“Here’s a suggestion,” she said. “You like to read. Read the side of the pack.”

“Soon as I buy another one, I will.”

“Fucking nurses,” she said.

“What?”

“The floor nurses are resentful bitches. Never send your specimens to the lab or tell you when your patient’s been moved. They hate med students. And they hate female med students the most. Like we should be making beds, not learning to give them orders.”

Complaining, however, wasn’t Glenna’s bag. She was too controlled for it. Her style was promising to be back from Presbyterian by seven and not making it till quarter of ten and not bothering to call. I’d be sitting in the bay-window seat gazing out at the lights across the Hudson when I heard a train pull into the station down the hill by Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Two minutes after the train had chugged on to Yonkers came Glenna’s rapid footfalls, the gate swinging in and scraping the mossy stone walk, the front door opening and closing, and Glenna climbing the three flights of stairs.

She kissed me briefly, the brevity of her kiss compounding my anger. I was happy that she was home, but resented my happiness because it depended on her return.

“You could have called,” I said, and that I sounded, even to myself, like an overwrought housewife didn’t help matters.

“I had an admission to do. This woman, Katherine. She has a carcinoma of the liver and had been in for a colostomy. She must weigh seventy pounds. Her husband left her years ago, and her daughter lives in Oregon. Katherine held my hand, her hands were like claws, and she cried, said I made her think of her daughter. I had to stay. She’s dying and she’s alone.”

I’m alone, I thought, and felt shitty for being so selfish.

Peeking out from behind her hair, she kissed me. “Try to understand.”

“I understand,” I said, choking on my anger. “And I don’t like it. You’re never late for Dr. Feldstein.”

“It’s work. It’s important.”

“What am I?”

“You used to be fun,” she said.

Frankly, fighting with Glenna was more satisfying than missing her; at least when we fought I had her attention. So we had our share of fights, and they began to center around Palmer Caldwell Chilton III.

“Glenna,” I said one night as we lay in the dark, “when did you and Biff form your mutual-admiration society?”

“Don’t call him Biff. And why are you interested in Palmer?”

“Because he’s interested in you.”

“Is not,” she said.

I wasn’t sure what made me angrier: Biff the Brooks Brothers Mouse constantly eyeballing Glenna or Glenna’s refusal to admit that he had the hots for her.

She said, “And don’t you dare ask me if I ever slept with him. That’s disgusting. Our parents are friends from the Ethical Culture Society. Our fathers play golf together in Palm Beach. Our mothers go shopping together on Worth Avenue.”

“How does any of that disqualify you from sleeping with him?”