Chapter 2 #3
If I don’t keep up this charade, David will never stop bothering me.
But if I fail to keep up this charade convincingly, everyone will think I’m insane.
And if I’m labeled insane, I’ll never match.
And if I never match, I’ll be $300,000 in debt with no way to practice medicine and pay it off legally—
“Percy,” Kane says firmly.
I go against my better judgment, and hand him the phone.
He disconnects the call.
“Kane!”
“You’re spiraling,” he says. “This happens all the time. Better for it to happen before you matched there.”
“Kane, that was my home program—”
“Among like three other home programs. Cornfield doesn’t really have a home hospital. You’ll survive—”
“Cornfield is a low-ranking MD school—”3
“What was your Step 2 score?” Kane asks. “You should still be fine to match, especially since you’re willing to go rural.”
“Because a Step 2 score helped you so much,” I retort.
He grimaces, and I wince. “Sorry.”
He sighs. “Unlike us bone wizards, you still have the M.D. and a personality.”
“But what if your crassness rubs off on me?”
He scowls further. “Then spend more time with Hyacinth!”
“How can she, when you hung up on me!”
The high-pitched voice spooks both of us, Hyacinth materializing next to our booth like a specter.
“Heard you were here,” Hyacinth says, twinkle in her eye, shoving my backpack aside to sit next to me.
“Why did you call me, then?” I ask at the same time Kane asks, “Do you always join her dates?”
She takes a fork to help herself to cheesecake before I grab her wrist, stopping her.
“Yes,” she says to me, shaking my grip off, “and no, but I usually eavesdrop.”
“And you,” she says to Kane, “are a campus legend.” She holds up the class group chat, which is alternating between memes about the demise of Rinky Dink, and—
“Is that a thirst trap of the Anki deck?”
“Luke made that,” she says proudly. “We didn’t know your boyfriend was actually useful. This is big news for the lazy and overworked.”
“But not too overworked to make a thirst trap of an Anki deck,” Kane points out, mesmerized by the screen.
“You,” Hyacinth decides between shameless bites of my cheesecake, pointing a fork at Kane, “are alright.”
She picks up the rest of it. “The silent area is hungry,” she says, rising like she’s about to make off with it.
“Hey!” I protest.
“Don’t worry,” she says to Kane. “Rumor has it, all the medical students from Rinky Dink are moving to Rusty with you lovebirds.”
“Just think,” she says, arching a rainbow above us with her hand. “A world where instead of just you, me, and Luke at Rusty, it’s almost a dozen of us. And they,” she gestures wildly to the rest of the library, lowering her voice, “are a lot smarter than Luke at picking up on things.”
My stomach sinks to the floor, appetite vanishing.
When they transfer, they’ll be here—hallways, rounds, everywhere.
No more polite distance. No more pretending I don’t know them. If this falls apart, I’ll be stuck watching David and Calypso play house in my home hospital all year.
Kane and I lock eyes at the same time.
Well, if you can’t beat them—
My shoulders square before I can think better of it.
Hyacinth’s voice cuts through the chaos, loudly announcing her cheesecake haul to the silent area.
But it’s her last words that echo in my head like an omen:
“Better get used to performing in front of an audience!”
Guess it’s time to step up on stage.
Showtime.
1 Narrator’s notes: The stereotype about doctors is that because they spend so much time training, they never fully grow up.
First, after K-12, is college, where baby premeds receive Bachelor’s degrees.
Next is medical school, where student doctors earn their training wheels with two years of classroom study and two years of hospital-based rotations.
Later is residency, where doctors have earned admission to their specialty, but not the ability to practice independently like the attendings (fully fledged adults).
Dr. Demon is an intern, a first-year resident, meaning attendings see him as a tween with a doctor’s knowledge base and a middle-schooler’s wisdom to execute it.
Kane’s childish antics are not helping this problem.
2 Narrator’s notes: There are regular flashcards, and there are Anki cards, spaced repetition software that helps exhausted medical students pretend they can hold in extraordinary amounts of information long term.
They can’t—only real-life repetition will help with that—but the appeal is cult-like, akin to worship for Anki. Some of these students spend more time with Anki than they do with their own families.
3 Narrator’s notes: There are three tiers of medical schools for residency applications:
On top is M.D., which is most common, and encompasses most medical graduates. Second is D.O. Last place is IMG, or international medical graduate, who may also have the M.D. designation, but not the American hospital connections.
Even within those tiers, there is subdivision. The top of M.D. schools would be the Ivory Towers, mid-tier would be state schools, and rural programs usually round out the ‘lowest tier’ of M.D.s, who are least desired by program directors.
With the closure of rural hospitals, M.D. students from low-tier schools are increasingly forced to compete with their mid-tier and high-tier counterparts for residency spots.