Tilting her head at his comment about doctors, she laughed. “You would be amazed what’s considered need to know. And what isn’t. I had a patient who had turned yellow and somehow didn’t think that his years of alcoholism were an important detail to add when asking about his current condition. If I have to hear the words, ‘oh, was that something you needed to know?’ one more time, I’m going to start charging an extra fee.” Pausing, she looked back again. “Did you just use the term, world wide web? What are you, my father? It’s the internet. You’re a computer person. How is this news?”
Truth be told, Lu did have concerns sometimes. But they weren’t the sort of thing she shared with other people. Her concerns were the same ones every mother probably had, if perhaps fed by more horror stories than the average woman. “Did you know the infant mortality rate is higher in America than any other developed country in the world? As is the mother’s mortality rate during labour. This is a third world country that’s lying to itself, if you ask me. But, to answer your question, yes, I am. But worrying won’t change things, except raise my blood pressure and make things worse. So I just … don’t.” She paused to try and explain how it worked. “We all have to do military service for a year back home. It’s almost always nothing, but you have to be ready for anything, you understand? But if you walk around all the time afraid, then everything starts to look dangerous, and you shoot the wrong person. You have to just let it all go until you’re back home and you’re allowed to panic again.”
She noted that he’d said ex, and trying, which meant there wasn’t a child, and wasn’t a wife, though she’d already deduced that from the faded tan line on his finger and his general demeanour of desperation and desire. She didn’t mind, things happened, but she assumed there was some sort of story. “They do. I just tell them I went to an expensive university where I studied how to keep humans from dying, and they sit at home and blog about the benefits of eating placenta, so I don’t give a shit what they think.” She hadn’t been asked back to the prenatal class. Pressing the cold can to her neck, she listened as he attempted to slip a date offer into his speech, which she found kind of sweet. He hadn’t even stared at her chest while doing it. “No wine, they’ll just scowl and complain and spoil things. But dinner sounds nice. I’ll even concede to gender norms and let you choose the place.”
Jason nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, my first thought would have been to wonder if maybe I’m eating too many carrots.” He teased, fairly certain that he was allowed to joke about liver failure because it was a leading cause of death in his family. “And you just called your dad your father, so don’t talk to me. Real ‘computer persons’ called it the world wide web. Sometimes unironically. Which, like many aspects of my kind, is unfortunate.” Jason knew this whole self-deprecating white guy thing was tired and overplayed but he couldn’t seem to stop. He felt tired and overplayed as a person and didn’t have anyone to blame for it but himself.
He listened curiously as she talked about her military experience and the life lessons it had taught her, though at some point he became hopelessly distracted with imagining her as some Party City costume’’s take on G.I. Jane. He knew it was gross, but he’d also been making a conscious effort to keep his eyeline at an appropriate level this entire time and he wasn’t great at multitasking.
He was snapped out of it the moment that she mentioned anyone eating placenta, this effectively acting as the cold shower he so desperately needed. “Okay, well, after dropping that horrifying mom diss you gotta pick the field of cuisine I’m working with, cuz I can’t think of anything else now. At this point I’m gonna take you to a juice bar- or a priest. Anything to cleanse that information from our collective consciousness.”
