It had all seemed so easy at medical school. Paige thought about the four years she had spent there. There had been one hundred and fifty students, and only fifteen women. She would never forget the first day of Gross Anatomy class. The students had walked into a large white tiled room with twenty tables lined up in rows, each table covered with a yellow sheet. Five students were assigned to each table.
The professor had said, “All right, pull back the sheets.” And there, in front of Paige, was her first cadaver. She had been afraid that she would faint or be sick, but she felt strangely calm. The cadaver had been preserved, which somehow removed it one step from humanity.
In the beginning the students had been hushed and respectful in the anatomy laboratory. But, incredibly to Paige, within a week, they were eating sandwiches during the dissections, and making rude jokes. It was a form of self-defense, a denial of their own mortality. They gave the corpses names, and treated them like old friends. Paige tried to force herself to act as casually as the other students, but she found it difficult. She looked at the cadaver she was working on, and thought: Here was a man with a home and a family. He went to an office every day, and once a year he took a vacation with his wife and children. He probably loved sports and enjoyed movies and plays, and he laughed and cried, and he watched his children grow up and he shared their joys and their sorrows, and he had big, wonderful dreams. I hope they all came true…A bittersweet sadness engulfed her because he was dead and she was alive.
In time, even to Paige, the dissections became routine. Open the chest, examine the ribs, lungs, pericardial sac covering the heart, the veins, arteries, and nerves.
Much of the first two years of medical school was spent memorizing long lists that the students referred to as the Organ Recital. First the cranial nerves: olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducens, facial, auditory, glossopharyngeal, vagus, spinal, and hypoglossal.
The students used mnemonics to help them remember. The classic one was “On old Olympus’s towering tops, a French and German vended some hops.” The modern male version was “Oh, oh, oh, to touch and feel a girl’s vagina—such heaven.”
The last two years of medical school were more interesting, with courses in internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics, and they worked at the local hospital. I remember the time…Paige was thinking.
“Dr. Taylor…” The senior resident was staring at her.
Paige came to with a start. The others were already halfway down the corridor.
“Coming,” she said hastily.
The first stop was at a large, rectangular ward, with rows of beds on both sides of the room, with a small stand next to each bed. Paige had expected to see curtains separating the beds, but here there was no privacy.
The first patient was an elderly man with a sallow complexion. He was sound asleep, breathing heavily. Dr. Radnor walked over to the foot of the bed, studied the chart there, then went to the patient’s side and gently touched his shoulder. “Mr. Potter?”
The patient opened his eyes. “Huh?”
“Good morning. I’m Dr. Radnor. I’m just checking to see how you’re doing. Did you have a comfortable night?”
“It was okay.”
“Do you have any pain?”
“Yeah. My chest hurts.”
“Let me take a look at it.”
When he finished the examination, he said, “You’re doing fine. I’ll have the nurse give you something for the pain.”
“Thanks, doctor.”
“We’ll be back to see you this afternoon.”
They moved away from the bed. Dr. Radnor turned to the residents. “Always try to ask questions that have a yes or no answer so the patient doesn’t tire himself out. And reassure him about his progress. I want you to study his chart and make notes. We’ll come back here this afternoon to see how he’s doing. Keep a running record of every patient’s chief complaint, present illness, past illnesses, family history, and social history. Does he drink, smoke, etc.? When we make the rounds again, I’ll expect a report on the progress of each patient.”