I also had no siblings, so they’d had no one else to heap their beliefs on, though that wasn’t a complaint.I loved my life, and I had them to thank for it.Without their convictions and guidance, I might have ended up working for a living, instead of living a life that I was rather proud of.
The funny thing was that I also had no friends, which I was oddly okay with.School had taken up such a huge chunk of my life that I hadn’t ever made room to make real friends or anything serious like that.Oh, I’d had plenty of acquaintances over the years, and I even dated regularly, but whenever I had to choose between socializing and work, work always won, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
As for ever feeling lonely, I didn’t suffer from that particular affliction.Once I had hit high school, I’d been all about the future and college had been a given.Early on, I’d decided on psychiatry as my chosen profession, and I hadn’t ever had any delusions about how much hard work it’d take to achieve that particular goal.
Proudly, after high school, my grades had been good enough that I’d been accepted to six different universities, but I’d chosen Stanford over Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Princeston, and the University of Illinois because Standford had been ranked number one in the psychiatric department, and I’d wanted to learn from the best.
At any rate, after busting my ass for four years at Standford, I’d had four years of medical school to get through, then four years of required residency.Luckily for me, my parents had saved big for whichever career that I’d be choosing, so I’d been able to get through it all without any debt, and I’d finally been able to get my license to practice psychiatry at the ripe old age of thirty-two.
Of course, I hadn’t just ridden off into the sunset after that.Even with several job offers lined up, it’d taken me a while to get my name out there as a reputable doctor, and given my choice of discipline, that hadn’t been easy.Unlike most psychiatrists that practiced in the general realm of basic psychiatric disorders, I had chosen to go work for The House of St.Dymphna, and it was a psychiatric hospital that came with a side dish of religion.
Saint Dymphna was the patroness for those who suffered from mental and nervous disorders, so the hospital was aptly named.The story went that Dymphna’s mother had died early, leaving her father to suffer from crippling grief, which had eventually led to severe mental illness that had bordered on insanity.In fact, once the insanity had taken hold, her father had decided to marry Dymphna to replace the loss of his wife, but with the help of some allies, she had managed to escape his plans.However, her father had managed to track her down, killing the priest who had helped her, and then he had ordered his soldiers to decapitate her if she still refused to marry him.Though only a teenager, Dymphna’s religious convictions and devotion to her Catholic faith had been enough to make her stand up to her father, and so she’d been murdered by him, making her the patron saint for mental illness.In addition, she was also the patron saint for therapists, anyone suffering the loss of a parent, and incest victims.
Of course, the entire hospital looked like a medieval church, it’s huge stone structure in association with religion, and Dymphna’s prayer was scripted beautifully on the north wall of the lobby, and the entire place really was something else.
In addition to the Catholic Church being wealthy in its own right, the hospital had also been built twenty years ago by a billionaire whose twin sons had killed themselves, despite the best psychiatrists that his money had been able to buy.After that, money and materialistic things had lost their meaning for both Lavone Randall and his wife, and so it was my understanding that they had liquidated their entire portfolio, donating everything that they’d had to champion mental illness.
Now, while I considered myself very pragmatic, I also wasn’t so academic that I didn’t believe in something bigger than myself.I believed in religion, and I also believed that the mind was more complicated than we realized.Whatever it was that shaped what we became, it was deeper than just how we’d been reared by our parents, and it was more significant than the influences around us.It was also this belief that made me the perfect fit to counsel at St.Dymphna’s.I listened with an open mind, and I never dismissed what my patients said as mental gibberish.
“What are you still doing here?”I looked up from my desk to see Juliette Swanson standing in the doorway to my office.“This can’t be healthy, woman.”
I just gave her a tired grin.“I can either stay here and get some work done, or else go home and think about all the work that I could be getting done.I’m choosing to be productive.”
“While I get that, the graveyard shift shouldn’t know you as well as they do,” she quipped.“Go home already.”
Because the nature of St.Dymphna’s was rather gruesome, our nursing staff didn’t have traditional twelve-hour shifts with maximum days off.Instead, we had three shifts of eight hours, and we also had surplus positions to cover call-ins, which happened often.If you were any kind of a decent human being, it was hard to watch the suffering of other people, and a lot of our patients were prisoners of their own minds, medication not always the answer.
At any rate, with the shifts starting at six, two, and ten, Juliette was exaggerating about how chummy I was with the graveyard shift.If I interacted with them, it was usually because I was coming in early, not staying late.Of course, there were always the middle-of-the-night emergencies, but due to the excellent staff here, those didn’t happen often.
“I have an hour max,” I told her, making her nose scrunch up in disapproval.“I promise.”
“I’ll tell you what, you need to find yourself a man that makes you want to be home more than you want to be here,” she joked.“There’s nothing like prime penis to make you re-evaluate your priorities.”
That got a laugh out of me.“A new man in your life, I take it.”
Juliette was in her late twenties, and the girl was a fan of new love and dating.“I’m not sure yet.We’ve only had two dates, and while he seems decent enough, I can’t commit to awful sex, no matter how nice the guy is.”
I shook my head.“You are too much, girl.”
“Well, when you consider that I don’t have the most glamourous job in the world, I need someone who’s capable of making all my stress go away,” she went on.
“Yeah, well...when you meet that special man, ask him if he has a brother,” I retorted, desperately wanting to forget the last time that I’d slept with someone.
“Sure thing,” she teased.“Now, go home.”
“I’m on my way,” I promised.
As soon as she walked away, I let out a tired sigh.I was forty-four years old, and while I had no regrets, it wasn’t lost on me that I was aging fast.While my five-foot-three frame was still in shape, that was only because exercise was a healthy mood stabilizer, and I needed all the help that I could get.Luckily, my figure was basic enough that I didn’t have any troubled areas, but the rest of me could use a good spa day.My dark brown hair was dull, my hazel eyes had permanent dark circles, and my complexion was rather pale with how much time I spent indoors.Honestly, if I could afford to take the time off, I’d book a weekend at a rejuvenation spa and pay for every treatment that they had.
Stretching my back and neck, that line of thought got me to thinking about the last time that I’d gone out, even to a simple dinner, and it was clear that I was due for a night of good food, music, dancing, and drinking, and I had no problem doing all that alone.Having always had a solitary personality, I wasn’t afraid to do things on my own, and that was a good thing since I didn’t have any friends, nor was I looking to make any.
Christ, I sounded like an asshole, and maybe I was.
I wasn’t sure anymore.
I also wasn’t sure if I cared.
