D6 ☾ { Dante Taplin } ☽ DONE

Simply being alive is a gamble.

And none of us give ourselves nearly enough credit for it. There's a million things that can go wrong.

See Also: Lyme Disease.

See Also: Meningitis.

See Also: Death.

That's what I'm learning at medical school. If anything can go wrong, it probably will. We're all born with a Murphy's Law Bond made out in our name. It's simply a game of roulette afterwards on when we cash it in.

And that's why I'm in med school in the first place. Definitely not to save lives, if I wanted to save lives I'd work at an animal shelter or become an activist or some selfless bullshit like that that actually achieves something but makes no money. You learn your first year in med school that doctors don't save lives, they prolong them. They facilitate them. We're lighthouses on a cliff that guide the ships but never tow them to the bay. Coming back to the shore through the storm and lightning takes a lot of luck, effort, prayer, and tequila. We'll tell you what degree of fucked you are and hook you up to an IV but after that it's all on you, son. 

I'm in medical school because I like the idea of having a daily front row seat to mortality. I like calculating survival chances based on all the factors that come into play. Height? Weight? Age? Smoke? Drink? History in your family? 

I'm studying to be a doctor because being constantly surrounded by people who samba on the needle-thin line dividing life and the afterlife curl up the corners of my mouth. 

See Also: Sociopath.

See Also: Compulsion.

See Also: Gambling Addiction.

Thursday nights are poker nights.

Texas Hold'em with five beefy red meat men trying to get away from their wives and my best friend Stephen.

"Your turn, Tinkerbell."

Thursday nights, I'm Tinkerbell. Because these guys sweat bacon grease and have hypertension clouding the neurons of their brains, they see someone like me who's too busy memorizing Viault's Essential Molecular Biology and Respiratory Physiology: Gould's 3rd Edition to get a haircut or eat something not heated up in a microwave. 

I smile.

"So Dante, I see you still look like a 15-year-old girl. But not hot."

Some nights I feel guilty that I'm stealing possible food and tuition money from these bastards' children. Tonight is not one of those nights.

"I'm all in."

And this is where I get my high. Toying with these men, calculating the odds of them calling me out on my bluff. How many kids? Occupation? Income? Does he have the balls?

No one will tell you this, but medical school teaches you how to call out a bluff like a pro. Posture? Dilated pupils? Flushed cheeks and hands? Family history of being a little bitch?

"No way..." one of them, Geoff,  starts, "He's bluffing."

Geoff asked me the week before about headaches, so I told him to go get some aspirin. Real med students know that a headache is never just a headache, though. A headache means numbness, means brain tumors, means double vision, drowsiness, seizures and death. Moles mean melanoma. Bruises mean cirrhosis. Bad breath means leukemia. Confusion means kidney failure.

Ignorance was bliss, but now there's no going back.

I smile. "Am I?"

After you find out all the things that can go wrong, life becomes less about granola and 6am jogs and fish oil supplements and more about blackjack and running red lights without getting caught and lying down with Stephen on the train tracks to see who can last longer as the blinding light sprints toward us. The radon in your house can give you lung cancer even if you've never smoked a day in your life. 

The threat of losing all my money, losing the ones I love, losing my life--

"Take a chance, big boy. Call me out on this one, I dare you."

--is the only thing that makes me feel alive.

See Also: Sociopath.



See Also: Compulsion.



See Also: Gambling Addiction.

"I can't believe you cleaned those guys out with a pair of 4's!" Stephen laughs as we enter our apartment by campus.

I open our refrigerator and see two frozen breakfast burritos and a bottle of orange juice I drank down to the last half-sip because I was too lazy to throw it away.

"Stephen, wanna use some of this victory money to get some tacos or so--?"

"Dante, it's your father here. I know you've been getting my messages. You're a grown man, and once you're ready to talk about this matter like adults, I'll be waiting for your call." The message ended in a sharp beep.

"Still haven't talked to him, man?"

I shook my head, not daring to look up from the kitchen floor.

"It's been like, what? Six years? Kinda messed up. What he did was messed up, I mean, but I don't see how you could still hate him so much after all this time..."

See Also: Infidelity.



See Also: Divorce.



See Also: Abandonment.

"The guy's dying, Dante."

"People die every day."

"Yeah, but you're his only match, right? Your sister didn't match, and his new kid is too young... you're his last hope."
 
See Also: Hodgkin's Lymphoma.



See Also: Emergency Bone Marrow Transplant.



See Also: Revenge.

Turns out it was a breakfast-burrito-for-dinner kind of night, after all. I unwrapped the limp mass and placed it on a plate, stuck it in our microwave, and hit 3 - 0 - 0 - START.

"Then his mistake was ever letting me be his hope."

Life's a gamble. And if some of us didn't lose, none of us could ever win.