Love You More(20)

Erin helped, too. She called me every few days, her voice crackling with energy as she updated me on all the hometown gossip. I could picture her perfectly—flushed cheeks, a mischievous smirk, the same spark she’d always had.

As comforting as she and Mick were, I found myself craving a local friendship—a connection beyond small talk in lecture halls.

Then the universe delivered a gift. After an insufferable classmate answered a simple question with a pontificating paragraph, I exchanged a glance with the girl sitting next to me. When she rolled her eyes, I smiled back at her.

After class, she gestured toward the front row. “What an asshat,” she deadpanned.

I laughed. “Totally.”

“I’m Lesli Green, by the way,” she said.

“Billie Wright,” I replied.

She asked where I was from.

“Wisconsin,” I said. “You?”

“Indiana. Are you in as much culture shock as I am?”

“Definitely,” I said with a laugh.

“Wanna grab a coffee and talk about it?” she asked.

“I’d love to,” I said.



* * *



— Lesli and I became fast friends. She was on the same roller coaster of emotion that I was: homesick and lonely one second; energized and hopeful the next. She even had a long-distance college boyfriend. The two of us commiserated over grueling study sessions and endless flash cards. The sheer volume of information was staggering, often leaving me blinking back panic. I was drowning in Latin roots, always one step behind the people around me, who seemed smarter, more confident, more deserving than I was. My back ached from hunching over lecture notes, and my dreams were cluttered with cross-sectional scans and cellular pathways. Forgetting one enzyme cascade felt like failing a hundred patients I hadn’t even met. Some nights, I was too tired to cry, too wired to sleep.

But amid the exhaustion and self-doubt, there were also moments when things clicked—golden flashes of clarity. Like the first time I held a human heart in my gloved hand. I was struck by how small it was—a muscle no bigger than a fist—yet how devastatingly sacred. Everything depending on it.

Sometimes, while sitting in a lecture hall, I’d look around and feel a jolt of pride so fierce it almost made me dizzy.

The city became wrapped up in that same sense of discovery—its own pulse of purpose and possibility. A saxophone echoing through the 168th Street station, the neon glow on wet pavement, the subway rumble underfoot—it was all stitched to the same heartbeat. I was here. I was doing it. I was settling into a new rhythm of life.





Chapter 10


That first year, I went home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, soaking up lots of quality time with Mick. He also managed three visits—long weekends filled with love, sex, and coffee in bed. But at the end of each, standing on the curb with his arms around me, the goodbye was brutal.

Summer arrived just in time. I landed a research assistant position at UW–Milwaukee, working on a clinical outcomes study in the cardiology department. It wasn’t glamorous—just tedious data entry: patient age, BMI, ejection fraction, medication regimens, all funneled into a chaotic spreadsheet that looked like no one had touched it in years. But the mindlessness of it was a welcome break.

Back in Wisconsin, I could breathe again. I relished the slow pulse of a midwestern summer—skies stretched flat to the corn horizon, cicadas sawing at dusk, the smell of fresh-cut grass. I slept in my old bed with the windows open, waking to birdsong and the rustle of leaves. I devoured my mom’s cooking, watched Brewers games with my dad, and hung out with my friends.

But the best part of being home was time with Mick. We reclaimed our rituals, slipping back into the ease of our college days.

By August, I felt grounded and restored, more determined than ever to make our relationship survive the distance.

On our last night together, he gave me a greeting card. The front had an illustration of a couple, arm in arm, staring up at a full moon. On the inside, he’d written: One down, three to go. Love you more, Mick.



* * *



— And just like that, I was back in the city, adjusting to a new pace all over again.

Our second-year classes shifted to systems-based blocks: cardiology, pulmonology, endocrinology, neurology. Facts became pathways, pathways became patients. We were expected to connect the dots and think like doctors—all in anticipation of Step 1, the infamous exam at the end of the year. Our three-digit score would impact everything—from our specialties to our residency matches. It hovered over every conversation, every lecture, every stressed-out AIM chat and group email thread.

Mick, as always, was my cheerleader.

“You’re going to kill that test, Billie,” he’d say. “You’ll have your pick of any program in the country.”

By “pick,” I knew he meant Madison. He never said it outright, but it was there in his voice—in the version of the future he sometimes let slip. The one where I moved back. The one where we got a place together. The one where this distance was only a memory—an obstacle we’d overcome.

Part of me wanted that version, too. But deep down, I was starting to wonder if the only part of that version I wanted for sure was Mick.



* * *



— By October, I felt impossibly behind. Every day became a sprint that began before sunrise and ended sometime after midnight. Mick and I still exchanged voicemails and text messages, but the time between our substantive phone conversations stretched longer.