"MADIIII get out of the shower! The water bill will be humungous again this month...", I remembered by mom's voice yelling at me from outside our small bathroom's door.

I had always enjoyed long showers. In a house full of people, the bathroom was my refuge. Under the warm water is where I could think and let myself, be myself for just a moment, before I had to go out and face the world.

Right now there was no mom calling out to me, or younger siblings banging on the door. But I still relished the warm water flowing over me. Even though, the sterile smelling, anti-bacterial hospital soap that I had used to scrub all the blood off me was a constant reminder that I was still on call in the ICU.

I had handed my pager over to the Kylie, one of the other senior residents in the ICU, so right now I let myself, be myself again. Away from patient rooms, and botched attempts to do procedures I had done successfully hundreds of times before...and from the intern who had forced me to lower my guard for just a second.

I took a deep breath in and washed my face again with the antibacterial soap.

There was something about that intern that made me want more from life. The near-perfect life that I had worked so hard to build, had a void that his words had filled temporarily, which is what had caught me off-guard.

Over the years, I had received plenty of professional praise from faculty, peers and staff at work. I knew I was good at what I did, the awards that filled a shelf in my parent's living room were testament to that. But lately it felt that all people saw when they looked at me, was an excellent physician, who had her life together and who everyone could depend on.

That wasn't a bad image at all to have, and I really didn't mean to complain, but it wasn't my whole story. It didn't tell the tale of my fear of failure, or my insecurities when it came to close relationships. No one had probably realized that I didn't even have someone I could call a best friend. Noor was probably the closest friend I had, and with her being married and now pregnant, I would only really meet her at work and occasionally for coffee after work.

In fact, I had never had a person I could share everything with, even in school. Everyone was friendly, yes. But that's because everyone wanted something from me. Whether it was my class notes, or help with their projects, or assignments, or even help covering up for them so they could go off with their boyfriends without their parents finding out. But when it came time to hang out at the mall, or go bowling with a group of friends, I was either not invited at all, not allowed to go or didn't have the time.

So I became the dependable, goody-two-shoes, who everyone was pleasant to, but no one sat with at the lunch table.

When Omar had looked at me sincerely with his piercing brown eyes, and said, "If you ever need to talk, I am here for you...", for a second it had seemed like he could see the real me. But then I remembered that even if he did see me, he was my intern and I was the senior resident.

And to be honest, I didn't think we could ever have anything more than a professional relationship. He was a good person and was just being kind. He was easy to talk to and trustworthy, but given the way he avoided even going to the food court, he was probably still in love with Noor. So yes, it wasn't him per se, that I thought would fill the void in my life. I just wished I would one day find someone who was capable of falling in love, unconditionally, like he had.

That person sure wasn't going to be my current fiancé...

I shut the faucet off. I didn't really need my safe space to think about Jawad. That space was reserved for things and people that mattered. Jawad was not one those people!

The latest fight we had was on some instagram pictures that he had been tagged on, where he was 'hanging out' with a group of his friends from business school. Except, that somehow all these friends were females and while they were dressed in business suits, they were all at a bar with shot glasses in their hand, toasting to something. Jawad didn't have a glass in his hand, but he had is arm around the shoulders of one of the women, who was arguably the most gorgeous among the group. When I confronted him, he swore he wasn't drinking alcohol or that his hand around his classmate didn't mean anything.

I hadn't believed a word of his explanation. After all, he was one of the handsomest men I had ever seen and I was, well...me! And I had decided that I could not deal with constantly questioning his faithfulness, or doubting if I was good enough for him.

He wouldn't even be my fiancé, had my parents not convinced me to wait till my younger sister, Maliha, was married off. And yes, my parents literally changed one letter in my name and decided to name my sister. But the irony was that our names was where our similarities ended. She was younger to me by several years and lived in a completely different world than me. I would give my life for her, but I don't think I could ever survive her long-drawn out gossip sessions, or her shopping sprees. So like the kids at school, Maliha and I were friendly, but not friends.

Last month, when Jawad had called me to patch things up, I had told my parents I did not like his attitude and informed them about what had happened in the hospital foyer as well as the pictures. But that day Maliha's future in-laws had called and wanted a last-minute informal engagement between her and their son, Hasan.

Maliha and Hasan were introduced by a mutual friend a few months ago and now were completely smitten by each other. I was really happy for my younger sister, but Hasan came from a relatively well off Indian family. His dad was a banker and straddled the business world in both Mumbai and Chicago, despite their family being based in the US for the last two decades. And Hasan and his brother, both Harvard graduates, owned a tech start-up company that had taken the world of cybersecurity by storm. So even though my parents did not explicitly say this, I knew they were nervous about the difference in financial standing between our families, and wanted to make sure that there were no untoward incidents which would put a bad impression on Hasan's family.

Untoward incidents like their older daughter calling off her engagement! So, being the perfect daughter that I was, I agreed to play along and be the dutiful sister, and fiancé.

Lost in my thoughts I had stepped out of the shower and grabbed a clean but rough hospital bathroom towel. It felt like I was drying myself with a loofah.

Is this what we use for actual patients too? Jeez!

When I was done putting on my clean scrubs, I wiped the steamed mirror in the bathroom.

"Oh man...I am going to have to step out looking like this?"

My hair, which I usually straightened with a flattening iron, was wet and very curly. Of course I had washed all my makeup off, so every blemish was on full display. I didn't wear much eye make up, but whatever I did had washed off as well.

Maybe I have some stuff in my bag...I was definitely one of those people who only cleaned out their purse twice a year. But first I needed to go find Kylie and take my pager back.

It had been almost an hour since Madi and I had parted ways. I had gone in to check in on our patient several times. By some miracle his blood pressure was holding steady, and he was no longer bleeding out like he was before. There was a large bruise in his left groin, but the bandages were dry, a sign that there was no active bleeding. Thank God!

I was finishing up my notes in the resident room when I heard Kylie say out loud, "Madi, here is your pager..."

Oh good...Madi is back!

But when I turned to look at her, I had to pause for a moment. She looked different, in a naturally attractive way. Her damp curly hair framed her perfectly shaped face, and her skin looked fresh and glow-ey.

Naturally attractive? Fresh and glow-ey skin? Glow-ey is not even a word! What the hell is wrong with you doofus...

Refusing to even entertain those thoughts any further, I took a gulp from my water bottle and walked over to her in the corner of the room to show her the EKG of one of our patients. But she was furiously digging through her bag for something.

"Madi...what are you looking for?"

Up close, her face was even more 'fresh and glow-ey'. And she had these adorable freckles lightly sprinkled over the bridge of her nose and cheeks, that I had never noted before.

Stop it, Omar!

"My makeup...or even just my concealer, or foundation stick...", she replied without looking up.

"I have no idea what those are...", if I had stopped talking at that point, I would have been just another clueless guy, and the world would have gone on like it was supposed to.

But for some unfathomable reason, I blurted out, "I don't think you really need them"

She immediately stopped digging through her bag, and slowly turned towards me, like a mother turns towards her child just before all hell is let loose.

She raised an eyebrow and said, "Dr Khan, are you going to start telling me where and when I should be wearing makeup?"

"No...no...not at all...I am sorry...", again I should have just stopped then, but my brain kept regurgitating words, "I just meant that...based on scientific standards...umm...you have a really nice face"

What did I just say?

Madi apparently had the same question for me, "What did you say?"

Maybe if she wasn't glaring at me with those dark brown eyes, that somehow looked even brighter without makeup, I would have been able to keep my wits about me. But that's not what happened. So I did the only thing I knew how to do well, since I had done a PhD and all...report the findings of a scientific study in the most objective way possible.

"There is something called a golden ratio. It's basically the ratio of the length of your face to the width of face. During the European Renaissance, the famous artists and sculptors used to use 1.6 as the ideal ratio, so a beautiful person's face was basically 1 and 1/2 times longer than it was wider...and then more recently psychologists used that golden ratio, plus other measures of facial symmetry to show that celebrities who fit that mathematical equation were considered more attractive by the public..."

Madi was still staring at me, so I felt obligated to clarify my statement further, "Personally, I think all people are attractive. But if you believe these psychologists and the artists from centuries ago, your facial structure would fit their mathematical model"

She still looked confused by my speech on math and facial structure, and I was pretty sure by that point she was thinking, 'why am I stuck with this idiot?'. Instead, I heard her say,

"I am not sure whether you are trying to compliment me or I am part of some experiment going on in your head, but it's not the structure of my face that requires makeup...", and she went back to taking things out of her bag, which I was starting to think was bottomless.

I was going to just walk back to my workstation and let her do whatever she was trying to do, but then she spoke up again.

"Its my skin...you put concealer and foundation to cover up your skin. Your future wife can thank me later for teaching you this stuff...", she said, smiling at me.

Yeah...I am not even going to try to get married again.

But wait...her skin is the problem? Her beautiful caramel brown skin with freckles is what she is trying to cover up?

And yes, I knew all about skin tones thanks to the Oprah magazine collection that I went through when my phone died and I had to wait for an hour in my dentist's office.

I walked back to my workstation and sat down, but couldn't help wonder why she, the confident, amazing woman, felt the need to hide behind makeup when she looked the way she did without it.

Oh well...if it makes her happy, who am I to question her.

But then I looked at her sitting alone in the corner putting all her stuff back into her bag, and wondered if she really was happy, underneath all that confidence and poise. I had seen her smile plenty of times, but I couldn't remember if I had ever heard her laugh. And what was going on with her fiancé? She hadn't seem too happy with him the last two times I had seen and heard her interact with him. Yet, she still seemed to be engaged to him.

All those questions were way too personal, and I had already crossed so many boundaries with her today, so I shelved them in my brain for now. But there was one question I wanted to ask her, which I could honestly say was for an educational purpose.

When she came to sit at the workstation next to me, I asked, "Madi, how do you remain so calm in a high stakes situation? Even the attendings sometimes get flustered..."

"Well...for one I used to have a poster of the poem 'If' by Rudyard Kipling up on my bedroom wall ever since I was a teen. Look it up when you get a chance, you'll know why I like to recite it in my head when things are going south, especially the first stanza. And secondly, my mom taught us to be like ducks...", she said.

I made a mental note to look up that poem, and figure out what a 'stanza' was. But I had expected her to explain that duck part more. Instead, she stopped talking and drank her water, so I said the first thing that popped in my head.

"That's weird, I have never heard you quack before..."

I don't know why she found that so funny, but she burst out laughing, almost choking on her water. I grabbed her a paper towel quickly, and apologized.

"Oops...I am sorry, I didn't mean to make you choke. But I am genuinely curious how and why your mom taught you to be like a duck"

She doubled over with laughter for a few more seconds, but then eventually caught her breath enough to answer my question.

"Omar, you are killing me today...what I meant to say was that she taught us to be calm and unruffled on the surface, even as your mind is thinking through a hundred things at the same time...kind of like how a duck looks so calm above the surface and glides smoothly across the water, all the while paddling like crazy below the surface", she said grinning at me.

"Ah...got it! That makes a lot of sense!"

She went back to working on the computer. And I thought about how nice it was to see her laugh like that. She had a such an authentic laughter, and that just warmed my heart.

I like her...

I sat up in my chair. Wait...what did my brain just say?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

'If' - By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son! (Or a Woman, my daughter! 😊)