I squeeze my hands together. “Well, um… I guess, since I’m here…”
“Have a seat,” Dr. Conlon says, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. I close the door to his office and sit down in the chair in front of his desk almost gingerly, as if afraid it might collapse under my weight. Which is actually possible, considering how many cookies I’ve consumed in the last month. “What’s up?”
“I just…” I bite my lower lip. “I think I failed the exam, Dr. Conlon. IknowI failed it.”
Dr. Conlon furrows his black eyebrows. “Heather…”
“I studied so hard, I swear!” Now I’mcrying, for God’s sake. What’swrongwith me? I’ve morphed into this stereotype of a hysterical medical student. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and notice Dr. Conlon is gawking at me. I hope he doesn’t think I’m on drugs. “I just… I don’t know what happened! The test was so hard… Maybe I just… I’m not as good as… Sometimes I don’t know what I’m even doing here… I just feel like…”
“Heather.” Dr. Conlon runs a hand through his black hair. “Stop, okay? Stop. You passed, okay?”
What?
“I… What?”
“You passed.”
I don’t know what to say. Honestly, I sort of want to jump across the table and plant a big sloppy wet kiss on my professor’s face. But that would be unprofessional. So instead, I settle for tearfully thanking him for a solid five minutes, followed by a brief speech about how he is the kindest man I’ve ever met in my life, concluding with something about how he ought to win a Nobel Prize.
After I finish making a complete idiot out of myself, Dr. Conlon sighs and shakes his head.
“Christ,” he says, but he’s smiling. “I forgot what it was like to be a medical student.”
I wipe my eyes. I really can’t picture Dr. Conlon twenty years younger, starting out as a nervous young medical student. Dr. Conlon always seems so confident. He knows everything about the human body, as far as I can tell.
“I didn’t know you had to go to med school to teach anatomy,” I comment.
“You don’t.” Dr. Conlon lowers his eyes as he toys with a button on his shirt sleeve. “I dropped out of med school.”
Before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “But why? You’re so smart!”
Nice job. I can’t believe I just said that to my professor.
But to my relief, he laughs. “Believe me, getting a doctorate in anatomy is not exactly a walk in the park.”
I watch as he puts his left palm on the handle of his cane and absently fiddles with it. I asked Abe once if he knew what’s wrong with Dr. Conlon, and he said he had no idea. I wonder if his disability has anything to do with why he left medical school. I wonder if he resents us for doing what he couldn’t do.
Dr. Conlon gives me a stern look.
“Now, Heather,” he says, “you better not tell anyone I told you that you passed. If I see a line of one hundred and fifty students outside my door, I’m going to be really angry at you.”
“I won’t tell,” I promise.
He smiles. “Good. And you need to have more confidence in yourself. I see the way you are in the lab, and you’ve made huge progress.”
I almost faint with joy. Finding out I passed the exam and that Dr. Conlon thinks I’m smart is an incredible high. I’m pretty sure there are no little white pills that could make me feel any better than this.
11
I singin my car all the way home from Dr. Conlon’s office. My radio is blaring some top-forty pop station, and I’m screaming out Ava Max and Dua Lipa songs at the top of my lungs. Thankfully, the windows are up, so nobody has to go deaf from my horrible voice. I love to sing, and I do it probably more than I should, considering I can’t hold a tune. A few times, Landon has told me that if I didn’t stop singing, he was going to stuff a gag in my mouth.
He was joking, obviously.
When I get back to the dorm, there’s only one person I want to talk to, and that’s Landon. Okay, things haven’t been super great with him lately, but that’s about to change. I’m going to make an effort to make it work from now on. Maybe next weekend, I’ll drive out to see him.
Before placing the call, I bring up a photo of Landon that I’ve got saved in my camera roll. In the picture, he’s lying on his bed, his curly brown hair tousled, grinning with those adorable dimples at the camera. It’s like I’ve somehow almost forgotten what he looked like. I trace my fingertip over the curves of his face, trying to remember how much I care about him.
I do. I know I do. Even though he’s sort of been a jerk lately.
