Dead Med, page 18
I had been working on a brave little speech as I ran over here. Something about how I gave in to the blackmailer to save his career and only did it because I care about him so much, and if he couldn’t understand that, then maybe we weren’t meant to be together. But he keeps looking at me with that hurt and angry expression, and the second I open my mouth to speak, everything I planned to say suddenly flies out of my head.
And then I’m crying. Huge, ugly tears are gushing down my cheeks. My shoulders shake with wracking sobs. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard in my whole life. I wipe my eyes, trying to keep up with the rapid flow of tears, but I can’t.
“Rachel,” I hear him saying, “Rachel, please stop crying…”
“I… I can’t!” I sob. “I miss you.” I sniffle and hiccup. “I know you don’t believe me, but I only stole that exam because someone was going to tell on us.”
He frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“I got a note.” I wish I’d brought the note. Oh well. “It said that if I didn’t put the exam in Locker 282, everyone would find out about the two of us. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Yeah, sure…”
“It’s true!”
He’s quiet for a minute. The only sounds in the room are the whir of the heater and my persistent sobs. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop. They’ll put me in the Guinness Book of World Records for crying.
Finally, he sighs loudly. “I don’t know what to believe anymore…”
I look up at him and wipe my eyes. “It’s true,” I insist again, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I swear it’s true. I swear on my life.”
Finally, Matt stands up and hobbles around the desk. He touches my shoulder gently, and I look up at him. I feel really unattractive with my swollen eyes and runny nose.
“Look, Rachel,” he says, “I do believe you, but… it doesn’t matter. We’re wrong for each other. For starters, I’m your professor, and I’m also a lot older than you. Maybe we had some fun together, but that’s it.”
“It was a lot more than that for me,” I whisper.
Matt pulls a tissue from a box on his desk and gently wipes my cheeks. The gesture is so tender that I start to cry harder.
“Yeah,” he says, “it was more than that for me too.”
It probably can’t ever “work out” with Matt, but I don’t care anymore. I just want to be with him right now—that’s all that matters. I stand up and fall into his arms, and he clings to me like he’s missed me as much as I missed him. When we kiss, I realize I can’t bear to ever be apart from him again.
“Matt,” I murmur, “I do love you. I really do.”
“I love you too, Rach,” he says, and I remember how much it hurt when I thought I’d never hear those words ever again.
That’s when we hear a knock at the door.
“Shit,” Matt mutters. He looks at the door, willing the person to go away. No such luck—there’s a second, more urgent knock. “Shit,” he says again. Then louder, “Who’s there?”
The student behind the door calls out his name, and my stomach clenches. What the hell is he doing here in the middle of the night on a Saturday?
“I’ll get rid of him,” Matt promises. He runs his hand through his short black hair to comb it out slightly. “Although it probably wouldn’t look too good for you to be seen here, huh?” He glances around his office, “Do you think you can make yourself out of sight for a few minutes?”
I scan the room.
“The desk,” I say. I approach Matt’s large mahogany desk and lower myself onto my knees. My body fits perfectly into the nook underneath the desk, and I’m completely undetectable. Well, as long as nobody’s looking for me.
The floor of Matt’s office is cold and hard, tiled with off-white squares. Many of the other offices have carpeting, but Matt told me he’s worried about snagging his foot. The bones of my hips dig uncomfortably into the floor as Matt opens the door. I shift, hoping Matt will get rid of the intruder quickly.
The door slams closed, and Matt slides into his chair, being careful not to ram into me in my hiding place. I strain to listen, but the desk is somehow filtering out the sounds. I can only make out hushed voices.
“Is that the excuse you’re using?” my classmate says.
I perk up my ears, trying to hear what’s going on, when a fist slams into the thick wood of the desk above me. I nearly jump out of my skin, and I hug my knees to my chest. What the hell is happening up there?
I tug on Matt’s pants, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. I have no idea what to do. I want to come out, but that would look really suspicious. It’s bad enough I’m in Matt’s office late on a Saturday night, but I don’t think I could explain why I’d be hiding under the desk. I can’t. If I come out, we’re so busted.
“Tell me how you killed him!”
I can just barely make out the words, but that’s what it sounds like. Except that makes no sense. Matt didn’t kill anyone—that I know for a fact. I must have heard him wrong.
That’s when I hear the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard in my life: a soft click.
I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never heard anything quite like it. And suddenly, I know with absolute certainty that there’s something terrible going on in this room.
55
Something terrible is happening in this room. I might be hiding under the desk, but I’m sure of it.
I feel in my pocket for my phone, figuring I can text 911. But then I realize I left my phone back in the library. It’s lying inside my backpack right now, useless.
I’ve got to come out. Whatever is going on, I’ve got to stop it.
Except then Matt’s left hand snakes down underneath the desk. He’s making some kind of sign at me. He’s pointing emphatically at the ground. He wants me to stay hidden.
Okay, one more minute. One more minute and I’m coming out.
Just when I can’t stand it another second, I hear Matt’s sorrowful voice, loud and clear.
“I’m really sorry,” he says.
Sorry? Sorry for what?
And then I hear the explosion, and Matt’s legs jolt with the impact.
I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. Even though I’ve never heard a gun go off before except for in television or the movies, I know instinctively what it is. The intruder had a gun. And for some reason, he has fired it.
And now it’s very quiet in the room. It’s so quiet that I can hear my own heart thudding in my chest. And another sound: whimpering. If Matt got shot, wouldn’t he yell? Curse? Something? I tug on Matt’s pants leg, but he ignores me again. I wait for him to gesture at me again, but he doesn’t. And then I see his left hand, hanging limply off the side of the chair.
Oh no. Oh God…
I want to come out, but something stops me. I remember how fervently Matt had pointed at the ground, signaling to me that I needed to stay hidden. He did that for a reason. I need to stay down here—my life may depend on it.
So I wait.
After what seems like an eternity, I hear the door to the office open and the footsteps of someone walking out then shutting the door behind him. Matt and I are alone again, or so it seems. I wait hopefully to hear Matt’s voice, for him to tell me that everything is okay and it’s safe to come out. But it’s getting pretty damn obvious that isn’t going to happen.
And then I hear a second gunshot, coming from outside the office. Oh God.
I hug my knees, not sure what to do. If only I had brought my phone, I could call for help, but without it, I can only wait. I force myself to count to one hundred, then I crawl out from underneath the desk. My knees ache from being bent in that position for so long. I grab the top of the desk to steady myself as I rise to my feet, but my fingers slide right off the surface. The desk is wet. I look at my fingers and see the dark-red substance on them.
That’s when I see Matt slumped forward in his chair, right in front of me. For half a second, I’m able to kid myself that he’s just unconscious. But when I see the blood coming from the back of his head, I know that isn’t the case. I cover my mouth, smearing blood across my lips, trying to keep from passing out.
I’m still nearly four years away from being a doctor, but it doesn’t take any advanced degree to know that Matt Conlon is dead.
I bend down in front of his body and lay my head down on his lap. I cry for the millionth time this week, this time knowing that he won’t be able to comfort me. I reach for his limp hand and hold it in mine. How can it end this way? It isn’t fair…
As I sob into his slacks, I hear Matt’s voice speaking. But the voice is coming from within my head: What are you doing, Rachel? I tried to save you! Get the hell out of here!
He’s right. I’ve got to get out of here. Before he comes back. He already fired two bullets, and I’m willing to bet that gun has plenty more.
I rise to my feet, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. I take one last look at Matt. His head is leaning forward as if he is resting, and his arms are hanging off the sides of his chair. His blue eyes are cracked open, staring into nothing. There are only slight flecks of blood on the front of his shirt—the wall behind him has taken most of the brunt. I mouth the words “I love you” then open the door to his office and get the hell out of there.
PART IV
MASON
56
THE FIRST DAY
“Look to your left and look to your right.”
Christ, this is stupid.
I’m not into the whole “motivational speech” crap. Dean Bushnell is trying to get us all psyched up. I get it. But this is just dumb.
Besides, he’s wrong. Not everyone in this room is going to be a doctor. Some of them are going to drop out. Some will flunk out (probably that girl two seats over with the bullring through her nose). And if the last few years are any indication, a bunch of them are going to turn to drugs to get through the year. And one of them might take too many of those pills and stop breathing.
Not me, though.
I’m going to graduate in four years with the highest honors, and I’m going to land myself the best residency in the whole damn country. Wait and see.
I look over at my roommate, Abe. I’ve been calling him the Incredible Hulk as a joke. No kidding, slap a little green paint on the guy, and he’d be a dead ringer. Minus the temper, though. Abe is too mild-mannered to be in med school. He’s a good roommate, though—he’s a slob like me.
Abe’s really taking in the dean’s inspiring words. His jaw is hanging open, awed by the whole experience. He’s going to be one of those touchy-feely doctors—you can just tell. When he rotates in the hospital, everyone will write on his evals that he has a great bedside manner.
Nobody’s going to say I’ve got a great bedside manner. I’ll be shocked if a few of the residents I work with don’t write down that I’m a huge asshole. But who cares? They’re going to love me on my surgery rotation, and that’s all that matters. That’s what I was born to do.
My father is a cardiothoracic surgeon. Dr. Walter Howard is the head of cardiothoracic surgery at Yale and one of the most respected surgeons in the country. I used to want to do what he was doing, but he told me don’t bother. Angioplasty is killing his field. When I graduated college, Dad took me aside and said, “Plastics, son. That’s where the money is.”
It’s plastic surgery or bust.
When I was six years old, my mom brought me to this really fancy dinner to honor my dad.
My dad is tall—really tall. Practically a giant, or that’s what it felt like anyway. Back then, he had this black beard that scared the shit out of me for some reason. When he gave his speech, I listened as hard as I could because I thought his black eyes would maybe shoot laser beams at me if I didn’t.
“Mommy,” I whispered. “What’s it mean that Daddy is a pioneer?”
In school, they said pioneers settled Middle America. I was pretty sure my dad hadn’t done that. But it seemed possible.
“It means he’s done surgeries that nobody’s ever done before,” my mother whispered back. She added, “He’s a great man.”
Then everyone in the room stood up and wouldn’t stop applauding for my dad for at least five minutes.
When I visited my grandparents on my father’s side, they wouldn’t shut up about my father. They would drag out a box that was as old and dusty as they were, filled with perfect test papers and report cards with rows of straight As. They saved everything.
“Did Dad ever get less than an A in school?” I asked as I wiped the dust off a thirty-year-old transcript and sneezed loudly.
“I think Walter got a B in gym once,” my grandmother recalled. “But everyone got a B in gym that semester.” She added, “That gym teacher was a little soft in the head.”
Sometimes, my mother would bore me with the story of how she met my father. I always tuned her out, but over the years, the details sank in. Elise Howard, née Elise Mason, was a year out of college and working at an art gallery, although her studio apartment was largely funded by—guess who—her rich parents. My dad was an attending surgeon then, almost a decade older than my mom, and he approached her at a gallery function and asked for her number. They started dating, and he proposed only a few months later.
“Sometimes, you just know,” Mom would sigh.
Bullshit. The truth was—and I’m going to be blunt here—my mother was really hot. I saw the photos. My dad always used to go around saying she was the prettiest woman in the room. All my friends in high school used to call her a MILF.
My dad, on the other hand, isn’t what you’d call a handsome guy. But he’s as intimidating as all hell. He cocked his finger at my mom, and she came running.
I got straight As in high school. Even in gym. Yeah, I worked my ass off. I had plenty of friends and even occasional girlfriends, and I ran track and played soccer, but most of my time was spent studying.
And then I bombed the SATs. Or that’s what it felt like when I saw my father’s face. I didn’t get a perfect 1600—I was ten points short.
“It’s an all-right score,” my father said with a shrug.
The word “asshole” was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t say it. I was the one who had messed up. My dad got a perfect score on his SATs.
I hung my head and mumbled, “Sorry, sir.”
I was valedictorian of my high school class—the best out of a whole class of snooty rich kids at a private school with a disgustingly high tuition. My speech was about the path to success, and I expected to do better than any other person who was graduating that year. My dad liked the speech—or at least, he was nodding a lot. I believed in my words. I was going to be a huge success someday.
I got a perfect score on the MCATs to get into med school, by the way.
Ever since I decided to attend DeWitt Med, people have been asking me: Why not Yale? DeWitt is a good school, but Yale is Ivy, and I had connections there (not that I’d have needed them to gain admission). There’s no comparison. People acted like I’d lost my mind.
Even my father was pissed off that I picked DeWitt over Yale.
But I had a really good reason for not going to Yale. At Yale, everyone would have assumed that I got in because my dad is a big cheese there, not on my own merit. And on every rotation, everyone would be comparing me with the great Dr. Howard. I’d never have a chance to get out from under his shadow.
DeWitt is perfect for me. When I look around at my classmates, I know that I can stand out here. I can be in the honor society and impress the hell out of all the professors. I won’t be one of a huge crowd of overachievers at Yale or one of the other Ivies. Plastic surgery is one of the most competitive residencies to get into, and being number one in my class is a great way to get there. If I succeed, if I become a plastic surgeon, maybe someday, I’ll have a house that is bigger than my father’s and a wife who’s hotter than my mom. Maybe someday, they’ll have a dinner honoring the great Dr. Mason Howard.
57
I studied anatomy all summer. I wanted to be way ahead of the class even before school started. I had my father bring me home some suture material so that I could practice tying knots because I heard sometimes they let you practice in the anatomy lab, and I wanted to be the best from the onset. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a scalpel and start cutting.
My lab partners were no big surprise. On the first day of orientation, Abe nudged me after lunch and said, “You want to be partners for anatomy?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Also,” he said. “I was thinking maybe we could request to Dr. Conlon that Heather McKinley could join our group…”
I had no clue who he was talking about. He nodded his head in the direction of a pretty blond girl in the corner of the lecture hall. Well, she would have been pretty if she had less junk in the trunk. Abe didn’t mind, though—I took one look at his face, and I got it.
“Sounds good,” I said.
Poor guy—I had already heard Heather yakking about her boyfriend.
In the lab, Heather is a complete disaster. I mean, really bad. She’s trying hard, but she just doesn’t get it. And I have much better things to do than waste my time explaining every little thing to her five times. Good thing Abe has endless patience with her. With his hand-holding, maybe she has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing.
I prefer Rachel, Heather’s roommate. Rachel doesn’t have a clue either, but she doesn’t care. Plus she has fantastic tits, and she never, ever wears a bra. I think about her a lot when I’m alone in my room, if you catch my drift. The best part is that she despises me. It’s really fun to try to get a rise out of her. The easiest trick is calling the cadaver Frank. Rachel hates that.
“Can’t you respect that he is a real human being?” Rachel snaps at me. “He’s not some inanimate object that you can just give a name to.”
