But he wasn’t fine. Soon after I graduated from college, he started having difficulty swallowing. Shortly after, he developed pneumonia and was admitted to the local hospital. He never came out.
For a long time after he died, I was angry. At pretty much everyone. I was angry at the doctors that took far too long to diagnose him, even though in retrospect, his tremors were a dead giveaway. I was angry at the hospital that gave him the wrong antibiotics for his aspiration pneumonia and then talked my mother into withdrawing care while he lay in the ICU.
And my mother—I don’t even want to get into how angry I was ather.
But I got over it. My father wanted me to be a great doctor. That was his dream for me. And wherever he is right now, I want him to see me achieve my dream and graduate from medical school. And notjustgraduate. I intend to be at the very top of my class.
And honestly, as I look around at my classmates, that goal doesn’t seem too unreasonable.
Anatomy isthe central class of the first year. If you ace anatomy, you ace the year.
One of the key components to acing anatomy is Dr. Conlon’s book,Anatomy: Inside Secrets. That’s what all the upperclassmen told me. So early on the morning of orientation, I travel to the hospital bookstore to buy myself a copy.
A lot of people had the same idea as me. There’s an entire shelf dedicated to Dr. Conlon’s book, and now, about half of those copies have been sold. I pick up a fresh copy of the book, flipping through diagrams of the human body, mnemonics, and something called “Conlon’s Law of Finger Flexion,” whatever that is.
Our professor is a bit of a dork, what with the bowtie and all.
There are at least a dozen copies left on the shelf, and I’m suddenly seized by the urge to buy them all so that nobody else can have them. The bookstore would order more copies, but at least this way, I’d have a head start for the first lab.
Of course, I don’t do it. Mostly because this book isn’t cheap, and I can’t afford twelve copies. I can barely afford the books I need.
Instead, I pull out the stack of paperback texts and load them into my arms. Conlon’s book isn’t that thick, but the stack is fairly heavy. I glance around to make sure nobody’s watching then relocate the stack to a little nook behind a life-sized skeleton. For good measure, I toss a DeWitt Med sweatshirt on top of them.
I check once more to make sure nobody saw me before I get in line to purchase my copy ofAnatomy: Inside Secrets. As Ihand over my credit card, another student I vaguely recognize enters the store. He sees my purchase and smiles.
“I’m about to buy the same thing,” he comments.
“Oh, sorry,” I say regretfully. “I just bought the last copy.”
76
It’s not toohard to shine in the anatomy lab when put side by side with my lab partners. For the most part, they’re all disasters. Heather McKinley—a total airhead. It baffles me that she’s here when it took meyearsto finish my requirements to earn a spot in the class. Abe Kaufman seems intelligent enough but also appears more focused on Heather than he is on studying. Rachel Bingham talks big, but I can tell that she’s struggling to master the material. And then there’s Mason Howard.
I hate Mason instantly.
He’s way too good-looking, for starters. Guys who look like that annoy me because they think they’re God’s gift to the world. If I ever get married, I’m going to marry someone butt-ugly who knows what it’s like to be shit on by the world. Also, Mason is super charming. I can just see the girls in our class eating it up. It’ssoannoying. Heather ogles him all through the lab.
He acts like he’s some sort of anatomy genius, but I know the truth: he studies his ass off. He doesn’t mess around—he takes med school very, very seriously. He’s the only person who stays at the library as late as I do.
But you know what pisses me off about Mason?
Even if I study night and day nonstop, even if every grade I get tops Mason’s, he’ll always have the edge over me. No matter what. Because Mason has one quality that I don’t possess: charisma.
A little charisma goes a long way. And Mason has alotof charisma.
“He already looks like a surgeon,” Heather says to me as we stand on the far end of the cadaver table, Mason cutting as we flip through the lab manual. Heather is practically swooning.
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” I say.
“Yes.” Heather blushes. “What are you saying?”
“Nothing,” I murmur.
Heather clears her throat and flips the page in the manual. “How about you? Are you seeing anyone?”
I dated a boy named Alex before med school started. It wasn’t very serious. He was the son of a woman my mother knew from work, and he was short. I’m short, so I always get set up with short guys, even though I’m not that attracted to them. Anyway, it wasn’t a big loss to break up with him when school started. I couldn’t have any distractions.
“Not really,” I say.
