Girls in the City Alison - Suzanne Jenkins

Prologue

On the third Friday of that last March before graduation from medical school, Alison Saint and her roommates, Eddie and Samantha Karas, waited together in the packed lobby of the main building of the Pritzker Medical School to get their results for Match Day, the day when senior medical students are matched with the hospital where they’d do their residencies. Samantha’s three-year-old daughter, Adelaide, held on to her father, fellow medical student Tom Kolsky’s hand. The electricity in the room was overpowering, but within this group, it had the potential to completely change two relationships.

For Tom and Samantha, if they didn’t match at least in the same vicinity, it could mean the beginning of a lifelong long-distance visitation and/or custody battle for their daughter.

For Eddie and Alison, it might be the end of a relationship.

“If we’re at least both in Southern California,” Alison said, “that might work.”

“I hope we’re at the same hospital,” Eddie said. “I don’t see it working any other way unless we live together halfway between the two places.”

For weeks, Edwin Kovac had been moody and uncommunicative when Alison wouldn’t accept an engagement ring from him, refusing to take their eight-year relationship any closer to permanence. She insisted they were just friends with benefits, but that label had been surpassed by love for him a long time ago.

“Very good, that’s an idea! Can we please just wait and see where we’re going to be? You might be making an issue out of nothing, Eddie.”

He looked to the front of the lobby, where the clock slowly moved toward 11 a.m.

“Samantha you’ll be the first one,” Eddie said, the self-proclaimed keeper of order in the group.

They called names in alphabetical order. “Samantha, Tom, then me, and poor Ally last.”

Tom wanted orthopedics, and he’d asked to stay right there in Chicago so he could continue to live with his mother, who would provide childcare for Adelaide.

Samantha wanted obstetrics, like her mother, the obstetrician, and wanted to go home to Detroit, but she hadn’t told Tom that, lying and saying that it was a third choice. She’d begged him to add Detroit to his choices, and he’d begrudgingly done so.

Alison wanted surgery, and she wanted to go to UC San Diego. Her father had done his residency there, and her cousins’ wives had gone there, as well.

Eddie wanted internal medicine, and San Diego was fine with him. As long as he was near Alison, he’d go to Alaska if that was what she wanted.

“Ladies and gentlemen!”

“Oh god, here we go,” Eddie moaned nervously. He looked down at little Adelaide. “I’m going to miss you,” he whispered.

“Miss you, Uncle Eddie,” she said, looking up at him.

Samantha’s name came next, and she opened the letter as soon as it was handed to her. Detroit. She and Adelaide would be going home. She couldn’t wait to tell her mother. A visit to her father’s attorney had already lined up custody, and Tom knew nothing about it yet, but would very soon. And he didn’t have the money to fight her, not yet anyway.

Tom’s name was called, and he let go of his kid’s hand as he moved forward through the crowd, trying to reach the front without knocking anyone down. Watching in back, Samantha mouthed a prayer. She didn’t want Tom coming to Detroit. There was just no way she wanted him lurking. And Tom was a lurker.

He didn’t open his envelope right away, but waved it in the air at his friends.

“Open it!” Alison cried.

“I can’t. Samantha?”

She reached for it, and he handed it over to her. Tearing it open, her eyes filled with tears, the relief was so complete. “You’re staying here.”

They focused on each other, and he saw the relief, but misunderstood it, thinking it positive, that she was hoping she would stay there in Chicago, too.

The next name to be called, Eddie Kovac, and he did the same thing, tearing open his envelope before he returned to the group. UCLA. The relief and excitement was almost unbearable, but it meant nothing until he found out where Alison was going.

“UCLA,” he said, back in the huddle. “Ten miles from the ocean.”

“UCSD is only seven miles from Mission Beach,” Alison said, laughing.

Looking into her eyes, Eddie had a wave of fear pass through his body. He was madly in love with Alison, like lifetime committed, I love you, I want to marry you kind of love. The thought that there was a real possibility that they wouldn’t be together made him physically ill.

And