Good for You by Tammara Webber Read Free Book Online

just teasing.” Deb is rarely unkind.
    She’s one aspect of my life that gives me the most joy and the most guilt. I have a loving and supportive family, always enough money for necessities—food, clothing, books—
    while others have poverty, neglect, il ness, and the constant hunger of never enough. For some reason this line of thinking makes me think of Reid, which is absurd. He has every advantage and more, with no excuse for forcing his egocentricity on people who have so much less.
    Pushing him from my mind, I ask Deb about her residency. After four years of col ege and another four years of medical school, she’s final y Dr. Deborah Cantrel .
    To become the pediatrician she’s always wanted to be, she’l be working crazy long hours for the next three years, making barely enough to feed herself and begin paying back her student loans.
    “You wouldn’t believe how many ER cases are drug seekers.” She sighs, frustrated. “They’re desperate for a fix, so they come in with phony symptoms. The more experienced doctors assume that everyone who gives
    ‘pain’ as a symptom is a fraud. We keep a list of the repeat offenders.”
    I try to imagine my sister in that environment, with her social idealism and her ambition to help people. “Maybe you’re just what those other doctors need—a balance to the pessimism.”
    “Wel , it’s going to be a contentious three years.”
    “So… met any cute doctors?”
    She laughs at my change of subject. “Yes, actual y—one of the attending physicians. But as luck would have it, he’s also the most cynical. Last night, he almost missed a possible placental abruption because the mother-to-be is a known addict. She claimed severe back pain, and he was about to send her out the door with Tylenol. I convinced him to let me do an ultrasound on her, for practice, and we had to do an emergency C-section. If she’d gone home, the baby would have died and the patient could have bled to death.”
    “Wow.” I’m not sure exactly what she’s talking about, but it sounds intimidating. “You saved their lives, Deb.”
    “Yeah, wel . She swore she hasn’t used since she knew she was pregnant, but to him, once an addict, always an addict .” She breathes an exasperated sigh.
    “We know that’s not true.” Our parents have helped dozens of people kick al types of drug addiction through the years. Though a depressing majority start using again, some stay clean. Dad says he has to keep fighting for those few, because you never know who’s capable of kicking it for good.
    “Bradford was brought up in a different environment than we were. He didn’t know much about addicts or poverty until he became a doctor. I got him to talk about it a little bit today. He grew up in an upper middle class suburb, and the worst thing he encountered was other kids who smoked pot or did a little X. To him, someone who’s hooked on cocaine or meth is forever hopeless.”
    I think of Reid, and how I told him he was hopeless. How angry he was that I deemed him unworthy of my time or attention. I don’t know if he’s addicted to any particular substances, though he’s certainly addicted to his hedonistic substances, though he’s certainly addicted to his hedonistic lifestyle. But is he hopeless? Maybe he’s right. Maybe my snap judgment concerning him makes me a hypocrite.
    “So you’re educating Bradford about real life, eh?”
    “I’m attempting to, but he’s the most opinionated, obstinate man I’ve dealt with since Dr. Horsham in second year pathology.” Deb almost quit medical school because of Dr. Horsham, until Mom convinced her to go back and prove she was made of tougher stuff than that.
    After I hang up, I lie on my bed thinking about my sister fighting for an ex-addict. She was right this time, but she won’t always be. There wil always be addicts who lie to get their fixes, taking hospital resources from those who have actual need. Stil , Deb wil find the people everyone