“It’s more complicated than that, Amir. I mean I wish more than anything it wasn’t. I—I love you.”
“Complicated? What the hell does that mean, complicated? It seems pretty fucking simple to me! Either you love me or you don’t.”
“Say something, Rory!” I berated myself, but I was speechless.
“Don’t do this, Rory! I love you. This is movie love, and I’m older than you are. I know this doesn’t come around very often. I’ll do anything. We can make this work!”
But my silence was deafening.
Amir hung up the phone, leaving me to cry hysterically in a fetal position.
What had I done? There was no rational explanation. Love was fragile and it couldn’t be logically debated. All I knew was that I had just ruined the best thing that had ever happened to me. Why wouldn’t I just call back, put the silliness of societal expectations behind me, and just be happy, goddamn it?! But my happiness was not part of the equation. It never had been.
28. The White Coat Burning Ceremony
The next few weeks were busy with wrapping up our final year, as Laura and I prepared for graduation. I secretly hoped that Amir would call me, but he never did. As strong as he was, Amir was proud—he was not the type to grovel, one of his features I found most attractive. As far as the match was concerned, by an amazing coincidence, Laura and I had both “matched” with Hillside Hospital. I was to join the surgery group and she would be in pediatrics.
Manhattan would be the ideal place to resuscitate my deadened senses now that Amir was gone—a city filled with successful men who could appreciate a woman with brains. Laura had stoked the flames during my period of celibacy, filling my mind and body with lust and the quest for power and even a little vengeance for all those lecherous older men who had tried to fuck me over. I had mentally established (or re-established) my first rule of survival: absolutely no MD relationships outside of the hospital.
Laura, sadly, hadn’t shared my New York City dream.
“Ror, you know me. I want to take a trolley home, a riverboat to work, not play Free Cell amidst the perspiring strap-hangers.”
“Laura, now you’re making me feel like a city rat. Hello? We’re both going to be in New York City! At the same hospital, no less. What could be better than that?”
I still had my own concerns about the future. Deep, deep down inside, I knew I had the chops, but I was still shitting bricks at the challenge that lay before me—mastering the field of surgery. Who did I think I was, ready to cut patients open and fix them? Was I ready to battle with the most mysterious and defiant organ, the pancreas, where cancer could erupt practically overnight?
We attended our graduation in the sweltering heat of early summer while our families looked on with pride, or maybe it was relief.
Suddenly, the music of bagpipes flowed into the tent, ushering in a procession of very important people—various deans, presidents, and trustee members, none of whom I recognized. This made sense, as we students represented metaphorical plankton on the food chain. A hush fell over the crowd as Dean Vernon took the podium.
The dean cleared his throat and began reading his speech:
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the graduation of the Class of 2012. It is my honor today to bestow upon these distinguished graduates their medical degrees. The medical degree represents the culmination of four years of unparalleled dedication and industry that many will attempt and only few will achieve. These young men and women before you have just completed the first leg of a lifelong journey as healers, having begun to acquire the challenging skills required to save a life, ameliorate pain, and manage a chronic condition. They have made sacrifices and will continue to make sacrifices as physicians, placing the lives and care of patients above all else...”
His talk went on like this for a while. I tried listening intently, sweat glistening from the insufferable heat. My graduation staple was a red bikini worn hidden beneath my cap and gown. I had done it in high school and college. Although I had no intention of revealing my wardrobe choice publicly, it represented my silent antiauthoritarian protest, as I was always too chicken shit to be outwardly rebellious. But there, at my medical school graduation, I began regretting my immature stunt as I listened to the moving words of the dean and prepared to recite the Oath of Hippocrates, my official initiation into one of the most elite and privileged societies on the planet.
After the dean had finally finished droning on, he called our names one by one. I had barely gotten back to my seat when I felt an elbow jabbing my ribcage.
“Let’s get out of here,” Laura whispered, clearly up to her usual hijinks.
“Wait, Laura, I want to give my parents a hug.” I quickly located them and embraced first my mom, then my dad.
We scampered away from the graduation tent and jumped into my car. Laura and I sang as we drove toward the hills, bound to celebrate at Webberworld. In the car, we stopped and changed into civilian clothes, embracing truncated shorts and tank tops, which would no doubt irritate my mother.
We were on an important mission that would mark the definitive end to med school.
“Do we have them both?” I asked, referring to our white coats we’d tossed in the back along with a couple of six-packs.
Laura nodded wickedly as she leaned over toward the back seat, confirming the attendance of our short medical-student white coats. The length of one’s white coat was a designation of a physician’s status.
The short white coat was the uniform worn by those at the bottom of the medical pyramid. For a flickering moment, I projected into the future, entertaining the possibility that I might want to keep this piece of memorabilia. I had made the rite of passage from “pre-doctor” to “actual doctor.” But my overwhelming desire and rebellious rage to leave these years behind prevailed. We were going to turn those coats into ash.
Burn, baby, burn.
We grabbed our coats out of the car and headed out back, where my father kept his precious grill front and center for those epic Webber barbecues. We knocked back a few beers and threw our white coats into a heap on the grill. I took out a match while Laura supplied the lighter fluid. I looked over at Laura with one final plea as if to say, “We have survived, haven’t we?”
Laura began giggling loudly.
