A Pre-Med: A Short Story

“Of course, I do,” she said. “I don’t care what our family will think either!”

“Good lord, girl. We’ve talked this whole thing to death. You know you’re the only one. Your mom and aunt couldn’t keep a secret if their lives depended on

Zealous and aspiring teens have numerous expectations for their upcoming adulthood life and desire the wonders that are yet to come. Similar to the boy in the poem “Fifteen”, William Stafford writes about the speaker who struggles between temptation and integrity. Through the use of irony and symbolism, Stafford enhances that the act of maturity is not dependent on age. He accentuates the morals and virtues in which the teenage boy acts upon. With a covetous tone, he portrays that no matter the age, maturity is justified by the decisions people make.

The hard work paid off much to your delight. You just received your medical license, now what? Lets just step back and relive the years past. Four years of Undergrad followed by four more years at Med School. Some of you had liberal arts and humanities majors before joining Med School. There are others who tried different jobs before joining Med School which puts them in the mid or late thirties. A further five or more years to meet Residency and Fellowship requirements! However few can put up with the brutal academic and research workload you did. Congratulations on your hard-earned success.

I have chosen pre-medicine because I have always wanted to work in a hospital helping people. I was first exposed to the possibility of working in a hospital because of my mother, who is a nurse. Whenever she would take me to work with her, I could picture myself working there, helping others.

I was awoken from the lights coming on and my grandma yelling at me saying “Wake up, we got to get to the hospital your brother was just in a car accident!” At that moment I was dead I didn't know what to do or say, so my only option was to get up and get dressed. When we were going to the hospital it was a straight down pour and I sat there looking out the window with my mind racing with questions like “What's going to happen to my Connor?” and “What's going to happen

“Do you honestly think that I don’t know about the conversations that go on in this family?”.

With narrowed eyes, my dad gave me a hard stare. “No grandchildren until you finish college. I don't care if you find your mate tomorrow. I want you to graduate college and be able to make something of yourself."

The story named “Are you a Doctor” by Raymond Carver is a very short yet interesting story. This story is about a man, Arnold Breit, who receives a phone called from a mistaken user. The woman that called Arnold, Clara Holt, was trying to reach someone else but the number she dialed was the wrong number. After a couple minutes of small talk and superficial conversations, the woman got the courage to ask the Arnold to come over to her house. The story seems simple and it is. It is simple and also very interesting because the writer managed to add suspense and doubt to the story to hook the reader. I believe that the most valuable and entertaining things of this story is the suspense and doubts Raymond Carver leaves unanswered throughout the story. Most readers like the ambiguity more than anything in this short story.

My heart started pounding against my chest, trying to escape and find a healthy pair of lungs, because mine it seemed had been replaced with those of a six-year-old girl. My mouth grew cold and dry as if the air around me was on the brink of snow. I desperately tried to tell my brain that everything was fine and that there's no need to panic. But my brain ignored me, as it had done many times before, and ordered by organs to keep fighting the against the danger to come. My head never seems to listen to me.

    “That’s not nice,” Sister said, looking up at Brother, “What if he doesn’t want to go?”

The story takes place in a large acute care teaching hospital in Ontario, Canada, in the Internal Medicine Unit. I assume that is it winter during the time of the story because the author described the morning as “freezing”. The author is in their office the majority of the story. He or she is reflecting on a situation with a client and her son that previously occurred. The author is looking through their voicemail messages.

“This is so dull! We should be doing something together instead of wasting all of our time practically ignoring each other,” I said with a huff. All of my cousins looked over at me, and I couldn’t help but blush at the scrutiny they gave me.

“I don’t understand you; she’s seventeen years old, you gonna keep her in her house all her life?”

“Honey,” Dad said, placing his hand over Mum’s own. “We know our boys. They’re not