The Select

Get a grip, Cleary.

She slowed her breathing, cleared her head, brushed aside the panic.

Okay, she told herself. Bad news. The worst. An awful setback. But there were other ways. Loans, and maybe work-study programs. Maybe even the military—sell a piece of her life to the Army or Navy for medical school tuition. She was not going to give up. There had to be a way, and dammit, she'd find it.

And besides, The Ingraham hadn't slammed the door on her. She was on the waiting list. There was still a chance. She'd call the Admissions Office and find out how many were ahead of her. She'd call them every month— no, every week. By September when registration day rolled around, everyone in that Admissions Office would know the name Quinn Cleary. And if any name was going to be moved off the waiting list into acceptance, it was going to be hers.

She quickened her stride. That was it. She would not let this get her down. She wasn't beaten yet. One way or another she was going to medical school.

As she stepped onto the front porch she glanced up and saw her mother standing there, waiting for her. Her mother's eyes were moist, her lips were trembling.

'Oh, Quinn.'

She knows, Quinn thought. Does it show that much?

Then her mother held out her arms to her.

Quinn held back for an instant. She was an adult, a woman now, she could handle this on her own. She didn't need her mother cooing over her like a kid with a scraped knee.

But somewhere inside she wanted a hug, needed one. And the understanding, the shared pain, the sympathy she saw in her mother's eyes tore something loose in Quinn. Inner walls cracked and crumbled. Everything she had dammed up, the agony of the months of waiting, the hurt, the crushing disappointment, the fear and uncertainty about what was to come, all broke free. She clung to her mother like a drowning child to a rock in the sea and began to sob.

'Oh, Mom...what am I going to go?'

She felt her mother's arms envelope her and hold her tight and she cried harder, cried like she hadn't since her dog Sneakers had died when she was ten years old.

*

'You're secretly glad I was turned down, aren't you?'

Quinn said it without rancor. She'd pulled herself together and now she was sitting at the battered kitchen table while Mom brewed them some tea.

Mom looked at her for a few seconds, then turned back to the whistling kettle.

'Now why would you be saying such a thing, Quinn, dear? Glad means I take some pleasure in your hurt. I don't. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I feel your hurt like my own. I want to go down to that Ingraham place and wring somebody's neck. But, well, yes, deep down inside some part of me is... relieved.'

Over the past couple of years Quinn had sensed in her mother an unspoken resistance to her dream of becoming a doctor. Now she felt oddly relieved that it was out in the open.

'Why...why don't you want me to be a doctor?'

Mom brought the teapot to the table and set it on a crocheted potholder between them.

'It's not that I don't want you to be a doctor—I'd love to see you as a doctor. It's just that I...' She paused, at a loss for words. 'Oh, Quinn, I know you're going to be thinking this sounds crazy, but I'm worried about your going to medical school.'

Quinn was baffled. 'Mom, I've been away at U. Conn for the past four years and—'

'Oh, it's not the going away that bothers me. It's just this...feeling I have.'

Uh-oh. One of Mom's feelings.

'Sure and I know what you're going to say, how it makes no sense to let these kind of feelings affect your life, but I can't help it, Quinn. Especially when the feeling is this strong.'

Quinn shook her head. No use in arguing. Mom sometimes thought she had premonitions. She called it 'the Sheedy thing.' Some turned out true, but plenty of others didn't. She tended to forget all the ones that didn't, and cling to the ones that had panned out. Mostly they were just apprehensions, fears of what might go wrong. She almost never had premonitions of anything good.

Mom seemed to think this sort of sixth sense ran in the family. If it did, it clearly was one more useful gene Quinn had missed out on. She wished she could have seen that letter coming. She would have prepared herself better.

Watching Mom pour the tea, she decided to play along, just this once.

'What's it like, this bad feeling about med school?'

'Nothing specific.' Her eyes lost their focus for a moment. 'Just a feeling that you'll never come back.'

Is that it? Quinn thought. She's afraid of losing me forever to some faraway medical center?

'Mom, if you think I'll ever forget you and Dad or turn my back—'

'No, dear. It's not that sort of thing. I have this feeling you'll be in danger there.'

'But what danger could I possibly be in?'

'I don't know. But you remember what happened with your Aunt Sandra, don't you?'

Oh, boy. Aunt Sandra. Mom's older sister. The two of them had been teenagers when the Sheedy family came over from Ireland. Aunt Sandra was always having run-ins with 'the Sheedy thing.'

'Of course.' Quinn had heard this story a thousand times. 'But—'

'She awoke one night and saw this light in the hall outside her bedroom...'

Mom wasn't going to be stopped, so Quinn leaned back and let her go.

'...The glow got brighter and brighter, and then she saw it: a glowing hand, and clutched in that hand was a glowing knife. It glided past her bedroom door and disappeared down the hall. Three nights in a row she saw it. The third night she tried to wake your uncle Evan but he was sound asleep, so she got up alone and followed the glowing arm with the knife down the hall. It glided past your cousin Kathy's room and went straight to your cousin Bob's, passed right through the oak door. She rushed inside and saw it poised over Bob's bed. And as she watched, it plunged the knife blade into Bob's stomach. She screamed and that woke everybody up. But the hand was gone as if it had never been. Your uncle Evan thought she was going crazy, and even Bob and Kathy were getting worried about her.' As she always did, Mom paused here for effect. 'But the next day, your cousin Bob was rushed to the hospital and taken to surgery where he had to go under the surgeon's knife for a ruptured appendix.' Another pause, this time accompanied by a meaningful stare. 'Thank the Lord everything turned out okay, but after that no one ever doubted your Aunt Sandra when she had one of her premonitions.'

Silly, but the story yet again gave Quinn a chill. The thought of being the only one awake, sitting in the dark and seeing a glowing, knife-wielding hand float past your bedroom door...

She threw off the frisson.

'Mom, you haven't had any, uh, visions about me, have you?'

Mom stirred honey into her tea. 'No. Nothing like that. Just a...feeling. Especially that Ingraham place. Giving you everything free. That seems...unnatural.'

She was sounding a bit like Matt.

'Well,' Quinn said, 'I don't think you have to worry now. Nothing bad is going to happen to me at med school.'

Saying those words, med school, triggered a pain in her chest. Crying it out, talking it out, having a cup of tea with her mother had helped her put aside the crushing loss. But only for a moment.

'I've got to call Matt,' Quinn said around the newly formed lump in her throat. Which was the last thing she wanted to do. She hadn't made it and he had. So had Tim. She felt humiliated, ashamed. But might as well grit her teeth and get it over with. 'He's waiting to hear from me.'

*

Tim sat in Matt's bedroom and watched his friend hang up the phone. He stared at it accusingly, as if it had lied to him. After a moment he turned and faced Tim.

'They turned her down,' he said, his voice hushed. 'The Ingraham fucking College of fucking Medicine turned down Quinn Cleary. I don't believe it.'

Tim already had gathered that from what he'd just overheard. He felt a pang, almost like a soldier who'd just lost a comrade. His hurt, he realized, was a little selfish: He'd been looking forward to spending some time with