Well I am Mrs. Fiona Richardson, Nae Murphey, and you met me in all the other chapters of the book. I just wanted to tell you a little more about my life before I met William, dating William, and well maybe how it took me a while to warm up to the idea that he got to see other women naked. I didn’t just grow up Irish-American Catholic, we were VERY Irish American Catholic. My dad’s mother was from Ireland and we didn’t even associate with many people outside our working class community. I went to Catholic Schools and an all girl’s high school. I had FOUR sisters and I was right in the middle. The oldest were Ursula and Bridget. The “Irish Twins” because they were only 11 months apart. Both of them were a lot tougher than any of the younger ones and loved starting a physical fight. Both dark haired and strong willed. Ursula almost got expelled from High School for running a protection racket and as much as she could be a complete bully she was also the first to stick up for any of us.

Two years after Bridget I came along. The quiet, redhead… You’d expect the red hair to match my temper but I was really a quiet one. I liked reading and the easiest way not to get bullied by Ursula or Bridget was to just be quiet and go along with them… But also stay out of trouble they might get into. I was also a nerd. I excelled in school, especially literature and religion. I was thin and tall but had no athletic ability. A complete klutz… When my mother had us all do Irish Step Dancing lessons I was the girl who’d go out of time and smash into the other dancers… To everyone’s embarrassment.

My younger sisters came 3 and 5 years after me. Sabina was next after me, a cute blonde and of course the youngest Murphey girl Laoise another blonde, but Laoise was the special one we all took care of because she had Polio when she was 8 and walked with a crutch. Maybe not the smartest, but one of the best musicians you’ll ever meet. I did a lot to help take care of my younger sisters and kept Bridget and Ursula from bullying them too much.

Gosh so after high school I managed to get an academic scholarship to a “secular” college. My parents did not want me to go. They honestly thought I’d be a nun… And the idea wasn’t lost on me… I really didn’t know what I wanted to do as a life calling. I was going to major in English and be a high school English teacher but all the nuns at my high school assumed I’d be in the convent teaching with them. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in boys, they were not interested in me… and the only boys I ever met were from church, and I am painfully shy sometimes.

Painfully shy, wavy red hair, that just goes frizzy, and thick glasses.. Yeah people often assume I’m cold and proper… And I do put on that act. Keeps me from having to interact with people I don’t know… But my hair is in a tight bun so it doesn’t become a frizzy mess on a humid day… and I’m blind more than 15 feet in front of me without the glasses…

OK So my FIRST day at college… I am SOOOO Lost… I am in the basement of a science building… I am panicking. I was about to miss a class. I was darting around the basement halls trying to find a map… I was breaking down… I might have been crying a bit… Then I heard a voice “Hi miss, are you ok?” It was William. Oh my he was handsome and seemed kind of sweet… and just as shy… Part of me just wanted to get directions and run away but when he offered to walk me to class I said OK…

And that’s how we met. He was a senior… And well, on the 3rd date I found out he wasn’t Catholic… and I KNEW how my parents would react. And his grandfather was a minister! Even worse! Anyways he was going to med school next year and I tried breaking up with him. I was already in love with him, but I’d just be a distraction… Anyways I am so working class could I really be married to a doctor? I broke it off then cried in my pillow for a week and according to him, so did he. Finally he “accidently” ran into me on campus. We were both miserable without each other. I Managed to keep him a secret from my parents for four years though!

Now I am sure William will be the first to tell you I am insecure about how I look. He really doesn’t see why but I do. Ivy skin, average breasts, thick glasses, and I look like a tomato, especially if I get nervous or embarrassed. Unfortunately too many women are self conscious and we are too mean to each other. But bright red hair just made me stand out more and I was bullied a bit for it. William and I kissed and hugged and stuff but I always made him keep his hands proper. I am a good catholic girl after all. But in my junior year he got his first stethoscope. A gift from his father. I wanted to be the first person it was ever used on… He came by that weekend and I snuck him up into my dorm room. Oh the trouble I'd have been in if he was caught there!

He was listening to my heart through my sweater and well… taking my top off was really my idea… I just said “Dear, do it properly like I am a patient.” and without thinking my sweater and bra came off… I didn’t do it seductively or slowly… really quick like I was a patient, and honestly I was a bit embarrassed for him to see them. Then he was staring at my breasts. By the time he was done listening to my heart and lungs my nipples were fully aroused and well so was everywhere else… I was kind of shocked how much I enjoyed it… He was so gentle and careful and listened so intently… and as much as he was trying not to stare, he was… But then he told me to get dressed and ran off… I thought for SURE he didn’t like them. I was a bit devastated that he didn't like my breasts.

Now if he HAD touched them improperly I’d probably have slapped him, but also secretly enjoyed it…I did corner him later that night, on our date, and made me tell me if he liked what he saw and he admitted he ran off because it made him need to take care of some “man business” and we all knew what that meant. And I admitted for the first time I sometimes need to take care of “girl business” after our dates.

Those thoughts kind of put me in a conundrum… Like OK I love him… I want to be married to him some day… But listening to my heart turned him on? It’s OK if it was me but what if… some other girl, with nicer breasts, did the same? What if she flirted with him? What if I just had breasts? Like umm breasts… areola… milk ducts… I am NOT some bag of organs for him… I am his Fi… I wanted him to like my boobs as boobs… not the anatomical chart.

I think some of that came from my experiences with the family doctor back home. A stern older fellow Irish-American who my sisters and I thought liked to see us naked. I really don’t think that was the case, and our mom ALWAYS said it’s just a body for him. Just a body? Once a year my mother took me to this man to see me topless, let his nurse stick a thermometer in my bottom, then look at my private parts… A woman who didn’t want us to show too much calf and no cleavage, let this man in his 50’s see us all almost bare.

My first intimate exam with him, or really with anyone, was just a nightmare… On our way home from telling our parents I was pregnant, and would get married I was in the back of the family car crying my eyes out. I wanted to stay with William and they just about dragged me to the car. My mother kept asking if he forced himself on me… I kept saying it was really my idea, and she kept just asking me if he forced himself on me… And she had this glimmer of hope that MAYBE I wasn’t really pregnant and made a doctor’s appointment for me as soon as possible.

I’m terrified because my parents are not talking to me, I am terrified because I’m pregnant… I’m terrified they won’t let me be with William. My mom who was very tough but oh so loving just was almost in tears the whole time. It was a Wednesday morning and she took me in to see him. My mom didn’t say what to expect… But here I was in his office and they called me back. The nurse told me to take everything off… Everything? And put on a gown… OK fine, I almost crying and my mom was there in the room but not talking to me. Well he did EVERYTHING you could do in such an exam and he was mean about it.. Didn’t explain anything… When he put the speculum in I said it hurts… His only response was that I am not a virgin anymore… I was crying a bit when his fingers were up inside me, again with no warning. He said I should be quiet because I was a whore… When I cried out to my mother he told her “You raised a whore.” and she didn’t say anything… That was my lowest moment of the whole ordeal… Well I was pregnant… When we got back home my Grandmother was there. My dad told her everything and she said “Look, First baby comes when it wants to after the wedding… The next baby takes nine months… Liam you’re the oldest, your birthday is in November? I was married four months before that so you do the math.”

My grandmother took me to her house and had me call William long distance on her phone… Said she didn’t care how long I needed… I told him about the doctor… He was mad… He was on the phone with me, while getting his brothers together to teach that doctor a lesson… I really really didn’t want William to end up in jail. I talked him down but I could tell he was fuming. My grandmother said to have him come down for dinner tomorrow if he could. She’d straighten everything out and talk to my parents and let me stay at her house. Not sure what happened, or what she said but my dad was actually nice to William at dinner and my mom did agree we could get married… Though she made sure to dig on William every chance she got. He just took it though. I admired that…

Meeting with our priest. Oh MY… William did not make the best impressions. He was fine with getting married in my church. He was OK with there being a Catholic Mass… Then Father asked him “You need to promise, on your honor, not to interfere with Fiona’s free exercise of religion. If she wants to go to holy mass, or stations of the cross, or a holy hour are you willing to let her go?”

“Of course father.”

“If she needs you to drive her, do you promise to do that?”

“Of course.”

“If it’s a sunday morning and she says she doesn’t want to go to church today will you get her out of bed and make her come.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“And why not.”

“Because you just made me promise, on my honor, I wouldn’t interfere with her free exercise of religion, and that would be interfering.”

“Both of you get out of here… and you should be ashamed of yourself Fiona. Giving your sacred virginity to THAT man.”

I thought William was going to clock him… He clenched up his fist to do it, but I got in between them, and pushed him out the door… Though he collapsed on the sidewalk and just said “What now Fi?” Luckily for us his father was friends with the Episcopal priest in the neighboring town and after explaining what was going on let us have the wedding there… And we have both converted since then… Much to the shock of my family, and an entire convent of nuns.

My family was slow to accept him. I understand, in a way, because it was a complete shock… The first time Ursula, who was married for about a year before that, met him she looked him right in the eyes and said “So you’re the one who knocked up little Fifi…” Then looked at me “He probably can’t even handle his Whiskey Fifi… Though, at least he’s handsome. Hopefully he was able to satisfy you in the process.”

Now after we got married we managed to get a small apartment in the West End of Boston near the Hospital. He could walk there, I could walk wherever I needed to… And I grew up in the city, albeit a much smaller one. It really didn’t bother me. The space was cramped, dirty, but cheap. With William there it was a palace. I know William missed the country. I also was OK with marrying a doctor after all… He was really down to earth,and his dad being a country doctor and being from a farm. His long hours strained us. More than anyone knew. I really had no way to take a break, and took it out on him. When he did get home, he’d take the baby and let me go rest… I usually just slept… But I always appreciated that he cared.

Though, remember what I said about him seeing my breasts… and how I was worried if that aroused him, despite being so professional? When he started an OB-GYN rotation I was furious but never let him know. See thing is, if he saw vaginas all day would he want to see mine? Was he a brute like my old doctor back home? What if he, umm, liked what he saw?? What if some pretty nurse flirted with him? I confronted him a bit… and he said that for every 18 year old nursing student there were three 60 year old grandmas… But why did he say 18 year old nursing students if he didn’t notice them? Problem was he was really good at women’s health. To the point he was being actively recruited to a fellowship. I talked him out of it by saying we should move closer to his parents and open his own practice with his dad retiring soon. Somehow that worked….

Well you can read in the other chapters the process of not minding he was doing pelvic exams on half the young ladies in town. And honestly I became ok with it because he always came home to me… and we did things he’d never do with anyone else. I wouldn’t say we didn’t have struggles, and quarrels, but we did OK. Years later he admitted to me that he was so kind and caring because he wanted to be the doctor I didn’t have those years ago. So it’s a good thing I became OK with it, because, well, it’s partially my fault.