Chapter 35
BITE DOWN (LIZ)
The oppressive air wraps around me the second I step onto First Avenue, thick and immediate.
Kips Bay is already in full morning motion.
Students cross in quick, purposeful streams. Tote bags.
Lanyards. Sundresses and T-shirts darkening at the spine.
Around us, the NYU medical buildings rise in glass and stone, polished and intimidating.
I adjust the strap of my bag on my shoulder, tighten my grip on the folder in my hand, and remind myself to move.
Inside, the blast of conditioned air is almost violent after the sidewalk. The lobby is bright, crowded, and too loud, full of people trying to look relaxed while taking in everything at once.
At check-in, I get a badge, a lanyard, a purple canvas tote, and a folder thick enough to qualify as a weapon.
I step aside and glance down at the badge hanging against my dress.
My name looks strangely formal, as if it belongs to a version of me more prepared than the one currently trying not to sweat through her bra in a lobby full of future surgeons.
I hook the lanyard around my neck and move with the flow toward the auditorium. Every few feet, someone introduces themselves with the same careful brightness. I smile, repeat my own name, and lose theirs almost instantly. Everyone already sounds accomplished.
The auditorium fills fast. I pull the anatomy packet from my tote and immediately wish I hadn’t. It’s stapled, dense, and printed in a font that radiates authority.
I slide it back in.
The dean steps up to the podium a few minutes later, gray haired and elegant, carrying quiet institutional confidence.
She talks about rigor. Service. The extraordinary honor of training to care for the human body at its most vulnerable.
The expectation that we will give more than we thought we had and then learn to give a little more.
I sit very still and listen.
Part of me rises to meet it. That old, fierce part. The one that loves hard things because surviving them feels cleaner than standing still. Another part folds in on itself, because now it’s real.
I’m finally here.
The day unfolds in dense waves. Faculty introductions. Curriculum overview. Professionalism. Safety. Somewhere in there is a quick mention of the full-tuition scholarship, and for a second, I have to look down at my notes. Without it, this version of my life doesn’t exist.
By the time we break into small groups, my brain feels overstimulated.
Our faculty advisor is a compact woman with sharp eyes and a kind smile who makes us go around in a circle and say where we’re from, what brought us here, and one thing outside medicine that keeps us sane. The answers come polished at first, then start loosening.
Running. Violin. Baking. A baffling number of people say tennis.
When it gets to me, I say, “New York,” because that’s easiest, and, “I worked as a nurse before this,” because it’s simple. When she asks for the outside thing, I hesitate long enough that the girl beside me glances over.
“Boxing,” I hear myself say.
It’s not even mine. Not in the way it’s his. But it’s the first thing that comes to mind, and the second the word leaves my mouth I see him under the lights, gloves up, body distilled to speed and force, every movement so controlled it borders on cruel, and have to fight a smile.
The girl on my other side chuckles. “That’s intense.”
I laugh, startled enough that it comes out real.
Her name, I learn this time, is Nia. On my left is Rebecca, who has already color-coded the orientation schedule and looks well rested. Across from us is Mateo, whose older sister is a resident in Charleston and has apparently spent the last three months terrorizing him with practical advice.
That helps.
Not enough to make me comfortable. Enough to make me feel less singular.
We get sent to another room for white coat sizing. The sight of the short white coats rattles me more than I want it to.
Back in the hallway, I check my phone and find half a dozen emails, two portal notifications, and a class GroupMe already moving faster than seems reasonable for people who met three hours ago.
AMELIA
Anyone want to grab coffee?
A few people answer immediately.
Nia turns to me at the same time. “A bunch of us are going downstairs. You coming?”
I almost say no out of instinct, because there is always a schedule and always the next thing, and because the habit of moving with purpose is so old in me, it can pass for personality.
Then I stop.
This matters. The small beginning. The first names that might become familiar. The first coffee that might turn into a study group or a friendship, or simply the relief of one face I recognize next week when everything feels harder.
After losing the Olympics, the pregnancy, my name, and the entire version of my life I thought I was building, I have finally fought my way back to a path I wanted before everything went sideways.
Not because it came easily. Because I refused to let the worst thing that ever happened to me be the end of me.
Becoming a doctor is not what I settled for. It’s the dream that survived.
Standing in the hallway of the Grossman School of Medicine, I let myself think one reckless, fragile thought.
Maybe this life is big enough for both.
My phone buzzes in my hand, pulling me up short.
EDEN
Just finished with Lukas downtown
Heading to Brooklyn to work on Leo
Want a ride back?
The message holds me up short while the hallway keeps flowing past. Leo is nowhere near me, and somehow the shape of him still changes the air.
Students drift toward the elevators in loose clusters.
Voices overlap in that bright, slightly frantic way people sound when they are trying to make new acquaintances feel effortless.
Nia is still beside me. Mateo is saying something about the anatomy lab that Rebecca seems to find either fascinating or horrifying.
I should stay.
For once, the answer feels simple. I should go downstairs with them, stand in line for coffee, learn two more names, maybe laugh at one joke that makes next week feel less anonymous.
But I’m already shot. My brain feels overfilled, my social battery frayed at the edges, my smile one polite exchange away from giving out.
Choosing the familiar feels easier. Worse, it feels good. That’s what makes me hesitate.
The typing bubble appears.
EDEN
No pressure
Just thought I’d offer before you melt on First Av
I laugh before I think better of it.
Nia glances over. “Good news?”
“A ride,” I say, lifting my phone a little. “A very well-timed one.”
Mateo looks offended. “From Midtown East in the middle of August? Take it and never apologize.”
Rebecca holds up one finger. “Agree.”
I smile and type back.
LIZ
That sounds amazing
Thank you
Her reply comes almost immediately.
EDEN
Perfect
I’ll swing by
Half an hour?
I slip my phone into my bag and fall back into step with the others toward the elevators.
Two realities colliding.
The one I am trying to build.
And the one that already knows how to catch me—with Leo at the center of it, quiet and certain and far too easy to fall toward.
The elevator dings, the doors slide open, and Nia hooks her tote higher on her shoulder. “Come on. Walk down with us.”
I step inside with them. “I have half an hour.”
Maybe that’s enough for today. Or maybe I’m already stepping out of my own day and calling it practicality because being pulled toward him feels easier than building something new from scratch.
The afternoon light is hard and bright, bouncing off glass and traffic and the pale stone of the hospital buildings when a black SUV eases toward the curb and flashes its hazards.
The passenger window slides down, and Eden leans over from the front seat, sunglasses pushed up into her hair.
“There you are,” she says. “Get in before you liquefy.”
I laugh before I can stop it. “You are the most beautiful person I’ve seen all day.”
“I know.” She grins. “Come on.”
I climb in, setting my tote and folder on the floor. The blast of air conditioning feels almost indecent after the sidewalk. The car smells faintly of leather, sunscreen, and some citrus product Nate must use when he gets it detailed.
“How was it?” Eden asks.
I let my head rest against the seat for a second. “A lot.”
Her mouth curves. “Intense?”
“They kept handing us folders and passwords and schedules. At one point, I think my brain left my body and watched from across the room.”
“It’s the first day. It will settle.” She pauses, grins. “Though I’ve heard things about medical school.”
I sigh and let myself fall back against the cool leather seat as traffic crawls around us in hot, irritated waves.
“So why are you headed to see Leo? Special accommodations?”
She lifts one shoulder. “He’s too smoked to come up to Yorkville tonight, so I told him I’d stop by for a cranial sacral session.”
The comment tugs me back toward his world before I can shut it down. I picture him exactly as he’ll be, exhausted, stripped down by camp, all that contained force pressed into stillness, and heat skims low through me before I can stop it.
“That’s nice of you.”
“Sisterly duties.” She smiles, turning her gaze back to the road. Traffic moves a little faster once we are off the bridge. Manhattan recedes behind us, glass and steel softening in the distance. I can feel the morning wearing off in real time.
By the time we pull up in front of Leo’s building, the overwhelm and fatigue catches up with me. Not just physically. Deeper than that. The kind of tired that comes from holding yourself together in public for hours and only realizing afterward how hard you were gripping.
Eden reaches for the door handle. “Come on. Let’s go fix your boxer. Then I’ll give you a few minutes too. You look as if you could use them.”
I smile despite myself, gather my things, and follow her out into the fading heat.
Upstairs, the apartment is cool and quiet. Leo is in the living room, stretched back into the corner of the couch, one arm draped across his middle, his head tipped against the cushion. He’s burned all the way down to the edges, his body heavy with exhaustion.
It should soften him.
It doesn’t.
If anything, fatigue strips him down to the hardest parts—the big body burning low rather than out, the quiet watchfulness under half-lidded eyes, the sense that even wrecked, he could fill the whole room just by lifting his head.
“Hey.” He sounds as tired as he looks.
“Hey.” I set my tote and folder by the entry table. “Long day?”
He almost smiles. “You first.”
Of course. Even flattened by camp, he reaches for me before he reaches for himself.
A part of me thrills at that. At being seen that fast. Claimed that quietly.
Eden snorts softly. “That answer alone tells me I got here at exactly the right time.”