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“I’ve been wondering the same thing. It’s still raining and I didn’t get enough sleep. When I was in medical school, and an intern, they told us when we entered practice, we could expect to get some sleep. They lied.”
“When were you an intern? Last year?”
“I will take that as a compliment. I don’t look old enough to have been a doctor very long?”
“Not even in your doctor suit,” Cynthia said, making reference to the stethoscope hanging around Amy’s neck and her crisp white smock, onto which was pinned a plastic badge reading, “A. A. Payne, M.D.”
“When I finish here, I’m going to make what they call rounds. We take medical students with us. I wear my doctor suit so that the visiting firemen don’t mistake me for o
ne of them.”
“Visiting firemen?”
“Visiting distinguished practitioners of the healing arts,” Amy said. “Who, when I offer an opinion, take one look at me and decide I couldn’t possibly be an adjunct professor of psychiatry, and therefore are dealing with an uppity young female who doesn’t know her place.”
Cynthia giggled.
“You don’t look old enough to be a doctor, much less a professor.”
“I’m getting perilously close to thirty,” Amy said. “I got my M.D. at twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two?” Cynthia asked incredulously. “I thought it took six years after you got out of college to be a doctor.”
“When I got my M.D., I already had a Ph.D.,” Amy said. “I was what you could call precocious.”
“You’re a genius?”
“So they tell me.”
“I’m impressed,” Cynthia said.
“On one hand, that’s good,” Amy said. “I’m smart and I am a good doctor. Statement of fact. Keep that in mind when you get annoyed with me.”
“Am I going to be annoyed with you?”
“If you extend my temporary appointment as your physician, if you want me to try to help you, we can count on that happening sooner or later.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because what we’re going to have to do is get your problem out in the open, and you’re not going to like that.”
Cynthia considered that.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“It’s your call, Cynthia. First, you’re going to have to face the fact that something happened in your life that’s made you ill. Next, that you can’t deal with it yourself and need help. And finally, whether or not you really believe that Amy Payne—Dr. Amy Payne—can help you.”
“When do I have to decide?”
“First answer that will annoy you: right now. Putting off decisions is something you can’t do. That sort of thing feeds on itself.”
Cynthia considered that for fifteen seconds.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Amy said. “Your mother and father are outside.”
“Oh, God!”
