Dead Med, page 5
And then I make the mistake of looking down at the sink. At the fissure in the porcelain that still hasn’t been repaired since that student broke it when she collapsed here and died. The thought makes me so sick that it takes everything I have not to run back into the toilet stall to try to throw up again.
As I stumble out of the bathroom, I call Landon’s number on my cell phone. I lean against the wall outside the bathroom, waiting for him to pick up. He knew I was taking an exam today and that I was panicking about it. But the phone rings and rings then finally goes to voicemail.
I don’t leave a message.
I stare down at my phone. I have never felt so alone in my entire life. Med school was such a mistake.
“Oh shit… What happened?”
I jump in surprise at the voice traveling down the hall and immediately try to hide my red, splotchy face. But then I lift my eyes and see who it is. It’s just Abe. Thank God.
“I’m okay,” I mumble, looking away from him.
“I was looking everywhere for you,” he says a little breathlessly. He halts in front of me, and his green eyes widen slightly when he sees my face, but he doesn’t comment. “You really hid yourself well. I thought I was going to have to call in a SWAT team.”
I force a tiny smile. “Yeah.”
Abe shifts between his feet, looking a little uncomfortable. I want to tell him that I almost definitely failed the exam, but the truth is, I don’t want him to think I’m dumb. I don’t want him to know I bombed an “easy” test.
“Hey,” Abe says. “That test was super hard, huh?”
I almost gasp. Say what? Abe thought the test was hard too? Is he just being nice? Abe is really smart, and if he thought the exam was hard, maybe I’m not too dumb to live.
“You… you thought the test was hard?”
“Oh, definitely!” Abe says, nodding vigorously. “I don’t know what Conlon was smoking when he said it was easy. That was brutal.”
“Yeah, it sort of was,” I say, perking up for the first time since handing in my test paper.
“Some of the pins in those bodies…” Abe shakes his head. “I mean, I had no idea. I felt like I was looking at an abstract art exhibit.”
I finally smile for real. Encouraged, Abe continues, “And those multiple-choice questions on the written exam? I could have filled in the bubbles before seeing the test and gotten the same score.”
I laugh. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Abe rests his large hand gently on my shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “I’m going to walk you to your car.”
“Okay,” I agree.
“And then,” he adds, “we are going to drown our sorrows in pizza. And beer. I’m buying.”
I dutifully follow Abe to the parking lot. A minute ago, I’d been having some incredibly dark thoughts. Thank God for Abe.
10
Dr. Conlon is taking his sweet time grading those exams. Honestly, this is sadistic. How can he make us wait so long? I’m going to get an ulcer at this rate.
After classes are over for the day, I find myself wandering in the direction of Dr. Conlon’s office. I don’t have anything in mind, exactly. I’m not going there to beg him to tell me my grade or anything.
His office is just around the corner from the anatomy lab, and I wonder if he can smell the formaldehyde from there. Of course, he’s probably used to the smell by now. Maybe it smells good to him. He probably likes it. You’d almost have to if you have a career in anatomy.
The door to Dr. Conlon’s office is closed, but I can see the light on under the door. He’s inside. I can hear soft voices talking, but I can’t make out any of the words. I hesitate, wondering what the hell I’m doing here. Do I really think Dr. Conlon is going to tell me my grade after saying flat out that he wouldn’t do that? I’m not that charming.
The door to the office swings open suddenly, and I jump back to keep from getting smacked in the face. And the person who steps out is none other than Mason Howard. He seems equally surprised to see me.
“Heather!” His face breaks out into a grin. He always seems so cool and collected. And sexy, of course—hard to forget that one. “What are you doing here?”
“I just…” I clear my throat. “I needed to talk to Dr. Conlon.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah…” I wonder what Mason’s doing here. He isn’t here because he thought he had failed, that’s for sure. Maybe Dr. Conlon wanted to personally congratulate him for getting the highest grade in the class.
“Well, I’ll see you later,” Mason says with a wink.
He nudges my shoulder as he walks past. Don’t tell anyone, but I sort of love it when he touches me. My crush on Mason hasn’t abated in the least.
I peek into Dr. Conlon’s office and see him sitting at his desk, shuffling through some papers. His cane leans against the side of his desk. I’m debating whether or not to knock when he looks up and spots me.
“Dr. McKinley!” he says, a smile on his lips.
I try my best to put on a surprised face. “Oh, I, um, I didn’t realize this was your office, Dr. Conlon!”
He squints at me. “You didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t,” I say, continuing with my lie. “It’s, um, really nice. I like the, um…” God, I know nothing about decorating. “I like the wood.” Okay, that sounded awful. I have to say something else. “And… I like your bowtie.”
Stop talking, Heather. Right now.
“Um, thank you,” Dr. Conlon says, a perplexed look on his face. He adjusts his glasses on his nose. “Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
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. I know I failed it.”
Dr. Conlon furrows his black eyebrows. “Heather…”
“I studied so hard, I swear!” Now I’m crying, for God’s sake. What’s wrong with 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 sing in 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.
I minimize the photo then flop onto my stomach so that I can call him and take advantage of these warm feelings. It takes seven and a half rings, and he answers just when I’m certain the voicemail will pick up. What is he always doing that he can’t manage to answer the phone in the first few rings?
“Hey,” Landon says.
“Hi. It’s me,” I say.
Thank God, he doesn’t ask who “me” is. And for once, he doesn’t sound distracted.
This relationship could work. It’s going to work. Two hundred plus miles isn’t so far for true love.
“Hi…” Landon says.
Actually, he sounds… oddly serious. But whatever. I’m not going to obsess for once. I prefer Serious Landon to the apathetic guy he’s been lately.
“So guess what? I passed my anatomy exam!” I almost get chills when I say it.
“That’s great… I knew you would.”
“So… I thought maybe we could celebrate this weekend,” I say, twirling a lock of hair around my fingertip. I didn’t even notice until now how bitten up my fingernails are. “I could drive in Friday night…”
“I don’t know if this weekend is good,” Landon mumbles.
“Why not?”
There’s a long pause on the other line. Too long. What’s going on? “Landon?”
“I just…” He sighs loudly. “I don’t know what we’re doing anymore. I mean, is this enjoyable for you?”
“It’s not about enjoyment,” I say. “I want to be with you. We both knew the long-distance thing was going to be hard.”
“But… shouldn’t it be about enjoyment? I mean, we’re twenty-two years old. Why shouldn’t we be able to enjoy ourselves?”
Landon might be the love of my life. But at this moment, I hate the bastard.
“I mean, if this isn’t making us happy…”
He’s dumping me. He’s dumping me! How is this possible? We have been together for over three years! How could he? We love each other, damn it! Unless…
“Is there someone else?”
“No… Well, not really,” Landon stammers. And now I really hate him. “There are other… I mean, aren’t there guys at school that you’re interested in?”
“No!” I say in an affronted voice, although I can’t help but think of Mason.
“I’m sure there are.”
“Go to hell, Landon.”
There’s a long silence on the other line. I grip the phone in my fist, not wanting to be the one to break the silence. If I talk first, he wins. I can’t let him win.
“I need to go study now,” Landon finally says.
“Fine, go study.” I don’t wait for a reply. I hang up the phone and hurl it across the room. It smashes against the wall, and I hear a resounding crack.
Well, that was a dumb thing to do.
I try to tell myself that if something as small as being apart for a month could break us up, obviously, it wasn’t true love. We’re just two people who dated a while in college and broke up when life got in the way.
A sudden ache in my chest nearly knocks the wind out of me. I had considered the possibility that Landon and I might break up—of course I had—but I hadn’t imagined how badly it would hurt. The sick, dark feeling seems to consume all the organs I learned about so far this year—my heart, my lungs, my esophagus. Even my pancreas seems to be aching for Landon.
I would give anything to make this pain stop. If there were a pill I could take to feel better, I’d swallow it in a heartbeat.
No. No. I’m not going to go down that path.
But what can I do to feel better? There must be something that could dull this awful pain.
I pace across the bedroom a few times, then I grab my keys off my desk and head out the door. I get to the stairwell, but instead of going downstairs, toward the exit, I find myself going upstairs.
Abe lives upstairs—one flight up, to be exact. But I’m not looking for Abe right now. I’m looking for his roommate.
Mason.
No matter what negative things I could say about him (and there are many), that guy is very, very attractive. He has those hazel eyes and that killer grin. When he gets into the hospital as a third-year, the nurses are going to go wild for him. He’ll probably sleep with half the hospital staff.
An hour with Mason will help me forget about Landon. Mason is like the perfect rebound guy—he’s hot, and I don’t care about him at all. And he looks like he’d be up for a little no-strings-attached action. I’m pretty sure all hot guys are at least halfway decent in bed, if only because they get a lot of experience.
I stand outside the door to Mason and Abe’s dorm room, taking inventory of my appearance and working up my nerve. Okay, I don’t look amazing or anything. I don’t have a scrap of makeup on, but at least I’m showered and wearing clean clothes, even if my jeans and sweater aren’t outright sexy.
Maybe I should go back downstairs and put on some lip gloss. Of course, if I do, I’ll probably chicken out. Oh God, this is scary. How do you hit on a guy?
I knock timidly. Once.
I hear footsteps, and it’s pretty obvious that those resounding thumps belong to Abe. Crap. How am I going to explain to him that I want to hook up with his roommate? Before I have a chance to think about it, the door swings open.
Abe’s face lights up when he sees me. “Hey, Heather.”
“Oh, hi…” I wrack my brain to think of a believable reason why I’d need to talk to Mason. I draw a blank.
Abe raises his red-orange eyebrows at me. “What’s up?”
I swallow. “Is… is Mason home?”
Abe frowns. I wonder if he has any idea what I’m thinking. “No, he’s probably at the library. He’s always at the library.”
Damn. “Oh.”
Abe steps aside. “Are you okay, Heather? Do you want to come in?”
I like Abe, don’t get me wrong. But I came here for a booty call, and now that it’s not going to happen, I feel completely deflated. Still, Abe can lend a sympathetic ear, at least. And I’m clearly not going to get any studying done.
I’ve never been inside Abe’s dorm room before, and let me tell you, their living room is disgusting. I mean, really disgusting. There are two empty pizza boxes and a few half-full beer bottles on their coffee table, and I can see a partially eaten crust abandoned under the table. I scan the floor for insects or rodents and can’t find any, but I do spot a pair of boxer shorts hanging off the edge of their ratty, stained futon sofa. Abe is nice enough to yank it off.
“Sorry,” he says, blushing. “Not mine.”
I’m seriously considering asking him to put a blanket on the futon so that I don’t have to sit on it directly. Of course, yesterday, I was elbow deep in Frank’s intestines, so maybe I shouldn’t be such a diva. I plop myself down between a brown and a yellow stain and bury my face in my palms in an overly dramatic gesture.
Abe’s large hand falls on my back. He rubs my shoulder gently.
“Heather,” he murmurs. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
I just shake my head. To say it will make it real.
“Come on, Heather,” he says. “It’s me.”
Finally, his kindness gets the better of me. I start sobbing, mourning three lost years of a guy I thought I was going to marry someday. I’m definitely not going to marry him now. I may even hate him.
Abe just sits with me, rubbing my back, eventually getting up to fetch me some tissues (well, toilet paper). I’m glad it’s just Abe with me, because I am not attractive when I’m crying. My eyes swell up, and my nose is clogged with fresh snot. Good thing Mason isn’t here to see this.
Abe scoops up the hand that isn’t holding snotty tissues and squeezes it in his own. He could easily crush my hand in his, but his touch is surprisingly gentle.
