“Manny, no eres realmente serio aceraca de esto, ¿verdad?”
Manny let out a tense, hushed breath and shifted his phone against his face. “Sí, lo digo en serio.” Fingers toyed with the edge of the device, and eyes strayed toward the window of his dorm room. “Ana, this is everything I always wanted. Since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to be a doctor. Uncle Leon is actually making it possible. For the first time, it may actually be possible, Ana. He said he’ll pay for my bachelor’s degree and med school.”
She sighed on the other side of the phone. “La escuela de medicina es para personas ricas y intelegentes que tienen demasiado tiempo. What about your family, Manny? And who’s to say this uncle of yours is really gonna do what he says he will? Not even your mother trusts him.”
“You don’t get it. This is the way I’ll take care of my family.” Manny found himself pacing the small space in his dorm room. He dropped his shoulder against the window frame and pulled aside the sky-blue curtains to look out at the late afternoon sunlight. “I’ll be a doctor. I’ll…I’ll help out anywhere it’s needed. There won’t be any more financial problems.”
“When? Eight years from now when you finally finish school? If you even do?”
“I—I will. I’ve never been more motivated for anything in my life, Ana.”
“Yeah. I can see that. Oye, me tengo que ir. Bye.” She did not even wait for Manny to respond before she hung up.
Manny dropped his phone onto his bed, then sat down beside it. He lowered his chin into his hands. Slowly, his eyes strayed about the room around him. A single. No roommates, as per Leon’s insistence. Stay focused. No distractions. “I can do this,” Manny whispered aloud. “I just need to get all the other things out of the way. No more thinking about that weird boy. The semester is gonna pick up soon. I won’t have any time for frat people or parties, anyway.”
He stood up and shoved his phone into his pocket. Manny slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed out to catch his evening anatomy and physiology class.
“And I know everyone is cringing in their seats right now. At least, you should be.” The heavy thump of a large black plastic case being set down on the hard surface of Professor Ramsey’s desk sounded through the classroom. The Bone Box.
Manny had heard horror stories about the bone box from previous med students. But they were mostly all people who had switched majors. Manny would not be one of them. The disassembled, lifelike plastic skeleton contained in that box did not scare him. He would learn every knob, hick, trench, and fleck on every bone in the body if that’s what it took to get an A. That is what it would take, because every differentiable feature on every bone had its own name.
“Alright, split up into groups, pick a bone box, and have a look at them,” Dillan Ramsey instructed. “Use the key in your lab book to identify the features on each bone. I will repeat, lab book. Not your textbook. You won’t find the keys in your textbook.” Ramsey paced back behind his desk and rifled through some papers. “That’s on page 122. Lab book.”
“I’m gonna save someone’s life one day,” someone in Manny’s group was saying to another student as they looked over the bones.
“And probably kill someone, too,” the other student replied.
Manny’s eyes scanned the group of ten or eleven students for a moment before he spotted a girl who actually appeared to be working on the project. Manny lifted his lab book and moved seats over to where she sat. She was better company.
Half an hour wound away. Manny had taken two pages of notes on bone features. When he glanced over at the female student’s notebook, he saw she had created drawings as well as notes. She seemed to sense him looking over her work, and brown eyes flashed up at him for a moment. She smiled.
“Hi, uh, do you wanna maybe start a study group?” Manny made a gesture to the entire collection of bones splayed around the long table among the other students. “It’s gonna be a lot to learn.”
“I work better alone,” the girl replied with another smile. Then, glancing over the small pile Manny had accumulated beside his lab book, “And some of the bones are duplicates.”
“Well, yeah, there are two of each of most bones in one person,” Manny agreed. “But still, it’s a lot.”
“No, I mean, there are actual duplicates.” The girl’s face sobered with earnest. “The left and right bones are all different. They’re mirror images of each other. But like those two…” The girl reached over and lifted two bones out of Manny’s pile. “Those are both right rib 12s. A left would be a mirror image. The wide part would be at the opposite end, see? But these are identical.”
“Oh…oh, right.” Manny blinked. “Right, so, when he tests us on these, we’re gonna have to know if each bone is left or right?”
“Except the ones that aren’t left or right.”
“But…but how?”
The girl shrugged. “It’s easy. Just picture where it belongs on the body.”
The bone box was, indeed, a nightmare. Manny flipped a few pages in his notebook and found a blank sheet. The girl had the right idea. Everything had to be drawn out. But a few moments later, Manny had changed his mind. He couldn’t even draw a proper line. He would have to find a diagram on the internet, print it off, and take his notes on that.
8:00 drew close, and students began packing up. Laptops, pencils, pens, notebooks, and textbooks were shoved into backpacks or shoulder bags. “Bone boxes can be checked out from the university library for further studying, I strongly recommend you do so,” were Ramsey’s final words before he let the class out.
Manny found himself glancing at the classroom seat Ava had briefly sat in last A&P session, but the chair was empty. The boy with the green shirt was wearing gray, now. Manny shrugged off an odd feeling of disappointment and headed out of the classroom. But he did not get far down the hall towards the exit.
“Manny!” Israel jumped out at Manny from just inside a doorway, drawing a startled gasp from his friend. He grabbed Manny’s arm and weighed him down to a stop. “Manny, guess what?”
“What?” Manny shook his arm free, and the two started for the exit.
“Stop frowning like that. I have good news!” They exited the building, and Israel diverted Manny’s path from the dorm building he automatically set out towards.
“What news? Where are we going?” A possible explanation formed in Manny’s head, and his heart picked up pace. Had Israel talked to the frat people? Had he found out who that beautiful boy was? Sudden fear overtook the uneasy excitement, and Manny forced his friend to a halt. “Where are we going?”
“To a car I borrowed,” Israel replied brightly.
“Why did you borrow a car?” Then, his frown deepening, “From who? And how?”
“My friend, Jen, lent it to me,” Israel answered with a shrug. He tugged at Manny’s arm, and they started walking again. “Annnnd…” His grin widened to impossible dimensions. “We’re gonna go find out who your one-night-stand is.”
“What do you mean, find out?” Manny pulled to a stop again. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “The Zeta Phi house is that way, and it’s in walking distance.”
“Well, we’re not going to the Zeta Phi house.” Israel rolled his eyes.
Manny raised his eyebrows uncertainly. “Wait…so…the frat boys really don’t know who he is…?” He was not sure if he found the notion comforting or horrifying. Manny found himself in half a daze as Israel led him through the cold darkened air towards one of the university parking garages. The frat boys had acted like they knew. They had acted like it was all some kind of clever inside joke. But if they didn’t know, maybe Manny had a real chance of simply putting the whole affair behind him. If they didn’t know, maybe he would not have a choice but to put it behind him.
“To be honest with you…” Israel stopped in front of a slightly beat-up, old, silver sedan and produced a key. A flickering frown darted across Israel’s face as he glanced up at Manny. “They gave me kind of the run around about that.”
“The frat boys did?”
“Yeah…” Israel’s uncertain expression melted away. “But! They gave me a clue.” He unlocked the vehicle. “So, get inside.”
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