“Thirteen hours,” I cut in. “Yesterday I was on my feet working for thirteen hours. I don’t have time to keep up with every single new nuance of immigration law. That is what—correct me if I’m wrong here—your office is supposed to do.”
His face reddened.
“I wish there was something I could do. The unfortunate truth is that sometimes these things slip between the cracks. It happens.”
I rubbed my forehead with my thumb and forefinger, looking down, and closing my eyes.
It was times like these, I remembered why I’d chosen the path I did: not because it was easy, but because I wanted to help people.
When I was eight and my dad died of cancer, I vowed to wage a war on this ‘cancer’ villain that took my father from me too soon.
It just so happened that Yale—thousands of miles away from my small town in Spain outside of Barcelona—had a phenomenal pre-med program for what I wanted to do. So I decided to apply and got in.
My pager buzzed with another notification.
“Just my staff asking where I am,” I said after looking at the text. “I guess I’ll tell them I’ll be back in Spain for a few months!”
“That’s not a bad idea. If you can swing it, take a little vacation,” he said, trying to offer a kind smile. “Look, I’m sorry this happened. Once you’re in Spain, we’ll communicate via email and we’ll sort this out. But for now we’ve got to follow the law.”
I stood up. “I’m sorry as well,” I said, my eyes welling with tears I refused to cry.
For the rest of the day, I smiled and nodded and did my best to stay tuned in to work, but I could feel my emotions being spread thin. On the other hand, the severity of the illnesses I dealt with kept things in perspective. No matter how bad something seemed, there was always someone who was worse off.
I succeeded in going through the motions of telling the staff I would have to be gone by next Friday. But I had to be realistic. My patients needed to be smoothly transferred, and I had to get the incoming doctors up to speed on all of the details of the patients’ treatment. I offloaded all of my shifts except for one next Wednesday and Thursday so I could come in and make sure all the loose ends were tied off with patients.
When evening came, I was dead tired.
I parked in the same spot I always did right outside my condo. I ordered Chinese food from the same place I’d been getting it from for years. Heck, I even made the same exact order of fried rice, one egg roll, and chicken with pea pods. I was a creature of habit, and I had become accustomed to my sterling clean apartment and my nightly routine.
After I ate, I collapsed on my couch with a book.
My phone buzzed with a notification from Rex, the guy I’d been dating.
Well, ‘dating’ was an overstatement if I was being honest.
We matched on a site, and for the last four weeks we had been trying to find a time to meet that worked with both our schedules.
I hadn’t even seen him in person yet, and I was already exhausted from our non-relationship. I sent Rex a quick message about how we would meet up ‘at some point for sure.’ I was too tired to explain my visa situation to him.
Still, I was feeling down, so I called my best friend, Phoebe. She didn’t pick up but called me back a minute later.
“Hey,” I said, my voice cracking a little.
“Sorry I didn’t pick up,” she said. “There’s a fight on TV just now. I’m kind of getting into it.”
“A fight? I didn’t know you were into boxing.”
“No,” she chuckled. “Better. A hockey fight. Turn on channel ten right now.”
I turned it on and saw a rowdy crowd cheering as our Washington D.C. Cougars hockey team played against the Chicago Tigers.
A Chicago player was being escorted off the ice by the referee.
“What happened?”
“Just wait for it. They’ll show the replay.”
They showed the play. A Chicago player, Dustin LeBlanc, had just knocked out one of ours, Landon DeMarco.
