Free Suicide Med by Freida McFadden Page A

in surprise.
    “I’m trying to read her T-shirt.”
    Oh. I guess that could be true.
    Rachel smiles at him. “It says, ‘I am the doctor my mother wanted me to marry.’”
    Mason starts to laugh. He looks Rachel straight in the eyes and says, “Not yet you’re not.”
    The doors to the anatomy lab open and the students file in like we’re on some kind of death march. The first part of the exam is the practical, where various structures on different cadavers are tagged with pins and the students are given a sheet of paper and clipboard on which to record their findings. I have to confess, the clipboard makes me feel very professional.
    I whip out my lucky pen, a black ballpoint with rubber handgrip that I’ve been using since college. I used my lucky pen for every big exam in college, and on the one occasion I had forgotten the pen, during an exam on electricity and magnetism, I had gotten a big fat F.
    I ch oose my own cadaver as my starting point, and uncap my lucky pen. Our cadaver’s insides are nearly perfect, thanks to Mason’s immaculate dissections and the fact that Frank was inexplicably healthy when he died. I clutch my clipboard to my chest, trying to stop shaking, although it’s hard after all that coffee. My breaths are coming too quickly and my fingertips start to tingle. I think I’m hyperventilating. I need a paper bag or something.
    “Are you okay, Heather?” Abe has materialized at my side, looking concerned.
    I look him over and am relieved that his short red hair seems as disheveled as the rest of my classmates and he has familiar dark circles under his eyes.
    “I’m fine,” I reply.
    And I mean it. Now that Abe is standing next to me, I feel about 100% better. There’s something about his presence that really calms me down. Don’t laugh, but I sometimes feel like he’s my guardian angel.
    Dr. Conlon limps to the front of the room. All eyes are on him, waiting for his instructions. He smiles, his blue eyes twinkling, “Why does everyone look so nervous?”
    Nobody laughs . Just start the exam, you asshole.
    Dr. Conlon scans the room, looking around. He nods at a student wearing a baseball cap near the front of the room.
    “No hats with brims,” he tells the student. He adds apologetically, “Cheating hazard.”
    Geez, I didn’t realize cheating was such a big problem. Doesn’t seem like it would be worth the risk.
    The student turns his hat around so that the brim faces the other way. The boy behind him raises his hand, “Now I can see the answers. Should I move?”
    The class laughs, but Dr. Conlon doesn’t think it’s quite as funny. He ends up confiscating the hat.
    With the hat issue resolved, Dr. Conlon clears his throat: “As I went over with you before, you’ve got one minute to identify each pinned structure and one minute for each X-ray. When the time is up, I’ll call out ‘next station.’” He looks around the room. “And don’t worry, the test really isn’t that hard. Any questions?”
    No hands go up.
    He ho lds up a stopwatch in his left hand, “Okay, then begin!”
    I look down at the first structure to identify. It’s my own cadaver that I’ve been working on for a month, so I feel confident I should know the answer. The pin is secured into a blood vessel that seems to be running into the back of the heart. Or is it the front of the heart? I suddenly feel disoriented. If only I could pick it up and examine it… but no touching is allowed on the exam.
    I think it’s t he pulmonary vein. I’m like 90% sure.
    Maybe 80% sure.
    I poise my lucky pen over the sheet of paper on my clipboard, printing the words “pulmonary vein,” but nothing showed up on the paper. I try again, but all I can see is the indentation of the words I had tried to write.
    My lucky pen is out of ink.
    You have got to be kidding me.
    The clock is ticking. I have less than twenty seconds left at this station. I shake the pen, trying to coax the last bits of ink into the point. I