In half an hour, I’d be facing a room of draped cadavers. I couldn’t get down more than a cup of coffee for breakfast that morning. Despite autumn being just weeks away, Boston still looked like summer. This city seemed positively bucolic. Even the crummiest neighborhoods had breathing space compared to New York City. I walked down Commonwealth Avenue, reveling in the wide sidewalks and the grassy mall parting the road like a green river. In a few months, magical white Christmas lights strung up for blocks and blocks would decorate the trees. Even when Comm Ave—as the locals called the street—became ordinary, turning from Back Bay brownstones to student-ridden Kenmore Square lined with dorms, cheap delis, and Burger Kings, I loved it, because no matter what, I wasn’t in New York City. This was my first year at Cabot Medical School, the only place I’d applied. Cabot was in Boston, my birthplace of freedom, where I’d gone to college. In Boston, I’d started over. In Boston, no one knew me.
