I stare at Rachel. “So… last year was okay?”
Rachel inhales sharply, shaking her head like she can’t believe anyone could be so clueless. “You really don’t know, do you?”
I shake my head.
“Last year there were two of them,” she says. “A murder-suicide.” She fashions her thumb and forefinger into a mock gun, aims it at me, then aims it at her temple. “Boom, boom,” she says.
_____
Rachel is messing with me—she has to be.
If Southside had a student die every single year, it would be big news. A murder-suicide would be even bigger news. I’d definitely know about it. It wouldn’t be possible not to know about it.
Of course, my boyfriend Seth always teases me about how oblivious I am. Maybe Rachel’s telling the truth.
As I wait on the slow-moving cafeteria line to get lunch during our break from orientation, I pull out my phone to do a quick internet search. It should be easy enough to verify Rachel’s story. And then I can put my mind at ease. Or else start to panic. One or the other.
Unfortunately, the connection is horrible in here, and my phone is complaining that it can’t access the internet. I’m debating if I should move closer to a window when I feel a horrible weight land on my foot, crushing the delicate bones that Dr. Conlon has not yet had a chance to teach me about. I gasp in pain and my phone crashes to the floor as I instinctively grab at my foot.
What the hell was that?
That’s when I notice a frightening bear-like creature looming over me. Actually, it turns out to be a human being, but he’s roughly the size of a bear. The foot that he used to crush mine with is practically the size of a tennis racket. This guy is big in all directions.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” the bear cries. “Are you all right?”
No, I am not all right. My goddamn foot is broken, you stupid bear. Well, maybe not broken. But definitely badly bruised.
Still, I manage to nod, and look up at his face, which is nowhere near as scary as the rest of him. The bear has a shock of red hair that’s disheveled despite being very short, and freckles pouring over either end of the bridge of his nose.
“I’m really sorry,” the bear says again. He rescues my phone from the floor and hands it to me gingerly. It seems to be intact, thank God. “I didn’t realize anyone was behind me.” He hesitates. “I’m Abe.”
“Heather,” I say. I release my broken foot just long enough to grab his outstretched hand. Thankfully, he doesn’t crush my hand in his when he shakes it. I hate it when men do that, and it’s pretty clear Abe could easily demolish my hand if he got the inclination to do so.
“You’re a first year?” he asks.
No, I just hang out at med school orientations for kicks.
“Yep,” I say.
“Neat,” Abe says, then appears to have run out of things to say. He rubs his gigantic hands together, clears his throat, and awkwardly turns back to the lunch line to examine his food options. It’s going to be either arroz con pollo or fish. And the fish is scary looking. So chicken and rice it is.
_____
Somehow I end up at the worst lunch table ever. I’d prefer to be eating by myself, but apparently being in med school is like reverting to high school, and as I walk off the line with my plate of food, I suddenly grow desperately afraid of being the loser who has to eat all alone. So I grudgingly join Rachel at a circular table, along with an intense-looking boy with big protruding eyes, and an owlish Asian girl. As I sit down, I see a shadow fall over me and I discover that the bear has trailed me to my seat. Clearly, he’s smarter than the average bear.
“Can I join you?” Abe asks, hovering over me, clearly uncertain if I’m too polite to refuse.
I nod, and everyone has to shove over to allow a large gap of space for this giant person. Once we’re seated, the intense boy introduces himself as Glenn and the owlish girl says her name is Lauren.
“That looks disgusting,” Rachel says, eying my plate of dried out chicken coated with a layer of yellow rice.
It sort of does. But I don’t think it’s any worse than Rachel’s own plate of uncooked carrots, cucumber, bean sprouts, and a weird-smelling white sauce. Abe (who has chosen both the chicken and the fish for lunch) seems to agree, because he stares at her food in absolute horror.
“Is that your whole lunch?” he says.
Rachel juts out her chin. “Yes. I am a vegan.”
Abe blinks. “Is that like a vegetarian?”
Before Rachel can answer, Glenn says, “No, it’s some weird religious thing.”
Rachel rolls her eyes. “No. It means I don’t eat any food items that come from animals.”
Abe still appears baffled. “You mean, like, their fur?”
I can’t help it—I start giggling into my palms. It’s nice that for once, I’m not the object of Rachel’s wrath.
“No,” Rachel says, her voice low and angry. “Like, I don’t eat dairy or meat.”
“Wow,” Abe breathes. “You mean you don’t eat eggs?”
Rachel shakes her head.
“What about butter?” he presses her.
“No.”
“Ice cream?”
“No.”
“Cheese?”
“No.”
Abe bites his lip. “Cream cheese?”
“No.”
Abe is shaking his head, looking mildly traumatized. I have to say, I’m with Abe on this one. I don’t think I could live without cream cheese or ice cream.
I grab my phone from my purse, and surreptitiously check if Seth has sent me any text messages. He’s starting his first day of med school today too, and we promised to keep in contact. I sent him a couple of texts first thing in the morning, but I haven’t heard a thing from him so far. But I’m sure he’s getting around to it—he’s just busy.
Unfortunately, Rachel catches me looking at my phone. “Texting with your boyfriend again, Heather?”
“No,” I answer truthfully.
Before I can say anything else, Rachel announces to the table: “Heather is dating some guy at another school about a thousand miles away and they text each other every five minutes.”
“No, two hundred thirty-eight miles away,” I mumble. I committed the number to memory last year, when Seth and I were debating if we could make our relationship work long distance. I’d offered to hold off a year, and reapply near his school. But Seth didn’t want me to give up anything for him. Especially since, as he rightfully pointed out, I only got into one school and it was off the waiting list.
“You know,” Rachel says to me, “about 80% of long-term relationships end during medical school.”
Where does Rachel find these stupid statistics anyway?
“Have you been with him long?” Lauren asks me.
I nod. “Three years.” I notice her eyes flit down to my left hand and I quickly add, “He wanted to get engaged, but I thought it was better to wait.”
That’s not exactly a lie. Except it’s sort of the opposite. I had been pressuring Seth for a ring at the end of senior year, but he wanted to wait. “What’s the rush, Heather? It’s not like we’re getting married soon.” Except two of my friends got engaged and neither of them were dating their boyfriends as long as Seth and I were together. Neither of us could imagine a future apart from the other, so why not make it official?
But maybe it’s better this way. There’s no point in complicating things. Plus it would be a pain to figure out what to do with an engagement ring during anatomy labs.
“Three years is a really long time,” Lauren says kindly. “I bet you’ll be in the 20% that stays together.”
I bet we will too.
I mean, I’m pretty sure.
Chapter 2
Seth is supposed to call me tonight at nine p.m. and it’s now one minute after nine. With each passing minute, I’m getting more and more ticked off.
I don’t want to be that kind of girlfriend—the kind where he has to c
all at the exact time he said he would or else I get all pissy. But then again, how hard is it to call on time? Is it really so difficult to pick up the phone and call me at the time I asked him to? I mean, he knows it’s my first day of school and I’m all keyed up. Why is he doing this to me?
It doesn’t help that Rachel is driving me completely crazy. First she started tacking up some pro-choice poster on the wall that had a huge picture of a zombie baby on it. I’m pro-choice too, but that doesn’t mean I want a zombie baby poster on my wall. It was awful. When I asked her to take it down, she started lecturing me on feminism and women’s rights. Apparently, she wants to be a surgeon and it’s people like me who are holding her back.
Look, I want women to have rights. I just don’t like zombie babies on my wall!
The other weird thing is that Rachel hasn’t bought any books. Not even Dr. Conlon’s book, Anatomy Inside Secrets. You’d think if she wanted to be a surgeon, she’d be studying her ass off right now in anticipation of our first anatomy lab tomorrow. Or at least halfheartedly trying to read the lab manual like I’m doing.
Instead she’s sitting on her bed in a lotus position, just watching me. It’s a little creepy. Our bedroom is just too small for two people to share—I feel like we’re always on top of one another. There’s just barely room for both of our beds, our desks, one dresser, and a single bookcase. We have to share the dresser and a single closet. I can’t even walk into the room without tripping on something.
“Are you waiting for your boyfriend to call you?”
I look up at Rachel, who is blinking innocently. I make a face. “His name is Seth. And… well, he might call.”
Rachel snorts. “Just don’t get too hung up on the guy. If he dumps you, I don’t want to be the one who walks in on you if you…well, you know…”
“What?”
Rachel makes a slashing motion across her neck.
I stare at her, horrified. “I’m not going to kill myself!”
She shrugs. “You never know. I mean, who walks into medical school thinking, ‘Hey, I’m going to throw myself off the roof of the hospital.’”
My mouth falls open. I never got around to checking on the internet to see if Rachel’s story is true. Suicide Med. Surely I’d have heard that nickname.
“Nobody really killed themselves, did they?” I say. I’m half-hoping Rachel will start laughing and admit she’s been messing with me.
“Maybe not,” she says.
I feel a twinge of relief until she adds, “They could have all been murders.”
Rachel definitely has a flair for the drama.
“What are you talking about?”
“So here’s an interesting detail,” Rachel says, a mischievous smile forming on her lips. “The first suicide at Southside was six years ago. And when do you think Dr. Conlon got hired?”
I picture Dr. Conlon limping around with his cane and his dorky bowtie.
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
Rachel shrugs again. “Six suicides in six years. Dunno, seems like a big coincidence to me.”
I’m about to finally tell Rachel that I think she’s full of it when my phone starts ringing with Seth’s number. My ringtone is Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA,” which resulted in some choice comments from Rachel last night. But screw her. I like that song.
“Hello,” I answer breathlessly.
I hear chewing on the other line. “’Lo?”
“Hey,” I say, rising up from my bed. Rachel is still staring at me, so I back out of our bedroom into the living room. “What’s up?”
More chewing. “Not much.”
More chewing.
“Um,” I say. “Are you eating?”
“Just an apple.” I hear him swallow.
“Didn’t you get dinner?”
“Yeah,” Seth says. “But, like, I got hungry again.”
Typical Seth. He always gets hungry about an hour after dinner.
“Oh,” I say. I grip the phone tighter. I wish I could give Seth a hug, feel his body against me. The person on the other line almost doesn’t seem like it’s him. This long distance thing really sucks. I didn’t expect it to feel so… distant.
Seth and I first met in freshman chemistry. We were assigned to be lab partners, and I got taken in by his dimples and brown curls. Also, he was just so smart. I would have burned the lab down with my Bunsen burner if not for him.
For months, Seth and I were just friends. Then one day, while we were walking together, I felt his hand slide into mine. We’ve been together ever since.
“I miss you,” I say to him.
“I miss you too,” he says. “I heard a Miley Cyrus song on the radio today and I thought of you.”
“Oh yeah?” I say. I’m unsure if that’s a compliment.
“But you’re way cuter than Miley,” Seth says.
“Gee, thanks,” I laugh.
“And way sexier,” he adds, even though I’m totally not. I’m not the sexy type, but that’s okay.
“I had my orientation today,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” Seth says. “How was it?”
“Pretty good…” I search my brain for something interesting to say. “Our anatomy professor was wearing a bowtie. Isn’t that funny?”
Seth laughs. “Maybe it’s a spinning bowtie.”
“Maybe,” I say, giggling into the phone. “I wonder if he’ll wear one to lab tomorrow.”
“That would be awesome,” Seth says. “You have to get a photo if he does that.”
We spend the next half hour or so chatting about our respective days. I fill him in on all the weirdo students I met today. He clucks sympathetically when I tell him about how that bearlike student stepped on my foot and almost broke it. And I laugh when he tells me about how a ripe pear that he packed in his backpack exploded and got over all his new books and papers.
“I wish I’d been there to see that,” I say.
“Yeah,” Seth says. “I wish you’d been there too. You would’ve pissed your pants laughing.”
I close my eyes and imagine that Seth is sitting beside me. My left hand squeezes my knee.
“I miss you so much,” I say.
“I miss you too, Heather,” Seth says. He pauses. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I say. It’s all I can do to keep from covering the phone with kisses.
Seth sighs. “Okay, I better get back to work.”
“Me too,” I say. But I don’t hang up.
“You didn’t hang up,” Seth notes.
I smile into the phone. “Neither did you.”
“Well, one of us has to hang up,” he points out.
“Well then, I want to be you,” I say.
Seth laughs. “No, you have to hang up first.”
“No,” I retort. “You hang up.”
“No, you,” Seth says.
“I think you’re going to have to hang up first,” I say.
We’re about go another three or four rounds like we usually do when I hear Rachel yell from the bedroom, “For Christ sake, hang up the goddamn phone already before I shoot myself in the head!”
Seth and I quickly whisper our goodbyes and hang up the phone. The last thing I want to do is incur Rachel’s wrath further. But when I hang up, I have a good feeling in my stomach. It helps knowing that Seth is here for me. Seth is my first… well, no, he’s more like my second… well, anyway, he’s my first love. I love him. And he loves me. This is totally going to work out. I’ve got nothing to worry about.
Chapter 3
Southside Med doesn’t have a locker room per se. What we’ve got is a long hallway of lockers, not segregated in any way by gender. Meaning that I’ve got two choices:
1) Be a prude and run to the ladies room to change into scrubs for lab
2) Change my clothes in front of boys
I stand in front of my locker, clutching my scrubs for far too long, trying to make a decision. The ladies’ room is all the way at the
other end of the floor, so I’ll save some serious time if I change my clothes right here. And it’s not very crowded, at least not yet. However, I’m still retaining a modicum of modesty and I’m not sure if I can make myself do it. I feel like my body isn’t quite as bikini-ready as I’d like it to be.
In any case, I need to decide soon. Because I look like an idiot just standing here.
I’m just about ready to start pulling my shirt over my head when I hear a door swing open and about a dozen students filter into the hallway, most of them male.
No, all of them male.
And loud.
I quickly pull my shirt back down.
One of the students yanks open the locker three doors away from mine, and gives me a charming smile. And oh my God, this guy is cute. I mean, seriously cute. If someone made a movie about our med school class, he’d be playing himself. His face is really classically handsome, but most of all, I can’t stop staring at his hazel eyes, and I have to admit, at this moment, Seth is the farthest thing from my mind.
Especially when Dreamy McCutie pulls off his shirt.
Wow, look at that chest. Sheesh.
“What’s wrong?” he asks me as he fishes through his locker for his scrub top. “You forget something?”
Oh God, I really need to stop staring at this guy.
“No,” I mumble, still clutching my own scrubs to my chest. “I just… need to go change.”
Dreamy McCutie yanks a crisp green scrub top from his locker and winks at me. “So what are you waiting for?”
I swallow, feeling like a silly little girl at a Justin Bieber concert or something. I should not be swooning over random guys in my class. I have a boyfriend who I love, who I want to marry. And even if I didn’t, I still shouldn’t be swooning.
And I definitely shouldn’t be changing my clothes in front of this guy.
“Excuse me,” I say, and I race off in the direction of the ladies’ room.
I am such a prude.
_____
The ladies’ room is a comforting sight, packed to the brim with other female students who are also too chicken to change clothes in the hallway. We prudes definitely make up the majority. I put on my scrubs and sneakers, deposit my clothes back in my locker, and head for the anatomy lab.
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