Little Known Facts: A Novel by Christine Sneed

yield to a diagnosis, his motives are indiscernible. It is also possible that he didn’t know what he was up to that day either.
    Some of the patients she sees during the last week with Dr. Glass before she moves to an ICU rotation—
just before,
she will come to think of this time of self-recrimination and agonizing anticipation—have embarrassing, messy afflictions. One of them, a Slovenian man in his late fifties, is suffering from what tests will soon reveal to be advanced colon cancer, and Anna and her classmates must examine him, despite the fact his ailing body exudes an odor worse than anything she has come across in her life. She has to try very hard not to gag when she stands close to him, and one of her classmates actually does gag—not Jim Lewin, but Anna thinks she sees tears of pained restraint in his eyes when he gently palpates the man’s abdomen, trying not to cause him more anxiety or suffering.
    The man of Sunday’s flirtation seems very remote when they are examining the sickest patients, and Anna views him in the same light that she often perceives her father when watching one of his films—at a distance, almost as a doppelganger, someone who looks intensely familiar but is unapproachable. She thinks that he couldn’t possibly have been serious about the invitation to see him again in Marina del Rey, and in her disappointment over this realization, she understands that she has already made up her mind to meet him.
    “Grace Whiting’s cancer is still in remission,” Dr. Glass tells her after she sits down across from him at the same table as the previous week, self-conscious in her pale pink sundress and a strand of small, flawless pearls, a gift from her mother on her twenty-first birthday. She feels overdressed, which she knew would probably happen, but the dress is her favorite and she has only worn it once before today. Everyone else is in shorts and T-shirts, or short skirts like the one she wore last week, but Dr. Glass is wearing a cornflower blue linen shirt and pressed khaki pants. It seems that he too has made an effort.
    “I’m so glad to hear that,” she says. “I’ve been wondering what happened with the tests you ordered last week.” In fact, Grace Whiting had slipped her mind, neither she nor Dr. Glass mentioning her case during the past week. Like her father, it seems that she too is susceptible to the walnut-brain phenomenon.
    “Her T-cell count was normal and her lymph nodes were clear. I think she’ll be fine. Her immune system is probably still a little worn down from the chemo last winter. The trick is not to let her get addicted to the painkillers we prescribed.” He gives her a sheepish smile. “I need to stop teaching, don’t I. We’re off the clock.”
    “It’s okay,” she says, though she already knows the things he has just told her. “I’m so happy that you think she’ll be fine.” She sips from her iced tea, which is weak and too warm, but she doesn’t want to complain at the register and ask for a new one.
    “Were you visiting your friend again today?”
    “Yes,” she lies. “But I remembered on my way to the car that you said you’d probably be here.” Her palms are sweating, and her underarms, though it is a perfect day—seventy-two degrees and a blinding blue sky.
    “Next week if you’re free, why don’t you let me take you to lunch? We don’t have to meet here. If you like seafood, there’s a nice little place a couple of blocks away. Or we could meet somewhere closer to you. I like Silver Lake. It has a couple of bookstores that I used to go to before I had kids and still had time to read.”
    “You were reading last week when I saw you here.” She cannot quite believe that he has just asked her on a date. She feels her heartbeat accelerate. Tachycardia, she thinks, the technical term for her condition there without prompting.
    “That’s true. I was. Do you like Bellow too? I don’t like his later books as much as his early