Her heart fluttered a little, but she returned the smile easily. “Go study. I’ll clean up in here.”
He didn’t waste time arguing with her. He hauled a stack of books into the living room and had buried his head inside them before she cleared away the first plate.
It was just as well, she thought with a slight smile, that she wasn’t a particularly high-maintenance type of friend. As dear as he was to her, she wasn’t blind when it came to Connor’s faults. Lately he had been more than a little self-absorbed and decidedly obsessed with his schoolwork. She certainly understood why he needed to be that way at this point in his life, but she knew better than to invest too much of herself with a self-centered, manipulative man. Been there, done that. Still bore the emotional scars.
Connor wasn’t anything like Dale had been, but only a true masochist would get involved with a first-year med student, she thought with a wry smile.
His eyes burned so badly that Connor could hardly focus on the charts in front of him. He rubbed his closed eyes with his fingertips, which didn’t help.
He needed coffee. Some sort of stimulant to wake him up and sharpen his mind. He’d never get through all these tables tonight without it.
Standing, he walked into the kitchen, limping a little because he’d been sitting in one position for too long. He heard joints crack as he reached for a cup and he felt suddenly older than his thirty years. He hoped t
here was some coffee left in the insulated carafe he always kept filled. If not, he’d have to waste valuable study time making another pot.
Looking around for it, he noted that the kitchen was immaculate. Gleaming, even. Every scrap of trash was gone, all the dishes washed and put away, the stovetop and counters wiped clean. Even the floor had been swept.
Mia, he thought with a little niggling of guilt. She’d cleaned his kitchen. And he suspected that if he checked his bathroom and bedroom, he’d find that she hadn’t restricted her cleaning to this room. On an impulse, he opened the folding wood doors that concealed the washer and dryer at the far end of the kitchen. Clean jeans, T-shirts, socks and underwear were stacked neatly on the dryer. When he opened the dryer, he found a load of clean towels, still warm and fluffy. Apparently she’d had the washer and dryer running the entire time she’d been there that evening. He hadn’t even noticed.
Had he even thanked her properly for bringing dinner? He frowned, trying to clearly remember her departure…just over an hour earlier, he thought, glancing at the digital clock on the microwave. He’d been buried in his books, staring intently at a diagram of the cardiovascular system, trying to memorize the vessels that originate from the external carotid artery when she’d told him she was leaving. He remembered looking up and reciting, “The superior thyroid artery, the lingual artery, the facial artery, the occipital artery and the posterior auricular artery.”
Without even blinking, Mia had laughed and leaned over to brush a light kiss against his cheek. Her bright blue eyes had been warm in her pretty, girl-next-door face when she’d drawn away, tucking a strand of her light brown hair behind her ear. “Thank you again for the birthday present. Good luck on your test tomorrow. Call me and let me know how it went, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” he had replied, his eyes already on the diagram again as he’d squinted at the brachiocephalic artery, which divided into the common carotid artery and the subclavian artery. “’Night, Mia. Drive carefully.”
He distinctly remembered telling her to drive carefully. Not exactly a “thank you so much for all you’ve done for me tonight and ever since I started med school, I don’t know what I would have done without you.” But at least it showed he cared about her, right?
He didn’t deserve a friend like her, he thought with a disgusted shake of his head. Maybe he could pay her back somehow when she started grad school, which was her plan after teaching and saving for another year or so.
Yeah, right. As a second-year med student, he would take another full slate of courses and begin studying for Step One of the nightmarish medical licensing exam that had to be passed before he could continue with his training. As tough as his first year had proven to be, there were some who warned that the second year was even more arduous. Hard to imagine.
In his third year, he would begin rotations through various disciplines of medicine, continue with classes, and start seeing real patients. Those rotations, with increasing levels of responsibility, would continue during his fourth year, along with preparation for the Step Two exams—clinical knowledge and clinical skills.
All assuming, of course, that he made it through the rest of this semester.
He might as well face it. He wouldn’t be helping anyone but himself for the next three and a half years—and then the four years of residency following that. He would be close to forty by the time he was a full-fledged physician, ready to strike out on his own. What on earth had made him think he could do this—and that the end result would be worth the stress, the sacrifices and the financial investment?
But that was exhaustion talking, he told himself, reaching grimly for the coffee carafe. And nerves. He’d wanted to be a doctor since he was a kid. It was his own fear and stupidity that had kept him from pursuing the goal earlier and he wasn’t going to let his dreams be derailed again.
A yellow sticky note was affixed to the carafe. “It’s decaf,” it read in Mia’s looping handwriting. “Get some sleep.”
His vague feelings of guilt dissipated and he scowled. He needed caffeine, damn it. Now he would have to make a fresh pot. He opened the lid of the carafe, and the scent of freshly brewed decaf coffee wafted to his nostrils. Mia made really good coffee.
He sighed and filled his cup. So maybe the jolt of the hot liquid alone would sharpen him long enough to finish the review he’d been studying. And she was probably right; he did need a few hours of sleep before he tackled the six-hour-long exam tomorrow.
He really didn’t deserve a friend like Mia, he thought again as he carried the steaming mug back to his papers. Someday he was going to have to figure out a way to repay her.
“So have you seen Connor lately?” Spanish teacher Natalie Berman asked as she picked at the school cafeteria lunch of greasy spaghetti, cold green beans, canned fruit cocktail and a rather stale roll.
Wishing she had remembered to pack a lunch that day, Mia swallowed a forkful of green beans before wiping her mouth with a paper towel. “I saw him a couple of nights ago. He was studying for a monster exam and I made him a casserole.”
“Is he doing okay?”
Mia shrugged and twisted her fork in the overcooked pasta. “He looks really tired. He could use a solid eight or ten hours of sleep, but I don’t think he’s going to get that until Christmas break, if he allows himself to rest even then.”
Natalie shook her dark head in disapproval. “Can’t imagine why he wanted to take that on. He had a good job here. He probably would have been named head coach when Coach Johnson retires next year. Now it’s going to be years before Connor finishes school and then he’ll have all those loans to pay back. Not that he’ll have much trouble doing that,” she admitted. “Doctors certainly make good money.”
“He didn’t go into it for the money. He’s pursuing a dream he’s had most of his life. And he’ll be a great doctor.”