I don’t really get along with my co-workers too terribly well. It’s nothing on them and I don’t particularly blame myself either. Some of them are partier types, most of them are young mommies, and there’s a little bit of overlap. I really don’t have a clue where the good bars in Fairfax County are or what to do when Junior bites the kids at daycare. They don’t read much and it’s not what I read when they do.
They seem to accept that I know things. Occasionally somebody asks me a general knowledge question, most memorably “What do Jews believe?” But that doesn’t make them want to hang around with me. I mostly study LSAT while I eat lunch alone. They’re career legal secretaries. I’m just stopping in for a year before I go to law school. I get the sense that they feel I’m not worth anthropomorphizing.
We work together peaceably enough. I’ve always had co-worker friends before that I could go out for a drink with and I miss that, but the situation is pretty tolerable.
Today, I was surprised when someone noticed that I look tired.
I explained that I’d gotten a call at 2am and gone dashing out to Fairfax Hospital. Honorary-Sister-In-Law-Tina was in labor.
All the sudden, half the girls in the office were looking at me. “How far along was she?” Someone said.
“Dialated three centimeters.”
Somone else nodded “the first three centimeters are the hardest. “
“Yeah, she was in a lot of pain,” I said.
“Did they induce?”
“No,” I said. “The Doctor wasn’t comfortable doing that at this point. Her husband and I took turns walking with her up and down the halls trying to get the baby to come, but it didn’t work. I finally came home at five thirty to get some rest and they sent her home at seven.”
There was a collective nod. “I wouldn’t have let the doctors get away with that. I would have just refused to leave.” Someone said.
The conversation went on in this vain for another ten minutes or so until we all went back to work.
But for a few minutes, Chalicechick felt like one of the girls.
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