… Sal?
On the last lab day, Hedley and Gable congratulated us all for making it through the course. Gable had lost a considerable amount of weight over the year, and Hedley stood more and more at her side to steady her.
Gable, looking very tired, sat at her desk and smiled, as we all came forward to shake her hand and Hedley’s. Then she gave her valedictory.
“You are my last class, ladies and gentlemen. I am, as the more astute of you already know, dying of a particular form of cancer. I want to let you know that I am donating my body upon death to this very lab. I know that John,” she turned toward Hedley, “I know John has also made arrangements for himself.
“God bless you all.”
Our first year was over … right?
Guess again.
Now we faced the dreaded week of comprehensives.
Our little black bags sat on the shelves in our dorm rooms. We sweated in Richmond’s oppressive heat and humidity, as we pored over all of the notes we had taken during the past year.
Pass them and move on to second year; flunk and you were either out or—the greater ignominy—forced to repeat year one.
You know the sensation from hearing finger nails scraping a blackboard? (Do they still use blackboards?) By day seven of the comps we would have torn the head off a chicken if it looked at us sideways.
“You’re breathing too loudly, City Boy.”
“Do you know how annoying your nasal whistle is, Country Boy?”
It actually helped. After we wrestled each other to the floor, we sat there laughing. Then we hit the books again.
That final day of comps, we turned in our last exam booklets and headed out.
Dave was going to spend two week at his family’s farm before returning to his summer job at the school. I had a job lined up as well. It would be two whole weeks of doing nothing, hearing nothing.
“Wanna come home with me, City Boy?”
We left together.
On schedule two weeks later we were back in the anatomy building. Dave and I worked as gofers for several graduate students, doing the scut work and bone articulations of skeletons for teaching assistants.
“Galen, Nash, would you guys wheel this over to the ENT lab in West Hospital?”
Charlie Nestor, our boss, was winding up his Ph.D. in human anatomy. His research developed the new preservative fluids for lab specimens. He was pointing at a medium-sized, wheeled table with large, dark-plastic jars on each of its three shelves. It was surprisingly heavy and needed both of us to maneuver it through the streets. We looked like demented hot dog vendors, dressed in foul-smelling, green lab smocks.
Two blocks and two elevator rides later we reached the lab where the residents specializing in head-and-neck surgery honed their skills on cadaver specimens. The lab master signed our slips and helped us park the table along the wall.
As we headed out, we heard him laugh.
“Hey, guys, who’s the joker who played makeup artist?”
We turned.
He had opened one of the jars and taken out its contents. It was a human head—hair combed and tied in a ribbon, wearing lipstick and facial makeup.
Gertrude Gable really did look natural.
Mother Nature Ain’t Nice
“Holy shit!”
Andy Kagill clutched his groin protectively, while the rest of us guys experienced that uniquely male sensation that occurs when we sit in cold water.
The gals looked on with Mona Lisa smiles.
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this poor woman definitely had a vaginal overbite.”
Second year medical school had begun on a beautifully balmy August day—definitely not weather conducive to studying. But this was pathology year, the year of the odd, the unusual, and the unexpected. Our previous year had been spent learning the normal, or what was considered normal. Now we got to see in full detail the tricks that Mother Nature could play on her children.
We stood there in the Pathology Museum, staring at a vast array of organ specimens in thick glass jars. Needless to say, the urology and gynecology sections grabbed our attention.
“This is a perfect example of a teratoma,” Professor Madden intoned, pointing at a large jar containing the mortal remains of a woman upon whom nature had bestowed the ultimate indignity: Lining her vulva were two complete rows of teeth.
For you scientifically inclined readers, teratomas are tumors that usually begin when a baby forms inside its mother. Cells that ultimately become different types of organs and tissues locate in the wrong place and develop just as they would in their correct position—hair, eyeballs, limbs, you name it. They can be found anywhere from the base of the tongue to the genitals.
Our class clown, Andy—yes, medical school has them—leered at his girlfriend, Tanya.
“You aren’t going to surprise me, are you?”
The smile on her face could have air-conditioned the room.
“You’ll never know.”
Most of us had survived the first year’s comprehensive exams, that critical testing of mind and body, fighting fatigue and knowledge overload. Ten did not. Three would be repeating freshman year, one had shot himself, and six had decided their best interests lay elsewhere.
Year two meant pairing off, kindred men and women finding each other and beginning the dating/mating ritual full tilt. Dave had fallen head over country-boy heels in love with Connie, whom he called the Teacher. My other friend, Bill, aka Baby Face, had lost his gentleman’s reserve over Peggy, the Southern Belle.
Me? I wasn’t the passionate type.
Right.
Until I met June, aka The Model.
From that time on the six of us became life-long friends. We survived and thrived in school because of one another.
I miss you, my friends.
Sophomore year. We carried our black bags to clinical presentations, ready to jump up and approach a patient staring back at us from a chair, wheelchair, or stretcher when a professor called our name.
“Mr. Galen.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Take a look at our patient. What are your observations?”
Dr. Stemp was known for pulling surprises.
The young man, no more than seventeen, smiled at me when I approached him. He sat in gym shorts and
