"You can't be everything you want to be before your time."
Name: (Dr.) Mara June Collins Age: twenty-nine (29) Birthday: 6 October 1944. Place of birth: Stillwater, CA Neighbourhood: Oakbury Pronouns: She/Her Sexuality: Bisexual
BIOGRAPHY
tw: familial death; car accident
On Mara June Collins’ 4th birthday, she received a medical play kit. A bulky carry case held the works – a crisp, white lab coat, a stethoscope, a thermometer, plastic syringes, and even a blood pressure cuff!
That’s all it took. Mara knew exactly what she would grow up to be.
Mara was raised as a middle child in a warm, stable home. Loving parents that loved each other. Pesky siblings that bugged but adored each other just the same. A neat ranch house with a manicured lawn. A family canine. They could’ve been the cover stars of The Perfect Nuclear Family Monthly if such an issue existed.
Daddy owned a mechanic shop, momma’ was a former teacher turned housewife, and both were perfectly content with the life they built together. They were immensely proud of the scholar, cheerleader, and sports star they raised. Can you guess which Mara was? (If you guessed scholar, you’d be correct!) The kids, too, were content and secure in who they were. After all, it’s hard to doubt yourself when your parents encourage you at any and every point. There was never a day when Mara’s parents didn’t support her dream of pursuing medicine one day.
Regardless, Mara often found herself dreaming of more. The daily routine of her household, however fulfilling it was to her family, did not resonate the same with her. After-school curriculars, weekend baseball games, Sunday backyard barbecues, and surprise parties for every birthday – how could she ever complain? They were happy. She had everything and anything she could ever need. Still, her family were plain homebodies who never dreamed outside their hometown. Mara, on the other hand…
When her older brother graduated high school, it was no surprise he chose to run the family business with his father. Two years later, it was also no surprise when Mara got a pre-medicine offer to a university in a larger city hours away. The tears in her father’s eyes, as he unloaded her suitcase from the family station wagon, tugged at her heart.
“I’ll come home every two weeks, Daddy. I promise.”
The first semester, she stuck to her promise. In the second semester, she aimed to make it home once a month. Once the more challenging biology and chemistry classes came around… she might’ve made it home a total of two times during a semester. And Mara, itching to get on with her career, studied through every summer. One summer, then another, and then another, spent away from her family.
Medical school was no different, except family visitations took the shape of rushed phone calls home. Mara was only genuinely present with her family during her winter breaks and maybe a lucky week during the summer months.
At 25, she found herself only three weeks shy of graduating from medical school when her world fell apart without warning.
Her father and her brother, dead, in only a blink.
The following months were a blur. Mara wasn’t living, but she existed only by going through the motions. She did not attend her own graduation but still received her honors. She went home, of course, and spent time with her mother and sister… but the house was so painfully silent. Mara couldn’t bear it. The silence left too much space for her suffocating regret.
So, she buried herself in her medical residency work. She did little else but work. Day. Night. Twenty-hour shifts at times. It did not take long for her to declare trauma surgery her specialty and for Stillwater General Hospital’s on-call room to become her new home.
Three years into Mara’s residency, the Vietnam War raged on. In the lifestyle she had created to specifically avoid her past, the unresolved trauma began slipping through the cracks. When the US government appealed to (training) medics across the nation to join the effort, she accepted the new challenge. While well-intentioned, it was just another attempt to suppress her lingering regret. In mid-1972, she was flown to work in a hospital in Yokohama, Japan, where she would treat Vietnam War soldiers in the burn unit.
She returned to Stillwater a year later to resume her last year of surgical residency. Mara, or Dr. Collins, is 29 years old and has proven to be a fiercely skillful surgeon, consistently outperforming her peers. Now, she has reached the point where she’s entrusted with solo, unsupervised surgeries. Her success, however, comes at a heavy price. She entertains nothing outside the walls of Stillwater General. She eats, sleeps, and breathes surgery. Anything else leaves her hollow inside.
