Page 29 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

The thread is still open. I should let that be the last thing. It’s good as last things go. I should put the phone down.

Instead, I type: Eat something before the exam.

I set the phone back on the nightstand. This time, face up.

A minute passes. Then another.

No reply.

That’s good too. She’s asleep. Or she has decided not to answer. Both are correct.

I close my eyes. For a while, I hear only the apartment. Then, for the first time in months, I fall asleep just like that.

Chapter Four

MAGGIE

I pass.

For a few seconds, I just stand outside the lecture hall and stare at the result on my phone.

Seventy-eight. It’s not a brilliant score. It’s not the kind of score anyone brags about. But it is a pass, and right now it feels like someone has handed me my life back in a paper cup.

I refresh the page once, just to make sure. Still seventy-eight.

My chest loosens all at once.

Marco leans over my shoulder. “Well?” I turn the phone toward him. He reads the score and grins. “Look at you.”

“I passed.”

“You passed.”

“I actually passed.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am surprised.”

He laughs. “Honestly? Same.”

I shove his shoulder, but I’m smiling too hard for it to land. My hands are still a little shaky from the exam, and my head has that hollow, over-caffeinated feeling that comes after a night of bad sleep and too much adrenaline.

But I passed. And I know exactly why.

I step away from the crowd near the lecture hall and pull up my messages.

The thread with D is still there.

The last text is from him, sent after I had already fallen asleep.

D: Eat something before the exam.

I stare at it for a moment.

I never replied. He stayed up with me, taught me, sent me voice notes, corrected me without making me feel stupid, and then I passed out without answering the last thing he said.

A strange little guilt moves through me. Not heavy. Just enough to make me type immediately.