Once, he would’ve been so ridiculously out of my league, I would’ve lowered my eyes to the ground as he passed. Not anymore. Now we were equals. I was thirty-two, secure with my abilities, comfortable in my own skin, someone who enjoyed her own company and loved her friends, too.
Bobby was the head of the ER, a young person’s job fit for adrenaline junkies and doctors who didn’t love patient interaction. Fix ’Em Up and Ship ’Em Out was the ER’s motto, and no one embraced it more than Bobby. Once in a while, I’d be called to the ER for a rectal bleed (usually just hemorrhoids, but everyone always thought they were dying, so it was kind of nice to be able to reassure them). I’d see Bobby, he’d smile at me.
There was a group of us at the hospital who were unmarried; we called ourselves Doctors Without Spouses, and we’d go to Fenway once in a while, or to Durgin Park to get Indian pudding. For the first six months we knew each other, Bobby was dating Mia, a social worker at the hospital. She was quite pretty, if way too thin, and perpetually unhappy. Once in a while, she’d come out with Doctors Without Spouses. Our group clearly irritated her; she wasn’t a doctor, kind of missing the joke—the group wasn’t just doctors, but somehow, Mia had never heard of Doctors Without Borders, and every time she came, the name of our group had to be explained to her. But more, she was irritated because she clearly would’ve loved to be Bobby’s spouse.
She was whiny, constantly drawing attention to herself by being visibly wretched. She didn’t like the rest of us, answered questions with one word, sat with a puss on her face. Every time she came with us, she’d have a whisper fight with Bobby and, most of the time, leave, not very surreptitiously wiping away tears. It was all very drama queeny, and I hated it for him...and for me.
She never ate, and being a GI doc, I would wince as she asked for water with a slice of lemon, no food. Her fingers were swollen (laxative abuse), her arms dangling like sticks from her shoulders. Because of the habitual vomiting I suspected, her cheeks were puffy, her lips cracked and chapped, and her teeth looked translucent from enamel loss.
I wanted to help her—and like her—but it was hard. She was obviously troubled and wanted everyone to know it.
One day, I saw her in the hallway, looking harried and on the verge of tears, which was her resting expression. “Mia, got a second?” I asked. We went into an empty waiting room.
“What do you want?” she asked. Not terribly polite.
“Well, to be honest, I’m a little worried about you.”
“Why?” she snapped. “Because you want to date my boyfriend?”
I let that sit a beat. “You’re very thin, Mia.”
“I’m naturally slender.” She looked at my size 10 body with clear disdain.
“You have all the signs of an eating disorder. I’m a GI doc. I can tell.”
She rolled her eyes in disgust. “I’m fine.”
“If you want help, I’m here, okay? I can recommend a bunch of programs and—”
“It’s none of your business, Nora.” She stomped out, the wounded doe on her toothpick legs. Anorexia was such a horror, the warped sense of self, the bizarre pleasure the person got from self-damage. If she didn’t change her ways, she’d face a lifetime of poor health. A short lifetime. I asked Roseline about her, and my friend said everyone had reached out to her, and that she was Bobby’s current damsel in distress.
I mulled that over, let me assure you.
I thought about Bobby too much, sitting on my tiny balcony, nursing a glass of wine and looking over at the Zakim Bridge, that architectural stunner. I liked Bobby, but I wasn’t about to flirt with a guy in a relationship.
One night, when Doctors Without Spouses was going out (minus Mia), Bobby and I walked side by side. In a low voice, I asked him if he had any concerns about Mia’s health.
“You mean her anorexia?” he asked.
“Well...yes.”
He sighed. “I’m trying to help, but she’s pretty happy being miserable.”
“Yeah, that comes across.”
“It would be so nice to date a normal person,” he said, cutting me a look.
“Who you calling normal?” I asked and he laughed. My stomach tightened with the thrill of it.
Two weeks later, Mia quit the hospital and went back to Minnesota to her parents and enrolled in a treatment program. Bobby texted me with the news. For Mia, I was relieved. For me, I was exhilarated.
Bobby was free, and he wasn’t being subtle about his interest.
For the next few months, we kept things at a flirty friendship level—I treated him the same way I treated Dr. Breckenridge, a seventy-something-year-old doctor who was beloved by everyone. But I didn’t have the hots for Dr. Breckenridge.
Bobby was fantastic. Funny, smart, snarky. I almost didn’t want to start dating, our friendship was such a blast. We went running together along the Charles, saw a great blues singer in an appropriately seedy bar. We grabbed lunch at the hospital cafeteria. We walked the Freedom Trail and got Sam Adams beers afterward.
Then one night as we were walking back from a Doctors Without Spouses pizza outing—the original Regina’s in the North End—Bobby took my hand, and it was lovely. Just held my hand, but we knew, and so did everyone else. “How long are you two gonna pretend you’re not a thing?” asked Roseline.
“We’re not a thing,” I said. “We’re two fascinating, miraculous clusters of cells.”
“Throbbing for each other,” added Tom from Ortho.
“That, too,” Bobby added and everyone laughed. It was a golden moment—the beautiful spring finally here after the long winter, a group of young friends at the start of what would clearly be illustrious careers, love on the horizon. Pizza, just like I’d always imagined back in high school.
Two days later, Bobby kissed me. “You ever gonna sleep with me?” he asked.
“Someday, maybe,” I said. “Not today, of course.”
I’d had boyfriends before (three...well, two and a half), but I’d never been in love. I was pretty sure that was about to change.
Another month of flirting and kissing and holding hands before we finally went back to my place and proceeded to laugh, undress each other, laugh some more, kiss and finally get it on.
This was it, I thought as we lay there afterward. Fabulous sex, a guy who was funny and popular and smart and me, who was finally, amazingly, all of those things, too (except for the guy part).
For three months, I had the absolute best time of my life. Life was revving on all cylinders—career, personal, romantic, health. Bobby and I spent at least a few nights a week together, and we laughed and watched old horror movies from the ’60s and made love and ate pancakes at 2:00 a.m. and laughed some more.
Bobby was surprisingly thoughtful—surprising to me, because he was brisk and efficient as a doctor, none of that hand-holding stuff I myself loved doing. He brought me bubbles one Sunday afternoon, the kind kids use with the wand, and we sat on my balcony and we watched the bubbles rise and float. When I sat up all night in the room of a critical patient who’d had massive blood loss after a GI bleed, he came up with a dish of soft-serve ice cream and got me a blanket. One night, when we were spooning in bed, he said, “If I can’t smell your hair at least once a day for the rest of my life, I might have to kill myself.”