Chapter 9
That August, my dad rented a twenty-foot U-Haul, backing it into the driveway with the ease of someone who’d been maneuvering box trucks his whole life. My mom and I folded clothes into bags while Mick and my dad packed up the college furniture I’d been storing in the garage.
My dad planned on taking me, but Mick asked if he could drive me instead. Later, he joked that it felt like asking for my hand in marriage.
“Just take good care of her,” my dad said, clapping Mick on the back.
We left at dawn the next day, armed with coffee and a playlist Mick called “road-trip canon.”
Just past Gary, Indiana, the sky ripped open. Rain pummeled the windshield in sheets so heavy the wipers could barely keep up. Mick refused to pull over; instead, he turned up Fleetwood Mac, drumming the steering wheel like it was a perfectly sunny day.
Near Toledo, we stopped for the night at a dingy motel called Sunrise.
With a faded comforter, a rattling AC unit, and the carpet mottled with stains, the whole place reeked of cigarettes and mildew.
But it felt like part of the adventure. We picked up a bottle of wine from a gas station, ordered a pizza, and watched a random movie.
I curled against Mick’s shoulder, tracing lazy circles on the inside of his wrist until we both drifted off.
The next day, we drove another five hours before detouring to Niagara Falls. It was more spectacular than I’d imagined. Spray soaked our hair and shirts, and the roar was so loud we had to shout to hear each other. A fellow tourist snapped our picture, Mick’s arm tight around my waist.
Afterward, we drove for a few more hours and checked into a quaint B and B in Utica.
It was run by an elderly couple who told us their love story over Merlot and chicken piccata.
Upstairs, in a room crowded with porcelain swans and lace doilies, we made love in one of the twin beds.
I was still pretending the end wasn’t near.
But late the next morning, as we crossed the George Washington Bridge, I couldn’t pretend anymore.
“Do you think I made a mistake?” I asked, watching barges slide down the Hudson.
Mick reached for my hand, squeezing it. “Of course not.”
“I think I did,” I said, my stomach in knots.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “You deserve this shot.”
—
My studio on West 165th Street was almost as small as our U-Haul and only slightly more refined than the Sunrise Motel.
In ninety-degree heat, we hauled boxes and furniture up three flights of stairs until our backs ached and our shirts were soaked through.
From there, we returned the truck, made a Target run, bought bodega groceries, and scrubbed the tiny bathroom with Comet until the whole place smelled like bleach and lemons—the simple, exhausting work of claiming new territory.
Late that afternoon, we explored Washington Heights and the nearby medical school campus, then took the subway down to Columbia’s main campus, the city falling oddly silent behind the stone facades.
We wandered past the broad steps of Butler Library and the quiet symmetry of the quad, posing for selfies in front of the Alma Mater and Hamilton statues.
Afterward, we visited St. John the Divine, staring up at the stone ribs of the nave. The air in the cathedral was cool and hushed, dust catching in shafts of light.
“Should we light a candle?” Mick whispered, gesturing toward a votive stand glowing with tiny flames.
I nodded, our footsteps echoing along the curved walkway. We each took a taper, lighting them from another flame. They trembled, then caught—steady and gold.
I glanced at Mick. His eyes were closed, his lips moving in a silent prayer. I wasn’t sure I believed in God, but just in case, I offered a prayer of my own: Please watch over my friends, family, and Mick and me. Please keep our love strong and true.
—
For the next few days, Mick and I ventured all over Manhattan, doing all the usual touristy things—museums, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty. As we ate hot dogs from a food cart in Central Park, he said, “You’re going to love it here.”
I looked at him, a little surprised. Just twenty minutes earlier, we’d seen a rat scuttling into a sewer, and he’d made a comment about how filthy cities are.
“You think?”
“I know,” he said, nodding. “You’re going to do great things. I can feel it.”
I met his gaze, awash with relief that he could feel it, too—the hum of endless possibility.
“Thank you. I needed to hear that,” I said, wondering how you could feel excitement and heartbreak at once.
—
Mick stayed through my first week of orientation—a blur of name tags, nervous smiles, and welcome speeches. There were financial aid briefings, social mixers, and trips to the bookstore.
That Friday, my parents flew in for my White Coat Ceremony, checking into a hotel on the Upper West Side. The following morning, Mick and I met them outside the medical school building.
“Look at you,” my mom said, smoothing my hair like I was heading into the first day of kindergarten.
“Dr. Wright,” my dad said, his voice breaking.
Mick stood a little to the side, hands in his pockets, watching with a soft smile. When our eyes met, something fluttered in my chest—love, longing, and the faint dread of him leaving.
Inside the auditorium, a dean with a polished voice gave a speech about compassion, rigor, and the privilege of caring for others. Pride swelled in my chest with only a thin ribbon of impostor syndrome.
When it was my turn to step onstage, Mick’s whistle cut through the applause. As the faculty member settled the clean white coat over my shoulders, the fabric felt stiff and symbolic, like responsibility made visible.
—
At the end of the weekend, my parents flew back home, and a day after that, it was Mick’s turn to leave. We hailed a cab on Broadway, then stood at the curb, saying our final goodbyes. When the driver honked, I cracked, tears flowing. Mick pulled me into his arms.
“I love you,” I said, my voice muffled against his shoulder.
“Love you more,” he whispered in my ear.
Then he climbed into the cab and shut the door with a soft thud, pressing his hand to the glass. I kept my eyes on that taxi until it vanished into traffic.
—
The next day, classes began. They were a welcome distraction from my heartbreak, but New York still pressed in on me—the sirens in the middle of the night, the stink of hot garbage, shoulders clipping mine on the sidewalk.
I kept asking myself what I was thinking coming here, the ache in my ribs telling me I’d made a big mistake.
On one particularly bad day, my scalpel slipped in anatomy, and I nicked the brachioradialis of my cadaver. Heat flooded my cheeks; my lab partners froze; and the professor called me out in front of the whole class.
When I told Mick what happened, he said, “Look on the bright side—you’ll never forget that muscle now!”
“Yeah. Neither will anyone else in the room,” I said.
“So you did them all a favor,” he said. “Way to be collaborative.”
I smiled, the sting of the mistake already fading.
—
Our nightly phone calls became my lifeline. I’d lie in bed listening to his voice in my ear as he told me what he’d made for dinner or repeated something funny Maeve had said. Sometimes I could hear the TV in the background—the hum of ordinary life—and I clung to it, letting it tether me to home.
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.