"Hmmm, I wonder why she's being so mean," I said.
"No idea." Liz shrugged. "She seems to have just been born that way."
"No one is inherently evil," I scolded gently.
"Don't bet on that," Liz said as she pulled open the door to the building and winced as her hand made contact with the metal door handle. "You haven't met most of my family."
We stopped in the bathroom to clean up Liz's hands before we took the practice exam. She'd ripped off several layers of skin when she'd fallen, and I did my best to clean it up without hurting her, but she inhaled sharply as I applied soap and gently scrubbed away the dirt and debris.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Yeah, fine. It just stings," she said, biting her lip as she ran her hands under the faucet to wash away the soap.
We were late for class and received a stern look from Professor Jackson as we grabbed our exams and sat down. I tried hard to focus on the exam, but the whole time I was answering questions, a part of my brain was back at my apartment with Cam feeling all of the wonderful ways in which his touch made my body come alive. Halfway through the exam, Liz elbowed me and then pointed to the papers on my desk. Having a crush on Cam Connor was not going to be good for my grades.
"What the hell was going on in there?" Liz demanded as we gathered our things and got ready to head to the lab.
"Nothing, why?" I replied.
"You look like a love struck school girl." She grinned. "Cam Connor is going to ruin your GPA if you aren't careful."
"The thought crossed my mind, thank you very much," I said primly. "I've got it under control."
"Yeah, sure you do." Liz laughed. "Just like Violet has her meanness under control. It's snake handling, my friend."
I looked at Liz, wide eyed, not believing that she'd said that, but her roaring laughter pushed away any shocked outrage I was feeling, and we both laughed until we were holding our sides. Our laughter continued as we entered the lab and prepared for the lesson, earning us nasty looks from Violet and her posse.
"Why is she so nasty to you, Liz?" I whispered as the lab assistant instructed us, yet again, on the necessity of proper slide handling techniques.
"I don't know, she's got a bug up her ass," Liz murmured, making me laugh and earning us a stern look from the lab assistant.
Meanwhile, across the room, Violet, Jessica, and Lydia all stared with rapt attention at Robert, the lab assistant, who could really only be described as tall, dark, and handsome. He was attentive to everyone in the class and always cheerfully answered questions, so most of the girls in the class had a crush on him; everyone, except Liz. She treated him as if he were part of the furniture, functional and necessary, but of little real interest.
"Robby, can you help us with our slides?" Violet asked in a sticky sweet voice. He sighed as he walked over to the table and showed her, for the third time, what she was doing wrong, and was rewarded with a hand on his arm and an overly grateful, "Thank you so much, Robby!"
Liz mocked the girls under her breath as she mounted the samples on the slides and put them under the microscope. When Robert walked by and asked if everything was going all right, Liz grunted the affirmative without looking up.
"Why are you so mean to him?" I whispered as I stared at a slice of epidermis I'd mounted on my slide.
"I'm not mean, I just don't care," Liz replied. "There's a huge difference."
I watched her closely, wondering what had happened that had turned her mood from good to sour so quickly, then shrugged as I turned back to my own slides. We worked in compatible silence for the next hour and a half, and by the time we were done cleaning up, Violet and her crew were, again, fawning over Robert.
Liz rolled her eyes dramatically as she walked past his desk toward the door. I waved and said thank you as I joined my friend. Liz suggested we get something to eat before we went to the library to study, and I reminded her that we'd picked up an extra shift in the ER that night.
"Aw, crap!" she swore as she kicked a pile of snow in front of the building. "I forgot about that. All right, well, I'll meet you at the hospital, then."
"You don't want to come over and get ready and go together?" I asked.
"Nah, thanks; I have something I need to do first," she said, taking off in the direction of her apartment before I could say another word.
I watched her moving down the sidewalk and wondered what she was up to -- and whether I'd have to pull her out of whatever it was that she was doing.
#
I met Liz at the door of the ER a few hours later and smiled as I saw that she was in a good mood. She'd brought a bag full of fortune cookies and proceeded to pass them around to the ER staff and nurses. For a while, the department was calm and everyone enjoyed their sweet treats, but around ten things started picking up as a guy with a gunshot wound arrived, followed soon after by a stabbing and then a heart attack.
I loved the swift flow of the ER and the way that everyone played a part in keeping the rhythm going. The admitting people got the information and checked the past history, while the nurses took vitals and got a rundown of what had happened, then the doctors moved in and evaluated the injury or illness before turning