Masks and gloves make me anxious, but not because you think.
They evoke a longing for a man I can’t have.
Rupesh grabbed his purse and rushed into the rain, like he’s rushing into the arms of Target instead of another woman on Valentine’s Day. He just admitted that he can no longer suppress his feelings for me, despite trying for a few months. I said I appreciate his honesty, but he needs to work it out with his longtime girlfriend.
I didn’t tell him I felt the same way, just double the intensity. I’m not saying that I’ve been eyeing Orbitz’s cheap airfare to Greece, imagining us diving off the cliffs of Santorini and sipping ouzo on the beach. Of course, it’s impossible – for starters, I only have $7 in savings – but my daydreams defy reality and, apparently, basic math.
I’m a 22-year-old immigrant daughter who, during my first year of medical school, was raised with doubts and not shown. Rupesh is my anatomy class lab partner. His forehead rippling gently as he smiles, like the river I fantasize about our retirement life.
But I learned a lesson from complex relationships: strength and vulnerability do not intersect. When Rupps admitted how he felt about me, I told him not to give up his four-year relationship for a lab partner with dirty glasses. I didn’t fight for him – for us.
“Go to her,” I said, straightening my back, reminding myself that I was a strong woman who made great decisions.
He hesitated, then hurried through the downpour to his rusted Toyota Camry. The engine stalled. Fate intervenes, I hope. He looked for me in the rearview mirror. We are too far apart for our eyes to lock on. The engine finally started. His taillights faded slowly in a thunderstorm, then in a flash of lightning.
“Blood cells bring oxygen to build new tissue,” one professor said that morning. “It strengthens as the wound heals.”
There are still old cracks in my heart that haven’t fully healed. I don’t want another wound to make me stronger. I can’t handle the thought of having to rebuild my organization again. But driving away was the only one that made me feel stronger without the armor. I was instantly horrified.
I want to chase him in the dirty sleet. The $120 Timberland boots I just splurged on sat in the corner. At this price, they might fly. But I didn’t move. The fragility of love has burned me before. I don’t make the same mistake twice. He had to figure out his conflicting feelings.
But… what did I just sacrifice?
Five months before the storm took him away, we hovered over the corpse of a generously donated old woman in the lab. “This is the appendix,” he pointed, gloved fingers accidentally touching mine. “This is the pancreas,” I pointed, frowning as my stomach quivered.
His dark brown eyes stick out from his mask.
“Would you like a beer later?” he asked.
I tilted my head as if considering all my invitations. He waited for me to pretend to think. “Yes, it should be possible.”
“A few months later, every time he handed me a scalpel, I couldn’t control the influx of dopamine into my synapses. I forced myself to make eye contact of the right length – I was worried that too short would reveal nervousness, too Long will reveal desire.”
Murphy, the campus bar on Green Street, is our place. Every Thursday, our group of medical students huddled together in a booth happily sipping pints of Bud Light. Earlier that day, we made fun of a classmate about his hyperflexed biceps, he wrote on the board. He responded by showing good esophagus movement by drinking beer.
In those moments, Rupps shone. His humor transitions seamlessly from high-profile to farce. I can skip countless workouts because my abs are sore from laughing. His intelligence is the biggest highlight. man, is he handsome? After a few beers, he tells us that his mother covered his nose with her sari when he was born, fearing that the villagers of their Indian town would curse its grace with evil eyes.
But he didn’t know how to drive the stick. He doesn’t like tennis. He hadn’t read Salman Rushdie or any literature. Like, forever. Prove, I reasoned, that he was far from perfect.
Additionally, he is in a long-term, off-site relationship. He disappeared from campus on Friday afternoon, spent the weekend with his girlfriend, and reappeared on Sunday night. Our group has never met her; we don’t even know her name. It’s been rumored that their problem has been around for a while, but he never made it our business.
I didn’t ask. I’m not going to introduce another complication into my life. We study and party in groups. The two of us stayed behind when the backpack shrank at the end of our hangout. Months later, every time he handed me a scalpel, I couldn’t control the dopamine rush to my synapses. I force myself to make eye contact of the right length – I worry that too short will reveal nervousness and too long will reveal desire.
Sometimes I find him looking at me and then looking away. Is it yearning? Or do I have a clump of corpse belly fat on my cheeks? In our case, you never know.
But I know this guy is dangerous. He silently pulled me to the lab when I was supposed to be in the library, at parties, or at bedtime. How many times can I track the blood supply to the liver? I think we all know our lab time is an excuse. We poured our formaldehyde-preserved lungs with attention that we couldn’t show each other.
As medical students, we should be clinical. decisive. Shortsighted. We strive for perfection, we knew it was impossible, but we worked hard no matter what. We learned from our mistakes. We have to. Mistakes are inevitable, but in medicine, they’re not always good. If we don’t learn the lesson the first time, the consequences are dire.
I’m the girl staring at the phone. Who makes excuses when that person doesn’t call. Ignore the idea of who he was with that night. The last breakup was frustrating for me, but I finally got used to it. Recalibration. A line from Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” became my mantra: “All I learned from love is how to shoot someone stronger than you.”
I’ve learned to spliced out harmful pieces from my genes and replaced them with healthy tissue. Rups must be spliced.
In 2004, the author and Rupesh were in Hawaii on a medical school graduation trip.
Courtesy of Anita Vijayakumar
During the Christmas holidays, we went back to our childhood home. Thinking of him is torture. Stupidly, I asked to see a picture of his girlfriend before we left. She looks like Katie Holmes from the ‘Dawson Creek’ era: cute on her way to beauty. I look down at my dirty scrub and my chapped hands that I’ve washed hundreds of times. I think my hair smells like Purell, no matter how much Pureology I use. Who am I lying to? But the way he looked at me…
It doesn’t matter. I vowed to find a new lab partner. Better yet, go alone.
When we got back to campus, his smile broke all my intentions. We started spending more time together in the name of friends. But the camouflage is getting more and more fragile. It’s hard to pretend when the other person’s face fully reflects your feelings. I continued to pretend, but by mid-February he gave up.
When we were hanging out one day, he looked me in the eyes as if looking for his future. I didn’t look away. He said he had feelings for me and moved in and kissed me. I turned to leave. I won’t be that girl again.
“Go and fix your relationship,” I said. “You owe the other party.”
He admitted I was right and disappeared into the rain.
I don’t know if I’m strong or stupid. Probably both. I was reminded of a lesson I had learned: acknowledging my feelings was a risk. He has exposed his, but so what?
I’ve tried mixing strength with vulnerability before. I had declared that my dream was to pursue writing as a career, but as the eldest son of an immigrant who sacrificed the old world to find security in the new, that was not an option. I have told my past lovers how I feel. That was also closed. Risk begins to align with vulnerability rather than strength, and then shifts completely. Maybe Lupus will be different. But leaving myself vulnerable to him strayed from the straight and narrow line I chose. That means I didn’t learn from my mistakes.
Still, he was standing in the doorway as he drove away, raindrops falling around me like tears. In that moment, I was across from the dissection lab, across from Murphy’s booth, in my fantasy, when the sun opened my eyes, in my fantasy, I wanted I-57 across from me Wheat fields on the road.
I decided I couldn’t let the lessons I’ve learned be the end of my studies. Some mistakes need to be repeated.
I called him. It goes directly to voicemail.
“I have feelings for you too!” I shouted.
Over the next few hours, I made ten more calls and texts, but I didn’t get a response. He’s reconciling with his girlfriend, rekindling their relationship over our bottle of pastis. I’m just a stupid girl with useless classes in my hands. I tried it, but it was too late. It’s over before it even begins.
That night, as I tearfully watched a rerun of “Dawson Creek” and picked out the remaining pad thai, I heard a knock on the door. Rups stood there: soaking wet, six packs of root beer in one hand, vanilla ice cream in the other. He smiled as my jaw dropped. “I heard root beer floats are your favorite.”
The author and her husband at the Pitti ceremony at their 2005 wedding.
Courtesy of Anita Vijayakumar
He said the rain had turned to ice. Highways are a significant risk. He called to tell her; they had a fight. He turned the car around.
“From now on,” he whispered, “my risk is yours.”
I’m still in shock when I see now my husband Rupesh is wearing a surgical mask. The white cord wrapped behind his ears, and the blue fabric danced as he spoke.
Sometimes, when our fingers—now without gloves—are accidentally brushed, I’m reminded of the medical student who suspected that strength and vulnerability might intersect. I take a deep breath. This is never true. The two feed each other—need each other. My anxiety is just excitement right now. My mantra has changed.
Sometimes we need to make a second mistake.
Anita Vijayakumar is a Chicago-based writer and psychiatrist. She writes about race, mental health and belonging. She recently completed a novel about two Indian orphans, their hidden past, and their entanglement over their identities.you can find her on twitter @AnitaV_K.
Author and Rupesh in a 2020 cycling pandemic.
Courtesy of Anita Vijayakumar
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