I stood at the front of a chapel that could hold 60 and read a eulogy to rows of empty pews. I didn’t cry. Not because I wasn’t broken, because I’d been crying for 3 months straight, and there was nothing left. That night, I sat alone in Sarah’s apartment, our apartment. Her coffee mug was still on the counter, her jacket still hung by the door.
I opened my laptop and stared at the application to reenroll for the spring semester. Then I found it tucked inside Sarah’s copy of Gray’s Anatomy, our running joke. She’d bookmarked the chapter on the pancreas with a yellow sticky note that said, “Rude was a card.” Her handwriting, shaky but deliberate.
“Finish what you started, Irene. Become the doctor I know you are, and don’t you dare let anyone, especially your own blood, tell you who you are.” She’d written it weeks before she died. She knew she wouldn’t be there when I needed the push. I closed the laptop, opened it again, filled out the reenrollment form.
Two options: crumble or climb. I chose to climb, not for my parents, not for revenge. For Sarah, and for the version of myself she believed in. I went back in January. No family support, no safety net. I picked up extra student loans, took a part-time research assistant position, and ate hospital cafeteria leftovers more times than I’ll ever admit.
Medical school doesn’t care about your personal life. Anatomy exams don’t pause because your family disowned you. 12-hour clinical rotations don’t get shorter because you cried in the supply closet at 2 in the morning. So, I stopped crying and started working. I worked like my life depended on it because in a way, it did.
