Chapter 2
PRESENT DAY
JULIA
While the doctor read her chart, Julia swiveled in the white leather chair to admire the view from the fifty-second floor of this perfectly placed corner office that faced southwest from the heart of downtown Seattle.
The view stretched out before her—a breathtaking panorama of Puget Sound and Mount Rainier. Good thing Dad paid for this visit.
The doctor cleared her throat, closed Julia’s file, and studied her over the top of red reading glasses.
After sizing her up, the doctor stood from her desk and went to sit opposite Julia in a matching chair.
The doctor wore a flowing blue linen dress and a white shawl; her wrists and neck jangled with colorful bracelets and chains.
On someone else, these accessories would have appeared garish, but somehow, the doctor pulled it off.
Julia decided it was partly because of her Asian beauty, but more from her reputation and mystique as a psychiatrist. Julia’s father had said he’d only send her to the finest shrink.
So far, Julia approved of his choice; in fact, as she looked at the doctor, it struck her that she might be looking at herself, forty years from now.
I should be so lucky to age so well. Then she smiled, glancing at her own outfit.
On this day, Julia wore ripped jeans and a tank top.
Although she usually dressed with conventional tidiness, today’s outfit broadcast a pointed rebellion against this evaluation.
She did not believe she needed to see a shrink.
The doctor said nothing, just nodded pleasantly as if waiting for Julia to speak.
Julia crossed her legs and cleared her throat.
Despite being firmly on the path to becoming a doctor, she couldn’t help but loathe them.
She especially detested psychiatrists. She found them cloyingly nice, surreptitiously trying to catch you off guard, secretly analyzing you, and threatening to expose your deepest secrets.
Julia looked away from the doctor’s gaze and out the window at the view. She remembered a cartoon a student had pinned on the bulletin board in her dorm at med school. The old “Far Side” cartoon featured a woman facing a therapist, whose notepad prominently displayed the phrase “Just Plain Nuts.”
In part, that’s what worried Julia. Maybe I am crazy.
“I love your pearls.” The doctor finally said.
Startled, Julia turned from the window and touched her right ear. She’d forgotten she’d worn the Mikimoto pearl earrings, with a hint of luminescent pink that her father had given her at Christmas. What a fine accessory with ragged jeans and a tank top. Double protest, Dad!
Julia meant to thank the doctor; instead, she said, “What a view you have!”
“I never take it for granted.” The doctor turned to admire it. “Sometimes I worry that it’s too distracting.” She smiled gracefully at Julia.
Julia wondered what a high-end practice like this might be like.
Just paying rent, the practice would have to be a money-generating machine.
She hated that about medicine. Now when you call a doctor’s office, it’s no longer, “How are you? What can we do for you?” The first question is a blunt, “How are you going to pay for this visit?”
Near Pioneer Square stood a small free clinic, operated by medical students. It seemed to be the only place where Julia dreamed she could actually practice medicine.
“Julia, why are you here?”
Julia jumped slightly. She’d been tightly wound for months. Truth be told, ever since the first day of medical school.
“Dear, why are you here?” the doctor repeated.
Julia could feel a flush of anger in her neck. “I told my father I wanted to drop out of medical school, and he said, ‘You need to see a psychiatrist.’”
The doctor covered her mouth with her hand and choked back a cough. “Just like that? That’s how he said it?”
“Word for word.”
The doctor nodded and pursed her lips. “I bet that helped.”
“Right?” Julia exhaled deeply for the first time since she’d stepped onto the fifty-second floor.
“How about you?” the doctor asked. “You think you need to be here?”
Julia scoffed. “I guess. Maybe I am just crazy.” There, she said it.
The doctor’s smile disappeared. “Do you think you’re crazy?”
Tears filled Julia’s eyes. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
That made the doctor chuckle. She put her notepad on a nearby table, folded her hands, and leaned in toward her. “Remember, Julia, I too am Asian with an overbearing father who is a doctor. Let this one soak in for a minute—I am a fifth-generation physician. Can you imagine the pressure?”
The word pressure broke the dam, and Julia’s tears rolled down her cheeks. She bent over holding her face in her hands. Her mascara would smear, but she didn’t care. Her protest shattered. She’d held her confident facade for way too long.
The doctor said nothing, and through her tears, Julia saw her five-year-old self confused and afraid at the family’s baby grand. Her piano instructor slapped the back of her hands with a ruler for the fourth time, and her mother stood behind them with her lips pursed and arms crossed.
“I hate this stupid medical school,” Julia blurted out, as more tears flowed.
The doctor let her weep while she stood up, pulled several tissues from a decorative glass dispenser on her desk, and gave them to Julia, along with a small hand mirror.
Julia welcomed the gesture and dabbed at the black mascara streaking her eyelids and cheeks.
“I am Asian too, you know,” the doctor said in a mock accent and chuckled.
The laughter made Julia feel more balanced than she had for months.
“Thank you.” Julia wiped more tears.
The doctor put a hand on Julia’s knee. “Tell me about your first year. Did you hate all of it?”
Julia blew out a loud breath and shook her head. “I don’t know, yes…maybe, I don’t know,” she stumbled for an answer.
“Why did you choose medicine?”
“My father forbade me to help in the family import company. He said it was too corrupt. He left me no other choice. I am Japanese after all.” Julia sat up straight and waved her hands by her face.
The doctor laughed. “I understand,” she said. “Has he not seen medicine lately?”
This made Julia chuckle. Maybe they had more in common than she thought.
“What part of medicine do you hate?”
Julia rested her chin on her hand. “It probably started on the first day…the whole cutting into dead people thing.”
“Anatomy lab?” The doctor nodded. “Yes, and why I went into psychiatry.”
“I don’t know,” Julia mused. “I just hate all the pressure. No one in my family is a physician and I’m not sure they understand.” She bobbed her head and looked up at the ceiling. “I had no idea what you doctors went through.” She wiped at a recalcitrant tear.
“The University of Washington School of Medicine is known for its rigorous academia,” the doctor said.
“Some have even said it’s a bit sadistic, but most medical schools are.
It’s just the nature of the beast, with so much to learn and so little time.
Is there any part of medicine that you do enjoy? ”
“I really like helping people,” Julia said without hesitation. “We staff the free Agape Clinic in Pioneer Square. It just feels…pure, I guess.”
The doctor leaned back and gave her a deep, probing look. Julia tried to look away, but before she could, the doctor said, “I believe we’re going to spend lots of time talking about school. I promise we’ll get it all figured out.”
Julia scoffed at her optimism, but quickly hoped it had gone unnoticed.
“I promise,” the doctor said. “Your grades are amazing. Near the top of your class, so forgive me, but I sense there is more. When your father called, he made it clear how deeply concerned he’s been about you, particularly over the last few weeks.
Is there something else I should be worried about, Julia? ”
This is exactly why Julia had almost canceled the appointment. She didn’t want to talk about this.
She looked at her sandals and wiped new tears.
Then she glanced up at the concerned doctor, trying to figure out if she could really trust the woman.
“I’m late,” Julia murmured. It came out so unexpectedly, it made her body tremble and opened a new flood gate. “My god, what am I going to do if I’m pregnant? My parents are going to kill me.” Her body shook with grief.
The doctor stood up instantly and wrapped her arms around Julia. Julia tucked her head into the doctor’s chest, safe for a moment.
Then she sprang apart with fury. “The worst part is the guy is such an ass,” Julia bawled with anger. “He’s one of the guys in my class. After…” she searched for words. “We were lying there together. He called me his little geisha girl.” The words made her so furious she could hardly spit them out.
She wept, and almost gagged. The doctor pulled her back into her arms. Safety enveloped her once again.
Then Julia pulled away. “I’m so sorry” Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I’m so hot,” she muttered and fanned herself with the wet tissues.
The doctor returned to her seat but said nothing.
Julia shook her head slowly. “Why did I sleep with him?” she moaned.
The doctor let her process the question for a few agonizing minutes and then repeated it. “Yes, Julia, why did you sleep with him?”
“I guess I wanted to. At least a part of me did.” She cleared her throat and swallowed. “I mean, he’s super buff and good looking…and pretty charming.” She smiled shyly. “He wants to be an orthopedic surgeon.”
“Oh yes, I know the type.” The doctor returned the smile. “How was the sex?”
The question shocked Julia, and she covered her mouth with her hand, ignoring the inquiry. She’d never talked with anyone, not even her best friend, about sex, and for sure, never with her mother. No way! Whatever she knew about it came from a handful of experiences and the internet.
She lowered her hand and said, “I don’t want you to think I’m like…that.” The returning anger flushed her neck.
“You mean that you’re a sexual being, Julia?” the doctor asked without judgment.
“Do all your patients talk to you about these things?”
“Well, the brave ones do…and Julia, I think you are being very brave. In fact, you are smart and beautiful and I’m sure there has been lots of pressure on you in this regard.”
Pressure…there is that word again.
The doctor cleared her throat. “I used to attribute the reluctance of talking about such things to being Asian, but looking back, it was more about my own sense of shame. But shame around sexuality surrounds all of us. All of us,” she repeated for emphasis, “men and women.” She toggled her head from side to side, “Except maybe your orthopedic friend.”
Julia knew she must have looked confused as the doctor continued.
“Shame is the number one stifler in the lives of my patients. It hits at our identity more than any other emotion. And confusion around our sexuality is the number one engine of shame.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Julia whispered.
“We’ll get into it more, but think of it like this; if I do something I perceive is wrong, my thoughts can often go from ‘I did bad’ to ‘I am bad.’ Shame may be part of what is driving your confusion over your career choice.”
Julia nodded tentatively.
“We’ll start by exploring all the parts that make up Julia.”
“Parts?”
The doctor smiled. “We humans all have multiple personalities.”
“See, I knew I’m crazy,” Julia nodded vigorously. “We learned about multiple personality disorder.”
“Well, that’s the extreme end of the spectrum.
I think of it more as different parts of our personality.
One part of you wanted to sleep with studly and another part didn’t.
One part of you wants to be a doctor, and another part wants you to run away.
Now you have all these parts screaming in your ears. ”
Julia nodded again.
“We’ll spend some time to sort out all these parts and listen to what each one has to say to you.
Some of these parts can come to us very early in life, through family issues or trauma.
In fact, some of these young parts can pull our psyche in powerful ways that we may not even consciously recognize.
But there is one part I don’t think we should even call a part, because it is the divine undergirding of who you are…
your true essence, your true self. That’s the part of you we want to fully uncover. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. Just talking about it lets me breathe a little.”
“Before we end our time today, I must ask you a more pressing question. Did you use birth control recently?”
Julia’s emotions tumbled from joy to sorrow. She just shook her head.
“Have you taken a pregnancy test?”
Julia covered her face with her hands.
The doctor stood. “That’s the first thing we should do. You need to go to the store and pick up a test, and then you’re going to call me straightaway. Here’s my cell phone number.” She handed Julia a business card from her desk. The doctor hugged her neck. “It’s going to be okay.”
The doctor put her arm around Julia’s shoulders as they walked to the office door. She turned Julia to face her and lifted her chin. “I promise.”
Julia turned to open the door, but the doctor pulled her back. “Do you know what a geisha represents?”
Julia looked at the floor and shrugged. “A prostitute, I guess.”
“Your young lover probably didn’t know this, but he gave you a beautiful compliment. The geishas were some of the most beautiful, most talented, and some of the smartest and creative women in all of history. Geisha literally means ‘art person.’”