Trick of Light (The Sutton Book Club 2)

Chapter 16

1997

The first month of Bethany’s summer internship at NYU Hospital was genuine hell. Manhattan was under a horrible hot spell, and Bethany was perpetually sweltering, sweat pouring from her neck and arms as she hurried from her dorm, down twelve floors of stairs, all the way to the hospital for a ten- to twelve-hour workday. She was only seventeen, which meant that amount of work per day was probably illegal or very near it. However, there was a general sentiment at the hospital that if you couldn’t hack the internship, you wouldn’t be able to hack medical school. Bethany took that to heart.

The other high schoolers in Bethany’s program hadn’t come to Manhattan to make friends. They kept to themselves, worked diligently, and hardly spoke to one another during shared dinners or lunches. The only time Bethany heard anyone exchange information was in the form of bragging. Everyone seemed to have better grades than everyone else. Everyone was going to rise to the top of the field.

Midway through June, someone in the program learned that Bethany’s father was Victor Sutton. Finally, they were intrigued with her, but only up to the point that she confessed she didn’t speak to her father.

“Why would you cut contact with him?” one of the girls asked. “He probably has so many connections. He could help you.”

How could Bethany explain? Asking for help from her father was akin to betraying her family and herself. She dropped her chin and focused on her wilted salad, one of many that summer.

Because of the frantic nature of her shifts at the hospital, the long nights of studying, the lab work she had to do, and the lack of sleep, Bethany lost ten pounds very quickly from her small frame. By the end of June, she’d lost another five. She felt slender and quick, but in the mirror, she saw a hollowed-out version of the young woman who’d moved to Manhattan with dreams.

For the first few weeks, Bethany made it a point to call Rod every evening. She’d been able to procure a landline and had plugged it in beside her bed. When she spoke to Rod, she splayed out across the mattress and stared at the ceiling, trying to drum up excitement in her voice.

Rod told her stories about his summer in Nantucket. He spoke of sailing, swimming, and barbecuing. He mentioned their friends’ names, beaches, and annoyance at the ever-rising tourism. He’d seen President Bill Clinton out and about recently, and Rod had been so startled that he’d nearly dropped a cooler filled with fish he’d recently caught.

When Rod asked Bethany about her days, Bethany waded around the questions. She didn’t want him to know just how miserable she was. She imagined him leaping in the car and driving to Manhattan immediately to “save” her. But she didn’t need saving. She needed to be stronger. She needed to be the sort of woman brave enough to face a life’s worth of stress in a hospital context.

These were impossible things to translate to Rod, who was still a teenager. Bethany now felt forty-some years old.

The full-scale panic attacks didn’t start until July. Rod had just come to visit, and Bethany had been allowed a blissful weekend of exploration with Rod, holding his hand as they scoured the streets for food and bars that didn’t card. After he’d left and Bethany was cast back into the horrors of her schedule, the contrast was so startling that she immediately fell to her knees. The panic attack came on strong and lasted for a full twenty-five minutes. She shook violently and couldn’t breathe. By the time she could stand again, she was ten minutes late for work. She downed a full glass of water and gave herself a pep talk in the mirror. “Don’t tell me you’re really this weak,” she said.

After that, Bethany knew to expect at least one panic attack per day. She had to fit them into her schedule, like brushing her teeth or combing her hair.

During July, Bethany called less and less. When she returned to the dorm at night, she was so strung out and exhausted that her heart felt like a frog’s during hibernation. Sometimes she stared at the landline, willing herself to pick it up and call Rod. But other times, she fell asleep immediately and didn’t dream.

“You sound different,” Rod said on the phone one night, his voice heavy with worry. “Are you sick?”

“I’m not sick.”

“You need to take care of yourself, Bethany. You’re working too hard.”

“I’m fine.”

Bethany didn’t know that saying “I’m fine” would be her consistent refrain for many, many decades. She didn’t know that being “not fine” was even allowed.

For her internship, Bethany was thrown headfirst into the medical industry, which meant one thing—she was forced to contend with a form of sexism she’d never experienced. Over and over again, the medical professionals at the hospital put the male high schoolers in charge of certain things, certain labs, and asked Bethany and her female colleagues to either watch or help. Sometimes Bethany was assumed to be a nurse. More than once, her male colleagues informed her that she would never be a surgeon, not in the “real world,” because women just didn’t become surgeons. They said it as a matter of fact, as though they spoke of the weather.

When Bethany explained bits and pieces of the rampant sexism at the hospital to Rod, Rod insisted she could change their minds. “You’re the most brilliant woman I’ve ever met. Every time they deal with you, they must be thinking, ‘Whoa! A woman has this big of a brain?’ Because they’re close-minded and stupid, Bethany! But you’re going to change the world! You’re taking down sexism in the industry one day at a time!”

He spoke as though she were a superhero in a comic book.

By then, Bethany had dropped a full twenty pounds, and she felt like a collection of sticks and rods meant to take her around the hospital and up and down those stairs. It was hard to believe that the dorm still hadn’t fixed the elevator. Sometimes Bethany took a breather halfway up and wept into her hands. This internship was beyond her wildest dreams. Why, then, did it feel like her biggest nightmare?

The last week of August, Bethany had another panic attack on Tuesday morning and immediately hustled to the lab to work alongside Clifford, a very rich high schooler from California—the same one who’d told her women couldn’t be surgeons. Still rattled after her panic attack, Bethany moved slowly and delicately around the lab equipment. When Clifford told her to “speed it up,” she grew agitated and accidentally dropped a pipette. The glass shattered immediately, and she yelped and burst into tears. When the doctor overseeing them saw what she’d done, he shook his head and told her to go home for the day.

Bethany had never failed so spectacularly before. She hated herself. Unwilling to go back to the heat of her dorm room, she wandered through Manhattan, unable to see its beauty. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the turquoise blue of the Nantucket Sound, Rod’s sailboat, and his strong, warm arms. She had another panic attack on a bench in Washington Square Park and came to find a clown performing in front of her, hoping she could give him a tip. But she didn’t have more than a quarter, which she needed to call Rod.

Suddenly, desperately, she needed to speak to him. She raced to the nearest pay phone and dropped the coin into the receiver. It rang and rang across the city, across the East Coast, all the way to Rod’s parents” house. But when Rod’s father answered, he said, “Rod’s out fishing, Beth. I can take a message?”

Bethany was so rattled that she hung up the phone immediately. Where was Rod when she needed him the most? Didn’t he know she was suffering from a near-nervous breakdown?

For the next several days, Bethany avoided Rod’s calls and didn’t call him back. She’d decided to hunker down, get stronger, and prove herself. Maybe having a high school relationship made her weak. Perhaps it had taken away her focus.

Maybe missing Rod had set her up for failure from the very beginning.

One week after Bethany and Rod had last spoken, Bethany finally got up the nerve to call Rod at the usual time. He answered on the first ring as though he’d been standing right there.

“Bethany,” he said, his tone colder than Bethany had ever heard.

“Hi.”

He cleared his throat. “How are you?”

Bethany was strung out across her bed. She felt as though an elephant was sitting on her chest.

“I’m fine. You?”

Rod sounded angry. “To be honest? I’m pretty angry.”

Bethany remained quiet.

“I haven’t heard from you in a week. I’ve been worried sick. I know things have been difficult for you this summer. I know you’ve been under a lot of stress.” Rod sighed. “I’m sorry. I just love you. And I got it in my head that you’d met someone else. A brilliant guy at the hospital.” He laughed to himself, trying to generate goodwill between them again. “Someone who could actually match your intellect.”

But Bethany felt too far gone to smile. “Yeah. It’s been stressful. Just a lot of stuff going on.” She swallowed. “I’m sure you’ve kept yourself busy?”

“Here and there. Work. Friends.” Rod sighed as his tone dropped again. “Should I come down there, Bethany? Do you need help?”

Bethany stiffened. She imagined Rod coming into her dorm room and finding her here—a string bean of a person without a soul.

“I don’t need help, Rod,” she said. “You know I can do everything on my own.”

“Is that what you think?” Rod’s anger shivered through his words.

Bethany sensed them dipping into dangerous territory.

“I guess that’s why you didn’t call me,” Rod said. “Because you don’t need me. Because you wanted me to get it through my thick head.”

Bethany’s eyes filled with tears. That wasn’t it. That hadn’t been it at all. But she couldn’t tell him. She thrummed with shock and homesickness.

“Say something,” Rod begged.

Bethany sighed. “Maybe we were stupid to try to make this work this summer. I’m so busy. And you’re clearly having a ball in Nantucket.”

Rod’s voice broke with tears. “You’re really doing this. You’re really breaking up with me. Aren’t you?”

“I just think it’s dumb,” Bethany said, speaking from a hollow and horrible part of herself. “You could be having a beautiful summer, but instead, you’re inside, on the phone, talking to me.”

“I want to be talking to you,” Rod insisted. “I miss you. I love you.” He paused. “Don’t you miss and love me, too?”

Bethany’s heart and soul screamed yes! But she was depressed and aimless. All she could do was shove him as far away from her as she could.

“I need to focus,” Bethany told him. “I can’t be distracted by your needs back in Nantucket. Why don’t we take a break? People do it all the time.”

Bethany again felt like a much older woman, operating with a different set of rules and facts. She sat upright in bed and stared at a stain on the far wall. There was silence on the other end. For a moment, Bethany feared that Rod had hung up.

“Is that what you really want?” Rod asked finally.

“Yes,” Bethany said, her face twitching. “Definitely.”

“Okay, then,” Rod said. He sounded so sad and defeated. Bethany’s heart cracked in half. “Let’s take a break.”

And he hung up the phone.

Bethany returned the phone to its cradle and splayed her hands across her thighs. Her first instinct was to scream, but she wasn’t sure she had the energy. So she lay back in bed and stared into space, listening to the city’s horns scream around her. The energy was untranslatable. Nantucket seemed like an impossible world, one she’d never fully known. Maybe she would never see it again. Maybe that was what it took to be a “real doctor.” You had to remove all sense of love, happiness, and comfort from your life in order to succeed.

Still, in the back corner of her mind, Bethany knew that a “break” didn’t mean a full “breakup.” She and Rod were too much in love to give it all up. Weren’t they?