You've never been so happy.

You weave in and out of the black coats, air warm and salt-smelling, people's voices bouncing around in murmurs of approval or bubbling out in hushed cries from mothers. You gently push past Alfred and Edward and Ashley, beaming with pleasure or pale with nervousness, and take your place in line. You look up at the mass of faces and don't see your mother or father. The man at the front begins to speak. You watch the other men move, and you do the same, raising your right hand.

"I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgement, this covenant."

The words vibrate in through your toes. They travel up into your tarsals, through the popliteus and sura, the back of your shins and kneecaps. You become alive, but your eyes don't well with tears like Ashley and Edward. What are the typical things one is supposed to think about when they graduate from medical school? You wonder if you too are supposed to be crying, and you begin to think even as the words are barely leaving your lips. They come out in a whisper.

"I will respect the scientific gains of the physicians in whose steps I walk."

You think about your father, how he started to grow a beard after he and your mother decided not to live together any longer- it felt strange and bristly when he cradled you in his lap. He would comment on how small you were for a boy of eleven, but your mother loved your lightness, your pliability- it made you delicate- it made you hers. You mother was willowy and you felt her ribs through her breasts when she held you, your father a looming tower smelling of lemons.

"I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart or a cancerous growth but a sick human being, whose illness may affect their family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these problems, if I am to care for the sick." The words fall like stones.

You think about Claire, her thin pink lips, awkwardly standing by the flowers in front of her building like a bride. You played with a tea-stained deck of cards on her floor and she made you laugh when she tried to imitate the way your voice cracked. You talked to her, and so she spent time with you, and then the events compounded until you no longer felt like parasites in polite company. You feasted upon one another. And then you stop thinking about her, because something in that memory reminds you of how the last time you kissed those same lips they were swollen and tasted of blood. You decide not to ever think of her again.

"Above all, do not play at God."

You think of the blue blossoms, how you memorized the shape of their leaves, how you overheard Mother saying pigs would eat anything, even humans. Such animals ought not to exist on this earth, you thought, and when you ground the plants into a bowl and fed them to the piglets you thought you were doing everyone a great service. When the pig-sellers' cries of anger and shock split the morning you slept soundly.

You were Eddie- born several weeks too early, pale and fragile, caught between two people who never showed eachother any love. You were Ed- the name coming mumbled from the just-kissed mouth of a sweet girl infested with lice. You were Edmund, to your classmates and the obnoxious ginger kid covered in soot, rubbing together with you in the crowd and nearly ruining your best suit.

The little fool is still sitting there in the audience, only this time he's with his parents. He looks bored. You glare up at him, but he doesn't see you, and you're sort of glad because that would mean he would probably see that as invitation to start following you again. You would be worried about how he knows your name, but that doesn't bother you anymore, because Edmund the medical student, and Ed the schoolboy holding a mortar and pestle, and baby Eddie born two sizes too small- they are all as dead as the piglets.

You stand beside the other medical students and mull your new name over, liking the way it feels in your mouth, rolling across your tongue. You know the four humours of the body and how much blood to draw from where. You can deliver babies healthier than you ever were. You know which herbs and powders to grind together to make someone's eyes bulge and lips turn blue. You know muscle and bone, and looking out at the crowd, with enough practice you could learn brains too- and then everything could be yours. Someone with that much grace and intelligence and cunning could never be called Eddie.

"Above all, do no harm." The man says. Your mouth forms the words.

You are Doctor Edmund Judge.

You've never been so happy.