Rebecca ignored these petty maladies. After all, everything else in her life was wonderful, Six months earlier she’d married, to her mother’s relief and her life had taken on new meaning. She’d even accepted a new Job as one of the youngest litigators for aprestigious Boston law firm Everything was perfect, and she was not about to let some mild physical complaints mar her mood Yet there was more to this episode than Rebecca could have known. The bacteria had started a chain of events that went beyond the immunological. The consequences were destined to come back to haunt her, to rob her of her happiness, and eventually, indirectly, to kill her.
February 21,1988 An agonizing screech of metal scraping against metal jangled Marissa Blumenthal’s already frayed nerves as the aging MBTA subway train strained to navigate the sharp turn into the Harvard Square station in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Marissa closed her eyes for a moment in a vain attempt to shield herself from the grating racket as she clutched an upright pole. She wanted to get out of the train. Besides peace and quiet, she needed fresh air.
Wedged among a crowd of six-foot-plus giants, five-foot Marissa felt more claustrophobic than usual. The air in the subway car felt oppressively warm. It was a rainy February day and the damp smell of moist wool added to her discomfort.
Like everyone else in the train, Marissa tried to avoid eye contact with the people pressed up against her. It was a mixed crowd. Harvard Square attracted both ends of the spectrum. To Marissa’s right was an Ivy League lawyer-type with a black ostrich briefcase, his nose buried in a,crisply folded copy of The Wall Street Journal. Directly in front of her was a fetid breathed skinhead, outfitted in a denim jacket from which the sleeves had been cut. He had clumsily tattooed swastikas on each knuckle of his hands. To her left was a massive black man with a ponytail of dreadlocks, wearing gray sweats. His sunglasses were so dark that Marissa could not see his eyes as she furtively glanced in his direction.
With a final lurch that all but sent Marissa to the floor, the train stopped and the doors slid open. Breathing a sigh of relief, Marissa stepped out onto the platform. Normally she would have driven her car from her office and left it under the Charles Hotel, but she wasn’t sure how she would be feeling after her minor surgical procedure, so she’d decided it was more prudent to take the T. There had been talk of her having some kind of sedative or intravenous painkiller, an idea that Marissa was not averse to.
She freely admitted that she was not good with pain. If she was groggy after the anesthesia, she thought it best not to drive.
Marissa hurried past a trio of street musicians playing for commuters’ donations and quickly went up the stairs to the street. it was still raining so she paused briefly to raise her folded umbrella.
Marissa buttoned her trench coat and held her umbrella tight as she traversed the square and headed up Mount Auburn Street.
Sudden gusts of wind foiled her attempt to stay dry; by the time she reached the Women’s Clinic at the end of Nutting Street, a plethora of raindrops were sprinkled across her forehead like beads of perspiration. Beneath the glass-enclosed walkway that spanned the street and connected the main building of the clinic to its overnight ward and emergency facilities, Marissa shook her umbrella and folded it closed.
The clinic building was a postmodern structure, built of red brick and mirrored glass, which faced a bricked courtyard. The main entrance was off the courtyard and was reached by a wide run of granite steps.
Taking a deep breath, Marissa climbed the front steps. Although as a physician she was accustomed to entering medical facilities, this was the first time she was doing so as a patient, coming in not just for an examination but for surgery. The fact that it was minor surgery had less of a mitigating effect than she’d imagined. For the first time Marissa realized that from a patient’s point of view, there was no such thing as “minor” surgery.