By the time my husband graduated from medical school I had spent eight years paying for it. On the lawn afterward his mother took the flowers out of my hands, he pushed an envelope into them, and I opened it standing in front of eighty people.

Here is the thing I would put in front of any twenty-three-year-old who is about to do what I did.

It is not the sacrifice that costs you. People survive sacrifice.

It is that a sacrifice with no end date written on it stops being a sacrifice and becomes a job description, and everybody around you adjusts to it within about eighteen months, and after that you are not a woman who gave something up. You are simply the person who does that.

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PART 3 — THISTLE ROAD

Idris and I sat in my car in that parking lot with the doors open for about twenty minutes.

He told me that hospital compliance had contacted the residency program the previous week about Teo’s financial aid records. That someone had filed a complaint. That the need-based support did not match the actual household support history, and that some of the marital status declarations did not line up either.