Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
“As a first-year intern, she should have been standing back and observing her superiors with her mouth glued shut. Maybe—maybe—it would have been okay if she’d asked if there was anything she could do to help. Hold an instrument, run a message, that sort of thing. You know what she was doing instead?” At this point, his smile takes over his whole face. “Correcting the fellow on the way he was stapling the xenograft. Apparently, she thought she could do it better than someone five years ahead of her in the program. The fellow chewed her out in front of everyone in the operating room before kicking her out. Then he proceeded to do exactly as she’d instructed him to do.” He laughs and shakes his head. “I’ll never forget it.”
I blush and fidget in my chair, uncomfortable. Looking back, I was totally out of line, walking into another surgeon’s OR and giving unsolicited feedback. I’m surprised the doctor didn’t permanently ban me from his OR.
“She’s always been a spitfire,” Noah agrees with a shake of his head.
Dr. Patel laughs, and then I steer the conversation toward him and his family. A doting father of two girls—both of whom are currently in med school—he’s more than willing to carry the conversation through dinner.
After the final course is removed and desserts are being distributed, Dr. Patel excuses himself to take the stage. Thanks to attending in previous years, I know how this next part goes. Since there are so few graduates, Dr. Patel will go through a short summary about each of us and our time spent in the program, as well as our plans now that we’re graduating.
Luke and Richard are going into private practice, Andreas is entering a surgical oncology fellowship, and I will be here, continuing on as a burns fellow at BHUMB. It makes sense for Luke and Richard to go into private practice. They’re both in their early thirties with a wife and kids, ready to settle down and start earning the big bucks. While Andreas has a partner he’s serious about, he isn’t ready to ease off the gas, so he’s happy to prolong his training in a specialty he loves.
As for me, there was never really a choice. I’ve always wanted to be a burn surgeon, always wanted to work with children. To do that, I had to be extremely dedicated, and I had to make sacrifices. It’s why I’m twenty-eight and single, why my phone gets more action on the nights I take call than on a Saturday when I’m actually free to go out and have fun.
Noah chides me about putting too much of myself into my job, but I made a decision a long time ago to put medicine before everything else and it’s paid off. I glance around the room and see the full tables, wondering if that’s really true. A part of me wonders if I’ve convinced myself I’m happy with my life choices because the alternative is too difficult to bear. The empty seat on my right is a looming presence. I fight the urge to push it away.
I’m about to turn my attention back to the stage, knowing Dr. Patel is getting close to asking each of us to come up to receive our diploma and have our photo taken beside him, when the back door of the banquet hall opens. I glance over, curious to see who the latecomer is, and shock immediately lurches my heart into a race it can’t win.
My stomach plummets and time slows to a crawl as I watch Dr. Connor Easton walk in wearing a midnight blue suit.
I swallow his presence like a pill that doesn’t want to go down.
Dr. Easton is an attending at BHUMB. I rotated on and off his service a few times during my residency, and in my opinion, he’s one of the best educators at the hospital. He was patient when it came to walking us through new procedures and surgical methods, but authoritative and formidable all the same. He’d throw us into the deep end but help us stay afloat. My fellow residents and I weren’t intimidated by him so much as captivated. We all wanted to go the extra mile to impress him, to stay on his service as long as possible because with him we felt like we were really learning instead of just being thrown to the wolves.
Of course, there was an awkward extra layer to our relationship that we were forced to navigate seeing as he wasn’t just my supervising attending—he’s also Noah’s best friend. I was so nervous about that fact in the beginning, worried the other residents would be angry when he played favorites. It’s funny to look back on that fear now because that’s not how it went at all. To his credit, Dr. Easton didn’t pay me any special attention when I was on his service. No sly comments or subtle smiles or easy tasks. I got my job done like everyone else, and in return, he barely gave me a second glance. In fact, he almost went too far in the opposite direction. He never made small talk, never really acknowledged that I was Noah’s sister. In the end, I convinced myself he actually disliked me, so his presence here is wholly unexpected.