The Select (9 page)

She threw off the
frisson
.

"Mom, you haven't had any, uh, visions
about me, have you?"

Mom stirred honey into her tea. "No.
Nothing like that. Just a...feeling. Especially that Ingraham
place. Giving you everything free. That
seems...unnatural."

She was sounding a bit like
Matt.

"Well," Quinn said, "I don't think you
have to worry now. Nothing bad is going to happen to me at med
school."

Saying those words, med school,
triggered a pain in her chest. Crying it out, talking it out,
having a cup of tea with her mother had helped her put aside the
crushing loss. But only for a moment.

"I've got to call Matt," Quinn said
around the newly formed lump in her throat. Which was the last
thing she wanted to do. She hadn't made it and he had. So had Tim.
She felt humiliated, ashamed. But might as well grit her teeth and
get it over with. "He's waiting to hear from me."

*

Tim sat in Matt's bedroom and watched
his friend hang up the phone. He stared at it accusingly, as if it
had lied to him. After a moment he turned and faced Tim.

"They turned her down," he said, his
voice hushed. "The Ingraham fucking College of fucking Medicine
turned down Quinn Cleary. I don't believe it."

Tim already had gathered that from
what he'd just overheard. He felt a pang, almost like a soldier
who'd just lost a comrade. His hurt, he realized, was a little
selfish: He'd been looking forward to spending some time with
Quinn.

"Doesn't seem right," Tim said. "I
mean, I don't know her as well as you, but she strikes me as
someone who was born to be a doctor."

"Damn right," Matt said,
his lips thinning as he spoke—Tim could tell he was getting angry
now. "What the hell's wrong with them, anyway? Turning down
Quinn—what kind of bullshit is that? Where are their heads? What
are they
thinking
about? Do they have any idea what they've just done to her
life?"

"Probably not," Tim said.
"They—-"

Matt stood up and kicked his wicker
wastebasket against the far wall, then began to stalk the room. No
mean distance, that. Matt's bedroom was the size of the living room
in Tim's home, which wasn't exactly a shack.

"Damn, this pisses me off! I've had
reservations about that place from the start, all their prissy
rules and regulations, but this ices the cake! If they don't want
Quinn Cleary, I've got to ask myself if The Ingraham even knows
what the hell it's doing."

"And what's worse," Tim
said, silently tipping his hat to Groucho Marx as he tried to
lighten things up a bit, "they accepted me. I'm not even
sure
I
want to go
to a medical school that'll take me as a student."

Matt didn't smile. "I'm not kidding,
Tim. I'd like to turn those bastards down, just for
spite."

Tim saw that he was serious, and the
seed of a scheme began to germinate in his mind.

"Hold that thought," he told
Matt.

SUMMER

Fenostatin (Hypolip - Kleederman
Pharm.) has surpassed lovastatin as the number-one selling
lipid-lowering agent in the world. In long-term clinical studies it
has consistently lowered LDL by 50% and trigycerides by 40% while
raising HDL by as much as 60% with a daily 10 mg. dose, without the
risk of rhabdomyolysis or alterations in liver function studies
seen with other HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors.

Medical Tribune

CHAPTER SIX

"Ingraham Admissions, Marge
speaking. How may I help you?"

"Hi, Marge. It's Quinn
Cleary."

"Quinn! How are you,
dear?"

"Still hanging in there. Any
word?"

"No, honey. I'm sorry.
Nobody's called. As I told you, it's very rare that someone turns
down an acceptance here. I've been here ten years now and I can
only remember two. And one of those had a serious neck injury that
was going to lay him up for a year."

"I know. But I can still hope, can't
I?"

"And we're hoping right
along with you, sweetheart. Listen, you know if it was up to us
we'd have you in here in a jiffy."

"That's nice, Marge.
Thanks."

"It's the truth. Look. You
keep calling, you hear? I can't call you—I have to account for my
outgoing long distances, and they'd kick my butt out of here for
something like that— hell, they might even do that yet if they find
out I told you your spot on the wait list."

Quinn had been crushed to
hear she was eleventh on the list. Even if she were first or second
her chances of getting in were slim to none. But
eleventh
...

"They won't hear it from me,
Marge."

"I know that, dear. But
there's no law says you can't call again. So don't you hesitate a
minute."

"Thanks, Marge. I appreciate that.
Talk to you soon."

"Any time, Quinn, honey.
Any time."

Quinn shook her head as she hung up.
Couldn't be too many applicants who got to know the Admissions
Office staff on a first-name basis. She'd called so many times
since spring break she actually felt close to those secretaries.
Couldn't hurt. Just too bad they didn't decide who got
in.

August was boiling the potato fields
outside and baking her here in the kitchen. She yawned and rubbed
her burning eyes. She was beat—mental fatigue more than anything
else. She was working her usual two waitress jobs plus hustling
after student loans from anyone who had money to lend. She'd even
tracked down a Connecticut Masonic Lodge with a student loan
program. She spent her free hours filling out applications and
financial statements until she was bleary eyed.

Money was tight. The bankers she spoke
to said student loans had been easier years ago, but with the
economy the way it was and the ongoing trouble some of the
Government programs were having with deadbeats, a lot of the funds
had dried up. And they all told her the same thing: All the purse
strings would loosen considerably once she reached her third year
in med school; she'd have passed through the flames of the first
two years when the shakeout occurred, when those who couldn't cut
it were culled out, and would then be considered an excellent
financial risk. But that didn't do much for her now.

There was still the Navy. It was
beginning to look as if they were going to approve her for their
program. If so, they'd pay her way through med school, but in
return they'd want her to take a Navy residency in the specialty
she chose plus a year-for-year payback—one year of service for
every year of medical education they funded.

So that was Quinn's situation on this
steamy summer morning. If she was approved for the Navy plan, she'd
get her degree in exchange for six-to-eight years of her life. A
stiff price, but at least it was a sure thing.

The other course was riskier: gamble
that she could scrape together the tuition for the U. Conn school
on a year-by-year basis through work, loans, and anything else she
could think of, and come out of medical school seventy-five or
eighty thousand dollars in debt.

The panic and heartbreak of March were
gone. She'd got her act together and devised a plan. Her dream had
not been snatched from her as she'd thought on that awful day,
merely pulled further away. She'd get there; she simply was going
to have to work a lot harder to reach it.

But getting into The Ingraham would be
so much better. She'd be able to devote all her efforts to the
massive amount of learning that had to be done and not worry about
chasing after tuition dollars. Or she wouldn't be stuck in a Navy
uniform, doing whatever they told her to do, going wherever they
sent her.

She sighed. The Ingraham...she still
got low when she thought about what she'd be missing. Here it was
the middle of August and no one who'd been accepted was going
elsewhere.

Better get used to it, she told
herself.

*

"I'm not going to The Ingraham," Matt
said.

Tim sat up and stared at
him.

"Bullshit."

They were stretched out on white and
canary-yellow PVC loungers beside the Olympic-sized pool in Matt's
back lawn. Each had a tall gin and Bitter Lemon on the ground
beside his chair, a pile of fresh-baked nachos cooled on the Lucite
table between them. Tim had been drifting slowly away on a soft
golden mellow wave.

"No, I mean it," Matt said, keeping
his eyes closed against the glare of the sun. "I told you there
were all those things I didn't like about the place. But I sloughed
them off. I mean, The Ingraham is such an ego trip. Then the other
night my father sits me down and says he and Mom really wish I'd
consider going to Yale."

"Yeah, but Yale isn't offering you any
incentives."

"They don't care. My father went to
Yale and Yale Law, my grandfather too, and I hadn't realized how
much the place means to him. And my mom...I think she just wants me
closer than Maryland."

Tim felt bad. Hot. Suddenly the sun
was getting to him. Hell, he was so comfortable with Matt, and now
the guy was dumping him, which he knew was not really the
case.

Tim tried to imagine his folks telling
him to kiss off over a hundred thousand bucks worth of tuition,
room and board just to attend NYU where his father had gone to
night school. Fat chance.

"What did the Ingraham folks say when
you told them?"

"Haven't yet," Matt said. "I've been
trying to figure a way to slip Quinn into my spot. Think I could
demand that they substitute Quinn for me?"

"Yeah, right," Tim said. "That'll
work. They'll jump her over ten names on your say so."

"You got a better idea?"

"I might." A half-formed scenario had
been lurking in the back of his mind since the spring.

"Well, let's have it. I need the input
of that devious mind."

"Give me a minute."

Tim lay back and closed his
eyes.

The Ingraham...he'd really been
looking forward to having Matt around, even finagling him as a
cadaver partner. All down the tubes now. But that did
leave...

Quinn.

He'd spoken to her twice this summer.
She'd seemed a little friendlier each time, but still reserved.
Perhaps on guard said it better. He'd tried to wrangle a date but
she'd always been too busy with her jobs or her tuition hunting. If
he could come up with a way to get her into The
Ingraham...

What had she said during that last
call? Something about how she'd become best friends with the
Admissions Office staff, how they were all pulling for
her.

He bolted upright on the
lounge.

"I've got it!"

Matt opened his eyes, squinting up at
him.

"Yeah? What do we do? What do I tell
The Ingraham?"

"The first thing is you tell The
Ingraham nothing. The second is hand me that phone. I have to call
Ms. Quinn Cleary."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Quinn felt awkward, uncomfortable,
scared too about this off-the-wall scheme, yet she felt she had no
choice but to accept Tim's offer to drive her down to Maryland. He
raced along 95 in a gray 1985 Olds Cierra that he seemed to love.
He even had a name for it.

"Griffin?" she said when he told her
the name. "Why a griffin?"

"Not
a
griffin. Just 'Griffin.' The gray
1985 Olds Cierra is the invisible car. GM sold a zillion of them,
or Buicks and Pontis that look just like it. I've parked this car
in some terrible neighborhoods and it's never been touched. Nobody
wants to steal it or bother it—nobody even
sees
it. So I named it Griffin,
which, if you know your H. G. Wells, is the—"

"Name of the Invisible Man." She
smiled. Griffin—the Invisible Car. She liked that.

After checking Tim's name on a list,
the guard in the gatehouse raised the gate and admitted him to The
Ingraham's student lot. Stiff and achy as she was after almost six
hours of confined sitting, Quinn didn't move from her seat when
they pulled into a parking slot. She stared ahead at the tight
cluster of beige brick and stone buildings that made up The
Ingraham. She hardly recognized the place. The trees had shed most
of their leaves the last time, now the oaks and maples were lush
and green. She watched a couple of new students hurry up the slope
to register.

They've got to take me,
she thought. They've just
got
to.

"Here we are," Tim said, glancing at
his watch. "Right on schedule."

"Do you think this has even a slight
chance to work?"

"Of course. The plan was designed by
the Master Plotter. It cannot fail."

"If you say so."