Chapter 9
NINE
VIOLET
ONE YEAR AGO | NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND
“Oh my goodness!”
High pitched coos came from all around the room as I sat forcing a smile.
“Another doctor outfit! Look at the little stethoscope!”
This day was doomed to be painful for me, and I was destined to grin and bear my way through it.
I was throwing a baby shower for my sister, Maya, at our parents’ house in Rhode Island.
My wonderful older sister, who was the “right” kind of doctor, held the newborn-sized doctor outfit over her perfectly round baby bump.
I kept my smile on and fought the urge to dissociate. One thought looped in my head.
It should have been me.
Well, not me married to her husband and carrying his baby. But it could have been me and Colton, if I had ever gotten my shit together enough to deserve him.
I had no good reason to be jealous of Maya and her husband, Nouri, other than that they had what I wanted.
Maya was just good. She’d followed the expected path with something that appeared to be exceptional ease.
I couldn’t even hate her for being good at dancing around my parents’ expectations, because she always went out of her way to make sure I was treated fairly.
And how could I possibly have any beef with my brother-in-law?
He was one million percent Maya’s type: clean cut, from a “good” family, accomplished, about to start his pediatric neurosurgery fellowship.
He and I liked to talk shop about neuroscience, and he conned me into joining his friend group’s fantasy sports leagues.
As it turns out, all my stats expertise made me quite the adversary, especially in fantasy baseball.
Nouri caught me slipping into the work-myself-to-death hole, and extended me the invitation to make me socialize once in a while.
Nouri was a great guy, just like Maya was a great gal.
I was surprised my dad wasn’t jealous of Nouri.
Dad was a plastic surgeon, which still required a ton of training and skill.
He had some seriously miraculous reconstructions in his portfolio.
But Nouri’s pediatric neurosurgery was highly complex, perhaps the pinnacle of medicine.
This meant, for once, someone outsmarted my dad, which was no small feat.
My dad moved from Lebanon to America to go to school at Alden University, where he met my mom, a Rhode Island well-to-do. They were a walking Alden power couple success story: met in Alden undergrad, went to Alden med school, and somehow managed to get surgical residencies near each other.
Dad was on track to be a plastic surgeon, and Mom specialized in breast surgery.
Technically, they both did plastics, but Mom mostly did reconstruction with breast surgery.
When I was a teenager, I begged her to give me implants.
Growing up in the age of Kate Upton wasn’t easy as the chairman of the board of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee.
The answer I always got was, “If you still want them when you’re thirty, I’ll give them to you. ”
In hindsight, Mom might have been right about that one. My small boobs made it easy to eliminate potential partners. If they made even the slightest stray derogatory comment about them, I kicked them to the curb.
Not that it mattered in the last few years. I’d been on a couple of dates with guys from the fantasy league group that fizzled into nothing. Otherwise, the last person who’d had any opportunity to be near my titties was Colton.
Why was everything coming back to Colton?
“Violet.” My mother’s hissed whisper snapped me out of my daze. She pointed her chin toward the presents at my feet.
My chest flushed and my ears burned. “Oh. Oops.”
I stooped to get Maya’s next gift off the floor, putting it in my sister’s outstretched hand.
Who knew what doctor-related paraphernalia lay under the ribbons and tissue paper?
Maya was carrying on the family legacy: a double MD marriage, with likely doctor children in the next generation.
Noble, selfless, proof of their extreme intelligence and confidence.
But I’d never resent Maya, because she really was that incredible.
She was the first to tell me it was cool that I wanted to go into neuroscience—after Colton, of course.
When we were growing up, she did things she didn’t really want to do just so I could get away with doing it: going to a movie late at night with my friends, going on trips with them, playing basketball so my parents would let me do the same.
That was Maya: thoughtful, obedient, effortless.
Our parents made their preference clear.
A lot of times, baby siblings get the benefit of the doubt more than the elder sibling.
That had never really been the case for me.
Maya broke the mold, and anything I did was always shadowed by her achievements.
If I won the same award as Maya in school, it wasn’t amazing for me.
It was expected. If Maya could do something, I should have been able to do it.
It was only impressive when she did it, and just another day at the office when I did it.
Then, there were the places where our lives deviated. Maya was the “real” doctor. I was the disappointment. I “struggled” with my grades freshman year because I got two Bs, and both were just through midterms. After that, I met Colt and got my act together.
He helped me get back on top of things, but not by controlling my schedule or forcing me to study.
He was the positive, encouraging force I really needed.
The person who truly believed in me. And when I broke up with him, my grades took a brief dip again, further proving my parents’ assertion that dating was a distraction from my goals.
Then I made my reputation with them worse by choosing to switch to biology from pre-med.
Was any of it worth it? Should I have just stuck to the plan?
I didn’t think my parents meant to put such high expectations on us.
But my mom’s family was well-to-do, and she was raised in a similar do-or-die environment.
It was all she knew. Love came in the form of achievement.
Add that to my dad’s prove-your-worth mentality, and the Gennari house was a pressure cooker of impossibly high expectations.
Sitting at Maya’s baby shower, I realized how much I had let pass me by in the name of trying to be good enough.
It could have been me getting married and having a baby shower.
But rather than putting my foot down and keeping Colton in my life, I had let him go.
I put my personal desires and my mental well-being to the side so I could have a hope of doing well enough to fit into my family.
“Aw, Vi, it’s gorgeous,” Maya said, opening the gold bracelet I had custom made for my soon-to-be-born niece. “You’re going to be the best auntie.”
I pretended the tears in my eyes were from feeling touched and not from my anguish.
Because I didn’t want to just be an auntie. I wanted to be a mom.
But I stood and extended my arms to Maya. “And you’ll be the best mom. Love you, sis.”
She hugged me a little tighter. “Love you too.”
Nouri and I sat on the couch in my parents’ basement, my laptop balanced in front of us on the coffee table.
Maya had already gone to bed, pregnancy and her sugar crash post baby shower taking her out just after dinner.
Nouri’s med school bros took the fantasy sports very seriously, and I was very dedicated to beating them.
This was the draft night for our hockey fantasy league.
We hadn’t done one the year before, keeping our focus on football, basketball, and baseball. But one of the bros, with some heinous name like Meatwad, insisted. So here we were, launching an NHL fantasy league too.
“Alright, you know the rules. Snake-style draft, so alternating first and last picks,” came the voice of Vince, the ringleader of the fantasy sports group.
Vince and I had gone on a very unsuccessful date to a Celtics game where he mansplained basketball to me.
I took exceptional delight in crushing his ass in the NBA fantasy league after that. “Let the draft begin.”
This was extra-fun for me, given how many players I knew. Okay, fine, it was like three, but it was a fun three. And the other guys, all Alden med school alumni, were fighting for the Alden grads in the league.
I got Guy as my first forward pick, and it was a strange feeling to pick my friend’s husband.
The rounds continued and I worked through the notes I’d taken based on stats and probability.
I had Mikey down for my first defenseman pick, but someone else picked him up.
I had to find an alternative. My stomach bottomed out on the next headshot.
Colton Jones, 8, Captain, Ohio Rusties, Defenseman. Most guys mean-mugged, but in classic Colton fashion, he had a big smile. It made me hold one back as I tapped his face to select him.
“Isn’t that your ex?” Nouri muttered.
“Wait, what? Vi dated Jonesy?” a voice came from the screen.
Nouri had already moved on to picking his goalie, chanting under his breath as he waited for the pick to solidify.
“Ha! Got him!” Nouri wiggled his shoulders. “Eat that, Vince.”
“How could you take Doyle? You knew I wanted him!” Vince whined.
“I’m surprised Violet didn’t pick him,” someone else said. “Wouldn’t he have been on the team at the same time as Jones?”
My heart pounded and my vision swam. Doyle. A cold sweat broke out on my skin and my breath shallowed.
I cleared my dry throat. “I prefer Nick Oberbeck for goalie. I met him at a wedding. He’s nice. Young too.”
“Nice doesn’t win cups,” Vince grumbled. “But suit yourself.”
I barely heard his negative nonsense. I was miles away mentally, in a darkened room, pulled away from a party.
Harsh breath against my back.
Limbs too weak to defend myself.
Head swimming. Trying to find a way out. Confusion.