Susan’s father was never particularly demanding, and certainly never pushy. He remained a source of confidence and encouragement for Susan to do whatever she wanted, without considering her sex. After Susan had entered medical school and became familiar with some of her female classmates, she realized that many of them had emerged from a similar paternalistic background. In fact when she met some of their parents, the fathers seemed to be vaguely familiar, as if she had actually known them in the past.
A resonant thumping issued from the radiator beneath the window, heralding the coming of heat. A tiny bit of steam hissed from the overflow valve. The radiator’s stirring reminded Susan of the coldness of the room. Stiffly she stood up, stretched, and closed the window. It had been open only about a half-inch. Susan lifted the nightgown over her head and regarded her naked body in the mirror on the bathroom door. Mirrors held a strange attraction for her. It was almost impossible for her to pass a mirror without at least a quick reassuring look.
“Maybe you should be a dancer, Susan Wheeler,” she said rising up onto her tiptoes and stretching her arms straight up, “and give lip this idea of becoming a fucking doctor.” Like a balloon being deflated, she let herself sag until she was slumped over. She was still looking at herself in the mirror. “I wish I could do that,” she added more quietly. Susan was proud of her body. It was soft and supple, yet strong and well tuned. She could have been a dancer. She had good balance and she was filled with a sense of rhythm and movement. She envied Carla Curtis, a friend from Radcliffe who had gone into dance after college and was somewhere in the New York world. But Susan knew she could not actually go into dance despite her fantasy about it She needed a vocation which would constantly exercise her brain. Susan made a horrible grimace and stuck her tongue out at the girl in the mirror, who did the same. Then Susan went into the bathroom.
In the bathroom she turned on the shower. It took four or five minutes to get hot. She looked at her face in the bathroom mirror, after shaking her hair from her line of sight. If only her nose had been made a little more narrow, she thought that she would be quite attractive. Then she started her bathroom routine with one lavender tablet of Ortho-Novum. Among her other characteristics, Susan Wheeler was a practical woman; strong-willed and practical.
Monday, February 23, 7:30 A.M.
The Boston Memorial Hospital is certainly not an architectural landmark, despite the disproportionately large number of architects in the Boston area. The central building is attractive and interesting. It was constructed over a century ago with brownstone blocks carefully fitted together with skill and feeling. But the structure is inconveniently small and only two stories tall. Besides, it was designed with large, general wards, now outmoded. Hence its present-day practicality is minuscule. Only the ooze of medical history which permeates its halls keeps the wreckers and the planners at bay.
The innumerable larger buildings are studies in American gothic. Extending off at obtuse angles, millions upon millions of bricks join together to hold up dirty windows and flat monotonous roofs. The buildings were added in spurts, responding to the purported need for beds or the availability of funds. There is no doubt that it is an ugly combination of buildings, except perhaps for a few smaller research buildings. Those had architects and money to burn.
But very few people ever noticed the appearance of the buildings. The whole is larger than the sum of its parts; perception is too clouded by innumerable layers of emotional response. The buildings are not buildings by themselves. They are the famed Boston Memorial Hospital, containing all the mystery and wizardry of modern medicine. Fear and excitement intermingle in an ambivalent dialogue as lay people approach the structure. And for the professional individual, it is the mecca: the pinnacle of academic medicine.
The setting for the hospital adds very little. On one side a maze of railroad tracks leading to North Station and a bewildering array of elevated highways forms an enormous sculpture of rusting steel. On the other side is a modern housing project for low income families. Somehow that goal got mixed up in the renowned corruptness of the Boston government. The apartment buildings look like housing for the underprivileged because of their lack of outward design. But the rents are out of sight and only the rich and privileged live there. In front of the hospital is a stagnant corner of Boston Harbor with water like Mack coffee, sweetened with sewer gas. Separating the hospital and the water is a cement playground filled with discarded newspapers.