F. Wilson - The Select

"Yeah, Quinn. Tim made it too. That's why you've got to make it."

Quinn slumped into one of the ladder back chairs at the rugged, porcelain-topped kitchen table. Her gaze wandered, unseeing, from the worn linoleum floor to the stark white cabinets that had been painted and repainted so many times the edges of the panels were rounded and the type of wood beneath had long since been forgotten.

Tim had made it. That meant the two answers he'd given her probably had been correct.

Then why haven't I made it? she thought.

"Listen," Matt said. "Tim wants to talk to you. He—"

"Can't talk now," she blurted. "I think I hear the mail truck."

Not really true, but she didn't want to talk to Tim. Was it because she felt embarrassed?

"Great. Call me right back if you hear anything."

"Okay. Sure."

Quinn hung up and sat there drumming her fingers on the table top. This waiting was driving her nuts.

And then a faint squeak filtered in from the front of the house. She knew that sound. The mail truck's brakes. She ran to the front door.

There it was, the white jeep pausing at the end of the driveway. She waited until it had rolled on—no sense in appearing too anxious—then she stepped out into the bright afternoon sunshine and, as casually as she could manage, strolled the one hundred feet to the road.

She flipped down the mailbox door and withdrew the slim stack of letters and catalogs from the galvanized gullet. Electric bill...phone bill...bank statement...The Ingraham College of Medicine...

Quinn's heart stumbled over a beat. She shoved the rest of the stack back into the box and stared at the envelope. It was light, no more than a single sheet of paper folded in there. She wished she'd asked Matt some details about his acceptance notice. Had it come in a bigger envelope with instructions on the how, where, and when of registration?

It's got to be a rejection, she told herself. It only takes one page to tell you to go pound salt.

Her mouth was dry and her fingers trembled as she tore open the envelope.

Dear Ms. Cleary:

Every year, The Ingraham College of Medicine reviews hundreds of applications and entrance exam scores. It is a most difficult task to select the fifty applicants who will attend The Ingraham. The Admissions Office regrets to inform you that, although you are most highly qualified and will certainly be a credit to any institution of medical learning, after careful consideration, your name was not among those selected for acceptance to next year's class. However, since your scores were ranked within the top one hundred, your name has been placed on the waiting list. This office will inform you immediately of any change in your status as it occurs. If you do not wish your name placed on the wait list, please inform the Admissions Office immediately.

There was another paragraph but Quinn couldn't bring herself to read it. Maybe later. Not now. Her vision blurred. She blinked to clear it. She fought the urge to ball up the letter and envelope and shove them back into the mailbox, or better yet, hurl them into the road. But that wouldn't do. She'd turned twenty-two last month. She was supposed to be an adult.

Biting back the sob that swelled in her chest, Quinn retrieved the rest of the mail from the box and forced her wobbly legs to walk her back toward the house.

What am I going to do?

She felt dizzy, half-panicked as her rubbery knees threatened to collapse with each step. All those bleary nights of cramming, the cups of bitter black coffee at four a.m., the endless sessions in the poisonous air of the chemistry labs... hours, days, her whole life had been about becoming a doctor. And suddenly it was all gone...in a few seconds—the time it took to tear open an envelope...gone.

She stumbled but kept her balance, kept walking. She clenched her teeth.

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.