reflection speaking silently. She could see that he was immersed in the material, that he was trying to get inside it. She admired this, and longed for Fitzgerald because of it. Ming had decided to be occupied primarily with the facts in her textbooks, and less with comprehension. Ionic channels were not a wonderful riddle to her, as she knew they were to Fitzgerald. They were simply a means to an end, that end being a perfect set of grades and a medical school admission letter. Hers was the more common attitude in the life sciences faculty, and so Ming regarded Fitzgerald as being pure and noble, if strategically unwise.
Midway through the exams, they grew into a twice daily session of going through questions. Fitzgerald proposed that they use these question sessions as breaks, and so they visited the library cafeteria twice a day. Ming considered going to the cafeteria to be an indulgent use of time, but she decided that it was acceptable as long as they discussed only academics, and as long as she didn’t spend too much time actually enjoying Fitzgerald’s company.
They ate, clarified the puzzles of cell membrane physiology, and talked about their need to become physicians. Others were not genuine, they agreed, and transparently wanted to become doctors for money and prestige. Ming and Fitzgerald wanted medicine for the right reasons, they told each other: service, humanity, giving. Because their motivations were clean, they were certain they deserved it more than those among them. They did not ask why they wanted to serve, be humane, or to give. These simply felt like the right motivations, and being correctly motivated should improve their chances of success. This was enough, and these sentiments felt easy and immune from questioning. If forced to reflect, both Ming and Fitzgerald would have had to admit that these convictions were, at their core, somewhat improvised. They did not challenge each other, but instead reinforced each other’s sense of moral correctness as a virtuous conspiracy of two.
Their consuming ambition was the same as those of their classmates, but they agreed that most of the people around them were fake. Ming did allow that, although she did not want to pursue medicine for the money, earning a good living was important to her.
“I like being obsessed by things,” said Fitzgerald one day. “It suits me.” He did not tell Ming that he supposed that if his attentions had happened to fall upon something other than medicine, he would have been equally engrossed with it.
Ming paced exams like a marathon. In a three-hour examination, she finished her initial draft within a strictly self-enforced two hours. For twenty minutes, she returned to uncomfortable questions she had indicated with a lightly pencilled star. After reworking her response she erased the star because she didn’t believe in changing an answer more than once. For another twenty minutes, she focused on the crucial phrasing of the questions, ensuring that her answers corresponded. They altered questions subtly from the previous years’ versions in an attempt to throw off those who studied from the prohibited, but widely available, pool of old exams. Ming was vigilant that a four-point question receive no more than four indisputably correct facts in the answer; it was possible to lose marks by including incorrect extra information. She sat straight, with her ankles crossed under her seat.
In her assigned seat behind Fitzgerald, Ming sometimes glanced up at him, saw him curled over his papers. In some sessions he wrote furiously until the invigilator came to take the paper from him. At other times, he finished writing within an hour and then fidgeted while everyone else worked. Fitzgerald constantly slipped his shoes on and off, and once accidentally kicked his right shoe two rows across. The invigilator retrieved it, and pulled out the insole to check for any hidden papers before returning it to Fitzgerald with a recommendation that his shoes stay on his feet.
Ming called Fitzgerald late that night, hours after she had rushed away from her half-eaten pad thai. He woke to the phone ringing, his head pounding with an early evening hangover.
She said, “You’ve been honest, so I should be. I am attracted to you, and now that we both understand this problem, we shouldn’t study together or even see each other.”
“Does that make it more clear?”
“It’s only that the whole thing will go wrong.”
Fitzgerald pointed out the competitively lonely nature of their faculty, spoke in a seemingly spontaneous and heartfelt way about the improbability and importance of human connection, and said, “Why don’t we be friends, of an academic nature.” It was at this moment, as he said this in a comforting manner, that Ming became certain that she was in love with him. They concluded that since they were adults with common priorities, and agreed that a relationship was inadvisable, there was no reason why they couldn’t help each other study. After hanging up, Ming felt pleased in a longing, distanced way. She could be in love with Fitz in this protection of an agreement, with an understanding between them that there would be no romance, and so, she decided, she would not be hurt.
The graded biochemistry finals were the last set to be distributed in the second week of January. Fitzgerald flipped through his paper, adding up the numbers. Ming opened her locker and thrust her own exam into the bottom of her knapsack. She was unsure whether to ask Fitzgerald the sensitive question, the private issue. Some people made a show of displaying their victories, or their self-flagellation at a disappointment. Ming felt that grades were fundamentally secret successes and defeats. On the other hand, Fitzgerald lingered near her. No, she wouldn’t ask. She was not afraid of him doing better than her. It was just that he might feel that she was being nosy in the publicly competitive way that she hated, or would think that she cared, which should be avoided.
“I won’t make the cut-off,” said Fitzgerald. He looked up.
In the way that a mother asks a child to show her a boo-boo she said, “Show me.”
“I needed to ace this,” he said, handing her the paper.
Ming was embarrassed by his grade, by his lower lip drawn tight, and by her own result.
“The cut-off changes every year,” she said. It was believed that a magic grade point average was required in order to get an interview. Ming searched for an error in the addition of marks, hoping to find that ten points had simply not been added. She could give this to Fitzgerald like a gift, although this happening would be like finding a hundred-dollar bill lying in the street. Among the medical school applicants there were theories about MCAT scores, varying schools of thought about curricula vitae, and tales circulated about what so and so’s brother and such and such’s sister were asked in their interviews. Small groups of people who sat shoulder to shoulder in every lecture shared underground treasuries of old exams, but denied their existence to anyone outside their number. It would have been commonly agreed that Fitzgerald’s grade of seventy-eight was a liability.
“How did you do?” asked Fitzgerald.
“Okay.”
“Most people wouldn’t be so modest.”
“I lost two marks, but made them up with the bonus,” she said. She had to tell him. There was an accepted notion of I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, and she felt good telling him. Whenever Ming got her marks, the numbers first gave her a sense of relief, and only once this moment passed did she allow herself to feel some pleasure. Then came the fear that if she became pleased and complacent, she might fail in the future. She reminded herself of the ease with which perfection could be lost, and was wary of being satisfied with her grades. Now, it felt good to tell Fitzgerald that she had received a perfect score. Still looking at his exam, she said, “Get this regraded.”
“Found something?”
“I can’t find marks, but you understand this stuff. You’re losing marks on detail. The Krebs cycle—you
