Trick of Light (The Sutton Book Club 2)

Chapter 1

2006

Savannah’s Mercer School of Medicine offered a single therapist for their student population. Just one therapist to help hundreds of medical students—all of whom suffered from lack of sleep, too much studying, skipping meals and generally destroying their mental and physical health for the sake of their futures in the medical field. It blew Bethany’s mind to think about it.

It was like the first huge hurdle of becoming a doctor. How much pain could you put yourself through in eight long, horrible years? How much pain could you fully withstand before falling apart?

It blew her mind that she’d decided to go to a therapist at all. She was twenty-six and accustomed to telling herself everything was okay. Everything always had to be okay. She was Bethany Sutton, for crying out loud, and accustomed to “grinning and bearing it” since her life had fallen apart more than a decade ago.

The therapist was a trim woman of about forty. She wore glasses from a very different fashionable era—fifties or sixties, Bethany guessed—and seemed between half awake and half bored. When she glanced back down at Bethany’s file, her eyes widened for the first time since Bethany’s entry and said, “Sutton. You aren’t related to Victor Sutton, are you?”

Bethany flared her nostrils. This was exactly what she’d feared. Should she lie? Maybe. But wasn’t lying to your therapist generally inefficient? She wanted to feel better. She wanted to heal, whatever that meant. And that meant telling this woman the truth.

So she said, “Yeah. He’s my dad.”

The therapist’s cheeks were suddenly rosy as though she were a teenager with a crush. “I’ve learned so much from him over the years. I’ve never met him, of course, although that’s a dream of mine. But you should see my copy of his last book. I think I’ve underlined something on every page.”

Bethany blinked. What could she possibly say? She hadn’t spoken to her father in many years and didn’t regret it. He’d abandoned her mother and their family after the death of her little brother, Joel. He’d run away to Providence, Rhode Island, with his secretary, Bree, and was apparently doing very well for himself. He specialized in writing books and appearing on talk shows to discuss human psychology. He advertised himself as the sort of man who understood the innermost workings of the human mind.

It sickened Bethany. She assumed it also disgusted her older sister, Rebecca, and her younger sister, Valerie. Presumably, also her mother, Esme. But she hadn’t spoken to any of them, either. Not since she’d left Nantucket Island. Not since she’d moved to Savannah and never looked back.

The therapist talked about Victor Sutton for nearly five minutes before returning the topic to Bethany and why she’d decided to seek help. Throughout, Bethany’s stomach bubbled with anger. Who did this woman think she was? Couldn’t she see that Bethany was suffering? That she hadn’t slept in many days? That she felt on the verge of a breakdown nearly all the time? She’d sobbed in the bathroom during her last lab test, wondering if she’d ever make it through medical school.

When the therapist finally asked Bethany “what seemed to be the problem,” Bethany hardened her heart against her. “Actually, nothing,” she said.

The therapist tilted her head. She still looked intrigued with her, as though she thought involving herself with Victor Sutton’s daughter meant a leg-up in her career. “What made you come in today?”

Bethany twisted her head around and gazed out the window at a lush Savannah afternoon. This was her third year of medical school, but she’d been in Savannah since she was eighteen. Eight years in Savannah. Eight years in the milkshake-thick humidity, trying to shed her past as though it were snakeskin.

“I have to run,” Bethany said, jumping to her feet and heading for the door.

“Wait! Miss Sutton?”

But Bethany charged down the hallway and broke into a run. She sped out the door and sprinted through campus as her long hair whipped behind her. Other students stared at her openly, surprised to see a woman look so frantic in the middle of the afternoon. Some underclassmen—boys, obviously—catcalled her, asking, “Where are you going, beautiful?”

When Bethany rounded the corner near her apartment, she staggered to a halt and grabbed her thighs. Sweat poured down her back and between her breasts. Her eyes stung. She considered what to do next. She’d planned to spend the rest of the evening studying, cramming as much information about the limbic system into her brain as she could before midnight. But she wasn’t sure if she could focus. Hatred for her father ballooned in her stomach.

“Yo! Sutton,” a male voice hollered.

What now? Bethany wanted to curl into a ball and hide. She twitched and stood upright to find a group of male med students with backpacks walking her way. Jeff lived in her building, and sometimes he and a few friends studied together in his apartment. Running into them always bruised Bethany’s ego. Everyone knew she didn’t have any friends in medical school. She hadn’t had a friend since junior year of undergrad when she and another quiet girl in her science lab had struck up a friendship, likely because neither of them had anyone else. After graduation, she’d moved to Washington, DC, to work for a cereal manufacturer—and Bethany never heard from her again.

Jeff had been the one who’d said hello. He was at the front of the pack, smiling like a male model in a magazine advertisement. Behind him were Austin Shelters, Nick Waterhouse, and Win Snodgrass. They always reminded Bethany of the handsome, popular guys back at Nantucket High School, who’d mostly ruled the school and the majority of the island, hardly gotten into trouble when they did anything wrong, and dated only the prettiest girls. She and her high school boyfriend had called them “the idiot squad.”

But Jeff, Austin, Nick, and Win were not idiots. They were in medical school, earned top grades, and were set to get into whichever residency they pleased. Bethany was pretty sure they all wanted to be surgeons. She wanted to be one, too, but she knew men like these were far more likely to have the careers they planned for.

Sexism in the medical field wasn’t something people knew about, but it was rampant. Most of her peers were men. Some people at the hospital mistook her for a nurse (because nurses were supposed to be women, and doctors were supposed to be men), and many, many people within medical school assumed she wanted to be a children’s doctor or a gynecologist. Nothing was wrong with either of those career tracks, but what if she wanted to be a brain surgeon? The doors wouldn’t open for her like they would for Jeff, Austin, Nick, and Win.

“You studying tonight?” Jeff asked.

“Um. Yeah,” Bethany stuttered, feeling like a fool. Tomorrow, they would watch a surgery and take a test immediately afterward.

“Don’t make us look too bad tomorrow,” Jeff joked, glancing back at his friends and sniggering. “You know, Nick’s old man is performing the surgery.”

Nick blushed and palmed the back of his neck. His father was one of the top medical surgeons in the South and very respected throughout the profession. It was understood that his father put incredible pressure on him to outperform the other students and ultimately follow in his footsteps. Although Nick was quite intelligent, Bethany had never known him to be the genius his father needed him to be. More than that, Bethany had heard that Nick’s father, Dr. Bob Waterhouse, was one of the worst offending sexists in Savannah. He’d never hired a female surgeon or sent any of his patients to a female doctor.

Still, Bethany knew Dr. Bob Waterhouse had come from another generation. And she had a great deal to learn from men like him—especially if she wanted to take his spot one day.

Nick held himself back as Jeff, Win, and Austin paraded around the corner. His cheek twitched with nerves. Bethany wondered if he hated people bringing up his father just as much as she hated the mention of Victor Sutton.

“You okay?” Nick asked.

Bethany stuttered with surprise.

Nick’s face contorted. “I’m sorry. You just look a bit… I don’t know. Upset? I hope it wasn’t us.”

“It’s nothing.” Bethany touched her cheek and realized it was wet. Had she been crying? She could just imagine herself with red-rimmed eyes and wild curls.

A crowd of female students streamed past and glanced at Bethany and Nick with confusion. Nick and Bethany practically lived on two different planets. He was utterly handsome, rich, and popular. Bethany had eaten ramen noodles every day for the past three weeks and planned on another round tonight.

“Do you want to study at the diner tonight?” Nick asked.

Bethany crossed her arms. Was he talking to someone else?

“I thought you were studying with Jeff and the guys?”

“I always study with them,” Nick said with a wry laugh.

“I always study alone.”

“And how is that going for you?”

Bethany wanted to remind him that she had the best grades, but she kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t one to brag. She disliked arrogance, especially because it reminded her of her father.

“Come on,” Nick said. “I’ll buy you dinner.”

Bethany locked eyes with him, searching for some sign that this was a joke. Sincerity echoed from his face. A bit of the ice around her heart melted. She tried to tell herself she couldn’t trust him, but another voice—a voice hungry for food and human attention—held more power.

“I’m free at seven,” she said.

“I’ll pick you up.”

Hours later, Bethany and Nick sat at a diner table surrounded by platters of onion rings, grilled cheese sandwiches, milkshakes, and brownies. The calorie count was enormous, but Bethany felt ravenous and free. She wrote notes to herself for tomorrow’s test regarding the surgery and crunched through onion rings, occasionally glancing up to look at Nick. Every time she did, she was struck with amazement. What was the most handsome man in medical school doing here with her? And why did he smile like that when he glanced up to meet her eye?

“You know, my dad asked about you a few weeks back,” Nick said as they gathered their books and prepared to leave.

Bethany was taken aback. “He did?”

“You’re the talk of Savannah.”

“You’re being sarcastic,” Bethany said, shoving her books in her bag and zipping it up.

“I’m not.” Nick laughed. “He asked why my grades aren’t as good as yours.”

Bethany stiffened. “Is that why you wanted to study together?”

Nick continued to smile at her. Bethany tried to drum up anger but was too exhausted to feel anything but curiosity.

“I wanted to study together because I wanted to study together,” Nick said. “I don’t imagine you’ll rub off on me. No medical study has shown that intelligence can pass through osmosis. Devastating.”

Bethany chuckled, surprising herself. Nick threw some bills on the table and waved his hand when she tried to add her half. “I said I’d pay.”

Bethany and Nick walked silently through the dark parking lot and slid into his car. Within seconds, it was glossy and cold from his high-powered air conditioner. Bethany had the strangest instinct to lean across the car and place her head on his shoulder. She held herself back.

Nick flicked through the radio stations and landed on classic rock. Bethany shoved away thoughts of her father, who’d played a steady stream of Pink Floyd, Supertramp, and The Alan Parsons Project throughout her childhood. Her throat felt clogged with emotion as they drove back to her apartment.

As he parked, Bethany remembered when she’d kissed her boyfriend in his dark car as time had ticked toward her midnight curfew. When she’d felt wholly protected in his arms. She hadn’t seen him in eight years, either.

Was she foolish to hope for a kiss from Nick here in the shadows of his car? Yes. But that didn’t keep her from hoping.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Nick said, his eyes glowing in the moonlight.

All night, Bethany tossed and turned in bed, trying to make sense of Nick’s sudden interest in her. At three thirty in the morning, she got up, turned on her light, and assessed herself in the mirror, trying to see herself as Nick had seen her today. Like always, there were subtle bags under her eyes and knots in her hair along her neckline. Like always, she looked like Bethany Sutton—future doctor without much hope for romance.

She didn”t care about herself as long as she could save people’s lives and eliminate their pain. After what she’d seen Joel go through, not marrying or having children of her own didn’t feel like a sacrifice.

Once, her friend back in college had asked her if she thought she could bring her brother back. “You’re putting yourself through so much pain,” she’d said, drunk on vodka one horrible night.

Come to think of it, maybe she hadn’t been such a good friend after all.

Bethany got up officially around five thirty, went for a four-mile run, showered, and got ready for today’s surgery. A fact about the patient was that just like her little brother, he had leukemia. And it was up to Nick’s father to perform life-saving surgery that would ultimately charter the boy’s body back to healthy territory.

Nobody else in medical school knew anything about her, and nobody knew what a big deal this surgery was. Bethany felt anxious about it, like a rock in the pit of her stomach. She walked to the hospital and arrived nearly an hour early to grab a cup of coffee and a low-carb yogurt, which she ate very slowly as she studied her notes from last night. One of the papers had a milkshake stain in the corner.

“Did you sleep at all?” Nick’s voice floated over her head.

Bethany raised her chin to find his handsome face hovering overhead. His chestnut eyes glowed.

“Who needs sleep?” Bethany tried to joke, then stifled a yawn.

Nick chuckled and placed a bag of croissants between them. “Have one.”

Bethany gaped at the bag. She knew the bakery they’d come from and how buttery and flaky they were.

“Come on,” Nick urged her. “We have a four-hour surgery ahead of us.”

In the hallway, Bethany could hear the other med students streaming in and saying hello to one another. Jeff’s, Win’s, and Austin’s voices were among them. Why was Nick here in the corner with her? Why was he sitting across from her, telling her about an incident with his neighbor’s dog that had nearly resulted in him losing the bag of croissants? Why was she laughing about it?

In order to watch the surgery, the medical students gathered in a room behind one-way glass. So that everyone could see, the room was built like an arena. Nick and Bethany grabbed seats midway up the room, which put them exactly in the center of the window. Dr. Bob Waterhouse stood on the other side of the glass in his immaculate surgical gear, a mask, and gloves. His glasses glinted in the medicinal light from the overhead lamps. Stretched out next to him was the patient, who was wearing a hospital gown and hooked up to tubes and beeping medical equipment meant to monitor his well-being.

Something cold and hard dropped into Bethany’s stomach. Her heart stopped beating.

“You okay?” Nick breathed, noticing something wrong.

But how could Bethany explain herself? The boy wasn’t much older than Joel had been when he’d been diagnosed with leukemia. Because he wore protection over his hair and was rail thin, just as Joel had been, he looked precisely as he had during the weeks immediately prior to his death. Seeing him like this, so startlingly close to Joel in looks and illness, nearly brought Bethany to her knees.

This was a very new situation for Bethany. Doctors and professors at Mercer often told her she had nerves of steel. But here, watching over the surgery of a young boy who very well might end up with the same fate as her little brother, she was on the verge of madness.

“I have to go,” Bethany muttered. Tears were about to spill from her eyes.

Bethany erupted from her seat just before Nick’s father sliced into the young boy. She saw red as she raced through the door and sped down the hallway. Her tennis shoes squeaked on the linoleum. Nurses eyed her, annoyed. She was just another female doctor who couldn’t handle herself. She couldn’t hack it.

The next several hours passed slowly. Bethany couldn’t explain herself to Nick’s father, but she couldn’t leave the hospital either. If she did, she couldn’t take the test she’d studied for, which she knew she could ace, with or without seeing the surgery firsthand.

Self-hatred stewed in her stomach. She couldn’t believe how tremendously she’d failed. She imagined explaining herself to Dr. Bob Waterhouse, telling him she hadn’t run out of the room because she was a “weak woman.” But he would surely see it that way. There was no coming back from this.

Perhaps, with a single act, she’d destroyed her future in the medical field. Maybe it was all over.

This was why she’d wanted to go to therapy. But therapy had failed her.

After the surgery, Bethany remained in the corner of the hospital café, nursing a cup of coffee. Her stomach ached from too much caffeine. She tried to get up and join the others because she had to take the test. But each time she told her legs to stand, exhaustion fell over her like a blanket, and she remained very still.

Suddenly, a figure stood over her. It took every ounce of will for her to raise her eyes to find Nick’s. His swam with confusion. Suddenly, his hands were over hers on the table.

Later, Bethany would ask herself, why now? Why did she reveal such emotionality and fear now? Was it because Nick had shown her an ounce of empathy? Was it because she reached the end of her rope?

“Bethany,” Nick whispered, “are you all right?”

Bethany broke apart after that. She shivered and wept as the world crumbled around her. Nick sat and wrapped his strong arms around her as she shivered, dampening the shoulder of his medical whites. Only once could she bring herself to say, “My brother. My poor brother.” Nick didn’t ask for clarification. It was as though he already knew they would have plenty of time to talk about this. They would find a way through.

After Bethany calmed down, Nick walked her back to the testing room, where Dr. Bob Waterhouse answered questions about the surgery and passed out the required test. Bob Waterhouse gave Bethany a confused smile.

“We were just grabbing some water,” Nick assured him.

“Bethany Sutton,” Dr. Waterhouse said, “I assume you got a lot out of the surgery?”

Bethany glanced at Nick, who gave her a stiff nod. It was best to lie.

“It was extremely informative. Thank you.”

Bethany sat next to Nick and took the test. Because she’d studied so well, she got the best grade in the class despite not watching the surgery at all. There would be other surgeries. There would be other patients. She had to find a way through her horrible memories. She had to guard herself against the past.

After the test, Nick held Bethany back to meet his father properly. When he shook her hand, Dr. Waterhouse said, “It’s rare to meet a woman in the medical field half as driven as you. What’s your secret?”

Bethany’s mouth was dry with alarm. How could she explain that she didn’t feel like a woman? That her sexuality had nothing to do with her career?

But then, Nick touched her lower back gently and said, “I was hoping to bring Bethany to dinner this weekend, Dad. Maybe you can ask her more then.”

His father beamed. “My wife makes the best pot roast in Savannah,” he said. “You’re going to love it.”

Bethany felt swept up in a storm she couldn’t possibly understand. But that evening, wrapped in Nick’s arms as a hard rain churned over the humid Savannah streets, she told herself these changes were far better than therapeutic results.

Maybe she could fall in love, and everything would be okay. Perhaps she could have happy, healthy, and brilliant children one day. Maybe she could blot out the darkness of her past and make space for new light.

Plus, with Nick’s father in her corner, she was sure to prove to him and the rest of the medical community that women were just as good, smart, and precise as men. He couldn’t possibly ignore her.