She looked at the naked male model on the platform in the center of the room, then down at her work. Her drawing looked flat, two-dimensional and without feeling. Normally she liked her life drawing class. But this morning she was not enjoying herself and her work reflected it.
If only the light would stop flickering. It was driving her crazy. With her left hand she shielded her eyes. That made it better. Using a fresh piece of charcoal, she began to draw a base for her figure to rest on. She started with a perpendicular line, pulling the fresh charcoal straight down the paper. When she lifted the marker she was surprised no line had resulted. Looking at the end of the charcoal she could see a flattened area where it had rubbed against the paper. Thinking it was a defective piece, Kristin turned her head slightly to make a mark with the charcoal in the corner of the paper. As she did so she noticed that the perpendicular line she had just drawn appeared in the periphery of her vision. She looked back and the line disappeared. Rotating her head slightly caused the line to appear. Kristin did it several times to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Her eye couldn’t perceive the perpendicular line when her head was perfectly aligned with it. If she rotated her head in either direction the line appeared. Weird!
Kristin had heard of migraine headaches, and although she’d never had a migraine, she guessed she was experiencing one. After putting down her charcoal and stacking her materials in her locker, Kristin explained to the instructor that she was not feeling well and left for her apartment.
Walking across campus, Kristin experienced the same dizziness that she’d noticed on her way to class. It seemed that the world would abruptly rotate just a fraction of a degree to make Kristin’s step feel slightly off-balance. It was accompanied by an unpleasant although vaguely familiar odor and a slight ringing in her ears.
One block from campus, Kristin’s apartment was a third-floor walk-up, which she shared with her roommate, Carol Danforth. As Kristin climbed the stairs she felt a heaviness in her legs which made her wonder if she were getting the flu.
The apartment was empty. Carol was undoubtedly at class.
In one way that was good because Kristin guessed she needed some undisturbed rest, but she would have appreciated Carol’s sympathy. She took two aspirins, slipped out of her clothes, climbed into bed, and put a cold cloth over her head. Almost immediately she felt better. It was such a sudden reversal that she just lay there, concerned that if she moved the strange symptoms would recur.
When the phone by her bed rang she was pleased because she wanted to talk to someone. But it wasn’t one of her friends. It was the GYN clinic calling to tell her that her Pap smear was abnormal.
Kristin listened, trying to keep herself calm. They told her not to be concerned because abnormal Pap smears were not that uncommon, especially when associated with the slight erosion she had on her cervix, but to be on the safe side they wanted her to return to the clinic that afternoon to repeat it.
Kristin tried to protest, mentioning her migraine headache. But GYN was insistent, saying the sooner the better. They had an opening that afternoon and Kristin could be in and out in no time.
Reluctantly Kristin agreed to come. Maybe something really was wrong with her and if that were the case she had to be responsible. But she dreaded going alone. She tried calling her boyfriend, Thomas, but of course he wasn’t in. Kristin knew it was irrational, but she couldn’t help feeling there was something evil about the Med Center.
Martin took a deep breath before entering Pathology. When Philips had been a medical student, that service had been his bete noire. His first autopsy had been an ordeal that he had not been prepared for. He had assumed it was going to be like first-year anatomy, where the cadaver bore as little resemblance to a human being as a wooden statue. The odor had been unpleasant but at least it had been chemical. Besides, anatomy lab had been characterized by pranks and jokes, relieving any tension. Not so with pathology. The autopsy had been on a ten-year-old boy who had died from leukemia. His body was pale, but supple and all too life-like. When the corpse had been rudely opened, then gutted like a fish, Martin’s legs had turned to rubber and his lunch came up in his mouth. He’d avoided vomiting by turning his head, but his esophagus burned from the acid of his own digestive juices. The professor had droned on, but Philips had heard nothing. He had stayed but he had suffered, and his heart had gone out to that lifeless boy.