“Mine is a nurse. My father’s a doctor, and so are my grandfather and uncle. My older brother is in medical school at Yale, and my younger brother is premed at BU. I wanted to go to medical school too, and they had a fit. According to my father, it’s fine for a woman to be a nurse, but not a doctor. I told him that’s an antiquated point of view. All they really want me to do is get married and have babies. They think nursing school is a suitable activity while I look for a husband.” Lizzie looked annoyed as she said it.

“Is that what your mom did?” Audrey asked her.

“More or less, but she doesn’t put it that way. After they got married, she helped in my father’s office until she had us. She quit when my older brother Greg was born. Now she volunteers at a hospital twice a week. She’s a Gray Lady with the Red Cross.”

“Why wouldn’t they let you go to med school?” That sounded puzzling to Audrey. She thought Lizzie was an interesting girl. And she was excited to be talking to someone her age. She hadn’t had time for a close friend since her parents got sick.

“They said it takes too many years of study for a woman to become a doctor, and men don’t want to marry women who work or have a career. That’s probably true. So maybe we’ll wind up spinsters after we’re nurses,” she said, laughing. There was something bright and bold about Lizzie that Audrey liked.

“But your father married your mother, and she was a nurse.”

“I don’t think she ever intended it as a career forever,” Lizzie admitted. “Just until she married.”

“I’m here to learn how to take better care of my mother. She has Parkinson’s,” Audrey confided in her. She was enjoying the exchange and confidences immensely.

“That’s serious,” Lizzie commented. “So you’re not going to work as a nurse after you graduate?” That seemed too limited to Lizzie. It did to Audrey too, when she said it out loud. Her life of dedication to her mother was hard to explain, and what her father had left them meant she didn’t have to work, as long as they were careful. Neither Audrey nor her mother were extravagant.

“I’ll have to decide when I graduate. It will depend on how my mother is by then.” They knew her condition would continue to deteriorate in the coming years.

They had lunch in the cafeteria together and met several of the other girls. Lizzie was nineteen, a year older than Audrey, and several of the girls were a few years older than they were. As it turned out, Audrey was the youngest in the group. A few of them were the daughters of doctors, like Lizzie, or their mothers were nurses. Medicine seemed to run in families, from what Audrey observed. She didn’t tell anyone else that her mother was sick. Lizzie seemed particularly confident while meeting their fellow students, and all the girls were excited about meeting each other and making friends.