I can see it all laid out for Heather. She’ll marry some guy in the next four years, if not her current loser boyfriend, then some other loser in our class. She’ll work as a physician for a few years and then probably quit to become a stay-at-home mom after popping out a few rugrats. Heather is not exactly a high-powered career woman.
Before I left for DeWitt, my mom said to me, “Rachel, please try to make some friends this time.” Or something patronizing like that. She sent me to a shrink in high school because I had no friends. Which wasn’t my fault at all—trust me. Is it my fault that most people get on my nerves? And anyway, you don’t go to med school to make friends. You go tobecome a doctor.
I just wish I were better at studying.
The truth is,there’s a lot in anatomy that doesn’t interest me all that much. Well, most of it, to be perfectly honest. There are just too many nerves, too many arteries… way too much to memorize.
So I fail a few quizzes. Big deal.
Dr. Conlon thinks it’s a big deal, though. After I fail three quizzes in a row, he starts paying a lot of attention to me in the lab. He seems concerned.
“You realize you just cut through the phrenic nerve,” he observes as he watches me.
Mason, who is working on the other side of the cadaver, says, “Rachel cuts through everything. She thinks it’s all fascia.”
Speaking of people I hate. I nearly reach out and strangle Mason for making me look bad in front of Dr. Conlon. He’s the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met. I sent out an email to the class about how disrespectful it is to name your cadaver and asked him if he’d seen it. He told me he had, and it was “hilarious.”
Dr. Conlon ignores Mason’s comment and limps closer to me, squinting at my T-shirt through his spectacles.
“‘I am the doctor my mother wanted me to marry’,” he reads off the shirt. He smiles. “I like that.”
“Yeah,” I mumble.
Dr. Conlon’s eyes meet mine, “It’s pretty amazing that women now make up the majority of med school classes these days. It wasn’t that way thirty years ago.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Too bad most women do peds, primary care, and ob-gyn.”
“What field are you interested in, Dr. Bingham?” he asks.
“Surgery,” I reply without hesitation.
I look up sharply as Mason snorts from the other side of the table. I hate Mason. And the worst thing is, he’ll live out his whole life being that same arrogant asshole and never learn any humility. It’s just not fair.
Dr. Conlon waits for me after lab is over that day. He’s changed out of his scrubs and is back in his slacks with a dress shirt. And a bowtie. That bowtie just slays me. Who the hell wears a bowtie?
“Rachel,” he says as he takes me aside, concern in his blue eyes, “I just want you to know that if you need it, there’s help available for you. There are a lot of second-year or graduate students I can recommend who will be happy to spend extra time with you in the lab.”
We haven’t even had our first big exam yet, and already, I’ve set myself aside as someone who needs remedial help.
“And of course,” Dr. Conlon continues, “I’m always available for questions.”
I’ll bet. Dr. Conlon is the biggest dork on the face of the planet and clearly does not have a rip-roaring social life. Every time I pass by his office, no matter what the hour, the light is on under his door. No wife, no girlfriend, no kids. He probably hasn’t had a date in years. Maybe it’s been so long, he’s given up hope that it’s going to ever happen again.
It is just so unbelievably perfect.
33
When I wasa junior in high school, I found myself in danger of failing trigonometry.
Trigonometry is hard. The entire concept of sines and cosines just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. My parents hired a tutor, some eighty-year-old walking skeleton of a woman, but each session just confused me further. What can I say—I suck at math. I kept getting my exams back full of red pen marks, and I started to worry about how I was going to get into a decent college with an F in trig.
Harvey Pritchett was my trigonometry teacher. Mr. Pritchett was a short, balding, unattractive, middle-aged man who waddled instead of walking. He was married, probably to a short, unattractive, middle-aged woman. He left a sticky note on my second midterm exam (with my spectacular grade of thirty-eight out of one hundred), saying, “See me after class.”
When I saw the note, I cried. I was not exactly a picture of confidence back then. I had zero friends, sucked at sports, and wasn’t really into extracurricular activities. I dressed in frumpy sweaters and baggy jeans and grew my hair out to hide the zits on my face. I had tiny little mosquito bites for breasts, and I wasso skinny that you could make out every single one of my ribs and pelvic bones. I was the kind of girl that the popular girls would point at and laugh.
Anyway, trig was the last class of the day, so after the other students filed out of the room, I trudged up to the front of the classroom to face Mr. Pritchett. I was terrified. I hugged my textbook to my chest, my dark hair nearly obscuring my eyes.
Mr. Pritchett sat atop his desk in a gesture that I guessed was supposed to seem casual and friendly. Perspiration stained his armpits and formed a little line on his brow.
