CHAPTER 15
RUTH
I HUNCHED OVER MY DESK, burying my nose in a textbook and pressing my hands between my thighs to hide the guilt sweats. I was so scared my mother would just look at me and know I had seen Xing. And know that I was seeing him again later today, not actually hitting the books with my ever-expanding fake study group like I’d told her.
It was starting to get too tangled. Earlier I’d had a brain fart and referenced Penny’s physicist dad, only to remember that it was fake Billy’s dad that was the physicist. Then I had to fumble and tell her both their fathers were physicists, to which my mother had said, “I thought Penny’s father was a doctor.” I had to summon every ounce of acting ability to convince her she was mistaken.
“What’s this?” My mother snatched up my biology exam from the drawer she’d been snooping in. I’d been so distracted I’d forgotten about the secret hidden at the bottom. She waved it in my face. “A seventy-two, Mei? That’s an F in our book. What happened to the other twenty-eight points?”
My mother would never understand the concept of grading on a curve and that the 72 was really a B+. But still, a B+ wasn’t good enough, even with MIT’s pass/fail grading for first-semester freshmen.
At age six, when I had presented my spelling test to her with a smiley face inked next to the 98, she had asked, “Where did the other two points go?” I used to tell myself this kind of tough love was what got me into MIT, but at that moment I wanted to rip that biology test into a million satisfying pieces.
I had worked my pìgu off for that 72 in a subject I hated as much as the cow’s hoof. So many hours in the library, forcing myself to learn about—yawn—signaling pathways and bland-as-rice enzymes, all for them. All for a tongue cluck and a stern look.
“Do we need to get you a tutor?” my father asked.
“Mei, you should be doing the tutoring, not getting tutored.” My mother threw the test onto my desk. “If you’re not careful, you may not get into medical school.”
That would be a relief, I thought before I could stop myself.
I lied to Xing for the first time. I told him I was dying to get a taste of medical school, and when he had grabbed the bait and ran, talking about how medicine was so exciting and I was going to love the adrenaline of it, the science, the satisfaction of helping people, I hadn’t said a word. So not a blatant lie, but a lie by omission. Yes, another one. Was this my alter ego now? Or worse, just me?
I was determined not to let Xing find out that today was not an exciting glimpse into my future, but rather a test to see if I could make it work. To see if I could handle things better than the last time. If anyone could help me see the fun in medicine (or in anything, really), it was Xing.
“You’re going to have such a blast today, Mei-ball. Gross anatomy was my favorite med school class. You’ll never experience anything like this again, that first sense of wonderment and wanting to know more—how we all tick, how to find the problem, how to fix it. This is the kind of stuff that gets me through the harder parts.”
He had this faraway look in his eyes, and for a moment I thought he might even tousle my hair or something, but then I remembered we were Lus: no unnecessary physical contact. But his talk worked—I could hear my heart beating in my ears.
Or maybe that wasn’t excitement. Maybe it was anxiety.
Xing introduced me to my tour guide for the day—a short East Asian girl dressed in wrinkled, cerulean scrubs and beat-up sneakers. I followed Anna down multiple flights of stairs. Now that I was separated from my optimism—aka Xing—my stomach was in knots, ironically caused by the prospect of seeing other peoples’ stomachs . . . and intestines . . . and livers. The space between me and the innards was growing too small too fast.
As soon as we reached the basement, the smell hit. It was vaguely familiar—corn chips, I realized, but mixed with a suffocating chemical odor. Yet another thing permanently off my grocery list (in addition to cottage cheese, of course).
I dug in my pocket for the Tiger Balm (the Asian cure-all) that Xing had told me I would need to put in my nose for the smell.
Anna grabbed my elbow. “Hey, you okay? Give it a minute—your nose just needs to adjust.” She glanced at the beads of sweat on my face. “This is exciting. Fun. Don’t be scared or nervous or whatever it is you’re feeling. It’ll be better once we’re actually in front of the cadavers, when you can see everything, just like Dr. Lu said.”
I ignored my bossy companion and took a moment to collect myself, needing a few extra seconds after hearing the words “Dr. Lu.”
Then I ripped the Band-Aid off, passing through the double doors quickly while holding my breath. It escaped in a whoosh when I spotted the rows and rows of body bags, most of which were open. The cadavers were yellow-gray, slightly deteriorated, even more dead than I expected. In various parts—the leg, arm, and neck—the skin was cut away, the fat cleaned out, with only muscles, tendons, and nerves visible. The whole image was so unnatural, so disturbing, like a horror movie come to life.
The ease with which the medical students milled about felt so out of place I stopped to stare. One student leaned against his cadaver’s leg as if it were an extension of the exam table. Another excised neck fat in the same manner one would hack apart a fatty rib-eye. The bodies were no longer human. No one looked at them, and the ones who did saw past them.
I felt someone grab my arm, and I numbly followed Anna’s tugs to a group at the back of the room.
The balding professor—Dr. Wilson, according to his hospital badge—patted the cadaver’s ankle with a gloved hand. “How’s Ruthie today?”
The students chuckled, and with a satisfied smirk, Dr. Wilson walked to Ruth’s partially dissected neck. “Who can locate the cervical sympathetic ganglion?”
All six students raised their hands. Several held strong and still in a salute while others waved. Both obnoxious, but in different ways.
Dr. Wilson pointed to Anna. After parting Ruth’s carefully incised neck tissue, Anna thrust her gloved hand in and emerged with the gray, knotted nerve. She tugged the chain so it extended past the plane of Ruth’s neck like an overstretched rubber band. The smug look on her face was more nauseating than the smell.
“Excellent work.” Dr. Wilson chuckled. “It’s like a treasure hunt.”
A sadistic, twisted treasure hunt for serial killers, maybe.
The gray elastic between Anna’s fingers snapped back, and she jumped in surprise, moving away from Ruth.
“Don’t worry. She can’t hurt you,” Dr. Wilson said, his voice dead serious, as if he were imparting new wisdom. “Consequently, what a perfect opportunity for more learning. If Anna had indeed injured Ms. Ruth’s cervical sympathetic trunk, what would the medical ramifications be?”
He absentmindedly picked a hand from the four in the air, this time a squat boy with a stubbly chin. The student’s voice was monotonous, as if he were reading from a textbook. “Horner’s syndrome, whose symptoms include miosis, ptosis, enophthalmos, and anhidrosis.”
Could I ever be happy memorizing textbooks and spewing them back to professors? I asked myself even though I already knew the answer.
“Correct,” Dr. Wilson said, then shifted over to Ruth’s head. “Okay, enough review. We’re going to get into the brain today.” He picked up the electric saw. Its half-moon blade was lined with jagged teeth and the bloated, boxy handle looked impossible to hold, let alone control. “Which one of you wants to do the honors with the Stryker?”
Six hands shot in the air so fast I wondered if I had misheard. Did he just ask, Who’s scared to use the tool specifically designed to cut through bone? Shouldn’t everyone’s instinct have been to run the other way, not fight for a chance to use it?
Anna’s outstretched arm was the straightest and most desperate, but Dr. Wilson pointed to the burly boy with gargantuan hands. Everyone crowded around Ruth’s skull, and I fought the tide to plant myself by Ruth’s lower half.
The saw came to life with a high-pitched whir. If my eyes had been closed, I might have thought an airplane was somehow landing in the basement. But I didn’t dare close them for a second, not with an active bone saw in the hands of an inexperienced operator.
There was a gleam in the boy’s eyes as the blade arced through the air, meeting Ruth’s cranium with an intensified screech. Flecks of skin and bone splattered onto the surrounding students, but they didn’t notice—all except one boy, who flinched and rubbed his mask with his double-gloved hand. Unbeknownst to him, the movement smeared the debris instead of removing it.
I was pulled to him like Lu Pàng to a scallion pancake. Clearly, he was the only other sane person here. Sidling up to him, I yelled over the noise, “How long did it take you to get used to this?”
His head whipped toward me as if he were surprised by my sudden appearance. “Maybe two sessions? I shower afterward and have the hospital clean my scrubs.” He pushed me closer to Ruth. “Once you get in there, you’ll feel better. Why don’t you pick up the forceps and take a look through the leg muscles?”
“No fucking way!” I yelled just as the saw fell silent. Crap. I could practically feel the veins in my cheeks dilating. Vasodilation, presenting as flushed cheeks, or blushing, I heard the squat boy say in my head.
Dr. Wilson glared at me, then returned to his cool-professor persona with a fake smile. “Everything okay?” he asked a little too sweetly.
“Yes. I apologize. I’m, uh, a visitor, and I was just . . . a little thrown off by how calm everyone is around the cadavers. It’s still pretty new to me.”
Dr. Wilson chuckled even though my lie was as exposed as Ruth’s neck. “This is nothing. In my day, when I was a student, we didn’t even use gloves. We ate lunch, hung out here, but now the rules are stricter. Who knows how much formaldehyde I accidentally consumed, and I’m still here.”
I retreated to a corner far from this potential psychopath.
By the end of the day, I was bathing in my own sweat. I didn’t know how I was going to do this—get through medical school, make this my life. A few hours and I was ready to immerse my entire body in a hand-sanitizer bath.
“Well?” Xing asked me, a hopeful smile on his face as he drove me home.
“I’m never eating corn chips again.”
“Oh yeah, the smell. Like I said before, it takes some getting used to.” He paused. “Wait, was it really that bad?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you. You use humor as a defense mechanism.” I gazed out the window, unable to look at him. “Talk to me, Mei-ball. What happened?”
At the sound of my nickname, I gave in. Fell apart. Became me. “I can’t do this. I just . . . I can’t.”
“Well, what did you enjoy about today? Let’s start there.”
A tear escaped from its pool at the corner of my eye. “Nothing. I enjoyed nothing.” My voice was a whisper, as if my words scared me. And they did. Because I knew the weight of what they meant. If I deviated from this path, it would be another behemoth secret from my parents, and it would be like shoving another biānpào into my overstuffed, overheating brain, and it was just a matter of time before one firecracker fuse ignited, leading to an epic explosion of domino proportions. Dance had been my gateway lie, an easy one that didn’t feel completely wrong since my parents had bought me my first pair of ballet shoes. But then it all just kept building and building, one secret at a time so it seemed doable, until now there was no more room.
Xing was glancing at me every few seconds, clearly unsure what to do. “What was so bad about it?”
“Do you ever struggle with thinking things are dirty? Worrying where they’ve been, what germs are on there?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Do you?”
Duh, I wanted to yell, but I stayed silent instead. How come we knew certain pieces of each other inside and out but then were oblivious to others?
Xing thought for a moment, then said, “Honestly? That stuff isn’t really an issue for me. I guess one time I carelessly shook hands with a scabies patient and it was a little gross thinking I might have gotten mites again”—Again?!—“so . . . yeah. That bothered me.”
I would have never made the mistake of touching that patient, I thought. And if I had, I would have immediately doused myself in mite poison or whatever. Burned my clothes, took a scalding shower, cut my hair, et cetera, et cetera.
“We’re different,” I said, the blue ribbon of understatements.
And I knew then what I had subconsciously known all along. I couldn’t be a doctor.
I hugged my knees to my chest, my arms wrapped tightly around them. Xing’s eyes raked over me, shifting from the tears running frightened down my cheeks, to my arms, to the fact that I made sure not to touch my shoes to any part of my body because, obviously, germs.
And I saw when he got it. Well, as much as someone like him could. His face completely sagged, those premature lines becoming so pronounced I could have stuck a penny between the folds.
“What now?” he asked me.
“You were supposed to be the one to answer that.”
I didn’t bother with the Porter Room that night. I knew it was futile.