I tried to understand Nia, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t as if we’d never fought. Normally, our squabbles were followed by a short stretch of tense silence, but before the day was up, we were sitting on our couch, snickering over tea, and brainstorming ways to make amends. And I was willing to do just that. If Nia wanted me to be more present, I could be more present. I could schedule weekly girls’ nights, put my books aside to focus all my attention on her. Yeah, I talked about medical school a lot, but I could stop that too. I could adjust my behavior, if she wanted me to. All she had to do was say the word.
But Nia wasn’t saying anything at all. She’d dropped off the face of the earth, ghosting me just like all those boys I’d cried about in the past. But this hurt so much more because I could never have seen it coming.
So I avoided the apartment. On my two days off before my exam, I drove far from home to libraries across town, subsisted on blueberry muffins and overripe bananas from dusty cafés, and came home only to sleep. I burned through question banks, filling my mind to the brim with knowledge to avoid leaving space for anything else and powered through my research proposal at lightning speed. Because if I thought too hard about Nia, I would lose my mind.
“Oh, honey,” Michelle said, grasping my hand. We sat in the downstairs café of the adult hospital, Harland General, white coats thrown carelessly over the backs of our chairs. We were both playing hooky, having snuck out of our respective rotation orientation lectures to catch up. At the beginning of third year, we wouldn’t have dared to sit out in the open like this, in plain view of any of our passing attendings. Now, Michelle slurped her frappe with unselfconscious gusto.
“This is the worst,” I said. “She didn’t say anything to you, either?”
Michelle shook her head, her gaze dropping to the table. I could tell that Nia’s rift from the group was hurting her too; the Sanity Circle group chat had been conspicuously silent for some time now.
“Maybe,” Michelle suggested cautiously, knowing that she was entering dangerous territory, “it was just a function of time. Maybe you were outgrowing each other, and it just took you a while to notice.”
I nodded miserably. I had considered that possibility, that the Angie Appiah of today was no longer as compatible with Nia as the one from years past.
“Yeah,” I said. “Most people aren’t still cool with their high school friends, I guess.” I sighed. “Medical school kind of feels like it’s taking everything from me at this point.” My parents, whom I hadn’t spoken to since the fallout in King Spa; my weekends; and now my best friend. What was next, the blood of my firstborn?
“Hey,” Michelle said, pouting. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
I laughed, knowing that she was only half-joking.
“Yeah, well, we’re enduring this hell together, aren’t we?” I sagged in my chair, watching the line for coffee grow as the lunch hour came to a close.
“We sure are,” she said. “Can’t say the same for most of our class, though. Seriously. How many couples broke up this year? So many, right?”
I thought about it. It was true—a good half of our classmates who had entered medical school with significant others had magically become single before the end of our first rotation. It was as though all the nonmedical partners had been seduced by the concept of a “cute doctor boyfriend,”* only to balk at the reality.
“Oh my god, wait, remember the party at Barron’s right before study block?” Michelle said, grinning savagely around her straw.
“With Simon Pritchett?” I asked, primed for a laugh.
And of course, she had been talking about Simon, whose illustrious career as class lothario had recently taken on an exciting turn—apparently, he’d gotten back together with his college ex over spring break! This would have been run-of-the-mill class gossip if not for one small detail—he’d also started dating a first-year, Katie Beckert, who had been too excited about her new six-foot-two, strapping, piano-playing, future-doctor boyfriend to realize that the only thing he could commit to was his workout schedule. She’d found out about Simon’s duplicity when the ex-ex sent him a nude while Katie was using his phone to take a picture of our class on the dance floor. The ensuing drama had been delectable. An inconsolable Katie had immediately thrown Simon’s phone to the ground; announced in very colorful, very explicit language exactly what she’d seen flash across his screen; then bum-rushed the stunned-into-stillness, picture-ready gathering of medical students to tell Simon about himself right to his face. At some point, she’d tried to slap him, but being too short to reach his face, accidentally hit poor Arnold Patterson instead. The night had ended abruptly after that, with the rest of class dispersing from the scene of the crime faster than it’d taken them to get in formation for the picture in the first place and Simon staying behind to finish off the bar’s supply of Jack Daniel’s while groaning to a highly amused Michelle and me how he really wasn’t a bad guy despite his infidelities.