Free Doctored by K'Anne Meinel Page A

doesn’t want you to marry?”
    “They’d love me to.  I just don’t like their choices,” she answered, perhaps with a trace of bitterness in her voice.
    “Are your parents alive?”
    Nodding Deanna continued on this safer subject as they turned to head back to camp.  The sun was setting and they wanted to be back before dark.  “Yes, my father runs a firm and my mother spends the money it makes,” she laughed. 
    “Do you have any sisters or brothers, or are you an only child?”
    “I’ve got an older sister.  I was an accident.  I think my parents ran out of TV to watch one night and oops, I was conceived.  Since I was such a surprise and so late in their life, I think God made me a child prodigy in order to hurry up my development.  When they realized what they had, they threw everything they had at me to challenge me.  I rose to all of them.”  She smiled in memory at her childhood, which had been very, very short.  “I loved all the knowledge I could gain; I absorbed books.  I finished high school in two years and only because they tried to hold me back.  I was done with college by fourteen, medical school and my internship by the time I was twenty-one.”
    This confirmed some of the other stories that Deanna had told them so Maddie knew that she wasn’t lying.  It still amazed her.  It almost made the rest of them feel so...inadequate.  “You seem normal ,” she muttered.
    “Oh, yes, my parents made sure of that.  I had regular sessions with therapists, psychologists, psychotherapists…anyone with a pysch in their degree examined, poked, and prodded my brain.  I’m a freak.  I know it, I relish it.”
    “But you were in college when most of us were just getting pimples,” she stated, remembering her own awkward teenage years.
    “Yes, but I was also in private schools and being challenged.  I didn’t realize I was missing anything.  To me, that was normal ,” she explained.
    “You make it sound so simple.  I can’t imagine.”
    “Well, it wasn’t like my hormones had kicked in then.  Yeah, I had pimples, but they showed up when I was like nineteen.  I already looked like a kid.  Can you imagine your doctor having pimples?” she laughed and Maddie shared in the laughter at that thought.  “Seriously, I’m grateful my parents had the money to send me to the schools that I was able to attend.  I graduated debt-free and, while they didn’t approve of my specialties, they allowed me to indulge.  There was a time they had tried to get me to go into business or law,” she shuddered for dramatic affect and they shared a chuckle as they walked along.
    “I can’t imagine you in business or law,” she snickered a little at the thought.  “What does your sister do?”
    “She went into the family business with Dad.  She had to do something.  She’s ten years older than I am, but I caught up and surpassed her.  She was pretty resentful until she found her groove.”
    “That’s good.  I guess it wasn’t easy having a super smart sister.”
    “And a teenage one at that.”  She chuckled again.  “God, I was such a smart ass.  We’re good now, but I had to mature, and fast.  Dealing with adults who weren’t about to put up with a smart-aleck kid, I learned.”
    Maddie could only imagine.  This woman had such an amazing life, she really respected her.  She was so...normal to talk to.
    Their walk took them back to their tent.  It wasn’t the first time they had gone off alone together and it wouldn’t be the last.  The women often went off in twos and threes to get to know each other better.  A couple of times the men went with them.  Occasionally a man and a woman would pair off.
    Everyone noted when Lenny began walking out with one of the elder’s daughters more and more.  At first it was supposedly so the woman could learn English better, but as it became more frequent, rumors began.
    “Do you think she is really...?” whispered Leida to