1
Thursday, 31 July, 1980, 10:34 AM
Jamie Dolores Meyers was an eight-pound ball of fire. She came into the world at 6:05 AM after a five-hour battle with her mother. She came out screaming and she hardly stopped since. The nurse brought Jamie to Karen in her semi-private hospital room. Karen held her in her arms and fussed over her in an effort to stop the crying.
“What’s wrong little sweetheart?” she whispered in the baby’s ear. “Do you want your bottle?”
It was Jamie’s first feeding since birth, and it did the trick. Jamie’s eyes were open but they were unable to focus on anything. As Jamie drank the warm sugar-water, Karen kissed her on the forehead about fifty times. It was Karen’s first child and it was all a wonderful miracle to her. The baby was gorgeous to Karen. She hardly noticed her red blotchy facial skin or the distortion of her head from the birthing. All Karen saw was beauty.
Vic came in about five minutes later to check on his wife and new daughter. He had been up all night with Karen waiting for the birth that they thought for certain was coming at 2:00 AM.
Karen made a shushing sound as he entered the room. “She’s asleep,” she whispered. “She just had a bottle and fell asleep right in the middle of it.”
Vic was careful to make no noise as he walked over and kissed Karen on the cheek. He looked at Jamie from up close for the first time. “She’s beautiful,” he whispered to Karen.
“Well, of course she is. What were you expecting?”
“I guess I wasn’t really expecting anything,” he answered. “I just know I wasn’t prepared for this. She’s really, really beautiful.”
The nurse peeked in. She asked, “Can I take the bottle for you?”
Karen handed it to her. She examined the level of liquid left in it and marked something on the chart at the foot of the bed.
“You can hold her as long as you want Mrs. Meyers. Just signal on the button when you want me to come get her.”
“Thanks,” Karen replied. “I’m Karen. What’s your name?”
The nurse flashed a polite smile and answered, “Lonnie. Nice to meet you, Karen.”
Karen looked at Vic and commented, “They’re so nice here. The doctors and the nurses are wonderful.”
“For what they charge, they should be bathing you in rose petals and feeding you grapes,” he answered sarcastically.
“Oh, quit complaining,” she admonished him. “The medical insurance covers every penny of it except for the television.”
“How much is the television?” he inquired.
Karen just shook her head at him and said, “Get off it, buster. Don’t find a way to ruin this. This is the happiest day of my life.”
“Our lives! And I didn’t mean anything by it. Did they say when you could get out of here?”
“Not yet. The doctor should come by any time now. I’m hoping I can get out by tomorrow.”
“Well, I’ve been up all night and I need to go crash for a little while.” He looked at his watch and added, “I’ll be back by three, honey. Call me if you need me to bring anything. I’ll leave the machine on in case I don’t hear the phone.” He leaned over and kissed her again. Then he studied the sleeping face of Jamie for a moment. He kissed her little forehead and whispered, “Absolutely beautiful.”
Karen said good-bye to him and watched him leave. She looked back down at Jamie sleeping cradled in her arms. It was absolutely a miracle to her.
.....
Victor Meyers was thirty-one and Karen was twenty-nine when Jamie arrived. She was their first baby, and Karen hoped that this new responsibility in Vic’s life would give him the needed incentive to finally lick his drinking problem. At the time of Karen’s conception, Vic was coming home almost every night and sitting down with a six-pack or more. He was a depressed and angry young man, stuck in a job he hated. He was mad at the world and he frequently took it out on Karen.
They met in a Disco bar in the mid-seventies right there in Buffalo, New York. He was a cabinetmaker that couldn’t make a living at his trade, and he took a job as a carpenter for a local homebuilder. Karen was a secretary in a small office of a heating-oil company. Both came from lower middle class families in the area, and both were determined to make better lives for themselves than their parents had.
It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. He danced a few dances with her at the club and asked her for her telephone number. He waited almost a month to call her, and she turned him down on his first request for a date. A week later he tried again and she accepted. They started seeing each other regularly, and they ended up married a year later. There was never a formal proposal or engagement. It was just a mutual decision that they made, and neither of them could remember exactly when they decided.
Almost immediately after they married, the trouble began. Vic began to drink himself to sleep. Karen could have dealt with that problem alone, but occasionally he got nasty, and that frightened her. He hit her a few times after they were married for about six months, and she instantly ran back to her parents’ home. They worked out some ground rules and got back together after a week.
The drinking problem continued, and Vic joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He quit drinking many times since. Karen was always there to help him through his bad periods, but she was losing her patience. Clearly this was not the life she had dreamed of as a young woman.
It was in August of seventy-nine that Karen went off the pill. She never really discussed it with Vic. She just told him her doctor recommended she quit taking them. She had decided she wanted to get pregnant, but she couldn’t dare tell this to Vic. He used contraceptives for a while, but in drunken laziness he often forgot or just didn’t give a damn. When she became pregnant, he took it well, and even began to look forward to being a father.
The drinking stopped and started a few times during the pregnancy, and Karen decided not to make an issue of it until the baby arrived. She felt that the baby would be the catalyst Vic needed to bring him to his senses.
.....
The doctor came in around noon to check on Karen and the baby. He told her that she could go home if everything looked okay when he checked on her tomorrow. She was all excited and wanted to tell Vic, but she decided to wait until he came back to visit that afternoon. She figured he’d be sleeping and she didn’t want to disturb him.
She spent two more periods with Jamie in the afternoon. Jamie’s appetite was healthy and the nurse said Jamie could start on formula the next day. Karen couldn’t wait to tell Vic. She dozed off around two-thirty.
It was after four when Vic woke her up with a peck on the forehead. “How’s my family doing?” he asked. The words my family felt strange to say, but somehow pleasant. “I just peeked in on Jamie and she’s wide awake.”
“Hi, Vic. What time is it?” she inquired.
“It’s after four. I guess I slept a little longer than I planned. Sorry I took this long.”
“Oh, that’s okay. You said Jamie’s awake. Is she crying?”
“Not at all,” he answered. “In fact, she’s moving her arms and legs all around and turning her head back and forth. You should see her. She looks like a little spastic.” He noted Karen’s look of concern. “I’m just kidding, honey. She’s not spastic. She’s a happy little baby from what I can see.”
Karen smiled at that. “Guess what, Vic! I can probably go home tomorrow. Can you take off in the afternoon to pick up your new family?”
“Sure, kid. No problem. But the boss said after tomorrow I’ve got to start putting in a full eight by six.”
“Saturdays?” she asked disappointedly. “I was hoping you could get back to a normal forty-hour week again.”
“No way. They wanted me to work seven days. Six is already a compromise. They’re taking orders on new houses like gangbusters.” He could sense her disappointment. “Look, things will slow down in the Winter. They always do. You know that.”
Karen nodded and said, “I never thought I’d ever wish for a bad Winter in Buffalo, but I wouldn’t mind one this year.” Then she laughed, looked up at the ceiling and whispered, “I take it back, God. Just kidding!”
2
Joan Spencer looked out at the world from the hospital nursery. Everything was a blur. She could hear the sound of babies crying and people talking. None of the words meant anything to her. She felt her new body moving and kicking, and her head turning back and forth. She wasn’t doing it. It was just happening by itself.
Then she began to feel her body jerk at regular intervals. It was uncomfortable. She wanted it to stop. She didn’t understand what hiccups were, but she understood how annoyed she felt. Somebody picked her up and held her. They patted her on her back for a little while, and the jerking went away. She could hear loud words in her ears, but understood nothing. At least the jerking stopped. That was good enough for the moment. Then the one carrying her put her down again.
She was Joan. That much she knew. But everything else was a jumble to her. She felt hungry. Somebody put something in her mouth and she sucked from reflex. Nothing came out. She tried again and got the same result. She spit it out of her mouth and it dangled on her face for a moment. Then it fell off as she involuntarily moved her head again.
.....
Lonnie’s shift was almost over. She made a final check on the babies. She noticed that baby Jamie was hiccupping rather severely and she felt bad for her. She scooped her up and patted her back. “What’s the matter little honey-pie? Is that last drink hard to digest?” After a minute or two the hiccups stopped. Lonnie listened carefully for another minute before she was convinced that they were gone completely.
She put Jamie back in her tiny bed and sensed that Jamie was about to cry. Out of habit, she immediately placed the little pacifier in her mouth. Jamie started sucking immediately, then paused and spit it out. “Oh, well,” Lonnie said under her breath, “I guess you’re not fooled by that, are you?”
Lonnie made some notes before she left. On Jamie’s chart she wrote 4:25 PM - strong hiccups. She then announced out loud to all the babies, “Until tomorrow, kids!” It was the end of her shift, and she left the nursery.
.....
Somebody picked Joan up again. They jostled her around a bit and finally put her back down, but it wasn’t in the same place she had just been. She could feel the warm body holding her. The heartbeat that she felt and heard was mesmerizing. She knew instantly that this was her mother. Her senses of smell and hearing and touch all confirmed it. But Joan didn’t really even understand the concept of the word mother. It was just a feeling.
She felt the nipple of the bottle push against her lips and she sucked it into her mouth. The hunger she felt was overwhelming, and the sweet fluid delighted her palate. She heard the voice of her mother speaking directly into her ear. It was comforting, even though she understood none of it. She sucked until no more came out and she drifted off to sleep.
3
The first few months with Jamie were nothing like Karen or Vic expected. She cried much more than they thought she would, and she got up as often as three times a night. Vic refused to get up in the middle of the night, leaving it all to Karen. It was a labor of love for Karen, but she resented the fact that Vic was so uncooperative. Every day by four, she was exhausted from the rough nights she was spending. She’d fall asleep on the sofa and Vic would wake her up when he came home. He was always annoyed with Karen when he found her sleeping, and he made comments about her having such an easy life.
Over the course of the first three months, Karen started becoming angrier and angrier with Vic. Jamie was very demanding, and Vic only wanted to deal with Jamie when she wasn’t fussing or carrying on. He wouldn’t feed her or change her diapers. He even balked about watching her while Karen ran out to the store to do the food shopping or run errands. But the thing that upset her most was Vic’s drinking.
She finally got up the nerve to say something to him. She was awake that day when he came home from work, and she could smell the beer on his breath. She confronted him immediately.
“Vic, I’m getting real tired of all your shit. You won’t help with Jamie. You won’t run the errands. You won’t give her a bottle in the middle of the night. And quite frankly, the drinking is getting old.”
“Well, hello to you too!” he replied. “What’s with you? On the rag again?”
She slapped him across the face. It wasn’t very hard, but it got his attention. He froze in disbelief.
She held her index finger in front of his face while she blasted him. “I’m not kidding around, Vic. If you’re not going to do your share, then I don’t need you around at all. I don’t need a husband at all!”
He was shocked, but he was angry too. He shoved her hand away from his face and held on to her wrist. “Don’t give me any of your shit! You’re my wife and Jamie’s my kid. Don’t threaten me with your divorce crap.”
She burst out crying and pulled her wrist free from his grip. She ran upstairs to the bedroom and slammed the door. Jamie started crying in the next room.
Vic mumbled to himself, “Shit! This is all I need now.” He climbed the stairs and opened the bedroom door. “Look,” he said, “we shouldn’t be fighting like this. I thought everything was hunky-dory. Let’s talk about it.” He sat down on the bed and tried to wipe the tears from Karen’s eyes. She pushed his hand away.
“I thought this baby would make you grow up, Vic. You’re a father now. You’ve got responsibilities. I understand you work hard and you’re tired when you come home. But I work hard too, and I get up in the middle of the night, and I do all the cooking and cleaning and shopping and diapering and...” She paused to catch her breath. “And I’m tired of you coming home stinking of beer and flopping down on the sofa for another six-pack.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I’ll stop the drinking, I promise.”
“Don’t make that promise,” she interrupted, “unless you mean it! It was one thing when it was just the two of us, but now we have a baby to consider. I’m not letting this sweet thing grow up with an alcoholic father. I’m not just blowing smoke here, Vic. I mean it!”
Vic dropped his chin down to his chest. He was caught somewhere between anger and shame. This time the shame won out. “You’re right. I’ll start the meetings again. I’ll quit this time for good.” He looked at her with his puppy eyes and added, “It’s not easy for me. Drinking’s an addiction.”
“I know it is,” she consoled. “I’ll help you all I can, but it’s just got to stop. This baby is the most important thing in life. She deserves to grow up in a normal home.”
.....
Joan gradually took control of her new body. She figured out that her new name was Jamie. She knew her mother and father and a few of the friends and family that visited her. She could work her eyes properly now. They could focus and follow people around as they moved. There were so many new things to look at and taste and feel. She wanted to move around, but she couldn’t quite master crawling; her strength wasn’t developed sufficiently.
She wasn’t yet aware of any previous lives. She just knew she was both Joan and Jamie. Her basic thoughts centered on necessities like food and water, diaper changes, and physical contact. She craved physical contact more than anything. The way her mother held her and kissed her was divine. She loved the sound of her mother’s voice when she spoke, and the sweet quality it took on when she sang to her.
She felt content, and there was only one thing in the world that really bothered her. She couldn’t tolerate the sound of people yelling. It was something that came from deep inside of her. When her mother and father fought, she was petrified. She would immediately feel stomach pain, and then her bowels and her bladder would let go. She cried each time it happened, and her mother would have to hold her and sing to her for a long time before the fear went away.
4
Jamie progressed well, and by the time she was six months old, she had mastered crawling. She was into everything. All the outlets in the house had to be outfitted with safety plugs, and barriers had to be erected to keep her contained within an area. Karen originally planned to have her mother start babysitting Jamie at six months so that Karen could return to work. They certainly needed the money, but Karen decided to stay with Jamie through her entire first year. Karen told Vic that Jamie was much too active for Karen’s mother to handle. In reality, Karen just wanted to spend every minute she could with her daughter.
Vic hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol for three months, and Karen was encouraged. But Vic was under a lot of stress, and they argued a lot. There was no mistaking the fact that Jamie hated the arguing. She cried hysterically whenever she was exposed to it. Vic and Karen made a strong effort to keep her isolated from their personal disagreements.
As Jamie was exposed to fewer and fewer arguments, she became more and more sensitive. In the course of everyday life there were always one or two times a week when someone’s voice got raised. Jamie began to respond badly to the slightest hint of a raised voice. Karen noticed that Jamie would sometimes start crying if Karen simply spoke too loud on the telephone.
After talking about it with Doctor Kravitz, the family physician, Karen decided to try to desensitize Jamie. Karen started holding her and talking to her while occasionally raising the level of her voice. The process worked well, and Jamie showed some improvement. After about two weeks of this process, Jamie no longer reacted at all while her mother held her. However, Karen thought she noticed that many of Jamie’s other emotions seemed to tone down after the desensitizing. It seemed she didn’t laugh as loud or hug as tightly as she had previously. It was such a subtle thing that Karen wasn’t even certain that she hadn’t imagined it.
Jamie began to learn quickly between her sixth and ninth months. She seemed to understand many of the things that Karen and Vic said to her. She began to babble and say recognizable words. She even tried to pull herself up and walk by herself, although she never got past the first step.
Emotionally Jamie appeared normal to others, including Doctor Kravitz. But Karen sensed something that only a mother could sense. There seemed to be a conflict of sorts going on within Jamie. Any time Karen tried to explain what she felt, people told her she was crazy. Karen quickly learned to keep it to herself. What she noticed was that Jamie would sometimes babble to herself in two distinct voices. It was just like two sides of an argument going on. But Karen was the only one who could see it. Even Vic was unable to detect it. Karen tried to point it out to him each time Jamie did it, but he saw nothing.
As Jamie approached one year, it was very clear to Vic and Karen that their child was exceptional. Jamie was walking and talking. Not just talking, but conversing! It was an eerie feeling having a conversation with a baby this young. They tended to forget just how young she was, and they often caught themselves actually arguing with her over some stupid point.
Doctor Kravitz confirmed how exceptional Jamie was. He told them that they should both try to learn a lot more about raising gifted children. He recommended that they talk with a child psychologist friend of his. He gave them the name and number and they said they’d consider it.
When the subject came up that night at dinner, Karen said they really couldn’t afford to take Jamie to a psychologist. That led to the subject of Karen going back to work. Karen said she wanted to stay home and raise Jamie, at least until she reached Kindergarten age. She was all set for a big battle, but Vic agreed without any fuss. Karen was amazed.
Vic was now alcohol-free for almost nine months. He was still having some stress problems, and he had a lot of strong cravings to drink. But Jamie was his inspiration. He saw in her something so beautiful and extraordinary that it gave him the strength to stay sober. He loved Jamie more than anything in the entire world. He wished that he could give her everything she needed, including the special doctor to deal with her intelligence. This only made him feel inadequate as a provider, and it added to his stress.
.....
Joan began to feel more and more fear at the sound of people yelling. Eventually a strange thing started happening within her. She withdrew internally when she heard yelling, and an entirely different entity took her place. Joan figured that this new entity must be Jamie, the one that everybody always spoke to by name. Jamie was just a shell of a being at first, but she gradually gained strength within the body they shared. This Jamie was a clear threat to Joan.
Joan felt that her mother must have known something was wrong inside her. Her mother started to hold her and soothe her a lot more during that period when Jamie was getting stronger. When her mother held her, Joan learned to let Jamie take over so that Joan could concentrate on nothing but her mother’s love and affection. Jamie never seemed to catch on, and this made Joan feel all the more powerful.
Eventually Joan took to sitting back entirely out of Jamie’s way. She began to just enjoy the ride and come forward only when there was some loving to be had or some interesting thing to be learned. This worked for a time, but Joan soon began to crave learning far more than Jamie did. The ride was nice while it lasted, but there was now far too much to see and to learn. Jamie would have to take a back seat.
The problem was that Jamie had become too accustomed to control. She wouldn’t give it up without a fight. Each time Joan came forward, Jamie argued with her. Jamie never relinquished control without an argument. It reached a point where Jamie was so stubborn about keeping control that Joan couldn’t even win an argument with her anymore. Joan decided that she simply had to kill Jamie and become her. It was so obvious that she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it earlier.
Joan confronted Jamie and proclaimed that she was taking permanent control and would no longer tolerate Jamie being in charge. Jamie fought back as Joan had expected. But Joan simply willed with all her might that Jamie would die and be gone entirely. It worked. Joan seized control of the body and took on the identity of Jamie. Joan Spencer ceased to exist at that moment, except in the memory of the new Jamie.
Jamie was amazed that even her mother didn’t detect the switch. She was so proud of herself. She was far too smart for anyone to catch on to her internal coup, including her mother and father and all the rest of the family. Now that she was just Jamie, there was nothing to get in the way of learning all the things she was so impatient to know. She realized what a great amount of things she already knew. New Jamie was so much smarter than old Jamie. New Jamie was so much better at accessing all of the things that were in her mind. She began to make use of all this knowledge. She learned to walk and talk and even started to recognize patterns of letters that formed words.
5
The next eight months of Jamie’s life were incredible. She was learning too fast for anyone to keep track. Karen and Vic didn’t even know where she was getting everything from. They would have sworn the child knew things she was never taught. Jamie watched a lot of television and spent time looking through her picture books. Karen began to find her looking more and more at magazines and newspapers. The child was a sponge for knowledge. As fast as they told her something, she knew it. They didn’t have to repeat anything.
Karen started reading to Jamie as often as she could. She read everything she could get her hands on, and started to go to the library to pick up books as far advanced as second grade level. Jamie sat hypnotized as Karen read to her. They would sit side by side on the sofa, and Jamie would stare right at the pages her mother was reading. She gradually got her mother to point to the words as she read them aloud. Then Karen started to notice that Jamie would say “no” every time that Karen skipped a word or said the wrong word. It wasn’t like Jamie knew these books word for word like her bedtime stories. She was learning to recognize words by sight. She was reading!
Karen began to experiment. She would print an unfamiliar word on a piece of paper. Then she would show it to Jamie and say a different word. Jamie would say “no” each time she said the wrong word, and “yes” when she said the right one. Through this game, Karen realized that Jamie wasn’t just sight-reading; she was phonetically reading. It was a revelation to Karen. Where could she have learned it?
Soon after Karen began reading the second grade books to Jamie, it was clear that Jamie was forming the words with her mouth while Karen read them. Karen began to deliberately not say certain words as she pointed to them, and she found Jamie saying them out loud herself. It was simply astounding. Each day, when Vic came home from work, Karen showed him some new and wonderful thing that Jamie had learned.
Then Karen found Jamie drawing one day. She was only nineteen months old, and she could draw like a six-year-old. Karen felt that Jamie could even have drawn better were it not for the fact that she was just too small to have good motor skills.
Vic and Karen finally had to sit down with all four of their parents and discuss what should be done about Jamie. The child was too gifted to ignore at this point. The parents decided to chip in and pay for her to visit a child psychologist specializing in exceptional learning abilities. Nobody had much money to spare, but they unselfishly came up with a few thousand dollars to try and get things moving in the right direction. They were all so proud of Jamie, and nobody wanted to hold her back.
Karen made an appointment with Doctor Elaine Rubin. Doctor Kravitz recommended her, having knowledge of her work with gifted children in the Buffalo area. Doctor Rubin had a very full calendar and couldn’t see Jamie for a month. Even then, she cautioned Karen that she only saw five or six patients herself, and referred most of the cases she gets.
.....
Jamie had somehow unlocked a storehouse of knowledge in her brain. She had no idea where it all came from, but she supposed that the old Jamie had probably put it there and forgotten about it, or didn’t know how to use it. Now that new Jamie was in charge things were going to be different.
Television was wonderful. There was so much to be learned. Mother always put on those kid shows, but sometimes the news shows came on without Mother noticing. The news shows were the best, because they didn’t talk in kid-talk.
She loved it when Mother read books to her. Most of them were too simple after a while, but Mother seemed to know when to get different ones. The books without the pictures were the best ones. She could watch as Mother pronounced all the words to her. So many of them were already familiar to her. She wondered just how dumb that old Jamie had been to learn this stuff and not use it. She especially loved to play the game where Mother said the wrong words on purpose. It was so much fun, and Mother laughed so hard when Jamie corrected her.
But the learning adventure wasn’t all fun and games. Jamie started to have funny feelings inside when she showed people how smart she was. Mother was the only one she liked to show. Even showing Daddy made her a little uncomfortable. Something inside of her told her not to let them know how smart she really was. Sometimes, even when she learned with Mother, she hesitated to pronounce the really big words. A fear rose up from inside that she couldn’t understand. It scared her and caused her to exercise caution.
When she discovered drawing, it opened up a whole new set of memories for her. There were so many wonderful pictures inside her mind that she thought she could draw forever and not get them all out. But the drawing started to evoke her cautionary feelings too. She would be ready to draw a picture of a place she knew and something would seize her arm and prevent her from drawing.
It was all becoming very puzzling to her. She felt she wasn’t going to be able to learn much more unless these feelings stopped controlling her.
6
Jamie was twenty months old when they brought her to see Doctor Rubin. Vic and Karen accompanied Jamie and they spent the first thirty minutes just filling out forms before Doctor Rubin brought them into her office.
“I’m Elaine, and you’re....eh....Karen, Victor and Jamie,” she said reading from the forms. “I spoke with Doctor Kravitz, and I know a little about Jamie from our previous conversation, Karen, so why don’t you just tell me again what brings you here.”
Karen began, “Jamie’s only twenty months old and she’s reading and conversing like a seven or eight-year-old. She’s even started teaching herself things, and we’re afraid she’s so bright that we’re not going to be able to keep up with her.”
Elaine looked directly at Jamie and asked, “Is all this true, Jamie? Can you read all by yourself?”
Jamie looked to her mother and she nodded her approval for Jamie to answer. “Yes, I can read by myself.”
Elaine was making some notes as they proceeded. “And what kind of books do you like to read the most, Jamie?”
“Fiction”, she answered.
Elaine had to hide her surprise. She was expecting quite a different answer. She made another notation on her pad. She decided to take the plunge and see what level this child was really on. “And why do you prefer fiction?” she asked.
“Fiction is more fun than biographies or history books. Science is okay, I guess, but most of that stuff I can’t understand. It’s just as easy to learn words from fiction, and it’s more fun.”
“Well, I see your point, Jamie,” Doctor Rubin agreed. She was absolutely shocked. And she was excited beyond belief. She turned to Karen and Victor and commented, “Jamie is indeed very advanced and articulate.” She tried to hide her excitement as she added, “I would like to handle Jamie’s case myself if that would be all right with you two.”
Karen asked her, “How much will all this stuff cost, Doctor Rubin? We don’t have all that much money.”
Elaine didn’t want to give up this find no matter what! “I normally charge two hundred an hour, and see my patients three hours a week.” She could almost hear their gasps. “But, I’m working on a new book. If you’d consent to allow me to use my findings from this case study, I’d be willing to work with Jamie absolutely free of charge.”
Karen and Vic looked at each other in surprise. They certainly didn’t expect to get this help for free. Karen asked very politely and apologetically, “Doctor Rubin, would you mind if Vic and I discussed this for a moment in private?”
Without hesitation, Elaine volunteered, “You may use my office. I’ll just go out in the waiting room for a moment. Come get me when you’re ready. Shall I take Jamie with me?”
Karen thought for a moment. “Yes, that might be a good idea. Jamie, honey, would you go with Doctor Rubin for just a second while Daddy and I talk?”
“Sure, Mother,” she agreed.
Elaine took Jamie’s hand and led her into the waiting room.
Karen asked, “Vic, do you think there’s anything wrong with letting Jamie be a case study, or whatever she called it?”
Vic was so relieved that it wouldn’t cost any money. He was obsessed by the shame of not providing properly for his family, and he viewed this offer as a miracle. “I think it would be fine. It would give Jamie exactly what she needs, and maybe even help others if Doctor Rubin puts it in a book.” He felt proud of his answer.
Karen wasn’t as sure as Vic. She was thinking more about her daughter’s privacy than the money. “I’m not sure I want her on display, honey. Do you really think we should?”
“I don’t know exactly what Jamie needs. It’s much more than we can give her anyway. This way I’ll bet she gets a million dollars’ worth of help. Even if we were both working, we’d never be able to afford what’s best for Jamie.”
Karen nodded her agreement. “Okay! Let’s do it.”
She opened the door to get Elaine and found the two of them talking and laughing. That only reinforced their decision.
“We’ve decided to accept your generous offer,” Karen announced. “That is, of course, if it’s all right with Jamie.”
Elaine responded, “Do you want to go home and talk it over with Jamie?” She cast a smile in Jamie’s direction. “You can let me know at your convenience.” She already knew what Jamie would say.
“Perhaps we’ll do that, Doctor Rubin,” Karen began. “It really should be up to Jamie. I’m afraid we did her an injustice by speaking for her.”
Jamie tugged at her mother’s arm. Karen leaned over and asked, “What is it, honey?”
Jamie pulled Karen close so she could whisper, “I already know that I want to come here.”
“Well, it looks as if the decision is made after all,” announced Karen. “Jamie says it’s okay. When does it start?”
Elaine flipped through her calendar and asked, “How does Monday, Wednesday and Friday sound? I have a nine o’clock or a two o’clock on all three days.”
“Nine o’clock works great for me!” Karen exclaimed. “That leaves all my afternoons free. What day should we start?”
“How about next Monday?” Elaine had another thought. “Perhaps you could drop Jamie off each morning at nine, and come back to get her at eleven?”
Karen seemed puzzled. “That would be six hours a week instead of three. I thought you said you usually spend three hours a week.”
Elaine smiled and explained, “Jamie is really very special. She should have more time.”
Karen looked at Vic inquisitively. He nodded. Karen then simply added, “Then it’s a done deal.”
They all stood up and shook hands. Elaine showed them out to the waiting room, and then went back into her office and closed the door. She thought to herself, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity!
