The story of pharmacy girl

While I was on general medicine, there was a girl working with the pharmacy who I'll call pharmacy girl. She was very bright-eyed and cheerful, and had this ebullient personality which was so very attractive. I have to admit that I was smitten, and when I say smitten, I mean smitten with every possible negative connotation. I had some sort of bizarre, junior high, blushing cheeks and stammering speech infatuation that lasted a brief couple weeks, but then she was gone away to perform some other pharmacy related service, and I didn't see her again.

However, I thought about her and how she defied all of my previous stupid crushes. She wasn't haughty and dismissive. She wasn't emotionally unavailable. She smiled. She was friendly and outgoing. She was (dare I say it) somewhat normal.

So, I saw her again recently, and we talked for a bit while I was going over a chart, and we chatted pleasantly, and she had a negative left fourth finger test, and I thought to myself, "Ask her out. Give it a shot. Worst she can say is no." We seemed okay. We could have some chemistry. And so I scrounged up a little nerve.

Or I tried to find the nerve, and there was none there, so I said good-bye and left the hospital. And that is the end of the story of pharmacy girl.

Coffee for two

In an effort to commune with the world and counteract my hermit tendencies, I have taken to camping out in coffee houses. This is, for the most part, entirely without point or purpose. I haven't yet met or talked to a single person who I didn't already know.

So, I'm not sure that this strategy is really an effective one, but I'm trying nonetheless, and I think the next step may be to join a gym or something like that. That may work, or it may just be another thing to waste my time.

But in the course of wasting my life in coffee shops, I've been privy to some interesting goings on. I've seen a lot of people studying, and most of them are studying medical things: students, pre-meds, residents, and even an attending or two. There seems to be a surprising amount of medicine going on in coffee shops.

Even funnier though is a conversation that I overheard between two girls about how to snag a doctor. It was absolutely ridiculous, and absurd in that they were surrounded by people in the medical field, in one way or another.

I've witnessed a few first dates (or half dates, depending on how you wish to view it). A lot of meetings from eHarmony or Match.com going off with several hitches and a few bricks. The world going by in coffee houses is a little bizarre in many ways, and the $2 cup of coffee is well worth the admission price to the show.

But it also points to the deficiencies in my life. Case in point, there is a pretty girl sitting not two tables away, typing away on her laptop, sipping her coffee, and here I am, doing the same thing, and I will pack up my computer and go home without another glance, and probably there was nothing there anyway, but still, how typical of me.