A Date For the Summer

Chapter 1: Claire's POV

There are fewer things I love more about my job than collapsing into my bed exhausted from a hard day's worth of work. My residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital provided me with that satisfaction easily; I was also provided with a way to escape from the reality of my non-existent social life in exchange for helping people in need. Still, tonight I was feeling restless and lonely, despite having been surrounded by other residents all day. And grimy. And I needed a hair cut, I thought absently as I pushed my messy curls out of my face and into a mostly broken clip. It was time to admit that I was working too many days in a row and that it was starting to get to me.

I decided to forgo checking the mail and head straight to bed. I shared a flat just off Harvard's campus, a small two-bedroom that I only saw for a few minutes before collapsing into a coma, most of the time. I could feel the pull of a hot shower as I opened the door to my flat, unconsciously calculating how many hours I had been up. I had settled on twenty-six when I realized I wasn't alone in the kitchen. Geillis Duncan, my flatmate and one of my best friends, was standing over the sink eating from a bowl of strawberries while sorting through a large stack of our mail. Mail I had definitely ignored for far too long, I realized guiltily. She looked up and gave me a wild smile, taking in my disheveled scrubs and knotted hair. "Good evening, deary," she greeted me in her light yet sultry voice.

I smiled back as she tossed her shiny long red hair over her shoulder, showing off her sharp cheeks and pale skin. "Hello, Gilly," I responded. Unlike me, she looked flawless in a pinstripe business suit, which apparently included a vest, and matching heels. I rarely saw my flatmate these days, between my hours and her jobs, something that pained me a bit of course, but did she really have to show me up like this? Not that she dressed this way for my irritation, but rather she felt that male students were easier to take down if they thought she was some bimbo who got by on just her looks. I didn't understand how any man could look into her green eyes and not see the constant calculating.

We had met several years ago in undergrad - we had been paired up as roommates and campus buddies due to both of us being international students that had started at Harvard at the same time. It wasn't long before she became one of my closest friends, though I was the first to admit that even years later, I didn't entirely trust her.

"How was work?" she asked in a strangely perky voice. She moved my stack of mail towards the end of the counter and pulled hers closer to her, placing two large envelopes at the bottom of her stack.

I put my jacket and purse on the wall hooks, then walked to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water and offered it to Geillis before pulling out one for me as well. "Work was.....exhausting," I replied, leaning against the fridge. "But good. I know I say this every new rotation, but Jesus H.R. Christ I am glad to be off the ER." I had moved on to pediatrics neonatal, which I honestly didn't care for either, but it was almost done and was my last rotation for this round. I was going to have to declare a specialty soon too and decide if I was going to find a fellowship. I took a swig from the bottle and asked, "How was teaching today?"

Geillis smiled, eating another strawberry. She was a political science major, working on her doctorate while TA'ing for the hardest professor in the department, or so she said. She also had a side job that wasn't quite legal, but I didn't press for details. She didn't bring drugs into our apartment, I had never had to get her out of jail, and so I didn't need any further details. Plus I knew it was just a means to an end; her true passion was political history and law. She wanted to change the world.

"Undergrads are obnoxious, and now that midterms are coming up they're all sweet talking me up." She giggled a little, a sound I knew as her taking way too much enjoyment in watching her students squirm. She opened a few envelops, separating her mail into further stacks.