Papa was the first person I told, in my first year of college, at the age of seventeen. He didn’t think psychiatry was a wise choice for me. Not because he didn’t think I would excel at it but because so few women went into the field of medicine aside from nursing, and fewer still studied psychiatry. He was afraid I would work myself to the bone getting the doctorate only to find I wouldn’t be hired anywhere. My weaker sex is still believed by most to be highly susceptible to fits andhysteria. I, being a woman, had better odds of becoming a future mental patient than of becoming a psychiatrist. I persisted, though, and Papa finally gave me his blessing—but not before he asked me why I wanted to pursue this kind of medicine when there were so many others to choose from.
“I want to understand,” I’d said.
“Understand what?”
“Everything.”
My course of study is nearly over—one year remains—and I am astonished that for all I know now about the human mind, there is so much I don’t know. Dr. Bellfield doesn’t know everything. Nor do Dr. Freud or Dr. Jung or any of the other great minds in the universe who are considered the pioneers of this new field. The human mind is so complex, sometimes it seems the more we study it the less we understand.
Papa is glad that my schooling and residency will soon be complete and I can then concentrate on being properly married off. He doesn’t say it quite like this, but it concerns him that I will be twenty-three in January and I’ve no suitors. Maggie has Palmer Towlerton calling at the house now, and Willa is forever talking about the boys she likes. But I spend all my waking hours at an asylum full of the mentally ill. Not a suitable place to find a husband. Papa’s words, not mine.
It’s not that I don’t want to be married. I do. But I want to experience again that electrified sensation I felt with Gilbert all those years ago, when the way he looked at me made my heart flutter. That feeling had been real and wonderful and different and very new. I had only just started to love Gilbert when the flu snatched him away from me.
I remember what it was like, though. I remember how that sensation swirled inside me for those months I was the new girl and Gilbert was still alive. I knew I had sampled something rare and divine.
I think if Mama were here she’d tell Papa not to worry about me. Ihave my studies. I have my work. I have Papa and Maggie and Willa and dear Alex. And I have my memories of what that first bloom of romance is like. Sometimes I think I can hear her voice assuring me that she is proud of who I am. Other times I’m convinced it is only my own voice inside, telling me I don’t need anything else—or anyone else—for my life to be complete. I came through the crucible, and it did not reduce me to ashes.
I survived.
