An application for medical school

Brad hoped that deciding to become a doctor would impress his pretty 25 year-old college undergraduate adviser. Sitting in front of her little desk in the Behavioral Sciences building, he announced his decision, and she smiled. That helped him get the courage to suddenly ask “Hey Liz, I was wondering if you would go see a movie with me?”

Her eyes widened, but she toned it down in a way that many women who get a lot of propositions do. “Sure why not? What movie did you have in mind?”

“I’ll find something,” he said. Shy around girls, he was feeling nervous and caught off guard. “How about Friday evening?”

“Call me,” said Liz. She wrote her number on the corner of a piece of paper, then neatly tore it across the edge of her desk.

“Okay,” he said. He felt the word stick in his throat. He took it and hurried out to drive to McDonald’s where he would clock in for the 5 pm- midnight shift.

Liz was irresistible. Lovely and intelligent, she had big, sad, mysterious eyes.  Brad had discovered that what was missing in his life was a woman, and he had become certain that finding the right one would fill the hole inside of  him. Maybe Liz was The One. The problem was that he already had a girlfriend named Brenda. He had met her at school two years before, when he thought she was The One.

When Friday came, he told Brenda that he had to pull a shift at McDonald’s to cover for a sick co-worker. He didn’t tell her it was only from 4-6 pm. That allowed time to get ready and pick up Liz at 7. By a quarter to eight, Brad and Liz were standing in line to see Star Wars.  Liz loved anything to do with outer space. In addition to a nuclear level of physical chemistry, that made him feel deeply bonded. Then the disaster happened.

Brad was presenting the movie tickets to an usher on his way into the Star Wars theater. Liz was standing at his side holding a tub of hot buttered popcorn, long brown curls bouncing over her shoulders, her long, athletic figure in a snug pink sweater dress.  Out comes Brenda from the ending of the previous Star Wars showing, wearing baggy jeans and an old blouse, shoulder to shoulder with her best friend Dee. Brad stops and looks at Brenda, and she stops and looks back. They both freeze and lock eyes. Liz looks back and forth between Brad and Brenda. Dee gets upset and calls Brad a lying, fucking cheat, grabs Brenda’s arm and hauls her out of the theater.

Liz looks at Brad and says “Sorry buster!” Throwing the popcorn all over him, she spins around, and follows the crowd out. Brad is frozen, clueless about what to say, what to feel, or who to pursue.

The usher is amused, and says to Brad, “Hey man, I saw that. It could be worse, you could be the father of their children! That happened to me, man. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

Breathing rapidly, pulse pounding, he does the only rational thing he can come up with  – goes home to study. Lost in textbooks, mind busy acquiring new knowledge, he tries to forget the disaster with the opposite sex. It will become just another bad memory in a young life full of bad ones. Brad is alone, left to fill all of his time with work and school.

Pushing forward with applications to medical schools, he gets invited for interviews. The first is conducted by a psychiatrist. They dig into childhood and family history, and quiz him about authority figures. He gets caught in their traps, and is not surprised when they reject him. The interview at the University of Texas is quite the opposite. A faculty member asks him what is the world’s greatest problem and when he says “overpopulation,” they have an inspired chat. He is enthusiastic about Brad’s humble family roots and tells him he should make a good doctor. He gets an acceptance letter a few months later, and prepares to move to Houston, Texas.

Brad gets paired up with a hawk-nosed roommate named Jarl Wacker, who studies like a hound on a fox hunt. Jarl spends every waking hour outside of class dominating their small living room in a gold velvet armchair, burning through syllabuses and texts. By the end of the freshman year he is not only top of the class, he is on track to graduate with more honors than anyone in the history of the school.

While Jarl ruthlessly memorizes reams of medical knowledge, Brad goes to the gym 5 days a week, and starts a new search for Mrs. Perfect. In between he studies and pulls all-nighters as needed before tests.  For the first time since the age of ten he doesn’t have to work. It’s easy to get  loans if you’re in medical school.

Dolled up girls hang out in the public lounge near the classrooms, and greet the medical students coming out. Some of them are students dieticians or nursing students, and some are just aggressive young ladies who heard about a place where they can meet future young doctors. The joke going around is that they are looking for their “MRS Degrees.”

TGIF parties are held at the medical school, with the great intention of socializing and building relationships.  But many of the students and residents need to release stress, and get sloppily drunk.  Naturally raging with hormones, and people are sleeping with each other. FIghts break out, and marriages break up. Relationship disasters rule the day.

The TGIFs ended abruptly when two drunk medical students were caught having sex in an elevator. By that time, Brad was dating 2 girls, one from a TGIF party, and another from the lounge. He was going to get taught a hard lesson, one that was much worse than getting buttered popcorn thrown in the face.