So anyway, the day I had to drive to Knoxville, I woke up to go to work with an amazing surprise: my beautiful face had been replaced with a grisly version of itself, sporting a gruff shiner under the left eye. While the eye wasn't swollen, the dark smudge of masculinity was incredibly apparent against the smooth caramel backdrop of my day-to-day visage. I was in shock. Suddenly the weight of my actions came crashing down on top of me, and I flashed upon the look on the faces of the people I'd inevitably have to face in the next few days: My attending physician, our patients at the hospital, the nurses, my sister in Knoxville, and of course the full staff of University of Tennessee Medical Center (whom I would be interviewing with in the next 24 hours). Fuck. Me.
Now, in true Dik form, I put my chin up, and instead of dwelling on the colossal shit-show that was my life, I soldiered on with my day, and decided that the best plan of action was disavowal. Already, my mind forged a bullshit excuse: "I was playing racquetball with my friend Poojangles, who is a novice, and got popped in the eye! How embarassing!?!"
Getting through my day at the hospital was cake-walk. I smiled a lot (so my wrinkles would cover the shiner), pulled a "Mariah Carey" with my attending, and only faced him with the prettier side of my face, and just simply didn't broach the subject with anybody at the hospital. At one point a nurse caught me googling "how to cover a black eye," and I simply looked up at her and tested my racquetball story. Thank god she was just a simple-minded nurse, and ate my lies with a side of bullshit grin. The real test was coming up: The Banana.
I jumped into my car from the hospital for my 4 hour drive to Knoxville, and called ahead with a simple message to my sister: "Can you get me some Concealer? I have a nasty mark on my face." When I reached Knoxville, two major things happened: 1) The flurries which had been tickling Atlanta's streets were full on rough-housing the Knoxville highways, and traffic was at a standstill due to the snow/ice mixture that had accumulated on the streets. 2) One of the residents in the program I was interviewing with called me to confirm our dinner - for that night! I completely forgot about the resident dinner, and realized that if I was going to pull of my black-eye, I'd need to perfect the story & cover-up within the next 2 hours.
On reaching my sister's house, my sister was obviously shocked and immediately starting cracking up laughing on seeing my face. "How the HELL did you get a black eye right before your interview!?!" So, in a move I regret as a necessary evil of my Hypocratic Oath, I fed her the racquetball story as a test of it's fallibility. She bought it. She declared over and over that "You are an Idiot," but she bought it. Because seriously, who gets into a bar fight 2 days before an interview? Yeah - This Guy.
Now, while my sister and I were putting make-up on my face in a spectacle of Banana-Dik tom-foolery, the snow had continued to fall on Knoxville, so that by the time I felt confident enough to make it through a dinner with fucking make-up on my face that hid my shiner, the doctor I was intended to meet called me to say "sorry about this, but can we cancel the dinner tonight? The roads are really messy, and I don't feel confident that we can drive safely."
"Fucking-A we can cancel our dinner tonight," I thought, and bullshitted some response that expressed regret & understanding, with a humorous comment that emphasized my desire to meet the doctor without getting a free meal or putting his life in danger. Success. I now had a 12 hour stay-of-execution, with which to resolve my black eye insecurity. So, Banana and her roommate Twirler cooked me dinner instead, discussed my stupidity at lengths, and expressed their hope that I would get the job in Knoxville, because they had a serious lack of entertainment that could use a shot of Dik to liven it up. I agreed that me living there would indeed be good for them, and went off to bed early, with my sister's words echoing in my ears..."make sure you take your make-up off before you fall asleep..." What an asshole.
The next morning I commenced the 3 S's: Shit, Shower, and Shave, and made an executive review of my shiner, with this final decision: Run with the fading shiner, and ditch the make-up. You're in Knoxville dumb-ass; getting caught with make-up on is far worse than getting caught with a black-eye at a job interview. So onward I marched, to what I felt was the professional equivalent of a Colombian firing-squad. What I encountered, however, was far better: A program full of over-worked, couldn't-care-less doctors who were more impressed with my attitude and demeanor, and less concerned about my physical appearance (which was impeccable, mind you, aside from the black badge of courage I wore on my face). By the end of the day, I had only 3 interesting moments regarding my eye: 1) The program coordinator took a picture of me on arrival, in which I smiled so wide that there was no way my shiner would show up through my wrinkles, 2) The Program Director started rubbing under his left eye (maybe in a ploy to get me to mirror his actions, and confirm if I had a shiner or just a dark circle/mark under my eye) - I didn't bite; and 3) at the lunch after the interviews, the other girl interviewing remarked to me (after I threw out my bullshit racquetball injury story of my own free-will) "Oh my god, I was wondering what that was!" Again, Fuck. Me.
At the end of that interview day, I stuck around to see some patients with the house-staff, and the doctor who canceled dinner on me the night before suggested we all try for dinner again this night. I invited Banana as my Wing-sister at a dinner populated by 3 other doctor couples, and being the fucking stud that she is, we wound up killing it at the dinner, and left the crew dying laughing and happy to have met us. Success. The rest of the weekend was all downhill from there, and walking back from dinner that night with Banana, she and I remarked to each other "Yeah, you've got a lock on this bitch. Well-played, sir. Well-played."
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