The Select

by F. Paul Wilson

  Obviously Tim had. Probably could tell her the page and paragraph where he'd read about it. God, she wished she had a memory like that. Wouldn't that be great? Like having an optical CD-ROM reader in your head.

  She stared at those little blackened boxes. They weren't her answers. She felt queasy about handing them in.

  Instinctively, Quinn reversed her pencil and moved to erase them. She had always done her own work, always stood on her own two feet. She wasn't going to change that now.

  Almost of its own accord, her pencil froze, the eraser poised half an inch above the paper.

  Her whole future was at stake here. This was real life. The nitty-gritty. Doing "good enough" wouldn't cut it; there were just so many places the next class. Fifty, to be exact. She had to score in the top fifty.

  The Kleederman questions could mean the difference between acceptance and rejection.

  And she didn't have a clue as to how to answer them.

  But still...they weren't her answers.

  As she lowered the eraser to the paper, the proctor's voice cut through the silence.

  "Time's up. Pencils down. Any more marks and your test will be disqualified."

  *

  Tim stood with Matt around the central pond and waited for Quinn to come out of the class building. A chill wind had come up, scraping dead leaves along the concrete walks. He pulled his jacket closer around him. Winter was knocking.

  Finally she showed up, walking slow. He wondered at her grim expression.

  "How'd you do?" Matt asked.

  Quinn shrugged. "You ever hear of the Kleederman equation?"

  "Sure," Tim said. "It's—"

  "I know you did." The look she tossed him was anything but friendly. "I want to know about Matt."

  That look unsettled Tim. He'd thought he'd be her knight in shining armor. What was eating her?

  Matt scratched his head. "It has to do with distribution of medical services among an expanding population."

  "You've heard of it too? You've both heard of it?" She shook her head in dismay. "Why haven't I? Three questions and I couldn't even guess at an answer."

  "Cheer up," Tim said. "You got two of them right, anyway. At least I hope they were right."

  Her head snapped up. Her expression was fierce. Her eyes flashed as she looked into his.

  "No. You got two of them right. Not me. I didn't have a clue. I don't hand in other people's work, Tim."

  He groaned. "Oh, no. You didn't erase them, did you?"

  There was pain in her eyes now. "No. I didn't. And I'm not too proud of myself for that."

  She turned and walked off toward the dorm. Tim started after her but stopped after two steps. He wanted to be with her but what was the use? She'd put up a wall.

  "You marked a couple of answers on her sheet?" Matt said.

  "Yeah. They were blank. Thought I was doing her a favor." He didn't want to show it—didn't even want to admit it—but he was hurt, damn it "Boy, I just can't win with her."

  "With 999 other people you'd be a hero. But Quinn's got her own set of rules. You tested on her own standards and she feels she failed."

  Tim was jolted. "Jesus..."

  "Didn't I tell you she's one of a kind?"

  "You got that right. Kind of old-fashioned, though, don't you think?"

  "Yeah," Matt said softly. "She's an old-fashioned girl."

  "I didn't think there were any of those left."

  To his dismay Tim realized he was becoming enthralled with Quinn Cleary.

  SPRING BREAK

  Adrix (adriazepam), the new non-habituating benzodiazepine with strong anti-depressant properties from Kleederman Pharmaceuticals, has quickly become the most widely prescribed tranquilizer in the world.

  Medical World News

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In what had become a daily ritual, Quinn sat on her window seat in her cozy little bedroom, raised the binoculars, and aimed them across the front yard toward the end of the driveway. And with each new day the suspense grew. It had swollen to a Hitchcockian level now.

  The front yard wasn't much—a hundred feet deep, rimmed with oaks and elms, filled with laurel and natural brush, and a patch of winter-brown grass. Pretty drab and lifeless now, but soon spring would bring the forsythia into buttery bloom and then there'd be lots of color. The house was old, the foundation even older—the first stones had been placed a century and a half ago. The superstructure had been built and rebuilt a number of times since then. The current structure had been completed sometime in the Roaring Twenties. Over the years Quinn had lined her little bedroom nest with photos, pennants, posters, honor certificates, medals and trophies from her seasons as a high school track star. And many a night she had spent fantasizing about the children who had occupied the room before her, where they were now, what they had done with their lives.

  They hadn't all stayed farmers, she was sure of that.

  The farm. The acres stretched out behind the house. Lots of land. If this kind of acreage were situated near the coast, or better yet, along the inner reaches of Long Island Sound, they'd be rich. Millionaires. Developers would be banging on their door wanting to buy it for subdivision. But not here in the hinterlands of northeast Connecticut.

  The farm had changed crops since Quinn was a child, and that had changed the look of the place. Dad grew hay, potatoes, and corn now, but back in the seventies the Cleary place had been a tobacco farm—shade-grown tobacco, for cigar wrappers. Quinn had helped work the farm then, feeding the chickens, milking the cows, sweeping out the barns. All of that had stopped when she went off to college. She no longer thought of herself as a farm girl, but she could still remember summer days looking out the door at acres of pale muslins undulating in the afternoon breeze as they shielded the tender leaves of the tobacco plants from the direct rays of the sun.

  Thinking of those fields of white triggered the memory of another color. Red...blood red.

  It had been in the spring. Quinn had just turned seven and she was out in the fields watching the hands work. A couple of the men were stretching the wire from post to post while the others followed, draping the muslin between the wires. Suddenly one of the men—Jerry, they called him—shouted in pain and fell to the ground, clutching at his upper leg. He'd pulled the wire too tight and it had snapped back, gashing his thigh. He lay in the dirt, white faced as he stared at the blood leaking out from under his fingers. Then he fainted. And with the relaxation of the pressure from his hands, a stream of bright red sprayed into the air, glinting in the sun with each pulsating arc. One of the men had already run for help, but the other three simply stood around their fallen fellow in shock, silent, staring.

  Quinn, too, stared, but only for a heartbeat or two. She knew Jerry would be dead in no time if someone didn't stop his bleeding—you couldn't grow up on a farm without knowing that. As she watched the spurting blood, the story of the little Dutch boy flashed through her mind. She leaped forward and did the equivalent of putting her finger in the dike.

  The blood had been hot and slippery. The feel of the torn flesh made her woozy at first, but she knelt there and kept her finger in the dike until Dad had come with a first-aid kit and a tourniquet.

  For a while people referred to her as the gutsy little girl who'd saved Jerry's life. The accolades faded, but the incident had a lingering effect. It had swung open a door and allowed Quinn to peer through and view a part of herself. She had done something. Because of her, life would go on with Jerry around; if she had done nothing, he would have died. Up to that time she'd had a vague image of her future self as a veterinarian, caring for the livestock on the family farm and all over Windham county. From then on there was never a question in Quinn's mind that one day she would be a doctor.

  Quinn shook off the memories and focused the binocs on the mailbox where it sat on its post in the afternoon sun. The red flag was still up. She lowered the glasses and tapped an impatient foot.

  Where is he?

  "Is t
here no mail yet?"

  Quinn turned at the sound of her mother's voice, still touched with the lilt of her native Ireland. She was standing in the doorway, a pile of folded towels balanced in her arms. Quinn had inherited Dad's lean, straight-up-and-down body type and Mom's fair skin and high coloring. How many times had she wished things were reversed? Her mother was fair-haired, too, but with a womanly shape, a good bust and feminine hips—she was only in her mid-forties and she still turned heads when she was out shopping. Dad was built like a beanpole but his skin type never blushed.

  It seemed to Quinn that she had wound up with the leftovers of her gene pool.

  "Henry's late today."

  "He'll get here," Mom said. "A watched pot never boils."

  Yes it does, Quinn wanted to say. And an unwatched pot boils over. Instead she nodded and said, "I know."

  No sense arguing with Mom's Old Sayings.

  "I'm very proud of you," her mother said. "Who'd have ever dreamed when you were born that my little baby girl would be in demand by the finest medical schools in the world."

  Sure. Great. She'd heard from Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown. All acceptances. All wanted her. Which was fine for her ego but didn't get her any closer to being a doctor. Each called for twenty- to twenty-five thousand dollars a year. She couldn't come up with even half of that.

  Quinn said nothing. What could she say? Her father broke his back every day working this farm and what did it get him? He met expenses. Food, clothes, seeing to the cars, repairing the machinery, insurance, mortgage payments pretty much took it all. If she hadn't won a full ride at U. Conn, she'd never even have come this far.

  Dad's ego had taken a real beating during the past dozen or so years, so she couldn't even hint at how she'd die inside if she couldn't go to med school. It would crush him.

  But Mom knew. And although her mother never said it, Quinn suspected she was secretly glad they couldn't afford it. But not through any malice. She'd probably hurt for Quinn as much as Quinn would hurt for herself. But Mom had her own agenda, her own reasons for wanting Quinn home. And none of it made any sense to Quinn.

  "It's got to come today," she said, raising the glasses again. She wished there weren't so many trees out by the road so she could spot the white mail jeep as it rounded the curve half a mile down. The way things were, she had to wait until he was within a dozen feet of the box before she saw him.

  "Don't be forgetting the old saying," her mother said. "Be careful what you wish for—you may just get it."

  Quinn kept her face toward the window so her mother wouldn't see her rolling her eyes. That was Mom's favorite Old Saying.

  "If I get what I'm wishing for I'll be really, really careful," Quinn said. "I promise."

  The phone rang.

  "I'll get it," Quinn said.

  She dashed down to the kitchen and grabbed the receiver off the wall. It was Matt.

  "Quinn! Did you hear yet?"

  "No, Matt. No mail yet today."

  He'd called every day this week, ever since he'd received his acceptance to The Ingraham. She wished she could tell him to sit back and wait until she called him, but he was pulling for her, almost as anxious as she.

  "Damn. You said it's usually here by this time."

  "I probably won't hear today either."

  "Maybe. But when it comes, it'll be a yes. Has to be. How could The Ingraham turn you down when Harvard and all those others want you? You're in, Quinn. No sweat. So don't worry. It can't go any other way."

  Then why are you calling every day? she wanted to say.

  "If you say so."

  She wished she could share Matt's optimism. Maybe then she wouldn't feel like an overwound spring. And every day her insides seemed to wind tighter.

  Matt had heard last Saturday. Here it was Friday and she still hadn't. Every passing day had to decrease her chances.

  "I don't..." The words caught in her throat but she managed to force them out. "...think I made it."

  "No way, Quinn. That's—"

  "Look, Matt. You've got to figure all the acceptances went out in one wave. It's not like they were mailing two thousand of them. There's only fifty spots. And it's not like I live in California. I mean, you're in New Haven and I'm in the boonies, but we're both in Connecticut. So let's face it, Matt. The acceptances all went out and I wasn't in there."

  "I don't believe that, Quinn. And neither does Tim."

  "Tim?"

  "Yeah. He's staying over for some golf and a sortie to the reservation casino."

  The memory of the exam last December, the answers Tim had marked on her sheet, and how she'd passed them in still rankled. She'd resented him—and her own weakness—for a long time. Now it didn't seem to matter.

  Unless they'd been wrong answers.

  "Matt...did Tim...make it?"

  She was almost afraid to hear his reply.

  "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 suppo
sed 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.