rubbed my eyes, which felt dry and almost grainy from all the marathon study sessions.
Water—no, coffee. I needed another cup of coffee.
My muscles barked in protest as I straightened my legs from their usual curled-up position and rose to my feet. How long had I been knotted up in Andy’s kitchen chair? Six hours? More? I’d finished summer school a couple of weeks before and taken the last week off work to focus on studying in preparation of my quickly approaching exam. I planned to use the extra free time to get plenty of rest and recovery time from the incessant cramming, but my sleep had been troubled lately. Restless.
What would I do if this test didn’t work out the way I planned? If I didn’t get into medical school or got there and realized that being a doctor wasn’t for me?
Weeks ago, when Andy had asked if I had a plan B, I’d frozen up, unable to even come up with a good deflection. He soothed my discomfort with his big, warm body and that constant, reliable kindness, and even though he hadn’t brought it up again, it stuck with me, uncomfortable like a splinter that I knew would never stop bothering me unless I dealt with it.
But I never did—instead, I’d mostly ignored the festering, except for the brief times in the darkest parts of my restless nights, when I prodded gently at that sore place, as if to find out whether it still hurt. And it did, it always did, but I still didn’t have a good answer for those questions.
I wanted to be a doctor. Needed it, and the thought of any other future—just…no. I had to be a doctor and I had to be with—
I cast the thought away as I rolled a stiff shoulder and reached for the bag of coffee in the cabinet above Andy’s little coffee machine. The under-used joint crackled and popped, and I winced in response. I had to get back into yoga after this damn test, I thought wearily. Contorting myself into a ball to perch in a chair for hours each day without moving made me feel like I was a thousand years old.
As the tiny coffeepot gurgled and spat the first dark drops of caffeine into the glass pot, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my phone. Numbers flashed on the glowing screen—it was past seven, I realized with a groan. Time to eat some dinner alone, since Andy wasn’t home yet. I tapped on the screen, flicking through windows to reach the pile of text messages that accumulated while I was waded through the anatomy of the human kidney.
A message from Fatima down in Portland, a few from Annie along with pictures of that enormous dog of hers—my heart picked up when I saw the waiting texts from Andy, sent about an hour ago.
Gonna be a late night, he said, and punctuated it with a little frowny face. I need to get a drywall job out of the way so I can get all my scheduled stuff done this week. I’m so sorry. Go ahead and eat without me.
A little prickle of disappointment needled at me. This was Andy’s third late night in a row, and even before this stretch, he’d been pulling them more and more. Part of the business, he’d explained the first time, when he came stumbling in after eleven, yawning and slapping at the fine white drywall dust that coated his clothes.
“Big job,” he’d said as he bent down to brush a kiss to my lips before he staggered off to the shower. “Tight deadlines and sometimes I can’t always schedule all the right people to get things done, so it’s on me.”
And on each of those late nights, when he fell heavily into bed and pulled me close, I snuggled against his shower-damp skin, inhaling his clean, piney smell and listening for his slowing breaths as he slid quickly into sleep. I’d often spread my fingers across the firm flesh above his heart, feeling the reassuring thump-thump as I marveled that this amazing, sensitive man—the kind of man who could tear through a wall with a sledgehammer and then write poetry so beautiful that it broke my heart—was there with me.
Mine, for however long I could keep him.
I shook my head, sighing ruefully as I grabbed a mug from a nearby cabinet. Andy’s favorite mug, I noticed with a slight smile, printed with dozens of photos of his oldest brother. Nicky had given them out one year as corny Christmas gifts and Andy still loved it because it made him laugh so much. And because Andy loved it, so did I, enough that I used it when he wasn’t around, just to make me think about his smile and his laugh while I waited for the real thing to walk through the door.
When he finally did, it was two hours later and the last dregs of coffee had long since gone cold in the bottom of the Nicky mug. I slumped over the laptop, blinking my dry, irritated eyes and trying to stuff one last bit of information—something about oxidative phosphorylation, but frankly the words blurred and rearranged in front of me before I could read them all the way through—into my already-overtaxed brain.
“You’re still going?” Andy said as he padded into the kitchen in his socks. A thick streak of beige paint slashed across the front of his old gray t-shirt, as though he’d accidentally run into a wet wall.
I yawned and pulled off my glasses to rub at my eyes again. “Just finishing up. You’re home a little earlier than I thought you’d be.”
He came to a stop next to my chair and bent down to brush a soft kiss against my cheek. “Got the job done tonight. I’m back to human hours until we get backed up again.”
I looked up at him and smiled wearily. “And when do you think that’ll be?”
Andy shrugged. “You never know. When the price is right, I try to get people in as fast as I can.” He peered over my shoulder and into the empty coffee cup. “No wonder you’re sleeping like shit if you drink coffee this late in the day.”
I shook my head as I rose to my feet and shuffled closer to him. “It’s not the coffee. I’m practically immune to caffeine these days. I think it’s just the stress of . . . well, everything.”
When Andy pulled me close and wrapped his arms around me, heedless of the flaking paint and bits of dust in his clothes and hair, something inside me relaxed, like a high-tension wire that ran taut through my muscles and bones that went slack. I melted into his chest, pressing my face into the soft nook between his chest and shoulder while my arms crept around his lean waist to pull him in closer, even as I wondered if I could ever feel close enough to Andy.
“You should get some rest,” he murmured into my hair. “You’ve got that glazed look like you can’t take in anything else, anyway.”
I nodded, then nosed further into the warm cotton of his shirt. “Yeah, you’re not wrong.” I thought about the dull smudges under Andy’s eyes, too, then glanced at one of his hands, where a few brand-new nicks and cuts shone angry red against his callused olive skin. “You should crash, too. When did you get up? Five?”
He groaned and bent down to bury his nose in my hair. “Yeah,” he murmured into the thick strands. “I’m gonna be a boring date tonight.”