#17:

"I lost it.- he answered.- I think I left it at the soap spot one night when I took a shower in the hospital, during a guard and whoever found it didn't return it to me."
Oh, I see.
The Montalvo brothers' ring is almost legendary, each one has his own, even Ramsés. They are quite heavy rings, I would swear they are gold and have the mason symbol of the square and compass engraved. In my ignorance, I once believed that it was the symbol of Harry Potter's deathly hallows.
Apparently receiving that ring at the age of fifteen is something of a family tradition. Losing the one that belonged to Matt must have caused him a lot of trouble. She didn't know them very well, but she did remember that her parents were very strict.
"Did your parents scold you?" I whispered.
"No. They still don't know and if it depended on me they would never find out. Several things were lost at home, you know? A gold chain with the Virgin charm , that of Ramses, and Mark´s watch ."
"You don't think it was me!"
"Obviously not. If I suspect someone, it's the late Amalia. This happened moths ago and she was always snooping around because she was Mark's girlfriend."
I bit the inside of my cheek, Matt stopped the car in front of Uni and I started to gather my things.
"When is the next study?" I asked, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
"Wednesday," he replied between his teeth.
"See ya then." I said, getting out of the car and staying on the sidewalk until he left.
***
"Is it true what is being said throughout the hospital?"
The next day, Monday, Lizet jumped on me as soon as I entered the guard.
"What?" I asked disinterestedly, reviewing my summary on surgical skin conditions. The following Wednesday we would have a seminar on that subject.
"Well, that you and Matt are dating!" Lizet yelled too close to my ear. "Oh, I always knew it. I always knew you would end up under the Montalvos´spell . At first I thought you might like Mark more, but…
"Lisi, stop. What is all that you say? What do you mean Matt and I are dating? Who invented that stupid thing?" - I protested indignantly.
"Is it a lie?" Lizet seemed to deflate. "I did believe it was true."
"Tell me everything."
The girl proceeded to explain to me that a fourth-year girl saw me get out of Matt's car on Sunday, not without withnessing us sharing a pornographic kiss inside the vehicle first. According to the girl, we could have had sex right there, in the parking lot at the entrance of the Uni. I ground my teeth.
My God! Matt is right, we should come together and sue a few people for defamation!
During the visit pass, the atmosphere was uncomfortable, charged with the constant glances and giggles from the fourth-year students. According to their childish reasoning, the only reason Matt requested that his duo be made up of boys was because he was either gay…or had a girlfriend And since such a cute boy couldn't be gay (what a stupid thing) and because he was with me on Sunday that automatically made him my boyfriend.
Pffffffff.
However, there were some girls who weren´t too happy, so after the visit pass they asked Matt directly and he laughed as if nothing had happened and answered.
"She doesn't love me." While I looked at him with a frown. However, he didn't flinch and to top it off, he blew me a kiss.
"What a fool!"
"She's crazy!"
"We do love you, sweety!"
I swear if I could have, I would have jumped on him and gouged his eyes out with my own fingernails. Then, I would have ended up accused of premeditated and treacherous disfigurement of the face, but I would have been completely and absurdly happy.
********
My shift on Tuesday would have been perfect if a patient with digestive bleeding had not suddenly become seriously ill.
I had never seen a person vomit blood like that, the jets coming out of his mouth with horrific pressure and with terrifying speed. Quickly taking him to hypovolemic shock.
While the specialist and several residents struggled to stabilize him, one of the patient's relatives explained to me that at the age of forty-five the man was an alcoholic and a long-term smoker and that in addition to suffering from a bleeding peptic ulcer, he also suffered from esophageal varices, which had been diagnosed very recently.
Luckily, the patient was stabilized and taken to therapy. And to cure our ignorance a bit, the specialist directed us to carry out the study of the causes of upper digestive bleeding, which would be examined in a seminar the following week.
******
"Have you already done your homework on digestive bleeding?" Yunior asked me, two days later, on Thursday, as we walked back to Uni.
"No. What do you think I'm Flash?" I growled.
We were standing on the edge of the sidewalk waiting for the light to change color to cross the street.
"I already did the summary, if you want you could…"
A motorcycle skidded to a stop right in front of me and I jumped back with a squeal.
"Shit...Matt! Are you crazy or blind?"
"Oh, please," Matt whispered bitterly. "Don't be so dramatic, I'm not going to run you over. Come on, we have to study. Get on."
he ordered, holding out a motorcycle helmet in my direction. I returned a grin.
"Not today. I'm tired, let's leave it for Sunday."
Matt pursed his lips, glared Yunior's way, and stormed off.
Plopping onto the bed, I dropped my backpack onto the nearest chair and proceeded to kick off my shoes, lying on my soft mattress and sighing happily into my pillow.
"Aren't you afraid of staying here, alone, at night?" Yunior whispered, standing on the edge of my bed.
"At first, yes, but as the months passed I got used to it. If someone doesn't mention it, I almost don't remember it."
With his gaze he toured my entire room, he unhooked his backpack from his shoulder, sitting in the chair in front of me, depositing my backpack on my bed, next to me.
"Amalia's parents collected all her things... are you sure they didn't forget something somewhere?"
I looked at him strangely, after all his question was very strange.
"I mean…" he smiled. "…with the madness of the moment, they could easily have forgotten some of her belongings or even taken something of yours."
" I don´t thimg so. Believe it or not, Amalia was a disaster at many things, but not at keeping her belongings organized. I often commented that she behaved like a control freak. She even kept picking up, folding and organizing my clothes and things. You can believe it?"
Yunior laughed, shaking his head and taking his notes from the backpack.
"Yes, I can easily imagine Amalia as Cinderella. I clearly remember that she even used to line up the chairs and tables in our classroom during first and second years.
Thanks to Yunior passing on his notes to me, I didn't need to do a summary myself and was able to study the content more calmly. By Sunday, Matt picked me up in the afternoon and we spent three hours reviewing for the seminar on following Tuesday.
"Hematemesis?" Matt asked, as we went over some concepts.
"Vomiting with blood."- I answered.
"Melena?" he insisted.
"The impressive fur on the lions' heads," I teased.
Matt looked at me sideways, making a disgusted face.
"Pffff, you don't have a sense of humor.- I protested.- In short, “melena” is the presence of digested blood in feces, which gives them a characteristic dark color."
"Very good," Matt scoffed.
"Thanks."- I answered self-sufficiently.
"Now... Melenemesis?" he asked raising an eyebrow.
I put a handful of popcorn in my mouth and chewed slowly.
"Is your goal to make me drop the snack?" I protested.
"Concepts are important, Rosario. Many times they appear in the tests as true or false questions, link or complete."
I compressed my lips.
"Melenemesis, are vomits that contain feces, are usually very smelly and unpleasant. I don´t understand why it is within our content to study because they do not really belong to digestive bleeding, they are a more characteristic sign of intestinal obstruction."
"Bravo!" Matt crooned in satisfaction, giving me his widest, most patented smile.