Titty
Damn it!
I still don’t know why it does that.
I snort loudly into the empty space of the parking lot. Glad no one’s around to witness it.
I actually can’t tonight. Scheduled an evening facial. FaceTime after?
Sure thing
Everything okay?
Just a weird day.
I shake my head at the screen. It isn’t a weird day. This day sucks ass, and I decide to turn to the one guy who’s been there for every mistake and misstep, and has guided me out to the other side: my big brother.
“What’s doing, little bro?” Brandon says after the third ring.
“Nothing. Just had a bad day.”
He laughs in his loud, boisterous way. “How come you never call me on the good days?”
“I don’t need your dumbass voice on the good days.”
“All right, all right. What’s got you down in doctor land?”
I slip into my truck and turn on the engine, waiting for the Bluetooth to connect before speaking. “You remember Mrs. Givens in tenth grade?”
He whistles. “Yeah. The witch gave me detention for dropping a pen once.”
“You remember the toilet paper prank?”
He cracks up on the other side of the line, and I chuckle as well, remembering how pissed the old crab was about having to unspool layers and layers of toilet paper from around her desk.
“That was epic,” Brandon says. “Didn’t you put it around her car, too?”
“I had help for that part.”
“Classic.” His chuckles die off. “So what about it?”
“When she found out it was me, she told me that I act like a child, I’ll never amount to anything and no one will ever take me seriously because I’m an absolute screwup.”
He curses under his breath. “The woman was awful, Ash. We all knew that.”
“Yeah.” I throw my truck into Reverse and back out of my parking space. “I think about that sometimes, though. It just... It kind of feels like she was right.”
“Asher, you’re a doctor.” He says it like that’s all it takes to be winning at life.
Still feel like a fraud, though. Even with that meaningless MD after my name.
Okay, maybe notmeaningless. Took a lot of work to get, actually. Wasted my twenties on it. So why does it feel trivial?
“Being a doctor isn’t enough,” I say. “I want to be agooddoctor.”
“Youarea good doctor. Do you know Mom reads us your patient reviews sometimes? She’s so fucking proud of you, man. And from what I can tell, your patients think you hung the moon or some shit.”
“Not all of them,” I mutter.
