Disobedience

Chapter 37: Emotional

Kimberly Jane

"Yeah, the half-life of the isotope in the patient's body should be..."

I tuned out the conversation that Nacho was having with another doctor over the phone while I sat here in this living room sipping my—-well, it should be wine but I stuck with a mocktail since I have teach a class after this—- It was our usual hangout day and after stupid DonkeyDom's—--I can't believe I'm starting to use that nickname now—--well, after his unwelcomed visit, I felt the need to drink more than ever and talk to my best friend.

For the first time in my life, I quite literally have no idea how to do the right thing, because doing the right thing means betraying my heart and breaking his.

"Yes. That's the correct dose of Iodine-131. Yes, you have to do the math. Aha, provided by the physician and then the medical condition. I know there are online websites now like ChatGPT but you can't be seriously trusting that. You have to do the radioactive decay manually to make sure it's the correct dose—yeah. You don't know the formula? Excuse me?" Lukot ang mukha niya habang napakawak siya sa bridge ng kanyang ilong, like he couldn't believe what he's hearing. "Who the hell let you graduate from pharmacy school then?" Hindi ko naman maiwasang matawa nang mahina dahil bahagyang namumula ang mukha niya sa inis.

"Figure it out and if anything happens to the patient, I'll ChatGPT how-to-kill-my-pharmacy-intern a.k.a you."

"Yeah, that's why I became a lawyer." I jokingly told him when he ended the call. He scoffed and shook his head at the phone.

"What? You hate medicine?" Tanong niya nang umupo siya sa tabi ko. He then grabbed his glass of wine.

Nacho is the usual bachelor with a high-rise condo somewhere here in BGC. The only reason why I feel comfortable sitting on his couch here is because he told me that he doesn't do the deed outside of the bedroom. He assured me that there was no 'unwated DNA' in his leather couch.

"Well, math isn't my strong suit at all. I would've been your intern right now, googling what is eight times six."

He laughed.

"I'm more of a memorizing-kind of girl and that helped a lot in law school and I feel like I would have a shîtty bedside manner." Dagdag ko pa. I decided to lose my blazer and just kept my black blouse. Meanwhile Nacho's rocking his white dress shirt tucked in his slacks.

"I don't have to worry about bedside manner since I work in a lab and in an office handling radioactive medications."

"You—what?"

See, the thing is I knew that Nacho's a pharmacist but he never told me what kind.

"Medicine that contains radioactive isotopes—so the table of elements that I learned wasn't useless because I use it everyday." Ngumisi siya.

"I am already having PTSD from just hearing that." I cringed.

He chuckled.

"Ever since I switched specialties, I had to re-learn the periodic table and equations, like the half-life of a certain isotope."

"You're talking gibberish right now." I grimaced.

"Well think of it as nuclear medicine–"

"Like nuclear as in Chernobyl?"

"No. Well—- kinda."

"Isn't that cancerous?"

"Yes. But folks like me use it for good. So you know, thyroid, the organ in our throats."