“Ten dollars a face.”

“Sold.” He hands the vendor a crisp twenty. “I’ll take the leopard, please.”

“One for your girlfriend, too?” the vendor asks.

“Oh, no, I’m not his—”

“Sure, she’ll take one, too. Pick out an animal, Char. Go on.”

Brian plops down in a chair and closes his eyes before I can protest this ridiculousness. I’m a grown woman with grown woman problems to solve.

“What’ll it be?” the artist asks.

Fuck it. The proceeds go to fire damage relief, right?

“I’ll take a panda,” I say as an artist gets to work on my zoo animal makeover.

“Oh yeah, my kids are going to love this,” Brian says, looking at his progress in a hand mirror.

“How did you get into pediatrics anyway?” I ask as his face painter continues drawing black spots all over his cheeks. “I thought you were on track for...something else.”

“Well, hello there, Diane Sawyer. Let’s see. I guess I just decided that working in a cosmetic plastic surgeon’s office can get kind of redundant, you know? It’s either a nose job or a boob job on any given day.”

I wasn’t going to say.

“And I wanted to be challenged more than that. What’s more challenging than a little kid who isn’t feeling well and can’t describe what’s the matter? So I fast-tracked my schooling in that direction.”

“So the last four and a half years or so for you have been...”

“Until I landed residency at Cedars? School, school, and more school—with a side of bartending, dumpster diving for copper wire, and the occasional selling my blood, plasma, and bone marrow stints.”

“Selling your bone marrow?”

“Yeah, you never know when you’re going to need a little extra cash.”

The face painters scold us for talking too much. All of our facial movements are smudging the little details they’re trying to get right. As we quiet down, I think about what Brian just said. I thought his parents paid for his school, car, and condo, so what was he doing scrounging for money?

Regardless of his finances, I had no idea that he threw himself into the field like this. Forget about not having time to party or go out with girls, it doesn’t even sound like he’s had time for himself. Is that even healthy? Why is he so averse to slowing down at all? Probably for the same reasons I am... Life is a little scary when you have to sit one-on-one with it for any length of time.

A girl—more specifically, a cute girl with an even cuter blunt bob that I could never pull off—enters the tent and commends Brian on his bold choice.

“Hi, my friends and I saw you from across the street and I just wanted to say...leopard looks good on you.”

“Ha, thanks,” he says with a smirk. “I know it’s silly but I work with kids in a hospital; my patients will get a kick out of it later.”

I don’t get it. How can he still be this cool with animal print goop all over his face?