Chapter Two
Two
The gash was on Mr. Shepard’s chin but the blood was all over his face.
“I know it hurts, but keep applying pressure,” Asma said.
Mr. Shepard’s hand shook as he pressed the gauze to his chin, his pale blue eyes watering from the pain. “I’m trying.”
Asma pulled the thin white curtain around Mr. Shepard’s bed to cordon him off from the patient stretched out on the gurney in the adjacent examining room. She put her hand on his shoulder and carefully checked the rest of his face to make sure there were no more cuts.
Mr. Shepard, a widower who lived in Green Meadows, the retirement home next door to the hospital, had slipped in his bathroom and split open his chin.
Asma gently moved his hand and lifted up the gauze. The bleeding had stopped. As a nurse cleaned the blood off the rest of his face, Asma rolled a stool up to his bed, pulling open the suture kit the nurse had set up beside it.
“You’ll feel a pinch, but squeeze my arm if it gets unbearable,” said Asma, reaching for his face.
Mr. Shepard closed his eyes, grimacing as Asma began stitching.
“Do you have grandkids?” Asma asked to take his mind off the pain.
“One. Olivia.” Mr. Shepard’s eyes fluttered open as he said his granddaughter’s name. “She wants to be a doctor.”
“So she’s smart?”
“Smarter than me,” he replied.
Asma smiled. If her grandfathers had been alive, they’d be around his age, she thought. She had never known them. She had only warm, faded memories of her grandmothers from her childhood summer trips to Pakistan—the smell of perfumed powder lingering on her clothes after enveloping hugs with murmured duas, hands clutching sandalwood tasbeehs with green tassels. The trips slowed after her grandmothers’ deaths, then ended completely after her mother died. But she thought of them often, especially now that Maryam had children of her own. Her father had come fully alive again after her nephews were born, almost a decade after his wife’s death. Asma sometimes felt a dull pain when she saw her father with them—a stark reminder of the one who was missing, the grandmother her nephews would never know.
The intercom in the exam room buzzed.
“Dr. Ibrahim, Mrs. Martin is still complaining of pain.” Asma could hear the early-nineties rock music the ER night nurses liked to listen to floating through the intercom.
“Double her dosage of acetaminophen and call in Dr. Marjan for a neuro consult.”
“And the lab results for Mr. Nichols?”
“They should be in by now.” Asma continued to talk to the nurse on the other end of the intercom without taking her eyes off Mr. Shepard’s chin. “I’ll review them when I wrap up here.”
Asma leaned back in her stool and admired her handiwork. Five clean stitches so close together that they would likely not leave a noticeable scar.
“All done, Mr. Shepard. You did great.”
Asma pulled off her gloves and glanced at her watch. It was after midnight. The few hours she’d been at the hospital had been so chaotic that sitting down to stitch up Mr. Shepard’s face had been a welcome respite. Two car accidents, a five-year-old with an asthma attack, and a wedding ring stuck on the finger of a waterlogged pregnant woman. It was a typical, hectic night at the ER—the kind of environment in which she thrived. No time to think, only time to act. She had been about to return Fatima’s call when Mr. Shepard arrived. Of course, now that the ER was finally quiet, it was too late.
She accompanied Mr. Shepard to discharge, then slumped in a chair at an empty nurse’s station. She pulled her phone out of her lab coat pocket. There were four missed calls from Maryam and two from Iman—no voicemail or texts, of course. Her sisters never left messages for her. They just called and called until she picked up, claiming she never answered their texts. “It’s not email,” Iman had complained. “You can’t wait two days to respond!” They were probably calling to whine about something related to the party, the last thing Asma wanted to hear about now. Instead of calling either of them back, Asma reread Fatima’s texts.
Farooq’s tech company had been acquired for a staggering amount of money. According to Fatima, all of the aunties agreed—he was now the hottest bachelor on the market.
Asma let out a strangled sound, unsure whether she was on the verge of laughter or tears. Eight years. It had been eight years since Asma’s family had persuaded her to break off her engagement to Farooq. And in those years, it seemed, everything had changed. Everything, except for Asma. Farooq had gone from a college dropout to a tech scion, and Asma was the same as she’d always been. Studious, driven, and still single, despite her family’s wishes to have it otherwise.
“Someone die?” Jackson Wong, Asma’s co-resident, removed his lab coat and plopped into the chair next to her. “You look like you’re about to cry.”
Asma slipped her phone back into her coat. “I’m tired, it’s been a long night.”
“Go home, dude. I’ll cover for you.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Come on, why don’t you let someone else have a chance of being Dr. S’s favorite, for a change?”
“I’m not her favorite,” Asma replied, though she couldn’t help the twitch of a smile at the corner of her mouth. Her attending physician, Dr. Saucedo, was brilliant, compassionate, and one of the most highly regarded doctors at the hospital. Asma was never sure what drew Dr. Saucedo to her. She hoped it was her attending’s desire to mentor a promising student, or at least lower a ladder to another woman of color in a challenging field. Sometimes when she was feeling particularly self-conscious, Asma wondered if Dr. Saucedo had looked at her and seen to her core: a lonely, brokenhearted young woman in desperate need of a mother. But, whatever the reason, Dr. Saucedo had taken Asma under her wing during her intern year and now served as Asma’s mentor and professional role model.
“Well, if you’re not going anywhere, then cover for me.” Jackson jumped to his feet and grabbed his coat. “I’m going to get a burger.”
Asma waved him off, then pulled out her phone once he had disappeared down the hall. She glanced around to confirm that no one was watching before she googled Farooq. Asma had internet-stalked him for years after their breakup, but for a man working in tech, he’d done a remarkably good job of keeping himself off the internet—her searches had always turned up empty. Until now.
Farooq, it turned out, had been hard at work.
Asma’s search was greeted with pages and pages of articles detailing Farooq’s success. She skimmed the details of his company’s product—a technology platform that would reshape delivery of medical services to rural populations. She felt herself choke up. He had done it. He had created what he had envisioned so many years ago. She scrolled quickly past his picture; even the quick glimpse of his eyes and smile set off a riot of competing feelings within her, though none louder than her regret. Regret that she’d been the good daughter and broken off their engagement. That she hadn’t fought harder to make her family see Farooq’s potential. Now everyone understood what she alone had seen back then. That he was brilliant, that any woman would be lucky to marry him.
She knew better than anyone that beneath the wealth and the success, there was kindness and compassion. The kind of person who had understood the deep pain she suffered in her life and would bring her flowers on her mother’s birthday. He had a character that she hadn’t been able to find in anyone before or since then. Not that she had tried. What would be the point? She had already met the love of her life, and he hadn’t met her family’s exceedingly high expectations. She couldn’t risk that kind of heartbreak again.
Asma was reading an article about Farooq in the Wall Street Journal when she heard shouting and running in the hallway.
So much for the few minutes of quiet. She dried her eyes and straightened out her lab coat, heading—as she always did—toward whatever crisis was unfolding.
—
Asma lay on her bed in the family home, staring at the framed picture on her nightstand. It was of Asma and her mother, taken Halloween morning when Asma was in the third grade. She was wearing a white doctor’s coat that skimmed the ground, the sleeves rolled up to her wrists covered in plastic friendship bracelets. Her mother had borrowed the coat and a stethoscope from a friend when Asma insisted that she wanted to dress up as a doctor.
It was one of the few pictures Asma had of her and her mom alone. The curse of the middle child—in all other family pictures she was either the baby in the shot or had a baby positioned next to her. Her mom’s hand lay gently on the side of Asma’s face, as Asma leaned into her, one arm wrapped around her leg. When she was growing up, everyone had always said that Asma resembled her father, likely because of their similar, darker complexion. But Asma knew that she looked like her mother. She had the same high cheekbones, strong sharp nose with a slight bump on the bridge, and wide-set eyes with faint bags underneath that were only accentuated with the sleeplessness of residency. She also had her mother’s temperament. Calm and sensible, the rock to her more dramatic and flamboyant husband.
Asma always came back to this picture when she felt confused or lonely. How would her mother have helped her through this moment? She was the only one who would have understood. Her mother had also wanted to be a doctor, though she’d never spoken of it when she was alive. After her mother’s death, Asma found out from Rehana that her grandparents had refused to send her mother to medical school, convinced that her economic salvation lay not in education but in marriage. And her marriage had been a happy one—full of affection and sometimes PDA, to the great embarrassment of their three daughters—in sharp contrast to the marriages Asma saw within their community. Mr. Ibrahim adored his wife and doted on her, and in return, she was his most loyal and devoted partner. It was only now, as a doctor herself, that Asma realized what a sacrifice her mother had made in forgoing a medical career to care for her family.
Her mother was still one of the smartest people Asma had ever known, as evidenced by her successful running of the family business from her husband’s shadow. Asma’s own success had always felt like a vindication of her mother’s secret desire to be a doctor. She’d worked hard during medical school and residency, determined to live her life in a way that defied the decision foisted on her mother: to pursue a family over a career. That was the only way Asma had been able to justify breaking up with Farooq.
Asma heard a soft knock at the door, before it opened slightly and Rehana poked her head in.
“Are you packing?” she asked, glancing at the still-empty moving boxes that were stacked in the corner of the room.
“I’m going to get it all done this weekend,” Asma said to her aunt, propping herself up on her elbow. Now that her father’s retirement party was behind them, the real work of salvaging the family’s finances had begun. And the first order of business was to rent out their Palo Alto house and move Mr. Ibrahim, Rehana, and Iman to Sacramento. It had been where the Ibrahims first moved upon their arrival in the United States and where Mrs. Ibrahim had insisted they purchase a home. They had lived there for a couple of years before moving to the Bay. They’d rented out the modest house in the nearby city for years—it was ironic that it would now become a haven for their little family, while their grand Palo Alto family home would become a much more lucrative rental property.
“The house has to be fit for showing by next week, Asma,” Rehana chided, sitting down on Asma’s bed. “I know this is difficult. But we all need to make sacrifices.”
“Easy for you to say, you’re not the one being forced to move in with Maryam,” Asma countered, still resentful that Mr. Ibrahim had deemed it unacceptable for Asma to remain in the Bay if she didn’t live with family. “Especially when I can afford to get an apartment of my own. At least until the end of residency.”
“You cannot live on your own,” Rehana replied, adopting the same tone as Asma’s father, like her words were a grand edict that could not be argued. But Asma was an adult now, not a teenager asking to be allowed to go to a movie with her friends. Asma was long familiar with the faults in Rehana’s judgment and no longer took her word as law.
“Why not?” Asma replied. “I lived away for four years at Berkeley.”
“You were in school. This is different. It’s not done.”
“You mean, it hasn’t been done. That doesn’t mean I can’t.”
Asma knew as the words left her mouth that this was the wrong approach. Her aunt had no admiration for pioneers or trailblazers. Theirs was a family that honored the status quo, that held in highest regard those who fell in line without complaint.
Rehana shook her head. “You know how people talk.”
As soon as Rehana uttered those words, Asma knew there was no way to win the argument. What people might say was her aunt’s trump card, based on her belief that the wrong type of gossip would cause irreparable damage to their family’s reputation and their social standing. More specifically, it would ruin the prospect of marriage for both Asma and Iman. As much as Iman’s haughty materialism grated on Asma, she did not want to be responsible for her sister’s spinsterhood. That was the problem: in a community that deemed marriage the ultimate goal for a young woman, what people said actually mattered. Couples were introduced to each other based on status rather than compatibility, and weddings were the marriage of families, not just individuals. Everyone in their community was kept in check by a social code, shackled by the fear of what people would say if they broke it. Everyone, including Asma.
“It’s like it doesn’t matter at all that I’m a doctor. As long as I’m not married, that’s all anyone will care about.”
“We’re proud of you for becoming a doctor. But, beta, you’re twenty-seven.”
“I never said I didn’t want to marry, Aunty. I just want to establish myself first,” said Asma. “You and I both know, it’s what Ammi would’ve wanted.”
“I know nothing of the sort,” Rehana replied.
Asma did a double take and felt a sharp sting of anger, so taken by surprise that she could only shake her head. Her aunt had said as much to her. At the end of Asma’s sophomore year in college, when Farooq proposed.
Asma knew her father would be difficult to convince when it came to Farooq. After all, everyone knew the story of her cousin’s fiancée, who had given up a Fulbright in music to join her cousin in dental school just so he would be considered a suitable match. Everyone in their community knew that doctors married doctors, and dentists married dentists, and a man who had dropped out of college after his freshman year was completely unsuitable for anyone. But Asma had counted on Rehana to take her side, as she imagined her mother would have, if she were still alive.
So it hit her like icy water when Rehana had joined in Mr. Ibrahim’s objections to the match.
“Not in college?” Rehana had asked, incredulous.
“He completed his first year,” Asma had responded. “But he doesn’t need a degree for the type of work he’s doing.” She told her father and aunt about Farooq’s business plan, convinced they would be impressed by his innovation and how he’d so intentionally thought about how he would support himself—and her—through his job at the campus computer lab. Taking the steps necessary to turn his dream into a reality.
“Does he think he’s Bill Gates?” Asma could still hear her father’s and Rehana’s laughter. She regretted then that she hadn’t allowed Farooq to come and present his case to her family himself, as he had wished. He would’ve done a better job. Maybe then they would’ve seen what she had.
Although perhaps she feared what she encountered. That her family wouldn’t think he was good enough. That they would laugh in his face.
They could not be swayed, despite Asma’s tears and pleas. Farooq came from a no-name family. He had no money, no education, and Asma would be forced to support the two of them if they were married. What would people say, if they allowed Asma to marry someone like that?
“Your mother didn’t have a choice when she married, Asma,” Rehana had said, the memory so clear in Asma’s mind it might have been a recording. “This is not what she would’ve wanted for you.”
Those words were the primary reason Asma had finally broken things off with Farooq, even though she was also breaking her own heart at the same time. She couldn’t stomach the idea that she might be marrying against her mother’s wishes, and that weighed more heavily than any objections her father might have made. So Asma couldn’t imagine how Rehana had possibly forgotten those words now.
“You told me,” Asma said now, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “You told me that Ammi would have wanted me to choose my career.”
But Rehana only shook her head.
“I meant, your mother would’ve wanted to see you settled,” continued Rehana. “A suitable match.”
“But that’s not what you said,” Asma replied, her eyes pricking with angry tears. “You told me that Ammi didn’t have a choice, and that I did. And that she wouldn’t have wanted me to choose marriage.”
Asma felt the creep of panic, that she’d been stupid enough to listen all those years ago.
“You know,” Rehana said, as if she hadn’t heard Asma, “Uzma said you never responded to her nephew’s email.”
Asma gritted her teeth. Unsure of everything now. Asma thought her mother wanted her to be a doctor instead of marrying young and potentially being thrown off course by the demands of a family. But now, if her aunt was admitting that those were not her mother’s wishes after all, it would change everything.
“Asma?” Rehana said, clearly noting the change in Asma’s disposition.
“Her nephew didn’t email,” Asma heard her voice rising. “He sent me a text that said ‘hey.’?”
“Well, that’s something, isn’t it? You’ve refused to meet anyone.”
“Because of—” Asma stopped herself. There was no use, her aunt would never understand. “I was in college, then med school, and now I’m a resident,” she said. “I haven’t had time.”
“And then you finish residency and join us in Sacramento and then what? There will always be something. Asma, beta, it will not get easier as you get older.”
Asma knew that Rehana assumed her silence implied agreement. But as Rehana left the room and Asma settled back into her bed, anger made her resolve harden. Rehana had invoked Asma’s dead mother once before to get her to do what she wanted, and it had cost Asma the love of her young life. She wasn’t going to let it happen again.