is up-to-date. And I read the journals. I know that’s not the same as treating patients, but I was thinking maybe I could start working almost as an apprentice. On a reduced pay scale.” She sounds nervous, talking too fast. It isn’t Kit that puts her on edge, it’s this job. It’s realizing this is a job she might like, this is a doctor she’d like to learn from, to work with. She holds the résumé in her lap for a minute, looking at its open white spaces wishing a sheer force of will could tack on those last few months and that critical piece of paper. Then she puts on a determined smile and hands it over.
Kit swivels back in her chair, reading. Claire concentrates on relaxing the muscles of her forehead. What’s there is good, might even be considered impressive. She’d coauthored three papers while she was in her internship, one in JAMA. She’d made Alpha Omega Alpha, had been a star of her internship class. She was elected chief resident, but had to drop that when she went on bed rest. Her references are well-known names in academic medicine, even though some have already retired. Jory had done a great job with the layout. Claire was kind of amazed she’d known that much about fonts and formatting. If she’d ever been that thorough with her homework she’d have made the honor roll.
She watches Kit’s eyes move down the single sheet of bond paper in her hands, and spots the precise moment Kit recognizes the problem. The narrow crease between Kit’s dark eyebrows deepens and she looks up, puzzled. “You didn’t finish your residency?”
Claire sits up straighter. “No. I couldn’t. I had some trouble with my pregnancy. I had to go on bed rest at twenty-six weeks. Then Jory—my daughter—needed a lot of medical care for a couple of years. And then…” She lets her eyes rest on a leafless tree shivering outside the office window where an empty bird’s nest is buffeted in the wind. She lifts one shoulder and lets it drop again. “No. I never finished.”
“So, you’re not board certified?”
“I couldn’t take the boards. I was short the required hours.” That answer is obvious to both of them, but saying it aloud feels like some kind of justified penance. The whole room seems to sigh, and Claire sees Kit’s shoulders sag. She knows, then, that she would have gotten the job. She could have worked with this admirable woman and nurtured her own medical practice alongside her.
Kit folds her arms across the résumé on her desk. She looks almost as disappointed as Claire, which, for some reason, makes the rejection harder. “It’s not me,” Kit says. “It’s the insurance. My malpractice insurance would never take you. Well, that’s not really fair. They would take you at a higher rate. I can’t afford to hire you if you’re not board certified.”
Claire’s face goes hot, embarrassing her even more. She should have told Kit outright, before she even sat down. She feels like a liar, telling everyone at the hospital, and Kit, too, that she is a family practitioner. She is a doctor of nothing. All that work, all those years of school, and she had quit before she got the final official stamp. In a profession that demanded the gold seals that were only doled out with the last handshake on the graduation stage, she had blown it.
Claire tightens her fingers around the leather binding of the steering wheel until her wedding ring bites into her flesh. She feels diminished by the verbalization of the years she’s been away from the practice of medicine—personally diminished, as if it subtracted from her value asa human being to say the double digit aloud and admit that she’s never earned back the fortune her education cost her parents and the state. She should paste a picture of Jory at the bottom of her résumé where the missing months of training should be—Jory’s, at least, was one life she knew she had saved.
The wind whips at her car and the low gray clouds blur onto the
Kit swivels back in her chair, reading. Claire concentrates on relaxing the muscles of her forehead. What’s there is good, might even be considered impressive. She’d coauthored three papers while she was in her internship, one in JAMA. She’d made Alpha Omega Alpha, had been a star of her internship class. She was elected chief resident, but had to drop that when she went on bed rest. Her references are well-known names in academic medicine, even though some have already retired. Jory had done a great job with the layout. Claire was kind of amazed she’d known that much about fonts and formatting. If she’d ever been that thorough with her homework she’d have made the honor roll.
She watches Kit’s eyes move down the single sheet of bond paper in her hands, and spots the precise moment Kit recognizes the problem. The narrow crease between Kit’s dark eyebrows deepens and she looks up, puzzled. “You didn’t finish your residency?”
Claire sits up straighter. “No. I couldn’t. I had some trouble with my pregnancy. I had to go on bed rest at twenty-six weeks. Then Jory—my daughter—needed a lot of medical care for a couple of years. And then…” She lets her eyes rest on a leafless tree shivering outside the office window where an empty bird’s nest is buffeted in the wind. She lifts one shoulder and lets it drop again. “No. I never finished.”
“So, you’re not board certified?”
“I couldn’t take the boards. I was short the required hours.” That answer is obvious to both of them, but saying it aloud feels like some kind of justified penance. The whole room seems to sigh, and Claire sees Kit’s shoulders sag. She knows, then, that she would have gotten the job. She could have worked with this admirable woman and nurtured her own medical practice alongside her.
Kit folds her arms across the résumé on her desk. She looks almost as disappointed as Claire, which, for some reason, makes the rejection harder. “It’s not me,” Kit says. “It’s the insurance. My malpractice insurance would never take you. Well, that’s not really fair. They would take you at a higher rate. I can’t afford to hire you if you’re not board certified.”
Claire’s face goes hot, embarrassing her even more. She should have told Kit outright, before she even sat down. She feels like a liar, telling everyone at the hospital, and Kit, too, that she is a family practitioner. She is a doctor of nothing. All that work, all those years of school, and she had quit before she got the final official stamp. In a profession that demanded the gold seals that were only doled out with the last handshake on the graduation stage, she had blown it.
Claire tightens her fingers around the leather binding of the steering wheel until her wedding ring bites into her flesh. She feels diminished by the verbalization of the years she’s been away from the practice of medicine—personally diminished, as if it subtracted from her value asa human being to say the double digit aloud and admit that she’s never earned back the fortune her education cost her parents and the state. She should paste a picture of Jory at the bottom of her résumé where the missing months of training should be—Jory’s, at least, was one life she knew she had saved.
The wind whips at her car and the low gray clouds blur onto the
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