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strandedinredneckparadise · 7 years

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Vanishing Act

No one knew her given name and no one thought to ask otherwise when she introduced herself as Sally. The name didn’t fit her Arabic heritage, her exotic features or her tall, voluptuous build. But Sally was in New Jersey on a student visa, granted with far more fanfare and aplomb by her Syrian government than the visas her female cousins in Saudi Arabia would have given limbs to obtain.

“I’m studying medicine so that I don’t have to depend on a man,” she announced one night over the club music hammering our eardrums. “Boys are fun but where I come from, it never stays fun.”

Sally’s father had been furious when she insisted upon obtaining an education. It was her mother, working behind the scenes, who’d soothed and cajoled and, little by little, brought her husband around to their daughter’s extraordinary gifts. Begrudgingly, he allowed her to go, but he refused to pay a cent toward her education.

“My uncle is very progressive,” she announced proudly. “He wants me to return to Syria as a surgeon or a cardiac specialist.” “Do you have a choice in this?” Brianna asked her, agog. No one had offered to foot her school bill just because they believed in women’s rights. “Yes...and no,” Sally said carefully. “I can be summoned home at any time. If I don’t keep top grades, my family feels I’ve behaved indecently or there’s political unrest, it’s over for me.” The smile stayed firmly fixed on her face as the words tumbled from her mouth. She wasn’t one to worry or to borrow trouble in worrying.

Thousands of miles from any watchful eye, her head remained uncovered. Her makeup ventured into swooping cat-eye eyeliner and her thick lashes further helped along by Maybelline. But her skirts stayed long, paired with her favorite clunky pair of Doc Martens boots. Pants did not happen in her world, even in the dead of winter. Necklaces tinkled and jingled at her neck, bracelets hanging from her delicate wrists.

“My sisters would kill for this,” she would always sigh, lifting a handful of my waist-length blonde hair. “But this would not be good for you...in my home town.” “Sally, I have no intention of visiting your home town.” She burst into a fit of giggles. “Well, if you ever have trouble finding a husband...I know a couple guys.”

She began attending Christian services, carefully avoiding mention of these trips to a heathen church once or twice a week. She experimented with Catholicism, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism...none seemed to stick, but that didn’t deter her from attending. Letters home did not account for these weekly gaps in study time.

Teachers loved her for her enthusiasm and the obvious fact she was willing to work hard to get what she wanted. She kept top grades, studying late into the night, disappearing to wander through the basement tunnel connecting the university to a hospital.

This was the ultimate teaching hospital, where we logged hours taking classes in the basement rooms and amphitheaters every day, then rushed to our rooms to change for afternoon clinicals. Up in the rooms where beautiful fall light illuminated some of the saddest scenes we could have imagined. The crisp fall leaves outside the windows brought no joy to those in our care. We had the catch-all wing, filled with respiratory ailments and diseases, failing hearts, cancer patients and elderly dementia patients all waiting to die.

“I love these people,” Sally sighed late one afternoon as we rushed the elevator. It had been a five-hour shift for most of us and if we hurried, we could sneak in some of the unhealthiest veggie burgers around by getting to one of the hospital’s cafes before it closed. “You love the dying?” Brianna’s nose wrinkled. It was no secret she was attending college in hopes of landing a doctor herself. “I have grown up with this,” Sally said softly, her words interrupted periodically by the ding of the elevator as we slid past each floor, further and further into the bowels of the building. “I have seen so much suffering; it was such a normal part of my childhood. I have wanted nothing more than to help people since I was a small child.”

Hours later we piled into our favorite club, Sally in her long skirt and Doc Martens, her wavy black hair a flying mass as she threw herself into the music. This was her escape.

Letters had begun to arrive from home with alarming regularity, filled with strokes of heavy black ink none of us could understand. The letters made Sally sigh, her nostrils flaring as her lips compressed.

“My father says I’ve wasted enough of my uncle’s money,” she said one night as we sat in the hallway together just outside the morgue. It was her favorite place in the hospital, where she found it quietest. No one could find her there or disturb her thoughts. It was the one place I hated going with her, always ready to jump out of my skin. “He wants me to return home and marry his business partner.” She shuddered convulsively, her black eyes filling with tears. “The man is 25 years older than me and I would be a second wife. I would be expected to bear his children, keep my mouth shut and act as a servant within his home. All because he wants to buy me for some ridiculous amount of money.”

An orderly glided silently past, a cart of very particular length and shape in front of him. The edge of the sheet brushed my knee as he passed, the blood draining from my face. What was I doing here, so close to death every day, completely unable to make peace?

It took effort to bring my concentration back into focus. “I thought your father ran a very successful business.” “He does,” she said flatly. “This is an ‘honor’ for him. There’s just the added bonus of buying a new luxury car once I’m married off. He’s not the one really paying the price. Just ask my sisters.” She hiccuped. “The men never do.”

Sally’s uncle intervened repeatedly, persuading her father to allow the girl to obtain more schooling. She was brilliant, he argued, and to boast his daughter was a trained medical doctor--surely this would fetch a far more handsome price in the future.

“I’m going to finish my studies,” Sally announced, eyebrows furrowed as she consulted the calendar in her lap. “I can be done in eighteen more months and then apply for a residency. I think...” her pretty face was tight. “I think I will need to apply for political asylum.”

Her brother arrived three days later. Tensions were heating up in the Middle East, he reminded. She had been sent for, her visa called in.

Sally disappeared without a trace.

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