Chapter 37
BACK TO THE CORNER (LIZ)
At five this morning, I woke planning to squeeze in a few sprints in Domino Park before heading into the city. The second I looked outside, I dropped back into bed. The sky over the East River was dark as bruised steel, rain hammering the windows with what looked like a personal grudge.
Now it’s after seven, and the rain is still coming hard. I lie still, listening to it beat against the glass in dense, relentless sheets, turning the city mean. Even from bed, I can feel the pressure of it pressing inward.
I push back the covers and sit up. The other side of the bed is already empty, the sheets cool. Leo must have left hours ago.
Camp has shifted him into that stripped down, disciplined version of himself who belongs to the morning before anyone else gets to claim part of it.
I can picture the sequence without seeing it.
Shower. Coffee. Training gear. Keys. The silent, efficient movement of a man who has built his life around eliminating wasted motion.
Even absent, he feels physical to me this way. Too solid. Too exact. A man who can leave a room and still somehow sets its rhythm.
I pull on the T-shirt that ended up on the floor last night, and the memory of how fast he got it off me is enough to wake the rest of me up too.
The kitchen lights are on. Coffee is waiting, a mug I’ve apparently started thinking of as mine next to the pot. Beside it sits a container of overnight oats, a banana, and a yellow Post-it stuck to the counter in Leo’s blunt, clipped handwriting.
Eat.
Car downstairs at 8.
—L
My breakfast. My ride. My morning. Already decided.
The more unsettling part is how quickly my body unclenches when I read it.
The note goes back on the counter, and I pour myself the coffee. The smell rises rich and dark, familiar now in a way that should probably concern me. I take a sip and walk toward the windows, holding my mug.
Below, the city is fighting the storm. Yellow cabs slice through standing water. People hunch under umbrellas that are too small. The awning over the building entrance bows under the weight of the weather.
The walk to the subway would be disgusting. The platform would be worse.
And then I would get to school damp and irritated and have to pretend I was thriving while my mascara tried to escape down my face.
The car is practical. Thoughtful.
I take another sip, then check my phone. There’s a text from Leo, sent fifteen minutes ago.
LEO
Try to stay dry
Have a great second day
A thought rushes through.
You don’t have to keep doing this.
Instead, I send back a simple Thank you, lock the screen, and set it down.
It’s pouring. I don’t need to prove I’m a grown woman by suffering through the subway in this weather.
But the unease doesn’t go away.
I finish the oatmeal he left out for me, make the bed, shower, get dressed.
At eight-oh-one, my phone buzzes.
UNKNOWN
Your ride is here
The text is from the car service, not Leo.
I stare at it. Then I pick up my bag, take the umbrella by the door even though I know I will barely need it, and head downstairs.
The umbrella barely opens before the driver is already out and moving toward me through the weather. He takes my bag, opens the back door, and the blast of cool, dry air hits me before I’m fully inside.
Yesterday this felt indulgent. Today it feels assumed.
I push the feeling away, telling myself to be grateful, and settle into the back seat, watching the rain sheet across the window as the car pulls away from the curb.
By the time the car drops me off on First Avenue, the rain has eased from violent to merely hostile.
The sidewalks are slick, the gutters running fast and brown, umbrellas bumping against each other in the current of people moving toward the medical buildings.
Everyone looks slightly more rumpled. Hair less controlled.
Shoes darker at the edges. Even the polished ones seem more human after being forced through this morning.
Except for me, apparently. Completely unruffled, I step inside with my tote, my folder, and my umbrella dripping onto the mat, and the blast of dry lobby air lifts the back of my hair off my neck.
Day two has none of yesterday’s ceremony.
No breathless sense of arrival. Just the immediate, indifferent forward motion of an institution that demands you keep up.
Which should make it easier to stay in my own head. Instead, some part of me is still aware of the note on the counter, the car downstairs, the man who set both there before daylight.
By nine thirty, I have three more passwords, two compliance reminders, an anatomy prep list, and a portal that seems to determine whether I am spiritually worthy. I now belong to an enormous machine, and this machine has paperwork.
It’s somehow both reassuring and horrifying.
Nia drops into the seat beside me during one of the smaller breakout sessions and nudges my arm with her folder. “Tell me you also have no idea what they mean when they say ‘the foundational systems block is intuitive.’”
I glance down at the color-coded schedule. “I choose to believe they’re using intuitive in a highly experimental way.”
She snorts.
On her other side, Rebecca is already tabbing something in a binder with tiny pastel flags, because apparently there are people who receive information and immediately become more organized.
“That’s because you two lack discipline,” Rebecca says without looking up.
Mateo leans across the aisle and grins. “No, we lack Stockholm syndrome.”
The faculty advisor at the front clears her throat and we all sit up straighter, but the exchange has done its job. It has taken the edge off. Made the whole thing feel a fraction less like standing in front of a wave and waiting to see if it will knock me flat.
The morning rolls on in compressed, demanding pieces.
Lab orientation. Building access. Tech trouble.
Reading assignments that are not yet crushing but are already trying to establish dominance.
By lunch, the GroupMe has already split into smaller offshoots, people breaking into pairs and clusters with the strange speed of those who sense instinctively that med school is going to become survival by proximity.
So when Nia says, halfway through a chopped salad, “A few of us are going to the library after the last session. You in?”
I say “yes” without the old reflexive pause.
The last session of the day is held in a room cold enough to make everyone look slightly persecuted.
Someone from student wellness talks about balance in a tone that suggests they have never once met a first-year med student during exam season.
Another person talks about peer mentoring, academic support, counseling access, and reaching out early rather than late.
I take notes because that’s what I do, because writing things down gives my hands somewhere to put the tension, because if I stop long enough to think about how much all of this means I might feel too much at once.
By the time we spill back into the hallway, the building has taken on a late-afternoon feeling of institutional fatigue. The lights seem harsher. The floors shinier. Everyone’s smiles half a watt dimmer.
“Library?” Mateo says.
“Library,” Nia confirms.
I shift my tote higher on my shoulder. We move toward the elevators in a loose knot, the rhythm already easier today than it was yesterday. We know a few things about each other now. Enough that the edges have started to soften.
This is how it starts, I realize. Not in some beautiful, cinematic moment where the world opens and you step into your future. But in repetition. In hallway jokes. In the second time someone remembers your name. In deciding to stay instead of peeling away at the first excuse.
The elevator doors open, and we pile in. On the way down, I almost believe the day is finally mine.
Then my phone buzzes. I glance down automatically, expecting the class chat. Instead, it’s a text. And before I even open it, I know I’m not going to like it.
NATE
Hey, Liam and I just finished a hospital visit at NYU
I’m heading to Brooklyn after this if you want a ride
I stare at the screen.
LIZ
For real?
Another ping comes immediately.
NATE
We do the kids’ wing a few times a year. PR
I’m out front in about ten minutes
Lmk
The elevator hums softly as it descends.
Rebecca is saying something about the library hours.
Mateo is pretending not to listen while obviously listening.
Nia is already answering two different messages at once with the terrifying efficiency of someone whose brain has accepted med school as a full-contact sport.
And I’m suddenly no longer fully in the elevator with them.
One second ago, I was in the day I had started building for myself. Now the air has shifted, and I’m back inside his.
Not because he asked for me.
Because somehow he never has to.
The Defenders’ captain and starting goalie visiting sick kids at the hospital next door makes perfect sense. So does Nate heading to Brooklyn afterward. So does the offer, warm and casual and impossible to resent.
What doesn’t slide down quite as easily is the part where he knows where I am on a random Wednesday afternoon.
Eden told him, I remind myself. Probably.
By the time I come back to myself, the elevator doors are open.
“Coming?” Nia asks.
“Yeah.” I tuck it away and follow them out.
I keep the screen open as we drift toward the entrance and the glass wall of weather beyond it. The storm has eased, but the sidewalks are still shining, the traffic outside still fighting water and impatience in equal measure.
I could say no. I could stay with my new people. Go to the library. Grab coffee after. Let the day keep unspooling in the direction I was already choosing for myself.
Instead I type back.
LIZ
That would be amazing
Thank you
The answer comes almost at once.
NATE
No problem
See you in a few