“What’s that, son?”“The anatomy course at Duke,” I say, feeling like my head is about to explode. “I don’t think I can do it.”Gen stops pushing her scrambled eggs around on her plate, just long enough to shoot me a look that says, very clearly, ‘you are going to get in so much trouble.’Dad’s eyebrows mash together in concern, and I can see the beginnings of disapproval in his eyes. When he speaks, his voice is calm and even, like he’s speaking to one of his psych patients in the ER.“What do you mean, when you say you ‘don’t think you can do it’?”I mean that I can’t be trusted to fly halfway across the US, or to act professionally in front of a bunch of strangers and esteemed medical school professors, let alone stand inches away from a corpse without having a full blown panic attack. I mean that I have no desire whatsoever to work in healthcare, adjacent to sick people, not in any capacity. I mean that after last night, I’m not even sure if I’ll even be able to live away from home, or go to school, or hold down a job, or get married.
