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“I thought you were in Florida.”
She set her laptop bag on the sofa in the office’s sitting area and made her way over to his desk. “I was…last week. Plus, there’s this thing. You might have heard of it. It’s called an airplane.”
When Delilah’s medical school application reached the admissions committee at JH, he was initially fascinated; her MCAT scores were some of the most impressive he’d seen in years.
Then, the committee went over the rest of her background information. As soon as he learned who her father was, he’d assumed expensive tutors were the reason for her success. In his mind, to her, medical school was only a conquest. Something she would do to prove to her friends, parents, and social media followers that she was more than just another rich girl.
So, he quizzed her—harshly.
And she eviscerated him—verbally.
So he’d learned, quickly, that who she was on paper didn’t tell the full story about who she was as a whole.
Learning about her father had only made him admire her family more. Regardless of his wealth, Orylin Daniels Sr. had instilled the same values in his children that had allowed him to reach his level of success despite social and economic obstacles and barriers.
People like that inspired him.
For him, it would have been easy to blame the world for his failures, citing religious phobias and cultural prejudice. But Dr. Akello, his mentor and the only father figure he’d had after age thirteen, once asked him whether he was okay with believing it when people told him he couldn’t do something. If he was okay with allowing others to stop him from reaching his goals:
“Lucas, can a fish drive a car?”
Lucas frowned. “What?”
“If someone puts a fish in a car and expects it to drive, is it the fish who is the fool, or is it the person who put it there in the first place?” Dr. Akello patted him on the shoulder. “You can learn, Lucas. Learning differently doesn’t mean you can’t make a mark on the world. It simply means the world didn’t bother to make time for those who learn as you do, so you’ll have to make time for yourself and lead the way for others whose brilliance merely looks a bit different.”
“I’m busy, Daniels,” he said. “Do you want something? Is your fiancé at training camp, so you remember the rest of the world exists?”
She took a seat on his desk.
Slid right on.
Like it was nothing.
“Get down, Daniels.”
She didn’t move. “I have tea.”
“Go drink it elsewhere.”
“Notteatea. I haven’t talked to you in over a week, and I haven’t seen you in longer. I missed you. Plus, we have to work on growing our sibling-in-law relationship for when you marry my sister one day.”
Unbeknownst to her, he already was her brother-in-law.
“I told you to stop doing that,” he hissed.
“Saying things about a possible future with my sister because it makes you happy?”
“Yes.”
He liked this kid.
Sometimes, she reminded him of his childhood best friend a bit too much with the way she side-stepped his snippy attitude as if she could tell it was bullshit.
From middle through high school, his best and only friend was a kid named Khalid Akello. Although they’d had the same classes, they’d barely noticed each other at first, both trained to keep their heads down, get an education, and not cause trouble, or else they would be seen as ungrateful for their family’s sacrifices.
Then, he started working at the clinic. Not long after, Khalid’s father, the primary physician at the clinic, taught him that a learning disability didn’t automatically disqualify him from reaching the goals he hoped to attain. Dr. A had shared that he himself didn’t speak until he was five and didn’t learn to read or write his name until years after his peers.
One evening, Khalid came to the clinic to see his father, who’d been busy with a patient at the time. In those thirty minutes, the two of them learned that they shared nearly identical backgrounds, although they were from different countries. They also shared the same birthday, and both had known little to nothing about American culture in the United States.
