Page 156 of The Clinch
At eight-oh-one, my phone buzzes.
UNKNOWN
Your ride is here
The text isfrom the car service, not Leo.
I stare at it. Then I pick up my bag, take the umbrella by the door even though I know I will barely need it, and head downstairs.
The umbrella barely opens before the driver is already out and moving toward me through the weather. He takes my bag, opens the back door, and the blast of cool, dry air hits me before I’m fully inside.
Yesterday this felt indulgent. Today it feels assumed.
I push the feeling away, telling myself to be grateful, and settle into the back seat, watching the rain sheet across the window as the car pulls away from the curb.
By the timethe car drops me off on First Avenue, the rain has eased from violent to merely hostile.
The sidewalks are slick, the gutters running fast and brown, umbrellas bumping against each other in the current of people moving toward the medical buildings. Everyone looks slightly more rumpled. Hair less controlled. Shoes darker at the edges. Even the polished ones seem more human after being forced through this morning.
Except for me, apparently. Completely unruffled, I step inside with my tote, my folder, and my umbrella dripping onto the mat, and the blast of dry lobby air lifts the back of my hair off my neck.
Day two has none of yesterday’s ceremony.
No breathless sense of arrival. Just the immediate, indifferent forward motion of an institution that demands you keep up.
Which should make it easier to stay in my own head. Instead, some part of me is still aware of the note on the counter, the car downstairs, the man who set both there before daylight.
By nine thirty, I have three more passwords, two compliance reminders, an anatomy prep list, and a portal that seems to determine whether I am spiritually worthy. I now belong to an enormous machine, and this machine has paperwork.
It’s somehow both reassuring and horrifying.
Nia drops into the seat beside me during one of the smaller breakout sessions and nudges my arm with her folder. “Tell me you also have no idea what they mean when they say ‘the foundational systems block is intuitive.’”
I glance down at the color-coded schedule. “I choose to believe they’re usingintuitivein a highly experimental way.”
She snorts.
On her other side, Rebecca is already tabbing something in a binder with tiny pastel flags, because apparently there are people who receive information and immediately become more organized.
“That’s because you two lack discipline,” Rebecca says without looking up.
Mateo leans across the aisle and grins. “No, we lack Stockholm syndrome.”
The faculty advisor at the front clears her throat and we all sit up straighter, but the exchange has done its job. It has taken the edge off. Made the whole thing feel a fraction less like standing in front of a wave and waiting to see if it will knock me flat.
The morning rolls on in compressed, demanding pieces. Lab orientation. Building access. Tech trouble. Reading assignments that are not yet crushing but are already trying to establish dominance. By lunch, the GroupMe has already split into smaller offshoots, people breaking into pairs and clusters with the strange speed of those who sense instinctively that med school is going to become survival by proximity.
So when Nia says, halfway through a chopped salad, “A few of us are going to the library after the last session. You in?”
I say “yes” without the old reflexive pause.
The last session of the day is held in a room cold enough to make everyone look slightly persecuted. Someone from student wellness talks about balance in a tone that suggests they have never once met a first-year med student during exam season. Another person talks about peer mentoring, academic support, counseling access, and reaching out early rather than late. I take notes because that’s what I do, because writing things down gives my hands somewhere to put the tension, because if I stoplong enough to think about how much all of this means I might feel too much at once.
By the time we spill back into the hallway, the building has taken on a late-afternoon feeling of institutional fatigue. The lights seem harsher. The floors shinier. Everyone’s smiles half a watt dimmer.
“Library?” Mateo says.
“Library,” Nia confirms.
