borrow my parents’ car again tomorrow to take her in.”
“She’s better,” her dad said, “she said so herself. We can’t afford to pay him to tell us what we already know. Kids get these things, they get over them. . . .” He waved his hand to dismiss the whole thing.
“But, he said. . . .”
“Right. He said to bring her in. He didn’t say it would be free. It’s going to take everything we’ve got to get out of this dump, and the sooner the better. If she gets sick again tonight, we’ll take her. How’s that?”
Her father’s voice snapped the words out and his tone bordered on a growl.
Her mother rubbed her eyes the way she did when she was tired or when she just wanted everything to go away.
“All right,” she said. “I’m tired and don’t want to think about it right now. She’s been like this off and on since the earthquake, maybe it’s just . . . nerves or something.”
“Yeah,” her dad said. “Nerves. So we’ll see how she is in the morning. You ate a good dinner and got plenty of sleep, Muffin. That’s all you needed, right?”
“I guess so,” she said.
She felt like she was taking a side against her mother, and she didn’t like that feeling.
The dream-work . . . does not think, calculate, or judge in any
way at all; it restricts itself to giving things a new form.
—Sigmund Freud
Dr. Mark White approached the last summer of his two-year psychiatric residency on The Hill with relief. Most of his colleagues from medical school had chosen private hospitals for their residencies, grooming themselves into a lucrative network of suburban practice. Mark’s appearance did not lend itself to suburban practice—executives and their wives did not want to trust their psyches to someone who looked like an Eagle Scout too young to shave. His bright blue eyes and unmanageable brown hair furthered the naive adolescent image. During his ER rotation he’d been mistaken for a high school volunteer and for the lab tech’s (high school) son.
Mark decided to continue with public medicine in the fall, but he kept that decision to himself. He was going to treat himself to some fishing first. This morning he bought his first fishing license in six years as a commitment to relaxation.
He had offers, all places like The Hill, but he had no plans beyond his residency. These not very attractive offers all came from overworked, understaffed state agencies. He had ignored his advisor’s warnings about a residency at the state institution, and now he reaped the consequences.
“Rich people get as crazy as the poor,” Dr. Bidet had advised him. “Psychiatric care takes time, it’s not like a gallbladder that’s wrapped up in a couple of hours.” He tapped his desktop timer that ticked away Mark’s allotment of six hundred seconds. “Time costs money—if it’s your time, then it’s either your money or somebody else’s.” He rubbed his fat neck and sighed just as the timer ding ed. “I think you’re an excellent physician, Mark. I’ll recommend you wherever you choose to go.”
Mark had never admired his advisor, a corpulent teaching psychiatrist with a very limited, very lucrative private practice. In therapy Mark had faced his distaste for the rich and fat, a “reverse snobbery,” as Mindy once put it.
The new Dr. Mark White had chose The Hill for unprofessional reasons. The hospital grounds, parklike and peaceful, perched a wooded ridgetop overlooking the valley. On a clear evening, standing on the helipad atop the fifth-floor roof, he watched sunset trickling down the Olympic Mountains as it pinked up the watery spaces between the San Juan Islands. Even the rain was a pleasure up there. Rather than washing the landscape gray is it did in the city, rain simply brightened the evergreen vista and freshened the air. If The Hill was not therapeutic for others, its location was pure therapy for Mark White.
His name tag read: “Dr. Mark,” and he seldom wore white. He worked
“She’s better,” her dad said, “she said so herself. We can’t afford to pay him to tell us what we already know. Kids get these things, they get over them. . . .” He waved his hand to dismiss the whole thing.
“But, he said. . . .”
“Right. He said to bring her in. He didn’t say it would be free. It’s going to take everything we’ve got to get out of this dump, and the sooner the better. If she gets sick again tonight, we’ll take her. How’s that?”
Her father’s voice snapped the words out and his tone bordered on a growl.
Her mother rubbed her eyes the way she did when she was tired or when she just wanted everything to go away.
“All right,” she said. “I’m tired and don’t want to think about it right now. She’s been like this off and on since the earthquake, maybe it’s just . . . nerves or something.”
“Yeah,” her dad said. “Nerves. So we’ll see how she is in the morning. You ate a good dinner and got plenty of sleep, Muffin. That’s all you needed, right?”
“I guess so,” she said.
She felt like she was taking a side against her mother, and she didn’t like that feeling.
The dream-work . . . does not think, calculate, or judge in any
way at all; it restricts itself to giving things a new form.
—Sigmund Freud
Dr. Mark White approached the last summer of his two-year psychiatric residency on The Hill with relief. Most of his colleagues from medical school had chosen private hospitals for their residencies, grooming themselves into a lucrative network of suburban practice. Mark’s appearance did not lend itself to suburban practice—executives and their wives did not want to trust their psyches to someone who looked like an Eagle Scout too young to shave. His bright blue eyes and unmanageable brown hair furthered the naive adolescent image. During his ER rotation he’d been mistaken for a high school volunteer and for the lab tech’s (high school) son.
Mark decided to continue with public medicine in the fall, but he kept that decision to himself. He was going to treat himself to some fishing first. This morning he bought his first fishing license in six years as a commitment to relaxation.
He had offers, all places like The Hill, but he had no plans beyond his residency. These not very attractive offers all came from overworked, understaffed state agencies. He had ignored his advisor’s warnings about a residency at the state institution, and now he reaped the consequences.
“Rich people get as crazy as the poor,” Dr. Bidet had advised him. “Psychiatric care takes time, it’s not like a gallbladder that’s wrapped up in a couple of hours.” He tapped his desktop timer that ticked away Mark’s allotment of six hundred seconds. “Time costs money—if it’s your time, then it’s either your money or somebody else’s.” He rubbed his fat neck and sighed just as the timer ding ed. “I think you’re an excellent physician, Mark. I’ll recommend you wherever you choose to go.”
Mark had never admired his advisor, a corpulent teaching psychiatrist with a very limited, very lucrative private practice. In therapy Mark had faced his distaste for the rich and fat, a “reverse snobbery,” as Mindy once put it.
The new Dr. Mark White had chose The Hill for unprofessional reasons. The hospital grounds, parklike and peaceful, perched a wooded ridgetop overlooking the valley. On a clear evening, standing on the helipad atop the fifth-floor roof, he watched sunset trickling down the Olympic Mountains as it pinked up the watery spaces between the San Juan Islands. Even the rain was a pleasure up there. Rather than washing the landscape gray is it did in the city, rain simply brightened the evergreen vista and freshened the air. If The Hill was not therapeutic for others, its location was pure therapy for Mark White.
His name tag read: “Dr. Mark,” and he seldom wore white. He worked
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