My sister and I walked the same road—same medical school, same sleepless nights. But when it was over, our parents cleared her debt… and left mine behind.

“Everything,” she said. “Consults stacking like Jenga, a septic patient who kept crashing, a kid with an asthma exacerbation who kept calling me ‘Doc Jess’ like I knew exactly how to fix the universe. I signed my first death certificate. No one teaches your hands how to move when a mother is looking at them like they should be God.”

“Your hands learned how to move long before tonight,” I said. “You learned how to hold them steady for four years. You’ll learn the rest, one midnight at a time.”

She laughed, the sound exhausted but real. “Say something smug about the Patterson Fellowship so I can hate you for ten seconds and then go back to loving you.”

“I label petri dishes really straight now,” I offered. “It’s my superpower.”

“Show-off,” she said, and hung up to answer a page.