George headed back toward his apartment, going through the back gate. He took in the relative rundown condition of the complex, which didn’t improve his mood. With a wry smile he imagined how it must compare to Paula’s home. Although he’d never been to her house, he knew Santa Monica had become a high-end neighborhood loaded with celebrities and studio executives living in multimillion-dollar homes.
George’s apartment complex, likely built in the sixties from the look of it, was an eyesore. It was a poorly constructed U-shaped structure, just like a gazillion other apartment buildings strewn across the greater Los Angeles area. Inside the U was a small, unappetizing pool ringed by a few scraggly palm trees and other plantings fighting for life. The building was two stories high with mostly one-bedroom units, although there were a few studios and two-bedroom apartments as well. The building manager lived in a ground-floor studio next to the back gate. His contribution to the building was a bad joke, as George had come to learn over the years. At exactly 3:00 P.M. every day the guy began drinking. If he made an on-site inspection of an apartment past 3:00 P.M., a drink was always in hand. And since he was hungover every morning, he was MIA before noon.
The ground-floor units of the complex had small fenced-in patios facing the pool. George estimated that the rickety fences hadn’t seen a coat of paint in at least ten years. George occupied a one-bedroom unit, as did Sal. Sal’s apartment was just to the left of George’s, and on the other side a wannabe actor slash waiter. His name was Joe. George didn’t know the last name, and he didn’t want to.
The actor’s apartment, like Sal’s, was the mirror image of George’s but, unfortunately for George, their bedrooms shared a shoddily constructed common wall without insulation. Consequently, George already knew quite a bit about the actor, since he could hear the man’s conversations as clearly as if he were in George’s apartment. Joe worked at a nearby Beverly Hills restaurant and had lots of one-nighters that he picked up at the dive bars on Sunset over in West Hollywood. These sexual escapades often woke George up. A few times, desperate to get back to sleep, George pounded on the common wall, but it had never done any good. It was apparent that Joe’s attitude toward women was not all that different from Clayton’s.
Since George had so many nights that required him to stay in the hospital on call, he’d tolerated the Joe the Actor issue, but now that he was about to begin his final year of residency, which had no scheduled night call, he knew he was going to have to do something.
George skirted the pool, glancing over at two inked-up twenty-something girls floating on rafts. They lived in one of the upstairs units. They were drinking PBR beers from tallboy cans and didn’t acknowledge George as he passed. He assumed his lack of body art combined with his somewhat combed hair was a factor.
Rounding a sad-looking palm tree, George started toward his door. Besides Sal, George was friendly with only one other tenant. His name was Zee, and George really didn’t know him all that well. He wasn’t even sure if Zee was his real name or not. He was in his mid-twenties and used to work for a computer gaming company. He had gotten laid off when a major new product bombed upon its release. According to Zee, he had nothing to do with that particular product, but since he was the low man on the totem pole, he was one of the employees who got their walking papers. Now he supported himself playing poker on the Internet, a career choice George never knew existed until Zee gave him the 411 on it.
George knew Zee to be incredibly computer savvy and capable of fixing anything and everything associated with hardware and software. That talent had come in handy on occasion. Zee had helped George with a number of iPad and iPhone issues. George was also aware that Zee was an accomplished hacker since he had regaled George with hacking stories while fixing whatever computer device wasn’t working. It seemed to George that Zee hacked secure sites just for the fun of it. Zee bragged that he could hack into anything.
Slamming the door behind him as he entered his apartment, George was in a strange mood. iDoc had invaded his world without his even having been aware of it. And it was an idea he had supplied to one of its creators! He wasn’t sure if he was depressed or just pissed off about the whole thing. The distinction probably didn’t matter.
“Shit!” George shouted while glancing at the bare shelves in his refrigerator. He had forgotten to stop at Ralph’s grocery on his way home. The empty fridge underscored how sad and devoid of pleasure his life was.
He looked around the room. He had no pictures on the walls and no photos. There had been a few of Kasey, but after she died he put them away. They were too painful to look at every day. His only addition to the furniture that had come with the apartment was the flat-screen TV and a bunch of radiology textbooks. Sad. Very sad indeed.
11
George entered the radiology main conference room, checking messages on his phone while balancing a cup of coffee on his iPad. For a small gaggle of first-year residents it was the first day of residency. He was still in a blue funk from the previous day and still couldn’t decide how he felt about Paula and iDoc.
Feeling decidedly antisocial, George took a seat in the very last row. He liked a lot of his fellow residents and some of them were very accomplished, but he wasn’t close to any of them. For the most part, they were married, some with kids and living a completely different life from George’s. In truth he felt envious, and it made him miss Kasey that much more.
George sipped his coffee and tuned out the welcoming speeches. He had heard them all, ranging from the warm to the threatening. George stifled a yawn as he eyed the first-year residents. There were more women than men this time around, and all appeared eager to go. They were scrubbed up in crisp, freshly laundered and pressed white coats. He had made it a point to look over the list of the first-year residents a few days before and noticed they were all married.
George’s mind wandered as the meeting droned on. Over the last few months he was supposed to have been dreaming up some sort of research project for his fourth year, but he hadn’t given it much serious thought. He wondered about the possibility of doing a year of subspecialty radiology as a way of putting off the decision about what he was going to do after he graduated from the program. After the previous day’s presentation at Amalgamated, he wasn’t as sanguine about his professional future as he had been prior to it. Would he end up working for Amalgamated or its equivalent? Unfortunately he thought the chances were depressingly possible.
At the conclusion of the department’s welcoming conference there was a modest spread of doughnuts and coffee to encourage mingling. George watched it all from the periphery, feeling disassociated. Just then Clayton caught sight of him and sidled over before George could escape.
“The women are getting better looking every year,” Clayton whispered.
“It’s just that we’re getting older,” George replied. “Plus they’re all married, so it doesn’t matter.”
Clayton glanced over at George. “Someone got up on the glass-half-empty side of the bed this morning. What’s your first rotation this year?”
“Supervising emergency imaging in the ER.”
“Good!” Clayton said, pleased. “I had told scheduling to assign you there, but you never know. Can’t count on anyone anymore. Listen: I heard through the grapevine that there’s a knockout first-year ER resident from Stanford. Single, since that seems to be a prerequisite for you. Her name is Kelley something or other. Check her out. I’m always thinking about you, buddy.”