It’s two weeks before finals. Classes have stopped, and my only job (aside from my actual job) is to memorize what we already learned and figure out how to apply it in an essay. My study group and I found the library’s past final reserve, and we decided to approach testing through exam simulations. Every other day, we write an exam and compare our answers.
On this particular Monday, my girlfriend called out sick from work again, complaining of a cold that refused to clear. She calls our insurance’s MDlive, and as I am analyzing whether Jaden Bob (the subject of this criminal law exam) should be convicted of robbery or attempted robbery, I can hear her voice from downstairs stating, “Do you think it could be bronchitis?” I hate to admit my first thought is that I can’t afford to get sick right now. Finals are in two weeks.
I try to remember the rules for robbery. It’s a “wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal property of another by means of force or fear of force.” Whew. I think as I scribble the definition and apply the facts of the case. Was there a wrongful taking? Well, Mr. Bob thought the property was his, so is it wrongful if he takes it?
Downstairs, I hear a sigh and feet on the steps. “Cori, I have to go to urgent care, apparently. Will you come with me?”
Shit. I want to be the partner that wants to go to urgent care, but I'm knee-deep in Jaden Bob, and I can’t figure out the right definition of wrongful taking and I can tell I've already taken too long to respond and she says, “It’s fine. I’ll be fine. I'm going to go to urgent care. I’ll update you.”
I hate to admit I am relieved. I don’t even hear the door shut. I just move on to “carrying away” and then “personal property” until I have a sizable essay. I hope this preparation is adequate and that my answers will compare well with my study group's. I remember to glance at my phone, and I shoot out of my seat when I see four missed calls and a message saying, “Please come. I have to go to the ER.”
“Fuck!” I yell. I knew it. I should have gone with her to the urgent care. Law school keeps creating these moments where I have to decide, friend or homework, dog walk or office hours. And this time, I chose incorrectly. The ER? What’s going on? I don’t put on pants (sweats are good enough). I don’t put on deodorant. I don’t bring a sweatshirt. I don’t grab my medication. I’m out the door before I even know which urgent care I need to go to.
I look at my phone again and find that she’s just down the road. I pull up and realize that I’ll have to come back for her car and that I maybe should have walked to avoid a repeat trip.
I’ll worry about it later. She walks out of the building and looks disappointed. The ER wasn’t on her plan for the day either.
“What happened?!” I ask as she gets into the passenger seat.
“It’s probably nothing, but they want me to check just in case.”
“Okay, I’ll take us to Huntington Hospital.” I drive out of the lot and take us to where we will be staying for the next few days. “Where’s your car?”
“I walked,” she replies.
“You walked to urgent care?” I am now not only frustrated with myself for not being there, I'm ashamed I wasn't there.
A few months ago, when I enrolled in law school, I attended an intro to legal education seminar where the instructor spent a sizable portion of the day on guilt. “You can’t be everywhere,” she told us. Apologize to everyone you love now, before it starts, because you won't see them once it does. I remembered her soft voice and her dark hair and thinking that I was prepared, but this level of guilt is new. The weight of knowing my girlfriend walked to urgent care because I was too busy figuring out what type of punishment a fictional man deserved. I want to vomit. But I also want this not to be more about me than I was already making it.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, and I don’t think she hears me or even really thinks there is anything to be sorry about because she just hugs me and thanks me for coming. Her brow is furrowed even though she’s wearing her glasses, and she squeezes my leg tight as I drive the few blocks to the local ER.
I can’t help but feel like this is not enough. I’m not enough.
We pull into the lot and walk into the lobby. As soon as she tells staff that urgent care sent us because she is having chest pain, they immediately put us into a room even though this is Los Angeles, and wait times are usually up to six hours.
I keep oscillating between guilt for not having arrived sooner and guilt for not finishing the Jaden Bob exam. Should I have brought my laptop to the ER? I think to myself, but I look at my girlfriend and realize I wouldn’t be able to focus here anyway. What if there is something really wrong?
They run test after test, and for the first time it occurs to me that she might die today. Or any day and that I’ve been so busy with school that I missed some of our last moments together. How small law school seems from the bed of a hospital. I try not to cry. I try to be there for her.
She squeezes my hand as they draw more blood. I think about the engagement ring I bought and try to think what I would do if this is something she won’t recover from. Would I propose in a hospital room? Would I propose today? I picture her in this same bed with more needles coming out of her arms and tubes out of her nose and this isn’t how I wanted it to look. This is not the way I want to get on one knee.
After the third round of tests, no less than six doctors walk into her curtained room. “You aren’t going home,” the centermost doctor says. “You have not one but multiple blood clots in your lungs.”
I understand why, in movies, people always fall to the floor. Gravity feels exceptionally strong, and the weight of my own body becomes foreign as I try to understand what this news might mean.
“How?” I ask, and the doctors look at me with a mix of sympathy as they shrug.
“It’s abnormal for someone so young. Right now let’s focus on getting them out.”
We ask more and more questions, and a man walks in to transfer us to a different room. He wheels her bed to the more permanent ward, and I run to keep up with him. Jeez, this man is fast. I sprint the hallways, trailing behind both him and the woman I love. The woman who I thought was exaggerating or just had a cold. The woman who I let go to urgent care alone. And how did I let her go to urgent care alone? How?
I admit I am guilty of thinking about Jaden Bob and how I probably won’t be able to figure out whether or not he committed a robbery before my study group meets. I think about how life doesn’t stop just because you enroll in law school. I think about my classmate, the one who got married during midterms and how on earth did he do that? I think about my professor who told us her father is dying, and I picture him in a bed across the hall. How wrong is it that I want her to get out for us but also for the sake of my final grade? I think about one of the women in my study group who has three children and wonder if she ever missed an urgent care visit or if she knew inherently that some things are just important.
We arrive at the right room, and the nurse attaches a medication that should dissolve the clots. I feel hope that she’ll get better, followed immediately by guilt that I ever paused to think about law school while at the ER with the woman I want to marry. I sit in a reclining chair to the right of the bed and tell her it’s the most comfortable chair I've ever slept in, and I hold her hand while she sleeps even though I start to feel pinpricks and I realize that life doesn’t stop just because I started law school.
Cori Bratby-Rudd is a queer LA-based writer and co-founder of Influx Collectiv(e)’s Queer Poetry Reading Series. She graduated Cum Laude from UCLA’s Gender Studies department, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts. Cori is a first year law student at Southwestern Law.
