Mark Bellows had been at the Memorial for two and one half years. Things had been going well, and he was reasonably sure of finishing the program. In fact, it had begun to look as if he might have a fighting chance for the chief resident position if everything went smoothly. Having been selected while he was an intermediate resident to get a group of medical students was certainly auspicious, although a bother. It had been an unexpected turn and was the immediate result of Hugh Casey coming down with hepatitis. Hugh Casey was one of the senior residents whose job included teaching two groups of medical students during the course of the year. The hepatitis came on only three weeks earlier. Right after that Bellows had received the message to come to Dr. Howard Stark’s office. Bellows had never associated the message with Casey’s illness. In fact, with the usual paranoia following a request to come to the Chief of the Department of Surgery’s office, Bellows had mentally tried to relive all his latest blunders so as to be prepared for the tirade he expected. But contrary to his usual self, Stark had been very pleasant and had actually commended Bellows on his performance related to a recent Whipple procedure Bellows had done. After the unanticipated honeyed words, Stark had asked if Bellows would be interested in taking the medical students scheduled to be with Casey. Truthfully, Bellows would have preferred to pass up the chance while being on the Beard 5 rotation, except that one did not pass up a request by Stark even if it were carefully couched in the form of an offer. It would have been professional suicide for Bellows to have done so and he knew it Bellows comprehended the vengeance of the affronted surgical personality, so he had agreed with the proper amount of alacrity.
With a straightedge Bellows filled the front page of his yellow legal tablet with little squares about an inch on a side. He then proceeded to fill in the dates of the subsequent thirty or so days the medical students were scheduled to be under his tutelage. Within each square he blocked off morning and afternoon. Each morning he planned to give a lecture; each afternoon he was going to enlist one of the attendings to give a lecture. Bellows wanted to schedule all the topics in advance to avoid duplication.
Bellows was twenty-nine years old, having just celebrated a birthday the week before. However, it was relatively hard to guess his age. His skin was smooth for a man and he was in excellent physical shape. Almost without fail he jogged two to three miles per day. The only outward evidence of the fact that he was almost thirty was the thinning area on the crown of his head and the slightly receding hairline at the temples. Bellows had blue eyes and an almost imperceptible salting of gray over his ears. He had a friendly face, and he was endowed with the enviable quality of making people feel comfortable. Most everyone liked Mark Bellows.
Two interns were also assigned to the Beard 5 rotation. Under the new terminology they were called first-year residents, but Bellows and most of the other residents still called them interns. They were Daniel Cartwright from Johns Hopkins and Robert Reid from Yale. They had been interns since July and hence had come a long way. But in February they were both experiencing the familiar intern depression. Enough of the year had passed to blunt the uniqueness of their roles as well as the terror of the responsibility, and yet so much remained before the year would be over and they would earn relief from the burden of every other night on call. Hence they demanded a certain amount of attention from Bellows. Cartwright was presently assigned to the intensive care unit, while Reid was on Beard 5. Bellows decided he would also use them for the medical students. Cartwright was a bit more outgoing and would probably be more helpful. Reid was black and had recently begun to attribute being called and harassed so much to his color and not his role as an intern. That was just another symptom of the February blues, but Bellows decided that Cartwright would be more helpful.