Chapter 1
Chicago, Illinois
Dr. Carrie Vogel read through the American Journal of Insanity for the latest articles and information on brain conditions and disorders.
When she reached page six, she froze, unable to believe what she was seeing.
She scanned the article not once but twice, flipping the page back and forth as if the words might change.
All her life, Carrie had been fascinated with medicine and healing.
About the age of twelve, she started reading everything she could get her hands on about medicine, and she helped Mama tend wounds and deliver babies.
She advanced through school quickly, and by the time she’d reached sixteen, she was ready for college, just as her younger brother Daniel was now.
It had taken some doing to talk her parents into allowing her to leave home and attend a women’s college.
It was an even harder time getting the college to accept her at such a young age, but after testing her both on paper and orally, everyone acquiesced.
Carrie was something of a prodigy, and the college was suddenly excited to welcome her.
Carrie had wondered if her birth mother might have lived had there been a better doctor.
But as she studied more and received intense training, she found her interests led her away from women’s birthing needs and instead sent her to the brain.
Few understood her passion for neuroscience and brain trauma, but since first hearing about Phineas Gage, Carrie had known this would be her field of interest.
In 1848, Gage had been a twenty-five-year-old railroad foreman when a large tamping bar ripped through his head.
It entered just below his left cheek, flew up behind his eye and out the top of his skull, destroying much of his left frontal lobe.
Even more amazing, he lived to tell about it for a dozen years after that fateful day.
The great “American Crowbar Case,” as it was often referenced, was a topic doctors discussed at length had they any interest whatsoever in the brain.
Carrie had been a second-year student at the Women’s Medical College in Chicago not so many years ago.
The doctor speaking had been one of her favorite professors.
He was an older man in his sixties with a passion for the brain and the medical conditions that involved it.
Dr. Ambrose Willaby had been his name, and his reputation was known far and wide.
He had worked with the very team of doctors who had treated Gage.
When he taught about Gage, he was intricate in his information, explaining everything and drawing out the details.
“Mr. Gage was working with black powder, and the tamping bar sparked an explosion. Mr. Gage had his mouth open to speak when the bar, some one and a quarter inches in diameter and three feet-seven inches long ripped through the left side of his face at a point just forward of the mandible and outside the maxilla. It proceeded behind the left occipital orbit in an upward trajectory and into the left frontal lobe of the brain. It exited out of the cranium, flying approximately eighty feet away. When retrieved, the tamp bar showed both blood and brain matter.”
Carrie remembered Phineas Gage had suffered only momentary unconsciousness and a brief seizure.
He had quickly settled and begun talking to the men around him.
On his way to the doctor, he even wrote notes in his foreman’s ledger.
His resilience had baffled and drawn interest from people far and wide.
Carrie knew it was difficult enough to be a woman physician. People seemed tolerant of a female doctor tending to women and their complaints, but one who wanted to work in brain research was an object of scorn or amusement.
Thankfully, Carrie had found Dr. Oswald Nelson felt differently.
Oswald was a gentle soul whose work and studies of the brain had been going on for a lot longer than Carrie’s.
In fact, he was fifteen years her senior and had, like her, gone to college at a young age.
Both were superb in their studies, making perfect marks, and both had a great passion for medicine.
The most troublesome difference was that Carrie was a woman and Oswald, a man.
His interest was applauded and hailed as brilliant, while Carrie was often condemned for her unnatural fascination with the sciences.
She tolerated people’s attitudes toward her interest but had never stopped longing for a day when her work as a doctor could be as equally respected as Oswald’s.
Now, however, it didn’t look like that was ever going to happen. She looked back at the article in the journal and felt a surge of bitter anger. Betrayal! Oswald had taken her work and published it as his own. Again.
How could he do such an abominable thing? They were engaged to be married. They worked side by side at his research clinic. He constantly sought her opinion and had convinced her that he respected her as an equal.
Carrie had worked for over a year with a thirteen-year-old girl who had received horrific brain damage after a carriage accident.
Her skull had been crushed on one side, but the impact had shifted the brain, causing damage on the other side as well.
Once the patient stabilized and it became clear she would live, most of her doctors gave up believing she would ever be able to do anything.
She had lost her ability to speak, didn’t seem to recognize her family, and reverted in many ways to an infantile-like state.
But Carrie worked with her, keeping meticulous notes and experimenting with various therapies to help the child reclaim her skills.
Little by little, her recovery was remarkable.
Carrie had shared the details with Oswald. She was convinced that because of the girl’s youth, the brain had been able to redirect impulses and heal itself. Her speculation on how this was managed had been of great interest to other doctors, and Oswald had taken credit for all of her work.
Letting out a primal grunt of disgust, Carrie threw the journal across her office, slamming it against the open door. Her rage didn’t stop there. She’d had it. She was done with Oswald and his lies. He’d taken credit for her research on at least four other occasions. Enough was enough.
She reached for a stack of books and papers, uncertain what to do.
For the moment, she figured to go home to her little apartment, which unfortunately happened to be in the same building as Oswald’s.
No doubt as soon as he learned she was gone, he’d seek her out, and she had no desire to ever see him again. Not even to denounce his actions.
She glanced at the top of her desk and swept most of the contents into the right top drawer and locked it. With her anger still mounting, Carrie knew she needed to leave before she took it out on the other workers.
But it was too late. The noise had already attracted attention, and someone had obviously gone to the lab to tell Oswald because he now stood in her doorway.
“Whatever is wrong, my love?”
Carrie stopped and pointed at him. “You! You are what’s wrong. How dare you?”
He gave her a confused expression and drew his hand to his chest. “What have I done to upset you like this?” He moved to close the door and noted the journal on the floor. Without a word, he picked it up.
“You stole my work. You took credit for my research and my insight. You took my discoveries from the months I’ve spent with patients and claimed it for your own.”
He closed the door and turned to face her. His soft expression was gone, and instead, it was replaced by the determined look Carrie knew all too well.
“My dear, we’ve spoken of this before. You are a woman and new to this field. I am a longtime veteran, and the industry knows my name well. No one is going to listen to you as a researcher. I’m really doing you a favor.”
“Well, your favor has changed my mind about everything.” She reached for a carpet bag that she often used to transport books back and forth from her home to the office.
There wasn’t a great deal of research done on the type of things she hoped to learn, but through the years she’d managed to accumulate some helpful material, and she wasn’t about to leave it for Oswald Nelson to use or dispose of.
“You’re obviously upset, and I understand. Why don’t we go enjoy a sumptuous dinner and talk about this in a calmer environment.”
Carrie stopped again and looked at him. “I am a good doctor. I was the top of my class.”
“A class for women.”
“It’s a highly regarded college. You’ve said so yourself on many occasions.”
He smirked. It was the one thing he knew better than to do, and Carrie found the last bit of respect she had for him dwindle away.
“Carrie, you’re upset, and in time you’ll see that this was all for the best.”
“What I see is a man who has clearly come to the end of his ability to find his own discoveries. Therefore, I quit. Not only this job, I quit you. There is no love where there is no trust.”
“Now, stop being a child and think about this. We make an incredible team. Your research and my fame will take us far. People will give credence to what you believe, and the discoveries you make will be placed in the archives of education for the future. You cannot accomplish that on your own. No one is going to listen to you, and if you leave me, I’ll make sure they don’t. ”