He's about to sweat through his cheap suit and the interview hasn't even started yet.
The elder in Egeigik told him he had unfinished business that he needed to complete for him to ever find happiness. He hoped the old man's salmon all rotted before winter was over, sitting here now. Whore!
He'd retaken his MCATs and the excellent score and fooled him into thinking he'd had a shot at getting back into school even with his past. He'd highlighted all his real world experience – his time in Spain as a doula, volunteering with Doctors Without Borders as an expediter in Mozambique – had gotten all sorts of letters of recommendation – including one from Joseph, the Egeigik elder – and sent out his application to as many people as he could afford to.
Sacred Heart at Winston University was the only school that responded and asking for an interview.
He should feel lucky that he got an interview at all – after all many didn't even get that. Except that Sacred Heart is a new med school and part of the middling ranked university in California. He'd gone to Harvard for chrissakes –
-- Except he'd fucked Harvard up, so maybe he was in the right place after all.
When a young woman comes walking out of the room with that stoic look that means that as soon as she finds the bathroom she's going to lock herself in and spend the next thirty minutes sobbing.
He's not glad to be right when he overhears her quietly asking the secretary where the bathroom is. Whore! Stupid gunner instincts…
An older man ushers him into the interview room where three people are sitting behind a table, looking at him expectantly. It feels like his parole hearing all over again.
Two of them are the ancient old fogies that he's used to dealing with. Kiss their ass, talk about how much you want to help humanity, how you're totally not in it for the money, etcetera etcetera etcetera. The third man, sitting off to the side and looking incredibly bored with the whole thing, is younger and probably some attending from Sacred Heart they bribed into being here with free food at the cafeteria.
They ask him the usual questions, 'Why do you want to be a doctor,' 'Why do you think you'll be a good doctor,' 'What is your greatest weakness,". He gives them the answers they want to hear, tinged with his personal truths on the subject. The old men all nod in time with his comments, not writing anything on the pads in front of them. The bored doc is just staring at him and as the conversation winds down and now it's really starting to feel like he's in front of the parole board again –
Only they're not going to let him out of jail – into medical school. He hopes that old man gets food poisoning from his goddamn salmon.
The whores are sending him politely packing out the door; the bored doc suddenly looks focused – pale blue eyes zeroing in on him with the same intensity of his fellow inmates did on fresh meat.
"You have to be one of the le-he-heast likely candidates I've seen, and trust me; I've seen a lot of the losers that medical schools can turn out. You've already crashed and burned once – why should we invest any more time and money in a failure. Why did you even bother to come back?"
He's floored for a minute, because dear god, who asks honest questions at these things? Better still, who answers them honestly back?
He does, because he's a whore.
"Because I need a second chance. There's still so much I can do – and I'm going to appreciate this opportunity so much more than whatever legacy kid you're going to shove into the spot – and don't bs yourselves, that's exactly what you're going to do."
He turns his back on them, heading out of the room feeling humiliated and barely manages to veer away from the nearby bar.
So he's surprised two months later when he gets his acceptance letter.
