by Anthony Youn
The first time they invite me to suture, the chief resident hovers like a hawk, eyes fixated on my hands, scouring my fingers for the slightest evidence of tremor. They’ve started me off with a foot. If I manage to suture without trembling, they’ll move me to a hand. I keep my hands still as stone, but as I begin, I start to shake.
Tony, you’re good, I tell myself. You can do this in your sleep. Slow down. Breathe. Now stitch.
I calm down, move my fingers a fraction of a millimeter at a time. But it’s too late. I know the chief has seen the tremor. He lurches away, mutters something. He’s seen enough.
I have weeks left. I haven’t really connected with anybody. I find none of the camaraderie of Grand Rapids. The surgeons in Springfield are all business—intense, impatient, distant—and not interested in engaging me. I no longer attribute this attitude to my dog breath.
I hit the clinic each morning at five. I round every patient on my own, fill out boring and basic paperwork, write progress reports—Patient doing well. Wound looks good—then I write down whatever the surgeon has suggested for the next step. An hour later, the residents arrive, round the patients themselves, read my reports, and sign their name. Two hours later, the attending surgeons come in, visit the patients with me, and sign their name on the report I wrote hours ago. My job, as I see it, is to do everything I can to make their job easier, to save them time. I change dressings, write notes, look up lab-test results, input them on the charts. And when I can, I kiss ass. I’m not proud of it. But this is year four, the year we land a residency. I hear every day how tough the competition is for plastic surgery. I wouldn’t love spending six years in Springfield, but if it’s the only place that takes me—
Yes, I want to become a plastic surgeon that badly.
The week of Thanksgiving, I start to feel extremely homesick. I miss my family terribly and ache to see Amy. I dread the idea of spending Thanksgiving alone. I’ve been coming in at five A.M. every day, never missing a day, and I’m sure the residents will give me a couple of days off to drive home and spend Thanksgiving with my family.
During rounds one morning, I ask about it. “Thanksgiving’s coming up next week. You think you’ll be needing any help? Should I stick around? Or should I make plans to go home?”
“Yeah, stick around,” the chief resident says, rumbling toward the door. “We can use your help. One of the residents will invite you over for Thanksgiving dinner.”
I have to stick around? You have to be kidding. You don’t need me. I don’t do anything. I write stupid notes on a stupid chart. Nobody knows I exist. You can use my help? Seriously?
“Oh, okay, sure, that’s terrific. Thanks.”
I doubt he’s heard a word I’ve said.
THURSDAY. THANKSGIVING DAY, 4:45 A.M.
I pull myself up off my sleeping cushion, take a quick shower to wake up, walk over to the medical center. I round the patients, make my notes, wait for one of the residents to show up. Two hours later, he strolls in. We speed-round the patients. It’s Thanksgiving, after all. A wave of homesickness washes over me. I won’t be going home, but at least I’ll have a home-cooked turkey dinner with someone else’s family. We finish rounding the patients.
“Well, I’m off for two days,” the resident says.
“Right,” I say. “The long weekend.”
“I love Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday.”
“I know, so great. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, buttered yams, cranberry sauce—”
“Cut it out. You’re making me hungry.”
I laugh. “Sorry. Got carried away. So, um, what time—”
“All right, buddy. I’ll see you in a couple days. Hold down the fort, willya?”
He slingshots out of there. I guess he’s not the resident assigned to invite me home for dinner.
WHEN I LEAVE an hour later, it’s raining, the kind of pile-driving Midwest deluge that rakes your face and hits the pavement with the consistency of mud. I run to my apartment, climb the treacherous, slippery concrete stairs, and pull off my clothes. I take my second shower of the day, a really quick one, in case the phone rings with my official Thanksgiving-dinner invitation. I dry off, change into the best clothes I have, and sit on my Korean sleeping cushion, the only spot in the apartment where I feel clean, waiting for the phone to ring.
It takes me only about twenty minutes to realize that no one is going to call.
I turn on my tiny television and flip from snowy channel to snowy channel. I stare numbly at the Lions receiving their traditional Thanksgiving Day beat-down. During commercials, I find an old black-and-white movie with Jimmy Stewart, so sappy it chokes me up. I nap, and then at around six, famished, I brave the storm, and with the rain battering my windshield like gunshots, I tool slowly toward the center of town, looking for a place to eat. “I am gonna have my turkey dinner, damn it,” I say as the wipers flap and crunch across the windshield.
In front of me, a large lad holding a tray full of food beckons. The sign reads BIG BOY. I pull in to the parking lot, find a space, throw my collar up, and dash inside. I shake myself dry in the small entryway.
“How many?” the perky hostess sings.
“One,” I say.
She frowns painfully into the clipboard she holds. She raises up, hits me with a blinding smile she’s clearly practiced in a mirror. “Right this way, sir.”
Sir? I’m probably younger than she is, but whatever.
“Here ya go.” She gestures toward a booth as if she’s Vanna White. “Plenty of room for ya to stretch out.”
I slide in, and she spanks a laminated menu into my hand.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” she says.
The booth smells of lemon Pledge. I tap my fingers on the edge of the table, then fan my face with the menu, even though it’s about thirty degrees in here. I look around the restaurant. A party of four to my right. Three women to my left. A family of six across from me, taking up two tables. As far as I can see, I’m the only single in the place.
“This is officially pathetic,” I say.
I lay the menu down on the table, edge out of the booth, and head out of the restaurant, passing the perky hostess standing like a sentry by her podium at the entrance. Her practiced smile twitches in confusion. “Did you want a different booth?”
“Kind of want a different life,” I say.
I slosh back into the rain.
IN THE END, I celebrate Thanksgiving alone in my apartment with two root beers and a turkey sub I find mashed in the front case at a convenience store. This may not be what the Pilgrims had in mind, but it’s all I got. I fall asleep to the sunny weatherman predicting more rain—why is everyone around here so damn perky?—and wake up, as usual, at 4:45 A.M. I drive to work, round the patients, write my notes, and walk out the door. I fill the Ford Tempo with gas, grab a bunch of PowerBars and a Big Gulp, and drive six hours straight to Greenville. One of the residents mentioned something a while ago about giving me a day off after Thanksgiving, so I’m taking it. I arrive a day late for Thanksgiving dinner, but it doesn’t matter. I just need to be with people I care about and who care about me. Sunday morning I drive the six hours back to Springfield, this time stoked on turkey sandwiches from home, geared up for my last week in the world’s most elite hand-surgery medical center.
The day before I’m set to leave, the chief surgeon calls me into his office, a dark narrow cavern on the third floor. He sits behind a desk the size of a conference table, his huge hands linked in front of him. “Sit down, Tony.”
I reach behind me and find a chair.
“As you know, we interview for residencies in December or January.”
I squirm in my seat.
“I figure you don’t want to drive all the way back here, do you?”
“I don’t mind. It’s part of the process. Gives me time to prepare, too.”
“You don’t need to prepare. Let’s do the interview now.”
“Now?”
�
��Is that a problem?”
“Oh, no, no, now’s good. Perfect. You’re right. Saves me a trip.”
I don’t remember what he asks me. The questions lumber out of his mouth in slow motion. I do my best, but I know I muff the answers. I feel ambushed. The interview lasts under five minutes. He kicks back from his chair, stands. “You have any questions for me?” A throwaway. This interview is over. He’s pushing items on his desk into his briefcase.
“Yes.”
“Shoot.”
“Do I have any shot of getting in here?”
His hand freezes on his address book midway from desk to briefcase.
A question he never expected.
He takes a moment. “Tony, you seem like a nice guy. Hard worker. Eager. Helpful. Prepared. But we have a lot of people who want to come here. Lot of qualified people.”
I’m slow, but I don’t think I aced the interview.
I leave the next day. On my way out of town, I stop at Lincoln’s home and take the tour. Then I go to Lincoln’s Tomb and check that out. I skip the Abraham Lincoln museum, but I park outside the thirty-foot-tall Lincoln totem pole and take a picture.
I don’t want to leave Springfield, Illinois, without taking in the town’s highlights, because I have a feeling I won’t be back.
19
Beverly Hills Bloodsuckers
One bracingly cold November night in Springfield, alone in my apartment, exhausted from a string of crushing twelve-hour days beginning at five in the morning, feeling vulnerable, lonely, and sorry for myself, I call my mother and tell her about Amy.
I don’t plan to. It just spills out. My mother, too, is alone this night, my father at the hospital delivering twins.
“I want to tell you something, Mom.”
I hear her gasp. The urgency in my voice has prepared her for the worst—I’ve been arrested, I deal drugs, I’ve killed a man in Joliet, I’ve dropped out of medical school.
“I have a girlfriend.”
There it is.
In our family, no one my age or younger has ever had a girlfriend or boyfriend. Or at least admitted it. None of the relatives, none of my cousins, none of us. It’s not supposed to happen. We’re Koreans. We work harder, study harder, achieve more, and we don’t date. I’ve broken new ground. Amy is the first. I’m a dubious pioneer.
“A girlfriend,” my mother says.
“Yes. Her name is Amy.”
“Amy,” my mother says.
I’m way ahead of her. I know her next question. I answer it before she asks.
“She’s not Korean. She’s white.”
“Oh,” my mother says.
“She’s Christian,” I add quickly. “White Christian Amy.”
“How long?”
I’ve anticipated this, too. I swiftly do the math. Amy and I have been together for nearly two years.
“Three months,” I say.
“Long time,” my mother says.
“I’ve told her all about you and Dad,” I say. “She’s dying to meet you.”
“I’m dying to meet her, too,” my mother says.
I hang up, wondering what the hell I’ve done.
AFTER SPRINGFIELD, I have five days at home before I leave for my third and final one-month rotation. Thanks to an introduction from Dr. Kanner, I will be spending a month where the dreams of plastic surgery are made, Beverly Hills, California. I will apprentice under Dr. Romeo Bouley, one of the most famous and respected plastic surgeons in Southern California.
“You’re in,” Dr. Kanner tells me over coffee. “Bouley is a little different, but he’s the best. Be prepared. Beverly Hills has a faster pace than Springfield.”
“Death has a faster pace than Springfield.”
“You have to see what this guy does. He’s a wizard. He’s also obsessed with women. He’s outrageous. Watch yourself.”
“I have a girlfriend,” I say, and then I blurt out, “We’re having dinner with my parents tonight. According to them, I’m too young to have a girlfriend. Makes sense. I’m only twenty-five. Did I mention she’s not Korean? Should be a fun night.”
“If you like that sort of thing. But hey, if it doesn’t go well, Romeo will set you up.”
WE’RE LATE. TOTALLY my fault. I picked up Amy twenty minutes late, stopped for gas, and I’m driving about forty miles an hour below the speed limit.
“Want me to drive?” Amy says gently.
I glance at her. I’ve never seen her look so beautiful. Kid cleans up nice. Plus, for the past year, I’ve seen her only in scrubs. Even in a conservative skirt and top, she’s a knockout.
“Tony, seriously, you’re driving like two miles an hour.”
“It’s a Korean thing.” The stink eye. “Okay, I’m a little nervous.”
“A little?”
“In my family, nobody dates a non-Korean. It’s never happened. I’m talking throughout my entire extended family, like a bazillion cousins. It’s unheard of.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“I’m sweating like a pig.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
“My father will be charming, polite, cordial, and then we’ll get home and he’ll kick me out of the family. Not out of the house. Out of the family. I’ll be excommunicated. A wandering Youn. My only hope is that in ten years, when we have kids, he’ll soften up and let me back into the fold. My mom won’t agree with my dad, she’ll be torn up, but she’ll go along with him because she has to, it’s what Korean wives do.”
We pull into the restaurant parking lot, and I fumble with my key as I turn off the ignition. Amy scoots over and kisses me forever. She finally pulls away, reapplies her lipstick in the visor mirror.
“Slight change of plans,” I say.
Amy puckers. “Yeah?”
“I already know my parents. You go in without me, have dinner, bond, then call me later and tell me how it went.”
“Genius.” She drops her lipstick in her purse, snaps it shut, and gets out of the car. A moment later, she flings open my door and drags me out of the driver’s seat. “Cowboy up,” she says.
Excluding one clumsy move when I reach for a bread stick and knock over my water, requiring a new tablecloth, the dinner goes smoothly. My mother sits next to Amy, my father across in prime interrogation position. I expect him to grill her like a murder suspect, but he doesn’t. He is charming and polite and even, in his own way, welcoming. I’m sure he’s acting, putting up a false front. He’ll wait until we’re home before he goes ballistic. But right after we order, my mother drops a bomb.
“So, Amy, Tony tells me you’re Christian.”
Nice, Mom. I was counting on you to go easy on her.
“I am, yes.”
“Do you go to church?”
Amy catches my eye.
“Actually, Mom—” I say.
“Mommy is talking to Amy,” my father says.
“I go every single Sunday,” Amy says. “I never miss.”
“Every Sunday?” my mom says.
“Yes. It’s a thing with me. I’m very religious.”
My father violently snaps a bread stick in half, scaring the crap out of me. “Tony go?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Sometimes,” Amy says.
I look at her. She smiles at me, I catch it, smile back. “She’s right. Sometimes. I should go more.”
My father chews slowly, thoughtfully. Across from him, my mother reaches over, lifts Amy’s hand, and places it between both of hers. Without saying a word, the two of them stand. Are all women’s bladders in the world always in sync?
“Excuse us,” my mother says. They walk hand in hand toward the bathroom.
My father mauls another bread stick. I can’t read his expression, but I have a pretty good idea what he’s feeling. I can certainly eliminate several options, overjoyed and delighted among them. Since they’ll be locked away in the ladies’ room for the next half hour, I expect that my father will take this opportunity to l
evel me. I’m not going to argue with him. I’m not going to defend myself, and I’m not going to defend Amy. I’m a man. I have my own life, which includes, now and forever, Amy. At some point after we both graduate, we plan to marry and have kids, and if the color of her skin or her ethnicity results in my being evicted from my own family, then so be it. I’ll deal with it. I’m just not giving up Amy.
“Daddy has something to say,” my father says.
“I thought you might.”
“You drop big bomb. Fourth year, first girlfriend.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Daddy and Mommy are relieved,” he says. “We thought for sure you gay.”
DECEMBER.
Beverly Hills. Movie stars, pop icons, and miles and miles of work done on boobs, eyelids, lips, noses, tummies, and butts, much of it shaped, enlarged, reduced, and reconstructed by Dr. Romeo Bouley, PSS—Plastic Surgeon to the Stars.
I ease my rented Ford Escort onto Century Boulevard outside of LAX and hit the 405 on-ramp. Forty minutes later, I coax the Escort up the Pacific Coast Highway and head to the Malibu Beach Colony. Every car I pass is a Benz, BMW, Jag, Rolls, or Bentley. Every car. And every driver shoots me a look that says this guy’s either lost or someone’s gardener.
Dr. Romeo Bouley’s house sits along a beach as white as talcum powder, the house framed by two leaning palm trees embracing fronds like an elderly couple, darkening the front of a three-story Spanish mansion in shadow. Dr. Bouley has insisted I drive right from the airport to his house for a drink. He wants to get acquainted before we jump in first thing in the morning. I park my rented clunker in his driveway behind two Benzes and a Rolls. I walk up to his front door, pause to soak in the late-afternoon Southern California sun. Man. December, seventy degrees, and everyone owns a fifty-thousand-dollar car. I could get used to La La Land.