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My mother callsme on the Friday evening before our final exam. I’m on my way out to the library, and I get irritated when her name pops up on my phone, but I answer anyway. I realize that I’ve only been home to visit her twice since the year started, but I don’t feel guilty. Honestly, she’s lucky that I visit her at all.

“How are you doing, Sasha?” Mom asks me. “Do you have time to visit this weekend?”

“My final exam in anatomy is on Monday,” I explain, the irritation seeping through my voice.

“Oh.” She sounds like she doesn’t quite buy this as a legitimate excuse. “How about for Christmas? Can you spend the week here?”

“Maybe a few days,” I say vaguely.

“I hope you do,” Mom says quietly. “It’s very lonely here.”

I feel my blood pressure creeping up. “Well, that’s your fault, isn’t it? If Dad were still alive, you wouldn’t feel so lonely.”

There’s a long pause on the other line. Finally, Mom says, “I know. I wish he were still here too.”

I nearly throw my phone at the wall.

“What are you talking about?” I cry. “If you hadn’t taken him off the ventilator, he’d still be here! It’s your fault he’s dead!”

“Sasha!” Mom gasps.

I shut my eyes and feel the tears rising to the surface. I can’t believe I just said that to my mother. But I’m not sorry. I meant every word of it. I’ve been itching to say it since the day he died.

“It’s true,” I manage.

“Sasha,” Mom says in a quiet, sad voice. “I didn’t take your father off the ventilator. The doctors just followed his wishes. He signed an advance directive saying he didn’t want to be kept on life support.”

What is she talking about? This is total bullshit.

“No way,” I say. “Dad would never have done that. Never.”

“He did it for you, Sasha,” Mom says. “He realized that as long as he was alive and sick, you’d never be able to live out your dream. He didn’t want you to waste your life taking care of him.”

No. She’s lying. I don’t believe her. My father loved life—he’d never agree to something like that.

“He was so proud of you,” Mom says. “You being happy and becoming a doctor was all that mattered to him.”

“And if not for you,” I say through the lump in my throat, “he’d be able to watch me graduate from medical school.”

And then I hang up on her, my hands shaking. I just can’t see how what she’s saying could be true. Dad knew that if he wanted me to go to medical school, I would have gone. He didn’t have to be dead. I mean, yes, I did want to stay at home and take care of him in those last few years. But I wasn’t going to do that forever.

I had every intention of leaving him to go to med school. I really did.