The Philanderer
He smiled when I approached him and his friends.
“So, are we all going to be working together today?”
“Yes.” And they laughed. It wasn’t everyday that three clerks and two interns will be on 24-hour duty at the same department. On ordinary days, there was only one intern on duty and he/she had to manage the ER by himself. The chief resident of the department had mistakenly scheduled all of us for today by accident, hence, the overflowing number of clerks and interns.
I wasn’t as attracted to him, at first. He was cute, yes, but tall and somewhat portly. Like a Teddy Bear who lost a few pounds. Physically, being someone who could lose a few pounds myself, I usually preferred the tall, skinny ones. But there was just something about him that somewhat magnetized me and I guess the only word to call it is “chemistry.”
- Philip, the flirtatious doctor -
He made me laugh a lot. And God, he flirted. He flirted with me so much, it was a miracle that I didn’t hook-up with him right then and there. The other intern, Martin, was a pretty boy who was flirting with me as well but having been one of my classmate’s ex-boyfriends, I wasn’t really that into him and before long, he had realized that he was no match for Philip’s witty advances.
“You’re having dumpling for dinner?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “I’m sort of dieting.”
I laughed. “So, you’re eating two?”
“No, I bought that one for you.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t. You look like you need both.”
“No, really. I bought that for you.”
“How sweet… No, thanks, you eat that.”
“So, you won’t even eat what I tried so hard to buy for you? Come on…”
I smiled. “Oh, you…”
After dinner, I found him eating a bar of chocolate. “Wow, Snickers.”
Yes, another food-centered flirtation. What can I say? The quickest way to my heart is through my stomach.
“You want a bite?”
“Yes, can I?”
He held out the open bar of chocolate that he had been biting into before I arrived from my supper break. I bit into the gooey goodness as daintily as I could and closed my eyes. “Mmmm… that was good.”
He looked at me and gulped.
Come evening time, Philip and I were losing precious sleeping time and were just happy talking to each other.
We had a lot of things in common that it was a surprise to both of us that we didn’t meet sooner. We both took up college away from home, same course, spent a lot of time in the big city, frequented some common hang-out areas. There were so many things that we were both into, music, TV shows, interests. It wasn’t that he was my soulmate, more like a kindred soul. If we had met any sooner, there was no doubt that we would have been a couple.
- A representation of the senior and the junior flirting in the hospital –
We were the only ones left in the ER, the rest of our friends from our department had already gone to sleep. The only ones in the ER with us were the nurses, who weren’t privy to our flirtatious conversations. I was holding a little back, laughing hard to make them believe I wasn’t really taking him that seriously. I think he had a reputation of being a flirt and I, on the other hand, had just broken up with one of the emergency volunteers from the same hospital, so I didn’t want other people to gossip about me as well.
“Hey, are you feeling sleepy?”
“Ahmmm… not really.”
“You?”
“No. I’m really enjoying talking to you.”
I smiled. “Maybe we should go sleep. It is almost 2 AM.”
“Where will you be sleeping?”
“The Intern’s Quarters. You?”
“Can I sleep beside you?”
I laughed. “Yeah, and we’ll have everybody in this entire hospital talking about us by tomorrow.”
“Why? We’re just sleeping beside each other. Other clerks and interns do it all the time.”
“Yeah, I guess… Actually, there was a time when I had to sleep beside one of the biggest guys in my class, and we were squeezed together at the top bunk bed. But I was just so happy to have a space to get some well-needed sleep during my duty that I didn’t care anymore that he was a guy or that the bed was really small for the two of us. I was just happy to be able to find a place to lie down, no matter how cramped we were.”
“So, what do you think?”
I laughed. “No. We just met. People will talk.”
“Okay, maybe next time.” And then, we both laughed.
By morning, as I went off to help out at the ward for the bedside rounds, he and I were text messaging furiously. In between dressing changes, writing discharge notes and prescriptions, the flirtation continued.
Wat tym r u going home?
Sun. I won’t liv until I get a gudby kis frm u.
Hahaha… Ur crzy.
I’m serius. So, I’l go to der 2 u now?
I decided not to meet with him before I left the hospital. Despite nothing intimate going on, I felt that I was already being too forward with my flirting and he might think I’m easy should I choose to let him make me give him the goodbye kiss. We still continued texting, and because I had to meet with friends after my duty at the hospital, my friends wondered why I kept laughing and smiling as I read the incoming messages from my constantly beeping cellphone.
The text messaging continued for the next few days. Not a day would pass when he wouldn’t text me. Until one day, he met up with me in school. And as soon as he saw me, I found myself engulfed in his arms and kissing him.
That was five months ago.
At that time, I simply thought I was embarking on a new secret adventure with a good man. I thought we were keeping it secret because people from our school knew us and we wanted to avoid the embarrassing teasings. I figured we both had a name to protect and although he never talked about it, I assumed he had a girlfriend. I wasn’t really closed to the idea of dating someone who has a girlfriend since I have dated a few guys with girlfriends before. I have very little scruples regarding guys in serious relationships. I figured, if a guy is cheating on his girlfriend by being with me, that’s not my fault but rather, his. But I wasn’t beneath kicking my boyfriend out if he cheats on me as well.
Little did I know that it wasn’t a girlfriend that he was concerned about but a wife. A friend told me about and it took some time before I had the nerve to confront him about it. Contrry to what you may think, I am not a bad person. I just attract and fall for the wrong kind of guys. If I only knew back then, back in that fateful day in May about his true status, I would have turned my flirtations to someone else and stayed as far away from Philip as possible.
