*Based on the interview with Grace Sebold
On the third Friday of March, Grace Sebold joined 158 of her classmates as they all gathered in Hiebert Lounge on the campus of Boston University Medical College. Besides the occasional students who wore jeans and sport coats, or casual blouses and skirts, formal spring dresses and suits were the common attire. Coffee and breakfast pastries covered a long table, where students filled plates and talked the hour away. Grace woke with an upset stomach and couldn’t muster the thought of a jelly-filled doughnut, let alone the acidic burn of coffee. Instead, she paced the hallways in isolation, not interested in mingling with her classmates. She had this way about her, taking joyous moments and turning them into angst-clouded misery.
There was a palpable buzz in the air. Today, every fourth year medical student would learn which residency program they had matched to. The ceiling of Hiebert Lounge was netted with balloons that would fall through the air and cascade off students as they opened their Match Day envelopes. The university had taken, during the last few years, to documenting the morning’s event through a professional videographer service that set up cameras in strategic positions to capture everything. Cameramen strolled the crowd of students and their families taking testimonials and ready for close-up shots when envelopes were opened.
Grace had participated in the early-morning group photo as the fourth years gathered on the front steps of the medical-school building and made “Oh, my God” facial expressions so the university could upload the whole day onto their websites and attract future applicants. But now, after the initial photo shoot and as the envelope opening was nearing, she had no interest in making small talk as the cameras rolled. All she wanted was to open her letter and see if she matched to New York.
She stood in front of the window and stared at the buildings of downtown Boston. She pulled her phone out and her thumbs moved like lightning as she texted Julian:
Five more minutes.
Yes! Everyone is nuts here.
This is so stupid. Just let us open the cards. Such a stupid production.
Relax! Have fun and stop stressing.
A clinking and some whistling drew Grace’s attention.
Gotta go. About to open our envelopes!
Us too. Call you in a minute.
Grace looked up from her phone and took a deep breath. She walked down the long flight of stairs, pushed through the glass doors and into the lounge.
“We are very pleased to welcome all fourth-year students and their loved ones to Match Day at Boston University!” the program director said into a booming microphone. “We are proud of our students and thededication they have shown in the past four years. We wish you the best of luck. And now, without further ado, we present your Match Day envelopes!”
Placed neatly on a table were 159 white envelopes containing the names of each fourth-year student. Inside was a single piece of paper that told each where they had matched. Grace thought she heard a countdown, people around her chanting numbers in reverse. But the noise and voices were in the background. She was concentrating only on the table. She estimated where her envelope would be located in alphabetical order. The crowd began to cheer, the singsong countdown ended, and the herd moved toward the table. Grace moved with everyone else, weaving past students, and finally came to the table. The envelopes had been picked over, and the once-pristinely-organized rows of white rectangles were now scattered at odd angles. She found theS’s and scrolled down until she spotted her name. She snatched the envelope.
Already students around her were cheering as they read their letters. She walked calmly through the crowd with her unopened envelope and exited Hiebert Lounge, took the elevator to the ground floor, and pushed through the front doors of the building and into the cool March morning. She stuck her finger into the flap of her envelope and tore it open, pulling the page from within and letting the remnants of the torn envelope drop to the ground. She skimmed past her name and ID number until she came to the middle of the page:
Congratulations, you have matched!
Program: Neurosurgery
Location: The Hospital for Special Surgery
Cornell University, New York
Without allowing the feat to register, she dialed her phone.
“Where?” Julian asked before the first ring had ended.
“Cornell.”
Silence.
“Julian? Did you open your envelope?”
There was a long pause.
“Tell me!” she said.
“Same.”
Sidney’s face came onto the screen in the media room on the forty-fourth floor of the network’s headquarters building as she stared into the camera with Cornell University in the background. It was a bright morning and the rising sun highlighted the hospital’s glass lobby behind her.
“On Match Day—March 17, 2007—Grace Sebold and Julian Crist, an all-American couple that had met during a medical-student program in Delhi, discovered their futures. They both placed into the highly competitive specialty of neurosurgery, and matched together at the same residency program at Cornell University. By any measure, these two accomplished and ambitious young adults were on their way to a storied future. But saving lives was not what waited for them. Tragically, less than two weeks after they opened their Match Day envelopes, Julian Crist was dead and Grace Sebold was on trial for his murder.”
