Chapter 56

"Lookto your left and look to your right."

Christ, this is stupid.

I'm not into the whole "motivational speech" crap. Dean Bushnell is trying to get us all psyched up. I get it. But this is just dumb.

Besides, he's wrong. Not everyone in this room is going to be a doctor. Some of them are going to drop out. Some will flunk out (probably that girl two seats over with the bullring through her nose). And if the last few years are any indication, a bunch of them are going to turn to drugs to get through the year. And one of them might take too many of those pills and stop breathing.

Not me, though.

I'm going to graduate in four years with the highest honors, and I'm going to land myself the best residency in the whole damn country. Wait and see.

I look over at my roommate, Abe. I've been calling him the Incredible Hulk as a joke. No kidding, slap a little green paint on the guy, and he'd be a dead ringer. Minus the temper, though. Abe is too mild-mannered to be in med school. He's a good roommate, though—he's a slob like me.

Abe's really taking in the dean's inspiring words. His jaw is hanging open, awed by the whole experience. He's going to be one of those touchy-feely doctors—you can just tell. When he rotates in the hospital, everyone will write on his evals that he has a great bedside manner.

Nobody's going to say I've got a great bedside manner. I'll be shocked if a few of the residents I work with don't write down that I'm a huge asshole. But who cares? They're going to love me on my surgery rotation, and that's all that matters. That's what I was born to do.

My father is a cardiothoracic surgeon. Dr. Walter Howard is the head of cardiothoracic surgery at Yale and one of the most respected surgeons in the country. I used to want to do what he was doing, but he told me don't bother. Angioplasty is killing his field. When I graduated college, Dad took me aside and said, "Plastics, son. That's where the money is."

It's plastic surgery or bust.

When I wassix years old, my mom brought me to this really fancy dinner to honor my dad.

My dad is tall—really tall. Practically a giant, or that's what it felt like anyway. Back then, he had this black beard that scared the shit out of me for some reason. When he gave his speech, I listened as hard as I could because I thought his black eyes would maybe shoot laser beams at me if I didn't.

"Mommy," I whispered. "What's it mean that Daddy is a pioneer?"

In school, they said pioneers settled Middle America. I was pretty sure my dad hadn't done that. But it seemed possible.

"It means he's done surgeries that nobody's ever done before," my mother whispered back. She added, "He's a great man."

Then everyone in the room stood up and wouldn't stop applauding for my dad for at least five minutes.

When I visited my grandparents on my father's side, they wouldn't shut up about my father. They would drag out a box that was as old and dusty as they were, filled with perfect test papers and report cards with rows of straight As. They saved everything.

"Did Dad ever get less than an A in school?" I asked as I wiped the dust off a thirty-year-old transcript and sneezed loudly.

"I think Walter got a B in gym once," my grandmother recalled. "But everyone got a B in gym that semester." She added, "That gym teacher was a little soft in the head."

Sometimes, my mother would bore me with the story of how she met my father. I always tuned her out, but over the years, the details sank in. Elise Howard, née Elise Mason, was a year out of college and working at an art gallery, although her studio apartment was largely funded by—guess who—her rich parents. My dad was an attending surgeon then, almost a decade older than my mom, and he approached her at a gallery function and asked for her number. They started dating, and he proposed only a few months later.

"Sometimes, you just know," Mom would sigh.

Bullshit. The truth was—and I'm going to be blunt here—my mother was really hot. I saw the photos. My dad always used to go around saying she was the prettiest woman in the room. All my friends in high school used to call her a MILF.

My dad, on the other hand, isn't what you'd call a handsome guy. But he's as intimidating as all hell. He cocked his finger at my mom, and she came running.

I got straight As in high school. Even in gym. Yeah, I worked my ass off. I had plenty of friends and even occasional girlfriends, and I ran track and played soccer, but most of my time was spent studying.

And then I bombed the SATs. Or that's what it felt like when I saw my father's face. I didn't get a perfect 1600—I was ten points short.

"It's an all-right score," my father said with a shrug.

The word "asshole" was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't say it. I was the one who had messed up. My dad got a perfect score on his SATs.

I hung my head and mumbled, "Sorry, sir."

I was valedictorian of my high school class—the best out of a whole class of snooty rich kids at a private school with a disgustingly high tuition. My speech was about the path to success, and I expected to do better than any other person who was graduating that year. My dad liked the speech—or at least, he was nodding a lot. I believed in my words. I was going to be a huge success someday.

I got a perfect score on the MCATs to get into med school, by the way.

Ever since I decided to attend DeWitt Med, people have been asking me: Why not Yale? DeWitt is a good school, but Yale is Ivy, and I had connections there (not that I'd have needed them to gain admission). There's no comparison. People acted like I'd lost my mind.

Even my father was pissed off that I picked DeWitt over Yale.

But I had a really good reason for not going to Yale. At Yale, everyone would have assumed that I got in because my dad is a big cheese there, not on my own merit. And on every rotation, everyone would be comparing me with the great Dr. Howard. I'd never have a chance to get out from under his shadow.

DeWitt is perfect for me. When I look around at my classmates, I know that I can stand out here. I can be in the honor society and impress the hell out of all the professors. I won't be one of a huge crowd of overachievers at Yale or one of the other Ivies. Plastic surgery is one of the most competitive residencies to get into, and being number one in my class is a great way to get there. If I succeed, if I become a plastic surgeon, maybe someday, I'll have a house that is bigger than my father's and a wife who's hotter than my mom. Maybe someday, they'll have a dinner honoring the great Dr. Mason Howard.