In a post-communistic city crawling with crooked cops and stray dogs, a girl in her father’s oversized black jacket steps in dog shit. She scrapes the heel of her sneaker against the thick brick walls of the tunnels that run through the heart of the city. Winding her way through the tunnels, narrowly avoiding the airborne saliva from the heated argument between an orthodox monk and a gypsy man. She cuts through the park. If you could even call it a park, absent of grass, mud thick from the rain, and a poor man’s handful of trees. She keeps her eyes on the ground, hopping from one haphazardly placed stone to the next, avoiding the muck. Her once-white sneakers were grey, much like everything in the city. With the pollution abundant in the sky, the buildings tattooed, and the people, exhausted and bitter.
She swung open the heavy oak doors engraved with the Rod of Aesculapius, startling the sleeping cat that watched over the university. She trudged up the three flights of stairs and down the hallway of overgrown foliage, giving the building the illusion of life, to the changing rooms. The Dean of the University insists that students and residents be properly dressed for morning meetings.That is in scrubs and a lab coat, only to sit and discuss patient cases in a board room on the top floor, then make their way back down to the basement, to do work that actually requires special clothing, and then once their shift ends, walk all the way up the stairs, dirty and spreading disease, suggestions for more efficient systems were rejected at previously mentioned meetings.
She flung her backpack onto the bench, ripped her jacket off her body, and wiped the sweat off her forehead. The boy resting against the lockers with his phone and two cups of coffee leaped from his seat, "Mara! Hey, good morning.”
His smile remained as the dark liquid escaped the lid and dripped down his hands. He settled the cups on the bench, and wiped his hands on his green scrub pants, "How are you?" He always asked rhetorical questions with utmost sincerity.
"Hi, Ilija," she let out a breath and smiled at him. She noticed his eyes, they were bright as if he had just sprinted down a beach in the morning light, somewhere beautiful, she thought. She sometimes wondered how he could be so full of light in this place. She looked away and began shedding layers. "Why haven't they turned off this godforsaken heat already, It's April."
Ilija shifted his body to face the chipped brick wall, giving her. "Did you notice that all windows are open?" he teased, as his fingers traced the lines of the painted blocks, picking at the baby blue paint.
There wasn't a rule about coming in already dressed in scrubs, most students took advantage of that. Mara tried it once. She spent the entire walk worried that someone would start having a heart attack in the street and everyone would look at her for help. It felt like testing fate. More importantly, it defeats the purpose of sterility.
"Yes!" she stripped to her underwear, folding her jeans and rosy pink long sleeve, "That's exactly my point, they are wasting energy and money heating up this building, just for it to literally go out the window, complete stupidity," She felt the sweat slick on her neck and down her back as she stood exposed to the locker room air. Her hands moved fast stacking her clothes on the shelf and tossing her backpack to the bottom. She knew there was no need to rush but she couldn’t help it.
She pulled on her scrubs and slipped her feet into her patterned clogs, "How was your weekend?"
She knew he wasn’t looking and would never peek. She had peeked at Ilija once before back in the beginning, it was an accident. In the beginning, there were more of them, all changing at the same time, about 10 people changing in one tiny locker room, and they were forced right next to each other. Elbows poked, skin brushed and faces blushed. She didn’t mean to look at him, she had simply looked down, and there he was in his slim-fitting black underwear and long legs. She can still see his legs behind her eyes, slim and covered in sparse dark hair.
"Oh, you know, I had to drive my grandparents to that special hospital, it was like four hours to get there.BabaRadmila kept turning off the music to talk."
"Right," she let out a short laugh and tugged on her white lab coat, spinning the locker dial, "It's great for Radmila’s arthritis, so worth it, right?"
"Definitely." He stood, his fingers gripping the lid and placing the cup into her hand, "For you," he said with a gentlemanly bow of his head.
Ilija was tall, but not too tall that he was imposing or that her neck hurt to talk to him. She liked that about Ilija and that he cared for his grandparents.
“For me? dammit, I was hoping you would be kicked out of the room again today," she smiled. The last time Ilija had one too many cups of coffee, the professor sent him out of the room. To be fair, he was talking a mile a minute and practically racing around the autopsy table. It was easy to pick on Ilija. He wasn't the type to bite when someone nibbled.
“I wasn’t kicked out, I was asked to leave. He lifted his chin and continued "Shut up, I know you were at neuro last night,"
He watched her take a slip, watching for a reaction as he ran a hand through his curly brown hair. She gave none.
She lifted her brows at him, "How did you pass the time on your drive back?” changing the subject back to his weekend.
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