SOMETIMES, MEDICINE SUCKS

I woke up today, thanking God tomorrow was gonna be a free weekend. No papers, no assignments. Because I managed to finish everything last night with Luke in the background. Tomorrow, I plan to conquer every freaking transcription ever posted, and then some. And then I’d get to spend the entire Sunday with Luke.

I showered leisurely, knowing I had all the time in the world because I woke up early enough. When I was ready to go, I had enough time to walk and even get myself a nice cup of coffee. All was well.

I arrived at school with five minutes to spare and saw Luke there, waiting for me by the elevator. He waved a little at me, and I gave him a nice bright and shiny smile.

“I missed you,” he muttered as he gave me a peck on the cheek.

“Ditto,” I replied as I drank in his scent, inwardly laughing how ridiculous missing him was. We were together just last night!

We went straight to his apartment after we both got out of school and work yesterday. I needed help staying awake for all the papers I needed to finish and he did just that while he watched TV and ate pizza. We have, just last night, become that kind of couple.

He wanted me to stay the night but I wanted to go back to my apartment remembering we still had to slow things down a bit. I wanted to take a cab, but Luke said he couldn’t let me “drive off with a stranger at this late hour”. So we sped off at eleven in the evening on his Ducati as he dropped me off at my building. It was physically impossible to not let him upstairs, but I had to make him go home. And I slept well that night, hence the good start I was having today. But I missed him. And apparently the man missed me, too. Sigh.

Luke never poked at me about my dinner with Casey either. I texted him when I got home that night and all he asked was, “Had fun?” I said yes, she’s awesome with multiple exclamation points to convey my enthusiasm, and that was that about the Casey dinner at Cabeza. And everything has been going on extremely fine. Sigh again.

The elevator doors opened, and we filed in along with the other students. We were both stuck at the back but we didn’t mind. I looked up at him and saw he was looking down on me, and I felt his hand on mine, and I thought this day might just be one of the best ones.

The students thinned out slowly, ickle firsties and sophomores, floor after floor, until it was only Luke and I going up three more floors to where my class was gonna be. It was one of his “things” that whenever we went together, he’d see me off before he went to work.

“I’ll see you later,” he murmured behind my ear just a little after he kissed me. It was such a common phrase but he managed to make the hairs on my neck prickle by the way he said it.

I was smiling dreamily when I entered the classroom. Which happened to be in silent chaos. “What’s up?” I asked Anne as I occupied the seat next to her. I had to give it to her, she was already busy reading transcriptions this early in the morning.

“Literature reviews for clinical research due on Monday. No extension,” she blankly answered, not even bothering to look up from her tab.

“You’re kidding me, right?” I asked with wide eyes. I didn’t even have a decent topic yet!

“Do I look like I’m freaking kidding? I’m freaking out!” Anne said, showing me her tablet screen. She hadn’t been reading transcriptions. Article after article were opened in her browser’s tabs. And she had it by the dozen at my estimate.

“Did your group get your topic approved already?”

“No. They’re gonna do the approvals later this afternoon.”

“During the afternoon class?”

“Yes.”

“How are we even gonna be able to swing that?” I asked in revolt, but took out my laptop nonetheless. The class had been divided into groups, and each group member was to come up with a research topic and a justification for choosing that topic. The research topics will serve as a pool for the entire group to choose from with the help of our research adviser. In the end, only one topic will be pursued by the entire group. And the topics were scheduled to be submitted next Friday. UGH!

Anne merely shrugged her shoulders with a roll of her eyes. “The one day I decided not to bring my laptop with me,” she muttered darkly before going back to facing her tablet.

Not mere minutes later, the lecturer had arrived. Most everyone had been busy with their laptops even before class started. And I would bet you anything, the majority of my classmates were busy consolidating their research topics for this afternoon’s presentation, not typing away lecture notes. I was certainly part of that majority.

The lecturer droned on and on about the different types of anxiety disorders and their symptomatic presentations. Yeah, well, at least that’s what it said on his title slide. Fifteen minutes into his distracting monotony (I could not string a decent sentence together for my research topic justification!), I decided I had to set up camp somewhere else. I tapped Anne’s wrist, told her I’ll just be in the library, and artfully sneaked out of the classroom (with my laptop) unnoticed. I never paid attention in any of the Psychiatry classes, anyway.

I took the stairs to go down two floors, lest the lecturer (or his secretary) decide to find themselves where the elevator doors were. Then I rode the elevator the rest of the way. Our library occupied an entire floor and it was generally empty at this time of day since everyone supposedly had class. I occupied my favorite corner table – the one far from traffic but near a window – and started to set my computer up. Five minutes after I had started typing away, I saw Anne walk in, looking for me. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one being distracted by the walking monotony that is my Psychiatry lecturer.

“This fucking sucks,” Anne declared as she sat across me, wanting to slam her tablet on the table but catching herself last minute. If she destroyed her tablet, she’d be done for. Or, well, she’d be stuck with the library computers which had a knack of shutting down in the middle of important work (true story).

“I was really hoping for a weekend off. Luke and I had plans,” I shared her sentiment. Luke did want to go out and finish the rest of our second date that we didn’t get a chance to do since we both wanted to go home so bad last time (wink, wink). “He had been so looking forward to it.”

“And I was planning on a marathon of North and South,” Anne said, rolling her eyes in angst. She was referring to the mini-series where, wait for it, Richard Armitage plays the lead. That got me laughing in amusement.

“Didn’t you watch that already?” I asked, still unable to rein in the giggles.

“Fine, re-marathon. I miss him already and his raised voice and cool temperaments,” she sighed and then laughed too. “Anyways, that is obviously not gonna happen now. Thanks to these inconsiderate research people. Ugh!”

We ended up staying in the library and foregoing lunch altogether to finish the justifications for our research topics. I was not greatly attached with my topic but it had to do. I just had to be able to pass something for our research group’s topic pool. If it ends up being scrapped, I don’t really care.

My Clinical Research class ended early. Half of our group’s research topics were scrapped. Mine wasn’t lucky enough to be eliminated early. It ended up being one of the three topics on temporary approval for group research. And that meant I had to produce a literature review for it over the weekend. (Fuck!).