Undead 3, Undead and Unappreciated - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,2

take my word for it, or if I needed a note from a doctor or bartender or something, and it was kind of weird with the camera lights and all—"

He was giving me the strangest look. Usually I got that look from Sinclair. "It doesn't work like that."

"Yeah, I know, I found out. Really nice bunch of people. Kind of jumpy, but very friendly. Had to dodge the reporter, though."

"Reporter—" He shook his head. "But Betsy… why did you go?"

"Isn't it obvious?" I asked, a little irritably. Marc was usually sharper than this. "I drink blood."

"And did it work?" he asked with exaggerated concern.

"No, dimwad, it did not. The reporter and the lights freaked me out, so I left early. But I might go back." I took another gulp of tea. Needed more sugar. I dumped some in and added, "Yep, I just might. Maybe they don't teach you the trick until you've gone a few times."

"It's not a secret handshake, honey." He laughed, but not like he thought what I'd said was funny. "But you could try that, see how that works."

"What's your damage? Maybe you should have a drink," I joked.

"I'm a recovering alcoholic."

"Oh, you are not."

"Betsy. I am."

"Nuh-uh!"

"Uh-huh."

I fought down escalating panic. Sure, I hadn't known Marc as long as I'd known, say, Jessica, but still. You'd think he would have brought something like that up. Or—ugh!—maybe he had, and I'd been so obsessed with the events of the past six months I hadn't—

"Don't worry," he said, reading my aghast expression and interpreting it correctly. "I never told you before."

"Well, I… I guess I should have noticed." I could put away a case of plum wine a month, and Jessica liked her daiquiris, and Sinclair went through grasshoppers like there was gonna be a crème de menthe embargo (for a studly vampire king, he drank like a girl), but I'd never noticed how Marc always stuck to milk. Or juice. Or water.

Of course, I'd had other things on my mind. Especially lately. But I was still embarrassed. Some friend! Didn't even realize my own roommate had a drinking problem. "I guess I should have noticed," I said again. "I'm sorry."

"I guess I should have told you. But there didn't ever seem to be a good time to bring it up. I mean, first there was the whole thing with Nostro, and then all the vampires getting killed, and then Sinclair moved in…"

"Ugh, don't remind me. But… you're so young. How did you even know you were one, much less decided to stop drinking?"

"I'm not that young, Betsy. You're only four years older than me."

I ignored that. "Is that why you were going to jump off the hospital roof when I met you?" I asked excitedly. "The booze had driven you to suicide?"

"No, paperwork and never getting laid had driven me to suicide. The booze just made me sleepy. In fact, that was the whole problem. Sleep."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. See, being a med student isn't so bad. The work isn't intellectually hard or anything—"

"Spoken like a math genius."

"No, it's really not," he insisted. "There's just a lot of stuff to memorize. And they—hospitals—can't work a student to death. But they can work the interns and residents to death. And the thing is, when you're an intern, you're always short on sleep rations."

I nodded. I'd faithfully watched every episode of ER until they killed off Mark Green and the show started severely sucking.

"So it was normal to go forty, fifty hours sometimes without sleep."

"Yeah, but don't patients suffer because of it? I mean, tired people fuck up. Even someone who didn't go to Harvard Medical School knows that."

Marc nodded. "Sure. And it's not news to administration, either, or the chief residents, or the nurses. But the fuckups are blamed because a babydoc—that's what the interns are called—did it, not because he did it because he hadn't slept in two nights."

"Bogus."

"Tell me. They're supposed to limit the amount of hours you work, but it's not enforced. After a while you get used to it. You can't really remember a time when you weren't dog-ass tired. It starts getting hard to sleep even on your nights off. You're so used to being awake, and even if you do fall asleep, you know a nurse is going to wake you up in five minutes to handle a code or an admit, so why bother going down in the first place, and you just… stay awake. All the time."

He went back to the fridge, refilled