The morning of my medical school graduation I sat in the front row of a stadium holding ten thousand people and looked at the four VIP seats to my left. They were empty. Not empty in the way seats are empty before a ceremony begins, with programs on the chairs and jackets draped over armrests and the particular charged atmosphere of space being held for someone. Empty in the way a space is empty when no one is coming. The programs were still fanned out in a tidy row from when an usher had placed them there an hour ago, undisturbed, unread, the kind of tidiness that exists only when no one has touched a thing.
I had given those seats to my parents. Four tickets, VIP placement, front row. I had mailed them with a handwritten card ten days before, along with a letter I had rewritten three times because I kept starting it with something that sounded like pleading and I did not want to plead. I had asked them to come. I had told them about the residency match, the ranking at the top of my class, the specific date and time. I had told them I wanted them there.
