Page 46 of The Brave and the Reckless

“I didn’t? What?”

Who the hell answered someone else’s phone? Especially when the caller ID very clearly showed a picture ofmymother. I barely let him get to his feet before I shoved him forward and out of the room. For good measure, I slammed the door shut.

Idiot.

My right knee buckled as I turned for my bed again. Fuck. I’d been too surprised to pay attention to how I was moving. I had a tendency to over-bend that knee outwards and the misstep from yesterday’s show had clearly left its mark. I limped back to bed and collapsed on to the mattress. The marching band behind my temples started its hungover drum roll.

What a shit show of a morning. At least talking to my mother couldn’t make it any more painful.

I grabbed the phone, took a deep breath and unmuted myself. “Mom?”

“Esra, why is there a strange man answering your phone in the morning? I thought you were with your brother.”

Lucas and I had fallen asleep watching some old Western that I didn’t even really remember. Not that my mother would believe me if I told her as much. “Do you really expect me to answer that?”

“Yes, I want answers. This is the first time I get to talk tomy only daughter in weeks and then it’s a stranger’s voice I hear. Where are you? Did you abandon your brother already, just like you abandoned us?”

Wow, we were heavy on the guilt-tripping this morning, and I was too hungover and aching to placate her. “First of all, I didn’t abandon you. You cut me off. Second of all, the fact that Sanny and I share the same employer doesn’t prohibit me from spending the night with whoever the fuck I want.”

“You will not speak to me like that, Esra. Where are your manners?”

“Lost them in Virginia along with the rest of my propriety.” There was a joke in there about virgins, but I was too frazzled to come up with it.

“Well, I hope you can go back and find them.”

“Huh?” That was a way calmer response than I’d anticipated.

Mom took a deep breath. “Your father has been talking to an old friend of his from college, Rodney Andrews. You might remember him. His family invited us to the Vineyard that one Fourth of July when you were eight. You dislocated your shoulder when you played with Rodney Junior on their boat even though I told you not to get on the pier because it was slippery, but did you listen? Your father spent that night in the ER with you instead of watching the fireworks with his old friend. They invited us again the next year, but I felt so bad for ruining the mood of the entire party and disrupting their plans, we couldn’t possibly accept.”

“Sure, Mom,” I sighed. I vividly remembered Rodney Junior trying to shove me off the boat and feed me to thesharks that he’d sworn were circling in the waters. And I remembered Dad handing me off at the hospital and how I’d watched the fireworks through a window with a nurse, getting two cups of red Jell-O. All of which Mom was perfectly aware of. It wasn’t useful to the narrative she was trying to spin right now though, so it’d be a waste of time to remind her.

“Right, so Rodney is vice president of the public health department at Yale, and he thinks you have a perfectly good chance at starting next semester. It’s not medicine, but you can transfer your credits toward a grad degree. You’re close enough to home if there’s an emergency, but far enough away from us for you to have your freedom. There you go.”

There you go?

Like she’d done me a goddamn favor by putting me right back where I’d started? More libraries and lectures? And then what? Work as a consultant for big pharma? I hadn’t gotten into medicine because I thought the healthcare system was so goddamn fascinating, or because I had a massive interest in medical research. I’d worked my ass off for med school because I’d spent the Fourth of July with a nurse; because the doctor at the pediatric ward gave me a big stuffed unicorn for my sixth birthday; because my physical therapist had helped me laugh about silly sex injuries after my first time had gone horribly wrong and I’d felt like I’d never have a single normal experience in my life. They’d wanted me to be happy, not safe.

Medicine had been a personal choice for me.

It had been a safe choice for my parents.

There you go?Go where?

“Mom, I’m too hungover for this. Just send me a link to the program or something.”

“Esra Selenay Taner!” Her voice hitched an octave higher, and I could vividly imagine the nervous spasm in her eyebrow. I knew I’d hit a nerve because she continued in Turkish.“You should not be drinking alcohol. What are you thinking?”

“I’m not. That’s the whole point,” I replied in English.

“Your body—”

“Gotta go. Bye Mom.” I hung up before she could ramp up to another lecture.

My notifications showed a missed message from Sinan from just a minute ago. I doubted he’d texted because he’d known Mom was going to call me. She called twice almost every day. I just let it go to voicemail.

Sinan:You good?

Esra:If Mom calls you, don’t pick up.

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