Picking up her briefcase, Marissa turned off the light and headed back down the hall to the elevators. She’d taken the introductory epidemiology course with forty-eight other men and women, most of whom, like herself, were trained physicians. There were a few micro-biologists, a few nurses, even one dentist. She wondered if they all shared her current crisis of confidence. In medicine, people generally didn’t talk about such things; it was contrary to the “image.”
At the completion of the training, she’d been assigned to the Department of Virology, Special Pathogens Branch, her first choice among the positions available. She had been granted her request because she’d ranked number one in the class. Although Marissa had little background in virology, which was the reason she’d been spending so much time in the library, she’d asked to be assigned to the department because the current epidemic of AIDS had catapulted virology into the forefront of research. Previously it had
always played second fiddle to bacteriology. Now virology was where the “action” was, and Marissa wanted to be a part of it.
At the elevators, Marissa said hello to the small group of people who were waiting. She’d met some of them, mostly those from the Department of Virology, whose administrative office was just down the hail from her cubicle. Others were strangers, but everyone acknowledged her. She might have been experiencing a crisis of confidence in her professional competence, but at least she felt welcome.
On the main floor Marissa stood in line to sign out, a requirement after 5:00 P.M., then headed to the parking area. Although it was winter, it was nothing like what she’d endured in Boston for the previous four years, and she didn’t bother to button her coat. Her sporty red Honda Prelude was as she’d left it that morning: dusty, dirty and neglected. It still had Massachusetts license plates; replacing them was one of the many errands that Marissa had not yet found time to do.
It was a short drive from the CDC to Marissa’s rented house. The area around the Center was dominated by Emory University, which had donated the land to the CDC in the early ’40s. A number of pleasant residential neighborhoods surrounded the university, running the gamut from lower middle class to conspicuously rich. It was in one of the former neighborhoods, in the Druid Hills section, that Marissa had found a house to rent. It was owned by a couple who’d been transferred to Mali, Africa, to work on an extended birth-control project.
Marissa turned onto Peachtree Place. It seemed to her that everything in Atlanta was named “peachtree.” She passed her house on the left. It was a small two-story wood-frame building, reasonably maintained except for the grounds. The architectural style was in-determinant, except for two Ionic columns on the front porch. The windows all had fake shutters, each with a heart-shaped area cut out in the center. Marissa had used the term “cute” to describe it to her parents.
She turned left at the next street and then left again. The property on which the house sat went all the way through the block, and in order for Marissa to get to the garage, she had to approach from the rear. There was a circular drive in front of the house, but it didn’t connect with the rear driveway and the garage. Apparently in the past the two driveways had been connected, but someone had built a tennis court, and that had ended the connection. Now, the tennis court was so overgrown with weeds it was barely discernible.
Knowing that she was going out that evening, Marissa did not put
her car in the garage, but just swung around and backed it up. As she ran up the back steps, she heard the cocker spaniel, given to her by one of her pediatric colleagues, barking welcome.
Marissa had never planned on having a dog, but six months previously a long-term romantic relationship that she had assumed was leading to marriage had suddenly ended. The man, Roger Shulman, a neurosurgical resident at Mass. General, had shocked Marissa with the news that he had accepted a fellowship at UCLA and that he wanted to go by himself. Up until that time, they had agreed that Marissa would go wherever Roger went to finish his training, and indeed Marissa had applied for pediatric positions in San Francisco and Houston. Roger had never even mentioned UCLA.