Holding Out Hope

I sat in on the interview. The people we were interviewing were all girls, no guys. It was for a receptionist position at a famous hospital in Boston.

I was moving up in the ranks because my previous coworker, let's call her Ava, was leaving. I got to take her superior seat in the receptionist area.

The last girl we interviewed was definitely not my favorite candidate.

My manager hired her.

She loved to talk. I mean, this girl was on fire with stories. She'd come from a lower position on the floor above us in the hospital. If I were to be unkind, I'd say she "yapped."

She talked about her love interest(s), her family, Iran. Her family had eleven daughters and one son. Her parents had escaped Iran for a better life in America.

That should have been enough to impress me. Instead, for about a month straight, she would update me on her sister.

Her sister was deeply in love. She was pregnant. She was holding out hope for the father of her unborn child, desperately wanting him to love her back. It was unrequited love and my coworker, if talking can be measured in meters, was on her tenth kilometer.

Then came the final update: my coworker told me that she had finally convinced her sister to get an abortion.

She told her sister, "He doesn't love you. He never will - don't trap him."

My coworker was five years younger than me - and I mean, I was young then, too. I think I actually turned my head all the way around to look at her as she recounted the abortion itself.

She said, "I have never seen so much blood in my life." She had held her sister's hand through the entire abortion. Her sister had screamed in pain, and she held on tighter.

Then she took a bite of her apple, shrugged, and answered one of our never ending phone calls.

I think she must have been about twenty at the time. Her sister was older than her. She had held her older sister's hand and told her it was the best thing she could do for herself. Don't trap him. Having his kid isn't going to make him love you.

If anything, he'll resent you.

My coworker turned back around to look at me. She applied her shiny pink lip gloss that made her long brown hair look like a halo.

"Anyway, I told her to let go of the guy. I mean, he clearly wasn't interested."

I might mention here that we worked in the pediatrics unit. Later that day, I was taking a phone call from a patient's parent/grandparent/guardian, and she walked up behind me. She cracked a joke she knew would make me sputter with laughter. She leaned in and whispered it so only I could hear.

I laughed so hard I couldn't speak. I hung up on the parent/grandparent/guardian. So unprofessional.

I turned back around to face her. We were both trying to stifle giggles, to the point that it sounded like we were choking.

"I'm so glad we hired you," I said.

"Are you kidding?" she said. "This job is just to get me to the next one."

Then she smacked her glossy pink lips together and smiled at me, and in that moment, I wished we'd been sisters.