Page 35 of My Favorite Bad Decision
The porters have setup a dining tent at Barafu Camp. Stacy wants to know why I never brought up medical school before. I send an accusatory glance in Miller’s direction before I answer, since he’s the one who told them. “It just wasn’t for me.”
“But you’re so good at it!” she cries while I struggle to force down a peanut butter and banana sandwich. “And you’ve been talking about medical stuff through the whole trip. Are yousureyou don’t want to go back?”
Before I can answer, the doctor who assisted Gerald pops her head into the tent and gestures me out.
“You did really well up there,” she says. “Why did you actually leave medical school after you made it through the worst part? And don’t try to tell me it wasn’t for you. I saw the look on your face when you said it.”
“I made a mistake,” I admit. “I didn’t catch something I should have.”
She frowns at me, but it’s a gentle frown, a sad frown.
“Weallmake mistakes,” she says, zipping her jacket up higher against the icy breeze. “You realize that, right? Every doctor who has ever existed has made a terrible, tragic mistake. We just have to tell ourselves that on the balance, we’ve helped more people than we’ve harmed.”
“I hurt someone I loved, though,” I reply, my voice nearly a whisper. “It kind of fucked me up. It’s just…too much responsibility.”
She traces a line through the dust with the toe of her boot. “The responsibility is the hard part, but it doesn’t mean you just walk away from it. Every gift comes with a price, and that’s the price of yours. Just think about it. And if you want to talk it through, give me a call.” She slips a piece of paper in my hand with her name and number and walks away.
I re-enter the tent, where everyone has clearly been listening but pretends to be consumed with their food. I won’t be able to eat with the ugly past now churned up inside me, and I don’t want to sit here faking it. I turn on my heel and walk to the outskirts of camp, where I slide behind a rock as I start to cry.
The last time I ever spoke to Rob I was just leaving the library. It was incredibly late in France, and he was so drunk that he was slurring. I was amused but also slightly annoyed because I couldstillhear girls there, and I was about to take one of the most important tests of my life—which he seemed to have forgotten about entirely.
I laughed and told him to sleep it off. He argued that he hadn’t had that much to drink. I assumed he was tired or hadn’t kept count—I’d seen him with his friends before and he reverted to Frat Boy Rob when they were around, keeping up with them shot for shot.
“Go to bed, babe,” I said. “Take some ibuprofen and call me tomorrow.”
“I love you so much,” he slurred. I told him I loved him too, but I said it the way a parent would to a hysterical toddler, as if I was humoring him.
God, I hate that I said it that way.
The call from his mother came in the middle of the night. When she told me he’d died, I thought it was a mistake.
“I just spoke to him,” I argued, but already I was picturing him: reckless on a dangerous slope, unable to stop as he careened toward a tree.
“They think he had—” she began, but she was crying so hard she couldn’t continue. Rob’s dad took the phone from her.
“Kit,” he said, his voice rough and broken, “they think he had a cerebral hemorrhage. It’s an altitude thing.”
And that’s when all his symptoms hit me, the symptoms I’d dismissed: his fatigue, his headache, the slurring. If I’d just thought for one fucking second, if I’d actually listened to him instead of laughing about the slurring, I’d have told him to get to a hospital, and he’d have been fine.
Miller takes a seat beside me on the freezing ground and wraps an arm around me. I lean into his chest willingly, though I don’t deserve to be comforted.
“What happened when you were in medical school?” he asks.
I’ve never admitted aloud that it was my fault. Rob’s parents heard from his friends about his symptoms. I’m sure it occurred to them that I should have put it together, but I never admitted it and they never brought it up.
“The guy who died?” I whisper. “The one I mentioned yesterday? His name was Rob. He was skiing at Chamonix and had a cerebral hemorrhage. He was slurring, so I assumed he was drunk. I could have saved him if I’d given it a moment’s thought.”
“Oh Kit,” he says, his voice low and pained. “Anyone could have made that mistake.”
My shoulders shake, and he pulls me closer. “No, a good doctor wouldn’t have. I knew enough. I should have thought of it.”
“You were only two years into your training,” he says. “Experienced doctors miss stuff. You heard the woman today.”
I take a shaky breath, trying to get ahold of myself. “He had so much ahead of him and because of me, he didn’t get it.”
Miller presses his lips to my head. “No, not because of you. Because you both had a really bad break.”
“He missed out on so much, though,” I whisper. “He was going to climb all seven summits. He didn’t get to a single one.”
