The Pact

by Sampson Davis

  Another important ingredient of perseverance is surrounding yourself with friends who support your endeavor. I can’t tell you how much it helped me to have George and Rameck in my life to help me reach my goal. Even though things were awkward between us for a while after I failed the state boards, just knowing they were there and that they expected me to succeed motivated me.

  I found motivation wherever I could. One of my college professors once told me that I didn’t have what it takes to be a doctor, and I even used that to motivate me. I love being the underdog. I love it when someone expects me to fail. That, like nothing else, can ignite my three D’s.

  And when success comes, I’m the one who’s not surprised.

  My motto is simply: no one can tell me that I can’t succeed. I’ve come to believe that every goal in life is obtainable and that the only limitations are the ones you set for yourself. For some, the road to success is merely based on taking advantage of opportunities provided to them. For others, the road is much more difficult because they have to create opportunities for themselves. When you have to find a way where there seems to be none, as I sometimes had to do, success in the end is even sweeter.

  I had to keep getting up when life knocked me down. There is nothing sweeter than stealing victory from the jaws of defeat. The closest I ever came to giving up was when I didn’t match at any of the hospitals I had listed. But again, something on the inside wouldn’t let me quit. And my last try, on the Internet, brought amazing results.

  That’s how life is sometimes. When you’ve failed repeatedly and think you’re done, that last try—the one that requires every ounce of will and strength you have—is often the one to pull you through.

  17

  GRADUATION

  George

  FOR A WHILE, it seemed that both Sam and I would land in Maryland for our residencies. I was considering joining the U.S. Air Force as a dentist, and I expected to be stationed at Andrews Air Force Base, about an hour down the road from Baltimore. The Air Force was offering a $30,000 one-time signing bonus, not including salary and benefits, to entice recruits to its medical corps. The money caught my attention.

  An Air Force van picked up several classmates and me and drove us to Maryland to tour Andrews in our senior year of dental school. We walked through Air Force Two, the vice president’s plane, and saw Air Force One, the president’s plane, up close. But I changed my mind about joining the military. I had just spent a grueling eight years in college and dental school, and I realized that I didn’t want to face the rigors of boot camp or the everyday restrictions of military life.

  I could have graduated from dental school and gone to work right away as a dentist. A dentist isn’t required to do a residency. But I figured a residency would give me the practical experience I needed and make me more competitive. I learned that there was an opening in dentistry for a general-practice resident at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, the same place that had first inspired my dream to become a dentist. I talked to Zia Shey, Associate Dean of the Dental School, and expressed an interest. I interviewed and was offered the position. About the same time, Sam and Rameck told me they had accepted residencies in the Newark area—Sam at Beth Israel Medical Center and Rameck at Robert Wood Johnson.

  We would end up at home together.

  It had never occurred to me that our graduation ceremonies would be at the same time. One day, near the end of my last semester in dental school, I asked them the dates and places of their graduations. When they told me that their ceremonies were set for May 26 at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, I realized that there would be one ceremony for the entire University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey system. We would graduate together.

  Rameck and I decided to invite some of our favorite teachers and counselors from University High School to our graduation. One of the staff members we invited was Dr. Valerie Noble, a guidance counselor who had encouraged us in high school. We often went to our guidance counselors when we needed to talk about a personal problem or had career questions, and they were always helpful. Dr. Noble was extremely proud that Rameck, Sam, and I had remained friends and were now about to graduate from medical school. Knowing our backgrounds, she said she couldn’t stop thinking about what an extraordinary accomplishment we had achieved. In the days before graduation, she told a reporter she knew about us.

  When Dr. Noble called and told us that the local paper was interested in writing a story about us, I was more puzzled than excited. I didn’t understand what the big deal was—hundreds of students were graduating from medical school that day—but we agreed to be interviewed. We met with the reporter before graduation.

  It was a beautiful, sunny morning, and we arrived in our black caps and gowns and colorful hoods. My mother, my father, my grandmother, and most of my aunts and uncles, as well as my childhood friends—Na-im and Abdul, Shahid Jackson and his father and brother—were all there. When I saw my aunt Lestine Graves, I was reminded how much her achievements had inspired me. Aunt Lestine had been in her early forties when she returned to college in Maryland, about the same time I entered Seton Hall. Then a mother of two teenagers, she consistently ranked at the top of her class. Many times when I struggled with a class, I thought about how tough it must have been for her to juggle school and family. Yet she consistently outperformed her younger peers, most of whom had the luxury of concentrating solely on school.

  “You know what? I can do it, too,” I said to myself.

  The graduates sat in large groups, divided by schools.

  Because we were seated in alphabetical order, I sat next to other guys whose names began with J, guys I had sat next to for four years during major exams and classes that grouped us that way. We talked and goofed off for most of the ceremony.

  Finally, it was time to receive our degrees.

  The master of ceremonies called the Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine, and the graduates all stood and moved toward the stage. One by one their names were called.

  Then, “Dr. Sampson Davis…”

  As I watched Sam walk across the stage, I sat still and quiet. Pride swirled through my body. I was thinking, “Man, we really did this.” I thought of all we had been through together, from boys comparing sneakers on the schoolyard in junior high to men walking across the stage to become doctors. We had leapt into the unknown together and locked hands and pulled one another up, over, and through the rough spots. I remembered how much I had hurt for him when he had failed the state board exam, how I’d driven to Camden one and a half hours each way nearly every weekend after that to be there for him. I tried to get him to play basketball and just have some fun to get his mind off the results of that test. It was all I could do to show him that I cared and that he wasn’t alone.

  This was the fourth time Sam and I had graduated together: junior high, high school, college, and now medical and dental school, and the third time for me and Rameck.

  Just before graduation, Rameck had placed so much faith in me that he became one of my first patients. He needed some dental work done, and instead of going to an established professional, he visited the clinic at the dental school about five different times so that I could fill a few of his teeth. I even performed a periodontal surgery on him. The credits I earned working on my boy helped me to graduate.

  Sam, Rameck, and I had become brothers, accepting one another for who we were. I think that this allowed us to see past whatever qualities irked us about one another. Our relationship extended to our families. During medical school, Rameck lived with my aunt in Maryland rent-free so he could do a rotation at Howard University.

  I didn’t really feel proud of myself until I saw Sam and Rameck walk across the platform. I thought of all I had learned from them: Sam, the workhorse, the most doggedly determined person I’d ever met, who held so much inside, and Rameck, the skeptic and activist, who was outraged by injustice and always believed there was something he could do to make things right.


  I like to think I brought foresight to our trio. I’ve always been able to think clearly and see through to the end of a situation before getting entangled in it. That saved our behinds a million times.

  When Rameck, Sam, and I each crossed the stage to get our diplomas, our families and friends roared. Each of us had an entourage of at least twenty people sitting in every corner of the amphitheater. Afterward, classmates jokingly asked if we had hired cheering squads.

  After graduation, Rameck, Sam, and I decided not to go out together. We had planned our first real vacation together, and we were leaving for Cancún the next morning. It was our treat for all of the spring breaks and summer vacations we had missed because we’d been studying or working, and for all of the trips our families couldn’t afford to take while we were kids growing up in Newark.

  I did, however, go to visit my father, who had arrived in town two days before my graduation. I had been so busy that I hadn’t had time to see him. A couple of my friends went with me to his hotel room. All of us had a few drinks together and caught up. I shared with him what was going on in my life, and he talked a bit about his, nothing really deep. This was the way things were between my father and me. I had long ago accepted that. Before I left, he told me he was proud of me. An hour had passed. It was time for me to get home.

  Early the next morning, I drove around the corner to get a newspaper from one of the street salesmen. I knew the story on us was scheduled to appear, but I didn’t know on what page. I stuck my hand out of the car window and motioned for the newspaper salesman. He turned to walk toward me, and I could see the front page atop the stack of papers in the plastic vest he was wearing. As he got closer, the photo of three boys drew more sharply into focus. They were grade-school pictures of Rameck, Sam, and me.

  We were on the front page.

  I was blown away. Most of the time when I saw young black men on the front page of a newspaper, they had either committed a big crime or they were dead. Not this day, though.

  Our childhood photos were above a larger photo of us congratulating one another after graduation. The story underneath told all of Newark about our pact. I had no idea then that the headline would be prophetic. It read simply:

  START OF SOMETHING BIG.

  18

  GOODBYE

  Rameck

  MA ALWAYS TALKED about retiring and moving to South Carolina. Soon after I began medical school, she did just that.

  After having worked as a mail clerk at the Newark post office for twenty-eight years, she bought a beautiful three-bedroom house that sat on a cul-de-sac in a secluded neighborhood in Columbia, the state capital. She liked the slow pace and beauty of the area. Ma initially planned to sell the family house in Plainfield, but she decided to keep it when the offers were lower than expected. She also wanted to have a place for her children to go if any of them ever needed a place to stay.

  It seemed that Ma would finally get to relax and enjoy the rest of her life. She had worked hard for so long. But in 1997, the family noticed that she didn’t look well when she returned home to visit her youngest daughter, Nicole, who had just had a baby. Ma’s stomach was swollen as though she were pregnant, her skin had darkened, and the whites of her eyes had a yellowish tint. My aunts urged her to see a doctor.

  About two months later, Ma called and told Nicole that her doctor had diagnosed her with cirrhosis of the liver. The family kept it from me. By the time I found out, Ma was so sick that my uncle Sheldon, a schoolteacher in New York, was heading to Columbia for the summer to help take care of her.

  “Something’s wrong with her liver,” my aunt said when she called to tell me.

  My family often hid bad news from me while I was away at school. They didn’t want me to worry. When I first heard about Ma, I didn’t get alarmed, because she had bounced back quickly before when a chest aneurysm forced her early retirement from the post office. It was the only other time I had ever seen her sick.

  But this time, Ma kept getting sicker. When it was time for my uncle to return to New York to go back to work, the family realized that Ma couldn’t stay in South Carolina alone. She needed to move back to Plainfield to be closer to the family.

  At first, she resisted. But reality forced her to give in.

  When Ma moved back home, she didn’t look like herself. She had lost so much weight that she was skinny. Her skin was so dry and scaly that she scratched all the time. But even on her sickest day, I never saw her break down or cry.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she always said.

  But I did worry. Ma was slipping away, and I knew it. Nothing in life had prepared me to lose the woman who had been as close as a mother to me. I lived one and a half hours away, but I drove to Plainfield as often as I could to visit her.

  In my last year of medical school, Ma’s liver began to fail. For months, she was transferred from one hospital to the next for treatment. She landed at Mount Sinai in Manhattan. Once, the doctors had to intubate her. I rushed to her bedside. She couldn’t speak, but I sat next to her, stroked her hand, and assured her that everything would be all right. I had seen many patients this way, but now it was personal. Seeing my grandmother so uncomfortable helped me to be more sensitive to the patients I encountered in medical school during my clinical rotations. I even chose gastroenterology as my specialty because I wanted to understand what was going on with my grandmother and someday keep other patients from suffering as much as she suffered.

  Doctors were unsure what had caused the cirrhosis. The family turned to me with their questions. I felt helpless. I was a medical student, not a seasoned specialist, and I didn’t have any answers. Her doctor seemed to be guessing about the cause of her illness. When I told him that Ma was not a heavy drinker, he said that even an occasional binge on alcohol could have caused the problem. I was offended by the suggestion.

  Only two things were certain: Ma needed a new liver soon, and if she didn’t get one, she would die.

  The hospital placed her on its list of people waiting for liver transplants, but the doctor explained that because the wait could be as long as a year, she would probably not live to get a new liver. The doctor also presented us with a riskier alternative. The diseased part of Ma’s liver could be replaced with a piece of a healthy liver from a living donor. I volunteered immediately to be tested as a possible match. I was scared, but I loved my grandmother. I figured I was young and healthy and could rebound quickly after the surgery.

  I talked to George and Sam about my decision.

  “Do what you got to do, dog,” they told me. “We’ll be there for you.”

  I was prepared to go forward with testing for the procedure, but my mother, aunts, and uncles talked me out of it. They said they needed me to be healthy to communicate with the doctors and didn’t want to put me at risk. Most of the other family members who were willing to be tested had been ruled out as potential donors by the hospital’s list of criteria.

  So we prayed and waited for a donor to be found elsewhere.

  Ma’s illness proved to be a trying time for our family. When she could no longer take care of herself, the finger-pointing began about who wasn’t doing enough to help. Ma had always been the one who solved problems and brought calm. Without her mediation, matters often dissolved into chaos. My aunts and uncles sometimes went without speaking until the next crisis brought them together.

  Through it all, Ma never stopped encouraging me.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she would say. “You’re doing so good.”

  My graduation was approaching, and I prayed that Ma would be able to make it. I wanted her to see me walk across the stage and become Dr. Rameck Hunt. I wanted her to witness the miracle that her faith in me had brought.

  On graduation day, I kept looking into the stands for my family. They had helped me as much as they could have. When I had begun medical school and couldn’t afford the expensive books, my mother’s brothers and sisters had pooled money and sent it to me eve
ry month for several months. I’ve always been very grateful to them for that. From my seat near the front of the auditorium, the faces in the crowd looked blurred. But one time as I scanned the room, I noticed someone sitting in a wheelchair in the aisle. I couldn’t make out the face, but I knew it was Ma. She had been determined to see this day. When the ceremony ended, my family wheeled her down to greet me. I threw my arms around her. She couldn’t have given me a more special gift.

  About three weeks later, the hospital called Ma with good news. A donor for her had been located. She happened to be home alone, but she needed to get to the hospital right away. A liver can function outside the body for only a limited time. Ma called her children. Nicole contacted her husband, Hosea, who worked in Plainfield and was just about to leave for the day. He drove to Ma’s house and, escorted by Port Authority police, rushed her to Mount Sinai. Other family members met him there and waited in the family room while she underwent the surgery. Doctors had told Hosea that the operation was expected to take six hours. There was a high risk that Ma could die during the surgery. But when the team of doctors emerged from the operating room two hours early, my aunts and uncles took that as a good sign. They were right. The surgery was a success. When I heard the good news, I felt hopeful for the first time in months that she would get better.

  Ma’s recovery was going so well that the doctor released her from the hospital within a week. She began to feel stronger and look healthier. But that lasted just a few days. On June 19, 1999, the day before the family was scheduled to gather at a cookout in West Orange to celebrate my graduation, Ma developed a fever and had to return to the hospital. We didn’t think it was serious because she had experienced a similar episode a couple of days earlier, and the fever had gone away.

  The weather for the cookout was perfect—sunny and hot. A large crowd of my family and friends, including Sam and George, spent the afternoon eating, drinking, dancing, and playing cards. I kept in touch with the doctor by phone.