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EDIE: You’re my ride or die, Faye-Faye.
I’m about to respond when I realize the classroom has gone silent.
“Ms. Benington?” Dr. Tehylor—and the rest of my cohorts—are all staring at me expectantly.
“Yes?”
Everyone chuckles around me. But Dr. Tehylor looks as though he’s less amused.
“Would you care to talk us through that rationale?”
Shit.I bite my bottom lip and sit up in my seat. I hate being caught unaware, and Dr. Tehylor is famous for seeking out students who aren’t on their game.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?” I ask. His gray, eerily unwrinkled face is devoid of any expression as he crosses his arms over his chest.
“You want me to repeat the question?”
My instinct is to say yes, but there’s a hissing sound somewhere behind me and I have a feeling that there wasn’t a question. I knew I wasn’t focused, but damn, what did I miss? The girl next to me taps at something on her screen, enlarging it as if she’s trying to show me what we’re talking about. But it’s too obvious. I don’t dare look.
“Ms. Benington, we were discussing the case study and when I asked you to restate the prognosis, your response was, ‘yes?’”
My cheeks flush with heat. Tehylor is old school, likens himself to being the ‘weed-out’ professor. It’s clear that he’s going to make an example of me.
“I apologize, Doctor,” I say, scrolling through the slides on my tablet for the case study he’s referencing.
“What exactly were you so focused on, if not the case study we were discussing?” His tone is acid. I find the case study and scan through it.
“In the case study, sir, the patient presented with—”
“Ms. Benington, I asked you a question.”
“Sir, I’m trying to tell you that the patient—”
“No, we’re beyond that. Your patient is probably dead by now because your focus was elsewhere.”
“Surely he’s not dead,” I say before I can stop myself.
He arches his eyebrows. “How can you be sure?”
“It seems unlikely someone would die so suddenly with a benign kidney tumor.”
“That is your prognosis.” His words are crisp, icy. The room is silent.
I keep scanning the case study and find my mistake. The patient was misdiagnosed with a benign tumor but was actually suffering from pancreatitis.
“Uh… I mean…”
He lets out a heavy sigh as if he’s thoroughly disgusted with everything in his immediate vicinity.
“If this is the level of scrutiny you intend to use with your patients, I believe it best to cut my losses. You are dismissed.”
I look up at my teacher, and he’s not just talking to me. He’s packing up his things. Ending class early. I look at the clock—not just early, forty-five minutes early. We’ve only been in the lecture for thirty minutes. Before I can say another word, apologize again, he’s gone, and my classmates are stone quiet. Nobody says anything to me as they pack their things, but it’s clear. The battle lines have been drawn and nobody is on my side.
I take my time packing my things and I’m nearly the last person out of the class. It’s only eleven thirty, so it’s not time for the lunch session on pediatric sports injuries. And I still have another lecture after lunch about who knows what. My head is fuzzy and before I realize where I’m going, I’m out the door and riding the tram, so out of it I don’t feel the regular fear of swinging down the mountain like a damn yo-yo.
When I walk into Rae-Rae’s, Zach lifts his eyebrows and pulls out my standard coffee mug.
“Coffee?”
