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Being a doctor wasn’t at all Echo had thought it would be.
“No, that sounds right,” Gig told them over coffee, when they confessed this mismatch of expectation and reality. “Lots of running around, lots of dramatic close calls?”
“Yeah, but I never get to do any of the boring stuff,” Echo complained. At their friend’s raised eyebrows: “I never get a break! I’d love to have a day where I just do routine procedures and maybe fill out some paperwork.”
“Tough shit. Should have picked a better profession.”
“Like you?”
“Like me,” Gig grinned.
“Okay, no one else in the universe could have possibly picked and slash or pulled off being an OSHA YouTuber.”
“I’m special, we agree.” Gig stood up and put down his card to pay for the coffee, deaf to Echo’s protests about a doctor’s salary. “I just got my first Patreon payment in. Let me pay and then go back to doing my own stupid paperwork about withholding freelancer taxes.”
“Next week is on me,” Echo insisted.
--
As soon as they got back to Bluff City Hospital, fortified on caffeine and friendship, the bullshit started up again.
“Thank you, Doctor, you saved my life!” gasped a patient, limping out of the hospital on the arm of Echo’s hottest coworker.
“I was just doing my job,” said Dr. Signet demurely.
“But if your necklace hadn’t contained a sample of the very plant I was allergic to-”
“All I ask is that you try your best not to have to come back here and see me again.” Signet smiled her warm smile, the one Echo could never detect a trace of irony in. “Have a wonderful rest of your day and call me if you have any problems.”
Echo held the door open for her as they walked inside. “It never ends, does it?”
Signet shrugged. “I wish as much as anyone that no one ever fell ill, but until that day I live to serve our patients.”
“No, I mean...” Echo dodged a cadre of nurses pushing someone around on a stretcher. “This is a weird hospital, isn’t it?” Signet merely looked at them, silently encouraging them (non-judgemental as ever) to go on. “We never just have a normal day. Everyone’s always solving obscure medical problems with... coincidences, or through relating to their personal experience in some way.”
Signet considered this.
“I suppose I always try to form a personal relationship with my patients. I’m sure you know this about me.”
“Well, yeah, it makes sense for you, Ms... fuckin’... Involvement,” Echo finished impotently. “Okay, I actually think it’s really fucking cool you care so much, I wish I could care that much and not... die of it, but you have to admit this place has too much to care about. Aren’t we supposed to just set a broken bone sometimes?”
“I do that all the time.”
“But not without learning about how the kid fell out of their favorite tree, and it happens to be your favorite tree from when YOU were a kid, and you once broke your arm, and really the kid’s problem is their mom works too much and needed your pseudo-parental guidance, or whatever. It’s unnatural, it’s designed, it’s... narratively tight.”
Echo stood in the hall, their chest heaving. Suddenly the lighting felt too devised, too hot. Signet clicked the pen she always kept in her pocket thoughtfully, then gently touched Echo’s arm.
“Maybe you do have a point. I’ll think about what you said, and feel free to talk to me if anything is bothering you, okay? But right now, we have to get to the staff meeting.”
“A staff meeting?” Echo couldn’t remember ever going to a staff meeting before, and their heart beat a little faster in anticipation of something with the potential for boredness. If they felt the urge to check their pager, they’d kiss it in gratitude.
Instead, Echo walked into the break room, and was immediately forced to downgrade Dr. Blooming to their third-hottest coworker. An artfully disheveled man stood before them, dressed in the loudest and most garishly patterned scrubs they’d ever seen. Who could possibly profit from manufacturing hospital gear in purple and green tartan? Despite this, and the expression of disdain he was currently sporting, the man’s round and stubbly face was undeniably handsome.
Dr. Gardner came to the front of the room and cleared his throat. “Everyone, please welcome our newest resident, Dr. Magnificent.”
“Uh, it’s Dr. Grand Magnificent,” he said. “It’s a mononym.”
--
Dr. Grand Magnificent was as annoying and pretentious as his introduction had been. Besides his insistence on his mononym, he’d gone on to explain that he’d gotten a medical degree solely for the purpose of fueling his “real career,” which was art.
“And to save lives, of course.”
“Oh, so that comes second?” Echo scowled.
“It’s not lesser. I just said it second, because I can’t say two things at once. I am only human, and I strive to show that humanity through the work of my hands.”
Echo could only gape. They had been assigned to show him the ropes of the hospital, and had given him a tour he barely seemed to pay attention to. Like everyone else, he seemed to take the hectic nature of their hospital as normal.
“The chaos is what inspires my art,” he explained. He and Echo were preparing to operate on a woman who just happened to go to Echo’s gym. She had, blissfully, succumbed to the anesthesia and left them in silence.
“So, what--you paint that whole story she just told us about how she had always relied on her physical strength, and had secretly been jealous of how much I can bench, but now she’s learning to rely on the strength of her spirit because of her injury?” It had made Echo surer than ever that someone, something, was somehow designing their life for maximum drama and pathos. It had also made them roll their eyes when their back was turned.
“No, of course not.” Echo sighed in relief, until Grand continued: “I make sculptures, obviously. But can you really bench that much?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“That’s so cool,” he said admiringly. “Can I feel your bicep? Once the surgery is over, obviously.”
That was when Echo figured it out.
“Oh, no,” they said out loud. “Come on.”
“Sorry,” Grand said. “I didn’t mean to overstep.” His cheeks turned pink. “It was just for... sculpture research reasons.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Echo mumbled. To the universe, they thought as hard as they could: I am not falling in love with Grand Magnificent.
--
Despite their fears, Echo barely saw Grand for the next few weeks. Once his initial settling period was over, they only caught glances of his terrible scrubs at the end of hallways, disappearing around corners.
“So that’s a good thing, right?” said Gig. They’d switched coffee places to be closer to the hospital, and Echo kept straining towards the door, worried Grand might come in.
“Uh, no? I just want it over with. This bullshit is just extending however long I have to wait until whatever the universe, the plotline, I don’t know, has us do together.”
“Why are you so convinced you’re going to do something together?” At Echo’s groan, he raised his arms defensively, almost sloshing the coffee out of his cup. “I promise I believe you about your hospital being cursed with drama, or whatever you want to call it. I just feel like... if you’re not seeing him, then it’s probably not part of that.”
Echo shook their head. “You don’t know what it’s like, living the way I do.”
“Okaaay.”
What Gig didn’t understand was the way Grand had made Echo feel. First, there was that burst of warmth in their chest, their sudden heart palpitations. Echo couldn’t remember the last time they’d felt like that, so--it had to signify something.
Then there was the way that he’d looked at them. Echo would have to be an idiot not to know what was on his mind.
“I’m right,” they insisted to Gig.
“Didn’t say you weren’t picking up on something.”
Somehow, Echo didn’t think the two of them were on the same page.
--
Another week went by without Echo seeing Grand for more than a minute at a time. It was starting to piss them off. Instead, he always seemed to be standing next to Dr. Even Gardner, who Echo had never particularly thought to dislike before, but who seemed to be helping Echo look for reasons.
Fed up, Echo decided to skip their coffee break. They found Grand on his own coffee break, sipping tea with Even. Even the way the Even stirred sugar into his cup was annoying.
“Come with me.”
Echo grabbed Grand by the arm without waiting for him to respond, and pulled him into an empty office.
“Just say it,” they demanded, pushing Grand back against the desk. He stumbled.
“Uh, ow,” he complained. “Say what?”
“You know what you want to say,” Echo pushed. “And, uh, sorry. I’m just having a bad day.” They thought about Even’s little wooden stirrer. Ugh, counterclockwise. What a freak.
“Oh. Um...” Grand knotted his hands together in front of him. Echo took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I took your extra scrubs the other day. Mine were completely soaked, and Even told me you hadn’t used yours in years...”
Echo blinked. “Is that all?”
“Uh, I’m EXTREMELY sorry?” Grand seemed genuinely unsure of what Echo wanted.
“...It’s fine.” Echo chewed on a thumbnail. Well, no confession yet. That really was fine. Rejecting people was hard, after all. And that was what they were going to do.
“You sure? You seem really upset. I can tell these things.”
“Then go tell Dr. Gardner about it,” Echo snapped, surprising themself. They left a bewildered Grand behind as they stormed away.
--
Echo spent a while hatereading Grand’s website. His work was mostly sculptures of what looked like mecha, the logic of which defied Echo. He could have made them look like anything, and he made them look like that?
The little blurbs under each photo didn’t really answer any of their questions, but they did teach Echo a little bit more about Grand’s life. He’d come from a town Echo had never heard of, Bluffington Beach, and used to be part of an artist’s collective called Memorious. Memorious was mysteriously impossible to find online, so Echo learned about it only through Grand’s copious and vague hints at drama in the paragraphs where he explained the motivation behind each sculpture.
Echo started to get the sense that Grand was much happier now than he had once been. His sculptures seemed to get bigger and more ambitious as time went on, far from the small, hunched designs of his Memorious days. Echo found themself actually impressed by one sculpture in particular: an iridescent mech pulling its own chest open, revealing an anatomical heart.
They brought it up to Signet once at lunch.
“And another thing,” they said. “He’s, like, actually pretty talented. It’s just not fair he can do medicine AND art.”
“I didn’t know that,” Signet said. “I never really see him, so I only sort of knew he was an artist. He’s always with Even.”
It seemed ridiculous to Echo that someone could only sort of know something about Grand. He was an all-or-nothing kind of person.
“Don’t even remind me,” they groused. “I never get to see him either. I thought, after we first met, that we’d be together more.”
“That’s under your control, you know.”
“No it isn’t. I have to wait for the script--” Echo stopped short. Something horrible had occurred to them. “No one is actually making me... get to know Grand, are they?”
“Of course not. If you don’t like him, you never have to see him. It’s Even that has to see him, given their complimentary medical expertise. But I don’t get the sense that you hate him, if I’m being honest.” Signet was smiling a little.
“Oh, fuck. I thought... shit. You know how I thought that everything at the hospital was somehow arranged for us.” It was too embarrassing to go on, to say that Echo had thought that Grand had been assigned to be their--fuck, damn it--their love interest.
“We may or may not be under the influence of some storytelling force,” Signet said. “I won’t deny this town is... weird. But we do have choices. That, I’m sure of.”
Echo buried their head in their hands.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Signet repeated.
“No,” Echo said grimly. “But I’m gonna.”
--
Echo invited Grand out for coffee, at the place Gig and Echo used to go to, as far from the hospital as they could get without being inconvenient. They didn’t want the influence of whatever metaphysics governed the hospital too close.
He showed up in one of his usual outfits, as bright as a poisonous berry, though Echo noted he’d taken the time to change into a shirt and jeans instead of hospital clothes. Before Echo could say anything, he handed them their stolen backup scrubs.
“I had them washed,” he said, by way of greeting. “I’m really sorry if we got off on the wrong foot. I know I can be a lot.”
Echo felt a pang. As a kid they’d been “a lot” too.
“Thanks. It’s fine.” They took a nervous sip of coffee, and pushed the cup of tea they’d bought at Grand. “That’s what you like, right?” Grand picked it up and sniffed it, a surprised grin lighting up his features.
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“I’ve seen you drink it before. You sure you don’t need something with more caffeine, though?”
“I’m fine. I just got off a sixteen-hour shift, is all.”
“Jesus. Do you want to do this another time?”
“No,” said Grand quickly. “I mean. I’m not about to let an opportunity for you to not be pissed off at me go by. Besides, I don’t sleep much.”
“Evidently,” said Echo, gesturing at the dark circles beneath his eyes. Grand winced, but he smiled, too.
“Ouch.” He sat down and leaned forward on his elbows, focusing all his attention on Echo.
“Anyways.” Echo inhaled. “Do you believe in fate?”
Grand gave an automatic snort, then bit his lip when Echo didn’t laugh.
“Oh, that’s a serious question. Um... maybe?”
“This is going to sound weird, but I think I do. And I think fate is pushing you and Even together.”
“Okay, this is the weirdest setup I’ve ever heard. Me and Even? I won’t say I’m not interested, but--”
“Let me finish. I think fate is pushing you and Even together, but fuck that.” Grand’s eyes widened. “I think you’re pretty cute. Do you want to go out on a date sometime?”
Grand spit out a mouthful of tea, and spent a good minute indulging in coughing over it.
“Now that’s the weirdest line I’ve ever heard. I thought you hated me.”
“You don’t know me very well yet. But you could.”
“I’d like that,” Grand said. “Wow. Um. Okay. Yes.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Both of them grinned at each other. Echo felt something loosen in their chest, and imagined it was the grip of the rules slipping, if ever so slightly. “But... what was that about fate, and stuff? I’m honestly the last person you could ever scare off with New Age bullshit, but I’d love to be less confused than I am.”
“Are you negging me about my “New Age” beliefs?”
“No!” Grand looked outraged. “What’s negging, though?” He grinned sheepishly at them.
“Dear god, I have a lot of work to do.”
“You do seem like a hard worker, Echo. Do your worst.”
“Well... have you ever watched a medical drama?”