Dr. Billing looked at the clock. It was 7:48. “OK, go ahead. I’ll tell you if she changes any more,” said Dr. Billing, while giving the breathing bag a healthy squeeze to inflate Nancy’s lungs maximally. Something was bothering Dr. Billing; something was keying-off his sixth sense, activating his adrenals and pushing up his own heart rate. He watched the breathing bag sag and remain still. He compressed it again, mentally recording the degree of resistance afforded by Nancy’s bronchial tubes and lungs. She was very easy to breathe. He watched the bag again. No motion, no respiratory effect on Nancy’s part, despite the fact that the second dose of the succinylcholine should have been metabolized by then.
The blood pressure came up slightly, then went down again: 80/58. The monotonous beep of the monitor skipped once. Dr. Billing’s eyes shot to the oscilloscope screen. The rhythm picked up again.
“I’ll be finished here in five minutes,” said Dr. Major for Dr. Billing’s benefit With a sense of relief, Dr. Billing reached over and turned down both the nitrous oxide and the halo-thane flow, while turning up the oxygen. He wanted to lighten Nancy’s level of anesthesia. The blood pressure came up to 90/60, and Dr. Billing felt a little better. He even allowed himself the luxury of running the back of his hand across his forehead to scatter the beads of perspiration that had appeared as evidence of his increasing anxiety. He glanced at the soda-lime CO2 absorber. It appeared normal. Time was 7:56. With his right hand he reached up and lifted Nancy’s eyelids. They moved with no resistance and the pupils were maximally dilated. The fear returned to Dr. Billing in a rush. Something was wrong … something was very wrong.
Monday, February 23, 7:15 A.M.
Several small flakes of snow danced down Longwood Avenue in the half-light of February 23, 1976. The temperature was a crisp twenty degrees and the delicate crystalline structures fluttering earthward were intact even after striking the pavement. The sun was obscured by a low cover of thick gray clouds which shrouded the waking city. More and more clouds were swept in by the sea breeze, enveloping the tops of the taller buildings in a mist, making it become paradoxically darker as dawn spread its frail fingers over Boston. It was not supposed to snow, yet a few flakes had crystallized over Cohasset and had blown all the way into the city. The few that reached Longwood Avenue and were blown right on Avenue Louis Pasteur were the survivors until a sudden down-draft slammed them against a third-story window of the medical school dorm. They would have slid off had it not been for the layer of greasy Boston grime on the pane. Instead they stuck there while the glass slowly transmitted the heat from within, and their delicate bodies dissolved and mingled with the dirt.
Within her room Susan Wheeler was totally unaware of the drama on the window pane. Her mind was preoccupied with extracting itself from the clutches of a meaningless, disturbing dream after a restless, near-sleepless night. February 23 was going to be a difficult day at best and possibly a disaster. Medical school is made up of a thousand minor crises occasionally interrupted by truly epochal upheavals. February 23 was in the latter category for Susan Wheeler. Five days earlier she had completed the first two years of medical school, the basic science part taught in the lecture halls and science labs with books and other inanimate objects. Susan Wheeler had done very well because she could handle the classroom, the lab, and the papers. Her class notes were renowned and people always wanted to borrow them. At first she lent them indiscriminately. Later, as she began to perceive the realities of the competitive system which she thought she had left behind in Radcliffe, she changed her tactics. She lent her notes only to a small group of people who were her friends, or at least were people from whom she could borrow notes if she had had to miss a class. But she rarely missed a class.
A number of people chided Susan playfully about her. marvelous attendance record. She always responded by saying she needed all the help she could get. Of course that was not the reason. Having entered a profession dominated by males, in which essentially all the professors and instructors were males, Susan Wheeler could not skip a class without being missed. Despite the fact that Susan looked on her mentors in a neutral sexless way as her professional superiors, they did not return the view in kind. The fact of the matter was that Susan Wheeler was a very attractive twenty-three-year-old female.