Page 36 of Trick of Light

Because of the frantic nature of her shifts at the hospital, the long nights of studying, the lab work she had to do, and the lack of sleep, Bethany lost ten pounds very quickly from her small frame. By the end of June, she’d lost another five. She felt slender and quick, but in the mirror, she saw a hollowed-out version of the young woman who’d moved to Manhattan with dreams.

For the first few weeks, Bethany made it a point to call Rod every evening. She’d been able to procure a landline and had plugged it in beside her bed. When she spoke to Rod, she splayed out across the mattress and stared at the ceiling, trying to drum up excitement in her voice.

Rod told her stories about his summer in Nantucket. He spoke of sailing, swimming, and barbecuing. He mentioned their friends’ names, beaches, and annoyance at the ever-rising tourism. He’d seen President Bill Clinton out and about recently, and Rod had been so startled that he’d nearly dropped a cooler filled with fish he’d recently caught.

When Rod asked Bethany about her days, Bethany waded around the questions. She didn’t want him to know just how miserable she was. She imagined him leaping in the car and driving to Manhattan immediately to “save” her. But she didn’t need saving. She needed to be stronger. She needed to be the sort of woman brave enough to face a life’s worth of stress in a hospital context.

These were impossible things to translate to Rod, who was still a teenager. Bethany now felt forty-some years old.

The full-scale panic attacks didn’t start until July. Rod had just come to visit, and Bethany had been allowed a blissful weekend of exploration with Rod, holding his hand as they scoured the streets for food and bars that didn’t card. After he’d left and Bethany was cast back into the horrors of her schedule, the contrast was so startling that she immediately fell to her knees. The panic attack came on strong and lasted for a full twenty-five minutes. She shook violently and couldn’t breathe. By the time she could stand again, she was ten minutes late for work. She downed a full glass of water and gave herself a pep talk in the mirror. “Don’t tell me you’re really this weak,” she said.

After that, Bethany knew to expect at least one panic attack per day. She had to fit them into her schedule, like brushing her teeth or combing her hair.

During July, Bethany called less and less. When she returned to the dorm at night, she was so strung out and exhausted that her heart felt like a frog’s during hibernation. Sometimes she stared at the landline, willing herself to pick it up and call Rod. But other times, she fell asleep immediately and didn’t dream.

“You sound different,” Rod said on the phone one night, his voice heavy with worry. “Are you sick?”

“I’m not sick.”

“You need to take care of yourself, Bethany. You’re working too hard.”

“I’m fine.”

Bethany didn’t know that saying “I’m fine” would be her consistent refrain for many, many decades. She didn’t know that being “not fine” was even allowed.

For her internship, Bethany was thrown headfirst into the medical industry, which meant one thing—she was forced to contend with a form of sexism she’d never experienced. Over and over again, the medical professionals at the hospital put the male high schoolers in charge of certain things, certain labs, and asked Bethany and her female colleagues to either watch or help. Sometimes Bethany was assumed to be a nurse. More than once, her male colleagues informed her that she would never be a surgeon, not in the “real world,” because women just didn’t become surgeons. They said it as a matter of fact, as though they spoke of the weather.

When Bethany explained bits and pieces of the rampant sexism at the hospital to Rod, Rod insisted she could change their minds. “You’re the most brilliant woman I’ve ever met. Every time they deal with you, they must be thinking, ‘Whoa! A woman has this big of a brain?’ Because they’re close-minded and stupid, Bethany! But you’re going to change the world! You’re taking down sexism in the industry one day at a time!”

He spoke as though she were a superhero in a comic book.

By then, Bethany had dropped a full twenty pounds, and she felt like a collection of sticks and rods meant to take her around the hospital and up and down those stairs. It was hard to believe that the dorm still hadn’t fixed the elevator. Sometimes Bethany took a breather halfway up and wept into her hands. This internship was beyond her wildest dreams. Why, then, did it feel like her biggest nightmare?

The last week of August, Bethany had another panic attack on Tuesday morning and immediately hustled to the lab to work alongside Clifford, a very rich high schooler from California—the same one who’d told her women couldn’t be surgeons. Still rattled after her panic attack, Bethany moved slowly and delicately around the lab equipment. When Clifford told her to “speed it up,” she grew agitated and accidentally dropped a pipette. The glass shattered immediately, and she yelped and burst into tears. When the doctor overseeing them saw what she’d done, he shook his head and told her to go home for the day.

Bethany had never failed so spectacularly before. She hated herself. Unwilling to go back to the heat of her dorm room, she wandered through Manhattan, unable to see its beauty. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the turquoise blue of the Nantucket Sound, Rod’s sailboat, and his strong, warm arms. She had another panic attack on a bench in Washington Square Park and came to find a clown performing in front of her, hoping she could give him a tip. But she didn’t have more than a quarter, which she needed to call Rod.

Suddenly, desperately, she needed to speak to him. She raced to the nearest pay phone and dropped the coin into the receiver. It rang and rang across the city, across the East Coast, all the way to Rod’s parents' house. But when Rod’s father answered, he said, “Rod’s out fishing, Beth. I can take a message?”

Bethany was so rattled that she hung up the phone immediately. Where was Rod when she needed him the most? Didn’t he know she was suffering from a near-nervous breakdown?

For the next several days, Bethany avoided Rod’s calls and didn’t call him back. She’d decided to hunker down, get stronger, and prove herself. Maybe having a high school relationship made her weak. Perhaps it had taken away her focus.

Maybe missing Rod had set her up for failure from the very beginning.

One week after Bethany and Rod had last spoken, Bethany finally got up the nerve to call Rod at the usual time. He answered on the first ring as though he’d been standing right there.

“Bethany,” he said, his tone colder than Bethany had ever heard.

“Hi.”

He cleared his throat. “How are you?”

Bethany was strung out across her bed. She felt as though an elephant was sitting on her chest.

“I’m fine. You?”

Rod sounded angry. “To be honest? I’m pretty angry.”

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