Deconstructing "A Scientist's Conclusion."

This is for Desi, who wanted to know what really happened. Otherwise, I doubt I’d write this-reality-to-fiction synopsis of “A Scientist’s Conclusion.” I began this commentary  back in May, but summer got in the way of finishing it.  (The story begins here in case you want to read it through before reading this.) Anyway, here's the story of the story.

Many years ago, when I was doing a post-doctoral stint (those two years were the nadir of my life), I happened upon a newspaper story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a Chinese graduate student in the biomedical sciences who shot his advisor. I no longer remember the details of the story, but I do remember thinking, “One day I want to write a story about a graduate student who kills his advisor.” That probably reflected the grimness of my life at the time.  I thought I should be able to depict the difficulty, the poverty, the isolation, the confusion, the demands, as well as the indifference verging on contempt suffered by many graduate students in the sciences, who endure a slave-like existence, living in fear that all their work may be in vain, knowing that half the students in the program never obtain the sought-after degree – flunking out or becoming too dispirited to continue.

I didn’t write the story then, and I later moved, got a decent job in a good lab, worked hard, published, and eventually became a graduate advisor in my own right. My first graduate student was a hand-me-down (as in the story) who had not performed well on his oral exam in another department and had been denied further study there. However, he was rescued by a faculty member in my department, who shortly thereafter took a job elsewhere and who begged me to take on this student. And yes, he was Chinese and had language difficulties.

I worked very hard with him. I mean, VERY hard. You have no idea how hard. And yes, we had difficulty with communication and with the very idea of what it means to do science. We did, indeed,  have an issue once with the idea of experimental controls. We were picking out photos for his dissertation, and we couldn’t find a good photo to illustrate a particular cell type in control animals. He showed me a photo that looked pretty good, but when I found out it had actually come from an experimental animal, I exploded. [Of such actions is scientific fraud born (and believe me, there’s enough of that out there already).] He somehow seemed unable to understand why that was taboo or why I was so upset. He later told a fellow student that I had "blown him up” (meaning, I had blown up at him).

When the time for his dissertation defense approached, as we were working on his presentation, he happened to mention that one of his fellow countryman had killed his advisor when he didn’t pass his defense. I viewed that as something of a veiled threat. However, he did all right on the defense (as a colleague said, “That was C…’s finest hour.”), and he obtained the Ph.D. Whew.

So I decided to write the story from a faculty advisor's point of view, but I also wanted to make the student seem sympathetic. The student in the story became Korean, which was odd because later (after retirement), I spent two years in Korea. Of course, in the story nobody wins. But I wanted to tell the story anyway.

Fiction or Reality?

How much of any piece of fiction is pure fiction and how much is reality-based?

I’ve often asked that question when reading the fiction of others. I might wonder what, in the author’s life, could have evoked such a pathetic (or outrageous or humorous) situation or conclusion, one that serves to fuel the story. Is this story a chance at a voyeuristic look into a writer’s life, or is it a window into the mind of a pathological liar?

About five years ago, I asked that question of my own fiction. I’ve always known, of course, that something – some event or personal interaction – must give rise to the impulse to write a story. Moreover, bits and pieces of past experiences feed into stories; these are often gathered from different times and places and pieced together in the mosaic that is fiction. I hope that every story I write tells some truth, however convoluted. But I also know that much – even most – of my fiction comes from imagination. I envision scenes and dialogues that I hope will lead the story through its maze to a real insight or understanding for the reader at the end.

So I decided to do a tally of my own fiction using a one-to-five scale: ‘5’ being “mostly reflects something that actually happened” and ‘1’ being “completely fabricated.” Only one story earned a ‘5;’ and one deserved a ‘1.’ All the rest, of twenty five short stories and two novellas, came in somewhere between ‘1.5’ and ‘4.5,’ with a collective average of ‘2.2.’ Of course, this tabulation – fictional fantasy vs. reality – reflects a scientist’s preoccupation with data gathering and analysis. But it also shows that, on average, the stories were more imagination than objective reality. What I was actually aiming for in each story was subjective reality, a personal "aha" moment on the part of the reader.

All this is background for a deconstruction of the story, “A Scientist’s Conclusion,” for the next post. I’ll look at what parts of that story were reality-based and what parts were simply made up. I’ve been intending to do this for several weeks now, but life got in the way. I promise, I won’t wait so long for the next post and the actual deconstruction.

How much of your fiction is reality-based and how much is pure imagination?
(continued)

A Scientist's Conclusion - Part 7

This is the final installment of this story. If you'd like to read it from the beginning, you can start here and move through the links to this one.
__________

Sung was not in the hallway when the committee left the room, and he was not in the Men's Room where Carl stopped on the way back to his office. Carl was almost relieved that Sung was not waiting in the office when he got there, because he really didn't want to face the student. Carl was annoyed by the prospect of having to spend another year or more working with Sung on a Master's thesis, checking on him constantly to be certain that he was performing adequate controls, organizing his data, correcting the grammar and sentence structure of his thesis, and then having to sit through a thesis defense with the very real possibility that Sung would perform as miserably on that examination as he had done on this one.

Carl stayed in his office late that evening, as usual. He tried to dissociate himself from his student's failure by working on a theoretical paper that was his secret pride and that had been put aside during Sung's exam preparation. The sun had set and the office window that looked out on the silent, surrounding darkness mirrored Carl's silent, intense activity at his desk, cluttered with references and old notes for the paper.

Caught in thought, he glanced up at the blackened window and saw an image there—surreal—as if standing suspended in mid-air, three stories above the ground. Carl wheeled around in his chair. He faced a figure standing, feet on the floor, in the fully lighted room.

"Sung!" Carl exclaimed with a start. "When did you come in? How long have you been standing there ?"

Sung didn't answer. He stood motionless, his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the floor. He glanced up at Carl for a moment, then lowered his eyes and focused on a spot near Carl's feet. Sung stood there impassively; his face, uncharacteristically elongate for an Asian, was expressionless. His eyebrows extended across his forehead in two straight ridges and his mouth was set in a straight, firm line, parallel to the brows. The flesh around his eyes seemed puffy and, despite high cheekbones, his eyes had darkened circles under them. Sung seemed suddenly strange to Carl, very strange, as if he were someone Carl had never met before, as if the scientist were seeing the student for the first time.

"We have to talk about your exam, today," said Carl, bringing up the subject neither he nor Sung wanted to talk about. "You know you did very poorly on the exam."

"Questions not good. You do not advise me correctly on questions," retorted Sung with a slightly belligerent tone.

"Well, there's no way to know for sure what people are going to ask," said Carl defensively. "You just have to be prepared and then think on your feet. You are going to have to learn how to think on your feet."

"When will I take next examination?"

"You won't. You failed the exam, but you're lucky the committee didn't just decide to fail you outright. They recommended that you be allowed to finish at the Master's level."

"But I want to take Doctor's degree."

"I know that, but you flunked the examination. You'll have to settle for a Master's degree. Even that won't necessarily be easy."

"If I take Master's degree, then I must take Doctor's degree again. How long to do that?"

"Sung, you don't have that option. Not in this department, at least. You were recommended for a terminal Master's degree and that's final."

"You give me bad advice," said Sung with a tone more hostile than Carl had heard him use before.

With that, Sung moved slightly backwards and pulled one hand out of his pocket. In the hand was a gun.

"Sung, for God's sake!"

Carl was paralyzed. His mind whirled back over all his interactions with this student, trying to find a key, a clue, that might have allowed him to foresee such a catastrophic eventuality. Nothing. He came up with only a series of missed communica­tions, but nothing that could have presaged this. What signs had he missed that could have warned him of this danger? The man was clearly mad. Why had he not seen that?  What about his own future?  What about his theory of hydrophobic interactions that was to be his lasting contribution to an understanding of organic macromolecules? What about his wife and their two-year-old son? What about his parents who expected so much of him? What about those childhood playmates who had once taunted him, to whom he had intended to prove himself undeniably superior?  How had his pursuit of truth betrayed him so utterly? How was it possible for reality to be so irrational?

"No, Sung, please."

Sung stood there, still, as if eternal. Then Carl heard a click, followed quickly by a crack of the gun that echoed blackly, a split second later, in his skull.

 

A Scientist's Conclusion, Part 6

This is the penultimate installment of this series. The first installment can be read here.

"Harry, would you like to continue the questioning," asked Carl of Dr. Stillwell, who was seated to the left of Dr. Munster.

"Yes, thank you, Carl." Then, turning to the student, Dr. Stillwell asked, "Mr. Park, as a Pathologist, I’m always interested in the contribution of basic research to an understanding of human disease. What relevance might your research project have to the diagnosis, prognosis or management of human disease--for example, neoplasia?"

The question was a fair one, even an easy one, and there were a couple of fairly obvious answers to it. Carl looked expectantly at Sung. Whether Sung Lee Park was still in a state of shock from his prior embarrassment, whether he did not understand the question and did not dare risk having it clarified, whether he was no longer willing to commit himself on any issue, whether he had decided that all was lost and had given up—whatever the reason, Sung glanced quickly toward Dr. Stillwell, looked back up at the wall and mumbled in a low tone, "I don't know."

"Well then, why the hell are you doing it," boomed Stillwell. Then, with a shrug, he muttered, "I pass."

The exam was by this time clearly an irredeemable disaster, but for some reason, all present felt compelled to carry out the structure of the examination format like a mindless minuet. Or perhaps no one knew what to do to prevent its inexorable progression. Like machines, around the conference table, each professor asked his prepared questions and, like a robot, swaying slightly back and forth, his arms crossed over his chest, Sung responded either monosyllabically or else said, "I don't know." Only once did he begin a sentence in response to one of the questions, but then stopped in confusion and neither finished the sentence nor offered any other answer or explanation.

Dr. Vanadian, when his turn came, declined to question the hapless candidate. When the prescribed ordeal was finished, Carl asked Sung to leave the room, scarcely looking at him as he walked out. The examination had lasted just less than one hour.

The first to speak, after Sung was out the door, was Dr. Davidson. "That was the worst exam I have ever attended!"

Carl had been mortified by his student's performance, and his chairman's pointed comment made it that much more excruciating.

"The boy was obviously suffering from panic," offered Vanadian, who spoke with an accent, although his grammar and syntax were flawless.

"Nonetheless, he can't be passed if he can't answer a few simple questions," put in Munster, with a tone of sarcasm.

Carl did not feel like defending his student and wouldn't have known how, had he been so inclined. He said, "The issue we have to decide today is whether he should be failed outright or be allowed to retake the examination."

"I really wonder if he is Ph.D. material," mused Dr. Bock, echoing Carl's previously expressed fears.

"I've sometimes worried about that, myself," agreed Carl.

"He's been here almost too long to flunk him out just like that, without recourse," said Dr. Karesh.

"Would it be possible to recommend that he pursue the Master's degree rather than the Ph.D.?" asked Vanadian.

"We could," said Carl, then added, "It would take at least another year's work to tie up loose ends and write the thesis."

"It would be only fair to give him that option at least," said Karesh.

"Well, all right, how many are in favor of giving Sung the option of pursuing a Master's degree?" asked Carl.

Drs. Vanadian and Karesh raised their hands.

"How many are in favor of failing him outright?"

Dr. Munster raised his hand.

"Harry, do you wish to vote?" Carl asked Dr. Stillwell.

"No," came the reply.

"Then I will tell him that he has failed his Ph.D. comprehensives, but that he does have the option of finishing a Master's degree if he chooses to," said Carl by way of summary and conclusion.

With that, the august group rose from their chairs around the conference table and recessed from the room:  all silent, all engaged in private analyses and justifica­tions. Carl felt an especially heavy mental and emotional burden, a major component of which was resentment against this student with whom he had spent so much time, in whom he had invested so much effort, and who had performed so poorly—who had, in fact, never seemed to understand the WHY of anything.

________________
For the final installment of this story, click here.

A Scientist's Conclusion, Part 5

Sung did a good job on his oral presentation of the thesis project; Carl's coaching had been taken seriously. The presentation was organized in a logical and obvious fashion. Sung stood confidently and enunciated slowly and carefully. The questioning began relatively benignly; Dr. Karesh asked about the turnover time of the tumor line that Sung was using, which led to more general questions on cell cycle kinetics and how cell cycle data were obtained and analyzed. Next came a question on the antigenicity of the tumor line and whether or not it secreted substantial amounts of antigen into the culture medium. Carl had forseen these questions and Sung was prepared to answer them. In fact, he was so well prepared that his answers sounded as if he were reading them from notes. Carl wondered, absently, whether Sung had taken the questions Carl had given him, written out answers to them, and memorized the written answers.

Then Dr. Munster asked, "Why are you using the B-14 tumor line for your studies?"

Sung looked baffled, glanced around at Carl, then said, "I use B-14 tumor line in laboratory."

"Yes, but why do you use it," pursued Munster.

"It is tumor line," answered Sung.

Carl could not refrain from responding. "Otto, it's a fast-growing tumor line that can be made to slow and differentiate by a variety of agents. It's an ideal tumor line for his problem."

Munster turned in his chair. "It's not your exam, Carl." He then looked back at Sung. "How long have you been working with this cell line?"

"Two year," came the reply.

"And after two years, you still don't know the plural of year?" enunciated Munster with Germanic precision.

Sung was baffled, not knowing whether that had been a question, nor whether he was expected to answer it. "Two yearrss," he said with effort, the "r" and "s" sounds rolling in awkward succession off his stiffened tongue and out his pursed lips.

"In the two years that you've been working with it, has the cell line changed?" continued Munster.

"No," said Sung Lee

With Sung's definite "NO." Carl knew that the difficult questioning was about to begin, and he felt a sense of helplessness as he foresaw Sung sinking deeper and deeper into a quicksand of inadequate answers resulting from his failure to perceive the intent behind a question.

"How do you know the cell line hasn't changed?" pursued Munster.

"It has same antigen," responded Sung, ready with an answer and regaining a bit of confidence.

"Is surface antigenicity the only criterion for identifying a cell type? Could there be antigens on the cell surface now that weren't there two years ago and that you haven't assayed for? What about other criteria for identification? Have you karyotyped the line recently? Have you checked metabolic pathways?"

After this barrage of questions, Sung hesitated a moment and finally said, "No." Another hesitation. He glanced at the blank projector screen, then at the blackboard, began walking toward it, stopped, and then turned back toward the expectant faces before him. He moved his mouth a bit as if intending to say something but, apparently thinking better of it, remained silent. He put his hands on the podium and a blank expression came over his face as he stared over the heads of the examiners.

"No?  No, what," queried Munster incredulously. "Have you not checked metabolic pathways? Did you not do karyotyping? Do you not know whether or not your cell line has changed?"

"No," responded Sung, still staring at the back wall of the conference room, his face reddening.

"I have no further questions for the time being," said Munster, turning to Carl.

_________
For the next installment, click here.

 

A Scientist's Conclusion, Part 4

As the time for Sung's comprehensive exam drew near, Carl still doubted that Sung was, in fact, prepared, that he could ever be prepared to stand that examination and do it justice. Even in their weekly sessions, Sung hesitated to complete answers and usually refused to pursue a line of reasoning without receiving a nod of affirmation, or an authoritative "Go ahead." from Carl. Carl mused to himself, half­ seriously, that he might be able to nod Sung through some of the more difficult questions on the oral exam if the student could only get himself off to a correct start.

The week of comprehensives came and Sung passed the general written exam—not brilliantly but adequately. His specialty written exam was uneven; he had badly botched one of the three questions on that exam. Because of his performance, he had been given a borderline pass. Thus, the issue of whether he passed or failed, and, hence, whether or not he could continue his pursuit of the Ph.D. degree, hung upon the oral exam. His committee was composed of four individuals in addition to Carl: Drs. James Karesh and Otto Munster from the Biochemistry Department, Dr. Harris Stillwell from Pathology, and Dr. Anando Vanadian from Immunology. Carl was very proud of having gathered this committee for his first graduate student; they were among the best minds and greatest reputations at the institution. Their willingness to serve on this committee was taken by Carl, perhaps with some justification, as an indication that he was accorded a certain esteem as a scientist, despite the fact that he had not yet achieved national recognition.

The format of the oral exam was structured so that the student first gave an overview of his thesis project, including highlights of any preliminary data he might have obtained. Then the committee members were free to question the student on any material to which he could reasonably be expected to have been exposed during his course work and his literature search pertaining to the thesis topic. In practice, the examination usually began with questions centering around the candidate's thesis project, then ranged farther afield as answers to questions suggested new questions to the examiners. A successful exam was usually fairly brief, perhaps an hour and a half, whereas less successful exams often went on for three or four hours.

Carl had rehearsed Sung twice on his presentation and, after each rehearsal, had asked Sung several questions of the type that might logically relate to the presenta­tion. Carl had also scheduled the examination for the afternoon at 2:00 P.M., for two reasons. First, he hoped that the committee would be in a pleasant, ruminative mood after lunch, and secondly, he hoped that, since the exam was to begin fairly late in the day, it might not last for more than two or three hours and Sung might be spared some of the more probing and esoteric questions that often come at the end of a long examination.

The afternoon of the examination, two others were present in the seminar room in addition to Sung's committee: the departmental graduate advisor, Dr. William Bock, and the department chairman, Dr. Henry Davidson. Carl was not entirely surprised, since it was quite within accepted procedure for any member of the department to be present at the oral examination of any departmental student. Nonetheless, their presence made Carl uneasy.

The next installment is  here .

A Scientist's Conclusion, Part 3

The first two installments of this story are  here/ and here.

The next day, Carl announced to Sung that he would have to postpone taking his comprehensive exams until the following spring.

"But I already make one delay already," objected Sung.

"I'm sorry, but I can't have you taking the comprehensives as poorly prepared as I'm afraid you are. We'll get together and go over background material for a few hours every week until I feel you're in control of it." Carl thought he was doing Sung a real favor by mentoring him in the only fashion he knew how, by helping him to think and understand as a true scientist. 

Sung had already postponed taking his comprehensives once, because Carl insisted that he take an English course and an additional methodology course before standing for such a demanding examination.

The retraining began once more in earnest, that first Tuesday afternoon. Carl began, slowly and patiently, trying to lead Sung to understand for himself the processes of logic: the differences between induction and deduction and the types of traps and fallacies inherent in each.  He tried to teach Sung to see that it was important to ask "Why?" of everything, that there were no final answers, only answers that led to new questions.

And above all, Carl urged Sung to question published orthodoxy. This was the most difficult task of all, since Sung clung stubbornly, almost fanatically, to belief in the authority of the printed word--not only the truth of the data, but also the validity of interpretations drawn from them.

In order to make Sung more at ease in the question-answer period, Carl initially asked questions centering around assigned topics. As the sessions progressed, Carl deviated from the topic at hand in an effort to force Sung's mind to range more broadly, to synthesize information from several subjects into a coherent whole, to approach a given question from more than one perspective.

Throughout this protracted process, Sung became increasingly demoralized. The year before this, his wife, Kai-Hi, had come over from Korea after nearly two years of separation, because they had thought he would be finished in another year—or two at the most. Now the task seemed endless. Sung had taught high school for six years in Korea before coming to the U.S.; he and his wife had postponed having children so that Sung could obtain the prestigious Ph.D. degree from an American university. The money that they saved so carefully and painfully during those years was gone, and Sung's wife had taken a job as a waitress in Philadelphia's Chinatown. Everything in America was so expensive that Sung's brother-in-law had also recently come to Philadelphia to provide another family wage and was working as a cook in the same restaurant as Kai-Hi .  That made two others whose lives were intertwined with his, here, in this indifferent country among incomprehensible people, three whose visas were temporary and for whom there was not enough money for passage back to Korea.  The dream of a prestigious American degree was becoming a frightening nightmare.

The next installment is here. 

A Scientist's Conclusion, Part 2

(continued from part-1.html)

It was with the realization that Sung Lee did not, in fact, understand the importance (or even the purpose) of controls that Carl came to appreciate the enormity of the undertaking to which he had committed himself. That realization came about after Carl's suggestion that a drug effect on Sung's tumor-cell line might have been caused by increased cell membrane permeability or by increased levels of a calcium-binding protein in the cells as a consequence of the drug treatment.

Sung Lee thereupon went to the library to find methods to assay those parameters. After more than three weeks of hard work and experimentation, Sung came triumphantly into Carl's office with the announcement that Carl had been right on both accounts. Carl asked the obvious questions concerning the time-course and dose-dependence of the effect, and it was clear that Sung had either not considered these questions, or else he did not have the courage to say: "These are just preliminary data." It was as if Sung expected Carl to be so pleased at being told that his ideas were correct that the methodology would not be questioned. Then Carl, in what he thought was an inquisitive (not inquisitorial) tone, asked Sung:

"Why do you think your data show increased calcium-binding protein in the cells rather than increased binding of calcium to the protein that's already there?"

"No, calcium-bind protein increase," said Sung emphatically.

"How could you determine that it was increased protein rather than increased affinity?"

"Everybody say so.  Anderson do same experiment on amoebae and say calcium partition coefficient directly proportional to amount of calcium-bind protein."

"Yes, but that's in a non-permuted system. Let me see your data."

Sung hesitantly gave him some graphs and Carl asked for the counter tapes. He noticed that, on the first tape he looked at, the counts were all quite similar.

"What counts are these?"  Carl asked.

"They calcium counts from drug-treated cells," said Sung proudly.

"Where are the controls?" asked Carl.

"Controls in other experiment," explained Sung.       

"What do you mean, other experiment?" Carl's voice rose through incredulity to anger. "You don't know a God-damned thing if you don't run controls with every single experiment! For Christ's sake, what do you think a control is for, anyway? Do you have any idea?"

Sung was mute--stunned.  There was nothing in his background, nothing in his training, nothing in his cultural heritage that had prepared him for this outraged outburst by one who was supposed to be his guide and protector.

"Well...I asked you, what do you think a control is for?" demanded Carl, impatiently.

Confused, ashamed, and unable to understand why such an apparently trivial matter assumed such importance for his mentor, Sung answered, "I don't know."

"Oh, for God's sake. Come back to my office at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon and we'll talk about controls." Carl didn't have the mental energy to deal with the subject at that moment, and he also knew that Sung had become so alarmed and defensive that any further discussion of the matter at the time would be futile.

In the interim, Carl confided to some colleagues that he had serious doubts about Sung's ability to do the work necessary for a Ph.D. degree and, more importantly, he wondered whether or not Sung had the mind to be a scientist at all. One of the colleagues in whom Carl confided was the departmental graduate advisor, Dr. William Bock. Dr. Bock suggested that Carl postpone Sung's comprehensives until the next scheduled exam, which was six months hence.

The next installment of this story is here.

A Scientist's Conclusion, Part 1

I'm reactivating this fiction blog. I've run out of fairly short and simple stories, or stories that have already been published, and I've decided to serialize a longer, unpublished short story.

A little background. For most of my professional life, I taught and did research in the biomedical sciences. In the beginning, I was extremely idealistic, believing that the practice of science was the pursuit of truth, and that scientists were acolytes in that almost sacred activity. It did not take many years for me to realize that this was a hopelessly idealistic notion, and that scientists are as flawed, emotionally and morally, as any other individuals. Many of the stories I wrote reflect this disenchantment, so they are not happily-ever-after stories. And because I was still practicing science, I chose a pseudonym for these literary efforts, some of which were published. I'm now retired, and anonymity doesn't matter anymore, but I'll still keep the pseudonym for fiction.


A Scientist's Conclusion, Part 1

Carl Sawyer's one-time research collaborator, George Ganon, had been an enthusiastic, imaginative man, although by Carl's standards, not a very thorough scientist. The two of them made a good team; George was full of ideas, and Carl tempered them with his thorough, analytical mind and tested them with rigorously designed experiments. But George and his enthusiasms had left the University of P... for a job in Texas, where free-flowing oil money promised better equipment and more ample funds for salary and supplies. Carl was left with the remnants of their shared equipment and with Sung Lee Park, a Korean graduate student who had been working on a Ph.D. degree in George's lab.

George had also been enthusiastic about Sung Lee--saw him as a diligent and willing pair of hands at a bargain price that could grind out answers to problems. Sung Lee didn't  want to go to Texas because his family had just settled in Philadelphia. So Carl inherited a student who was essentially finished with course work and already working on a thesis project. Carl saw Sung Lee differently than George did. Carl saw him as a moderately well-trained technician who needed to be turned into a scientist. Carl was willing to assume the responsibility for this transformation, but not without misgivings.

Carl thought both he and Sung Lee were at a disadvantage, having inherited one another. It was like taking on a half-sculpted piece of marble; the previous artist's vision can seldom be realized in another man's hands, and one who completes another's creation is rarely satisfied with the result. Carl realized the enormity of the task involved in turning a pleasant, uncritical Asian into a competent and confident scientist in the Western mold. Moreover, even if Sung did develop into a genuinely skilled scientist, it might still be difficult for him to find a good position. Carl did not have the network of colleagues and connections that a more self-consciously political scientist would have generated.

Carl took on the training of Sung Lee with the same thoroughness and objectivity that he used to tackle scientific problems. Carl began by asking Sung Lee, during their first few discussions together, to repeat in his own words what had just been said to him, instead of simply saying "Oh, yes." or "Yes, Sir." This was intended to determine whether or not Sung understood what Carl had said and could transform it into an alternative, comprehensible form of English.

During this time, Carl also asked Sung Lee questions about the research problem he was working on, which had begun under George's tutelage, and he examined the data Sung had already generated. Carl often challenged Sung's answers and data with questions like "How else could you interpret those results?" or "What could you do to verify that?"

When discussing the scientific literature relating to Sung's work, Carl often asked, "Was their methodology adequate to allow them to draw that conclusion?" or "What was wrong with the way those experiments were designed?" This line of questioning sometimes threw Sung Lee into confusion and Carl noticed that, when they were speaking together, Sung's mouth occasionally twitched visibly, which he tried to hide by drawing his hand to his face.

The next installment of this story is  here.

Holiday Refrain

Thought I'd reblog this story from last year's December post.

It's a cool winter late afternoon; a lazy holiday flavor hangs heavily in the air. My husband, Steve, half-dozes before a TV bowl game; our son, Teddy, beside him in the den, carefully constructs a miniature Superdome with his Christmas erector set. The girls play noiselessly in their room upstairs.

The sky dims in shades of orange and rose through the kitchen window steamed by supper's boiling pots and sputtering skillet. I step to the window and run my hand across it; the mist runs like tears down the clouded pane. Interlacing branches of bare-limbed trees show, blurred and distorted, through the cleared swath, creating an angular mosaic against the fading, pastel sky. The image is shockingly exquisite, as if the gentle tones of Odilon Redon had been emboldened by Rouault's stark strokes. I try to capture it with my eyes, to memorize each line and shade of light, realizing that, if I ever find time to transpose the scene to canvas, its memory will have faded nearly as much as the image itself.

This afternoon, a long-distance telephone call broke in on the waning holidays. Sandy Martin, a long-time friend and modestly successful artist living in New York City, called to wish me a Happy New Year.

"Say, Cora," she asked, "when are you going to move to New York? This long­-distance friendship is for the birds! I never see you anymore. Calling long-distance is expensive for a struggling young artist." She laughed.

"I don't know," I answered. "I can hardly keep up with small-town life. Can't imagine how I'd handle living in New York."

Sandy changed the subject. "How's your holiday been?"

"Just great. Busy, but everyone's been in the holiday spirit most of the time."

"Are you doing any painting while you’re on vacation?"

"No. Haven't had the chance. My in-laws came for a few days around Christmas, and I did a lot of cleaning and cooking for that. Then we had a party last night. There was more cooking and cleaning ahead of time and cleaning up afterwards. In fact, I just put away the last load of party dishes and I'm getting ready to cook supper for the family. More dishes!"

We chatted for nearly half an hour. After we hung up, I put a tape in the stereo and went into the kitchen to begin dinner, musing with the music, listening to the rhythms and moods of the piano etched, in some mysterious way, into that plastic.

And I wonder, What has happened to the ten-day holiday? I realize that, in just one more day, I'll have to go back to work. The two canvases I planned to paint are still not begun and an unread book lies on the stand beside our bed.

I turn from the window to the stove, set the sizzling pork chops on simmer, pour rice into boiling water and put the vegetables on medium heat. It should all be ready to eat in ten or fifteen minutes. I call my six-year old daughter to come downstairs and set the table for dinner. She neither comes nor answers. Before I call a second time, the music stops, and I know she can hear me.

"Debra!" I call out for the third time, raising my voice. "Come down here and set the table for dinner!"

She stomps down the stairs into the dining area adjacent to the kitchen.

"I don't want to set the table," she says sullenly.

"Well, you're going to do it anyway," I respond.

"I was playing. You interrupted me."

"That's too bad."

"Why do I always have to set the table?"

"Because it's your job."

"Why doesn't Tammy ever set the table? She never does anything."

"She's only three years old. When she's your age, she'll set the table and you'll have other jobs to do. But for now, you're the one who sets the table."

“What about Teddy? He never does anything, either.”

“He’s busy with his father,” I say, evading her accusing look.

"Well, I'm not going to," she says with a determined tone.

"You are going to do it whether you want to or not," I reply, my voice rising and eyes narrowing. She turns her face away.

I place the plates on the counter. She picks them up, struts over to the table and slams them down at each place with such force that less sturdy plastic might have cracked. Her lithe body flings this way and that; her blond curls toss about with each jerk of the head. Her small hands and slender arms seem too delicate for such emphatic gestures.

"I hate this!" she says, her voice catching.

"You'll do it and you'll do it gladly," I say, articulating each word slowly and deliberately.

She begins to sob softly, putting the rest of the dishes slowly on the table. I put glasses on the counter and she sets them gently above each plate. She gets silverware from the drawer and puts each piece in its proper place. As she sets forks on carefully folded napkins, I hear a thinly voiced refrain.

"Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la..."

I smile and join in. "...'Tis the season to be jolly. Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la."

She smiles back at me and I turn to the stove to dish up the food as she finishes setting the table.

[This was published in the College of Charleston Miscellany in 1981]

EVENT

As an official of this large and important city (a hub of both commerce and culture, situated on a major inland waterway), my duties include the planning and coordination of an annual parade that has become a community event of some magnitude. This city is, for the most part, a modern city - not one of those decaying shells of turn-of-the-century urban life with scarcely habitable tenements and row houses, narrow, crumbling streets, dust- and soot-encrusted shops covered at night with grill-work. No, this is a contemporary city; people don't live here. They live outside the city and come here only to work or to shop or to amuse themselves. The jig-sawed cityscape rises against the sky like cliffs and pillars of reinforced concrete, plate glass, and steel: solid as granite, brilliant as crystal, sharp-edged as a sword. A highway nexus joins knots of high-rise apartment buildings and shopping centers that form islands in the sea of single houses spreading out from the city's core.

As I was saying, I have spent considerable time during the past few months occupied with planning and preparations for today's parade: setting the date, contacting fraternal organizations and colleges to arrange for floats and musicians, contracting for vehicles, communicating with departments of Public Safety and Sanitation for permits and personnel. I have come into the city early today to do the last-minute phoning required for everything to run smoothly. The parade route has been closed to cars by the traffic control division of Public Safety. Uniformed policemen are stationed throughout the area to keep people off the streets and the cross-walks overhead. The general functioning of the city, particularly that part of it around City Hall, has been disrupted for several hours, but few are inconvenienced on a Sunday afternoon.

After parking my car in a new underground parking garage, I go to my office by way of an overpass blocked by a policeman. He obviously recognizes me without identification and nods to let me pass. People have begun to gather early for the parade; children and their parents line the streets along the parade route, sitting on camp chairs and blankets; vendors sell candy and roasted chestnuts from sidewalk carts. Beyond the cement side-walls of the cross walk rise yellowed and browning maples, bare-branched elms, green and gold sycamores. And beyond them range multilithic skyscrapers like a giant histogram against the gray glow of the sky, like a solid, three-dimensional, population-growth bar-graph.

I walk alone along the empty overpass toward my office in the new City Hall building, I notice a cloud of leaves flying through the air in front of me as if borne up by a vigorous wind. Large, yellow and brown leaves float and swirl--turning, gliding, somersaulting erratically, some even landing on the cross-walk in front of me near the tops of some maples. I peer over the edge of the wall toward the trees and view an intriguing spectacle.

Children are tossing leaves into the updraft of a vent above the underground parking lot. Several families, speaking different languages, skin of various earth hues, have gathered around the vent. Children run and squeal and pick up piles of leaves that, when thrown, fly from their hands like scattering pigeons. The leaves catch in the up-rush of air and rise as if by magic: floating higher and higher into the sky, tossing this way and that, tracing graceful arabesques, and then, the magic spent, drifting indecisively back to the ground. The children, watched by mothers, abetted by fathers, gather leaves and throw them into the air over and over again, laughing, jumping with each toss, heads thrown back to see the leaves climb skyward. I stand and gaze awhile, and then, not wishing to squander more time (since I have several calls to make), I walk briskly toward City Hall.

I take the elevator to the fourteenth floor; once in my office, I glance out the window. Down and far off to the right, yellow specks rise like a swarm of bees above the cross-walk. From the window, I can also see the gathering spectators, diminutive at this distance, that line the parade route. I establish radio contact with my assistant in East Side Park at the start of the parade route where floats and bands have gathered. The organization and order of the parade are proceeding smoothly. As the time draws near for the parade to begin, I put on my coat carefully and leave the office; I am to be one of the officials on the dais observing the event. I glance in the long mirror near the elevator and feel reassured that any TV camera trained on the official box will find me befittingly attired and groomed. When I arrive at the viewing stand, I greet everyone pleasantly.

I give the signal by radio for the parade to begin. At first, only the faint pulse of drums and tubas can be heard dimly in the distance; soon the sharper, more brazen din of other winds pierces the air. Crowd noises diminish; small children are hoisted onto their fathers' shoulders; people turn expectantly toward the sounds.

The parade arrives, all trumpets and glitter. Pigeons waddling on the streets scavenging cast-off fragments of food fly before baton-twirling majorettes in short skirts. Behind these come brassy, strutting musicians; lurching, stilted, high-stepping figures; fragile floats topped by bobbing, oversized fantasy images and waving figurines. All flow by in slick succession - smoothly, almost flawlessly - enthralling the children. I stand ceremoniously, hoping that no engine stalls, no child runs into the street to be struck by an oncoming vehicle, no aging clown collapses of a stroke to mar the procession. The multitudes have waited hours for this parade; the spectacle is over in minutes, winding, serpentine, down other streets, past other spectators. Once the parade has passed, the crowd throngs the streets.

I walk back toward my office to make sure the parade's dispersal goes smoothly (and to wait until traffic thins before driving home). No leaves now fly across the overpass as I walk along it. I take the elevator to the fourteenth floor of City Hall, traverse the deserted hallway and enter my office. I gaze for a moment out the window at the emptying streets and dimming sky and then turn to my desk and to the telephone to discharge the rest of my immediate duties, a sense of relief and exhaustion, perhaps even melancholy, overtaking me.

It's dark outside when I leave the building. The park around City Hall is quite silent. Leaves swish and crackle with each footstep. I notice as I pass the vent that it's still surrounded by mounds of leaves. Looking quickly around and, seeing no one nearby, I stoop and gather up a crisp and fluttering armful. I toss the leaves into the air and throw my head back to watch them rise in the soft orange glow of the park lights, see them fly up and up and up, catching gusts of air, tumbling, and twirling, and careening, and then gliding widely as they zigzag gently back to earth.

[Published in Kansas Quarterly (1992) v24, No 2&3, p167]

THE BLACK WATCH

We went to see Her Majesty's Royal Highland Regiment at the Citadel Field House one early autumn evening. Do you remember? We went together, you with your Scots ancestry and I with my fondness for all things male.

The band was rousing and disciplined, but it was the pipe and drum corps we came to hear and see. And we weren't disappointed. After a warm-up by the band, and with no pause, the pipers marched onto the field house floor, applause mounting. One might almost say they flowed onto the floor; they did not so much march as move like oil to the hum and moan of the bagpipes, haunted by the drummers' muffled cadence.

The corps and their instruments seemed the very essence of manliness: the cockiness of their strut, the Celtic kilts with elaborate ermine codpieces, the bare and knotty knees, the peacock showiness of flowing shoulder tartans, the unyielding drone of the pipes. And they epitomized centuries of going to war, their uniforms binding together those of a kind to intimidate the adversary--vulture feathers like streaks of blood in black, bobbing head gear, leopard skins slung across drummers' shoulders. How well trained! How beautifully controlled! What awe they would inspire in battle!

Ah, the ancient art of war. The fragile spirit of solitary man girded and inflamed by the pomp and pageantry of the larger troop, wound like a coiled spring. Intense, potential power, intent upon victory! Thus seemed those glorious pipers as they strutted in file across the field house floor.

And then a horrible imagining came upon me. I saw MODERN WAR, abomination of desolation, overtake this magnificent manhood. I saw IT (unimpressed by spectacle, or skill, or courage even…unseeing…unfeeling…uncaring…unknowing) blow a hole in the field house floor, ripping apart the pageant. Remnants of men flew through the air, kilts akimbo, uncontrolled, grace and order gone, beyond all symbology or retrieval. And I knew at once, as I know still, that war is no more mere sport for men.

[This was published in the College of Charleston's literary magazine, Miscellany, in 1983]

PHILADELPHIA GYPSY

If you were to visit North Philadelphia, you would see that its streets are a naked, forsaken gray. What you might not see, if you haven't lived here, is how deeply that gray penetrates below the obvious surface of things. Beneath the gray gutter water and the matted gray pulp of morning newspapers crushed into sidewalk crevices, below the gray clothes of druggies stretched like shadows across late afternoon sidewalks, beyond the gray wails of evening sirens, lies the grayer reality of despair accepted as fact-of-life, even embraced as destiny.

Up these gray streets I walk each morning on my way to work as a resident in Internal Medicine at Temple University Hospital, and down them I return in the evening or late at night. As I walk from the bus stop to the hospital and back, I try to look beyond the grayness of streets and above the facelessness of buildings into the tunnel of sky that opens like a bloodless gash overhead.  That, too, is often gray. Even if I had a naturally sunny disposition, the relentless gray would eventually discolor my spirit. As it is, I vacillate between despair and annoyance, with an enervated numbness stretched across the long spaces between.

Just yesterday, I took the subway downtown during lunch hour. Several subway-car windows were open, as they often are in hot weather. The car stopped at a station, briefly as usual, while stragglers ran from turnstiles to the still-open doors. Across the aisle from me sat a young man, a boy of perhaps fourteen, with short cropped hair, a well-washed face, and neat clothing. As the door slid shut, a group of five boys about his age ran up to the car. I thought they were trying to catch the train as the door was closing. Then three of them reached their arms through the open window behind the sitting boy and hit him on the head and shoulders. The boy looked up in bewilderment. The train began to move. He looked over his shoulder to see who had done it, but the gang had already run down the platform, whooping and chattering as in a primal war dance. When the train slid out of the station, he turned his head back around and looked down at his hands as if ashamed. An advertisement for Marlboro cigarettes, festooned with swirls of red and black spray paint in some indecipherable script, flashed through the window behind him before we went into the dark tunnel. I asked if he had been hurt. He didn't answer or look at me.

Since that encounter I have felt giddy and skittish, vaguely confused and threatened. On my way to and from work, I usually pass a fortune-teller's shop with a sign in the window showing a red hand painted on a yellow background. The name "ROSA" is hand-printed in pink block letters above it and "FORTUNES" below. After leaving work today, I feel more dispirited than usual. The bright sign catches my eye, and, on impulse, I walk up the cement steps to the door.

When the doorbell chime isn’t answered quickly, I start back down the stairs, but then hear the door open behind me. I turn to see an old woman in an oversized gray sweater and brown skirt peering through the partly opened door.

"What you want?"

"Is this Rosa's fortune telling place?"

"You want your fortune?"

"I guess so," I reply, no longer sure I do.

"Come in then." says the old woman, and lets me into a dim, inner room. Covering half the floor is a faded and frayed oriental rug; a round table and two chairs stand idly atop it. At the back of the room, a dingy green curtain hangs along one wall by rings strung on a dark rod. The old woman calls out.

"Rosa!" There is no answer. She calls again: "Rosa!"

"Huh?" comes a drowsy voice.

"Rosa. Is someone here to see you."

"What do they want?"

"They want to see you. A fortune."

"Oh."

A frowzy woman in her late twenties, perhaps slightly older than I, draws the curtain aside and saunters unenthusiastically into the room. She sits down slowly in one of the chairs by the table.

"You can sit," she says, nodding toward the other chair. I sit down and adjust my purse strap securely on my shoulder.

She looks me over with a detached air and says, "You want the ten dollar fortune or twenty dollar?"

"What's the difference?" I ask.

"The twenty dollar fortune is longer. More complete."

"Ten dollars," I say.

"You pay me now."

"What?"

"You have to pay me first," she says.

I lift my purse off my shoulder, pull out a ten dollar bill, and put it on the table. She puts it in her pocket. I settle the purse securely in my lap. She asks me to show her my hand and I extend one hand tentatively across the table. She takes it, glances at the palm, lets it go, then pulls a deck of cards from a small drawer in the table and cuts them once.

"What’s your question?"

"What do you mean?"

"What is your question? What do you want to know?"

"Oh. I didn't know I was supposed to ask a question. Let me think."

She looks at me with narrowed eyes. I divert my glance to the pattern of swirls on the table cover. I had expected her to tell me something interesting or amusing. I have to think for a moment about what I really want to know.

She is stares at her hands with a bored, impatient expression. Finally, I ask, "Will my life be significant?"

An undecipherable expression flits across her face, an amalgam of surprise and annoyance. "What do you mean?"

"Will I do something that others will consider of real and lasting value?  That will be remembered?"

She lifts the top card off the deck, looks at it, looks toward me with a self-satisfied air, and says, "No."

She puts the cards back into the drawer.

"Is that all?"

"You wanted the ten dollar fortune. You get only one question."  

She rises from her chair; the interview is obviously over. She walks slowly toward the curtain. I hoist my purse strap securely onto my shoulder, walk toward the door, open it, step down the stairs, and walk out onto the dun-colored sidewalk.

 [This was written in the mid-'80s as I recollected my two post-doc years at Temple Health Sciences Center in Philadelphia. It intends to capture the spirit of what I felt while there]

WHO WILL CARE FOR THE CHILDREN?

 

The call came at 10:30 that night. She had just gotten back to her room from a long, late dinner with two former fellow graduate students whom she hadn't seen for almost a decade. She had turned off her cell phone during the conference sessions and had forgotten to turn it back on during dinner. When the hotel phone rang, she answered in two rings.  It was her husband, David.

"Lynn, I've been trying to get hold of you. Jamie's in the hospital."

She answered in the controlled tone she used automatically during a crisis. "What's the matter?"

"I'm not sure. Appendicitis. The pediatrician saw him and told me to take him straight to the emergency room. I'm here right now. In the hospital. They're going to operate." David's voice sounded tense and disconnected.

"When are they going to operate?"

"As soon as they can.  As soon as the surgeon gets here.  It may have burst. The appendix."

She gasped to herself, but said quietly, "I'll come home as soon as I can. I may not be able to get out tonight, but there should be a flight early in the morning."

"Your mother's with him right now."

"Who's the surgeon?"

"I don't know."

"I'll call you and Marjorie as soon as I make plane reservations."

"All right. I'll pick you up at the airport.

As soon as she hung up the phone, she called the airline, made a reservation on the earliest plane she could take out of Dallas the next morning and canceled her Thursday flight. She had to transfer in Atlanta, and wouldn't arrive home until 1:20 the next afternoon. It was the best she could do. It was after 11:00 at night when she called Marjorie, a neighbor and the closest friend she had, to give her the flight schedule.

The phone rang five times before Marjorie finally answered. "Oh Lynn! Where are you?" she asked in a slightly hoarse voice.

"Still in Texas. Did David tell you about Jamie?"

"Yeah, he called from the hospital. I saw the poor kid before he went to the doctor. He was doubled over in pain. Screaming and crying like mad. David called me and asked me to come over and take a look at him. Guess he figured a mother would know what to do."

"Wasn't my mother there?"

"Yeah, your mom was there. She looked kind of upset. I believe she'd just given him an enema. Thought he was constipated. I told David he ought to get the kid to a doctor. Quick."

"Well, I'm coming back. I won't get in until tomorrow afternoon, though. David will call you in the morning. My plane gets in at 1:20 in the afternoon. Flight 1322, Delta."

"O.K."

"Where's Melinda?"

"Right here. She's sleeping on the couch."

"Good. Can she stay there overnight?"

"Sure, Lynn. Of course."

"You've got a key to our house. Send her over in the morning to get clean clothes for school. She can take lunch money out of the vase on my dresser. She knows where it is."

"She'll be all right, Lynn."

"Thanks, Marjorie."

"Don't worry about it. Have a safe trip back."

Still in the grip of her compulsive calmness, she called the front desk of the hotel and left a message for a colleague saying she couldn't have lunch with him the next day. Having taken care of the necessary practical details, she sat in the chair next to the bed, put her head in her hands, and wept.

Jamie had been complaining of a stomach ache for nearly a week before she left. She and David thought it was a bid for attention. He'd been out running and playing with other children in the neighborhood just the evening before she took the plane to Dallas. He always had some complaint before she went to meetings or conferences. Usually his stomach; he'd always had a sensitive stomach. Even when he was a baby, she and David often took him on long drives in the car to quiet him when he (and they) suffered from his attacks of colic.

'Why did Mother have to give him an enema?' Lynn asked herself. Her mother was one for keeping children's bowels moving, especially if they had a stomach ache. Every childhood illness could be blamed on constipation. The enema was exactly the wrong thing to do.  'My poor baby,' she chanted to herself. He wasn't exactly a baby, anymore. He was six years old, in first grade and learning to read. How far behind would this put him in his school work?

Mother, of course, would blame her. Mother had never understood why she went back to work in the first place. When Jamie was two and Melinda had started kindergarten, Lynn took a job as a research associate at the University. She tried to justify her decision to her mother.

"We can really use the money."

"Well, Honey, you've managed so far. You could scrimp a little. Tighten your belt. That's what I'd do. Why do you have to go back to work?"

"It's not just work, Mother. It's a career.  I've had years of training. I don't want it to go to waste! I can't stay out much longer or I'll forget everything I was trained for. I'll never be able to go back."

"But who will care for the children?"

That, of course, was always the question. Lynn had made the necessary arrangements. Nursery.  Baby sitters.  A part time housekeeper for a while.  She managed to juggle everything so the children were always supervised, always in somebody's "care."

Now that they were both in school full time, it was a bit easier. They took the bus to school in the morning and another bus dropped them off after school at the day care center. Either she or David picked them up in the evening on the way home from work.

Why did David have to wait for Marjorie to suggest taking Jamie to the doctor?  Why couldn't he just look at the child and know he was sick? At least, palpate his abdomen. But then, David had never bothered to learn which side of the body the appendix or gall bladder or spleen was on. He was an engineer; machines were his specialty. The body was a deliberately sustained mystery to him. He, too, would blame her, though he wouldn't say it in so many words. Why wasn't she there when he needed her? Why should he have to call a neighbor?

And she, too, would blame herself. Why wasn't she there when her child needed her? Could she have forestalled this crisis by paying more careful attention to his pain? Why had she left the children in the charge of two people who knew nothing about medicine or even biology? But then, who else should she leave them with?  What if he died from her neglect?  From her preoccupation with preparing her talk and packing for the conference?

She changed into her nightgown, called the front desk and asked for a 4:00 a.m. wake-up call and for a cab at 4:30, and then got into bed. She set the travel alarm she always brought with her, just in case.

As she lay in bed, she enumerated her losses. Of the $700.00 plane fare, she had paid $300.00 out of pocket. That was irretrievable. She had presented her talk that morning, the first day of the conference. So at least that wasn't a loss. But she had been looking forward to three more days of worry-free learning. That was gone.  She would not have the opportunity to talk with Ryder and compare techniques and results with him. He had confirmed some of her anomalous data using a different method, and now people were beginning to take her work seriously. All the top people in the field were here. She would miss hearing their papers, miss talking with them, miss developing a collegial rapport with them. She'd miss learning new techniques and new approaches to her research area. There wouldn't be another gathering like this one for a long time. She'd have to do it all the hard way—in the library, on her own.

On the morning plane ride to Atlanta, high above the clouds, she felt utterly cut off, isolated from everything—home and family, profession and colleagues. She could not know how her boy was doing, even whether or not he was still alive. Somewhere in her subconscious, she believed he was, but she also knew that he was in danger.

By the second leg of her flight back, her sense of suspension in a web of dichotomies had settled into her being. Home and profession. Husband and children. Reason and an almost mystical appeal to the power of will. Determination and resignation. It seemed as though ambiguity lay at the very center of her soul; in it was her only security and peace. She felt a numbness that no tears penetrated.

David met her at the airport.

"How's Jamie?" were the first words out of her mouth.

"They operated last night. Apparently his appendix was ruptured. They're worried about peritonitis."

"I was afraid of that."

"What is it, exactly?"

"It's inflammation in  the abdomen. It's caused by bacteria that get into the peritoneal cavity and spread and multiply around the intestines. If it doesn't kill you, you may get internal adhesions, scars where internal organs stick together and can cause trouble for life."

"Good heavens!"

They got into the car and drove silently to the hospital. She followed her husband into Jamie's room. Her mother, in the far corner of the room, looked up from her book when they walked in. Jamie lay flat on the bed in a white hospital gown, his left arm strapped to a board, an intravenous tube bound to the arm with tape. A plastic bottle filled with clear fluid was suspended high above his head and drained slowly into the tube. He turned his head toward them and gave his mother a weak smile as she entered the room. His face was feverish and his eyes listless and half-lidded. She went over to him and kissed his forehead, then laid her cheek against his. His face seemed to be burning.

"Hi, Mom," he said gallantly.

"How did you get yourself into this predicament?" she asked.

"It wasn't my fault," he answered, as if taking her question seriously.

"I know, Dear." She turned to her husband. "What did the doctor say?"

"He was in earlier this morning. Didn't say much. He said he'd be back in the afternoon. I guess we just have to hang in there and wait."

"They're giving him antibiotics in his veins," said her mother. "He can't eat anything but clear liquids."

He looked so small and frail, lying there. What would several days of clear liquids do to that already slight body? He had never been as solid as his sister. Now he would be even thinner. 'Thin people are supposed to live longer.' she thought, as if telling herself a cruel joke.

Her mother turned to David. "Since Lynn's here, I can take the car and drop you off at work, then go to the house and pick up Melinda. We can come back about 5:30 this afternoon."

"O.K., Mom," David said.

"Thanks, Mother."

Lynn was left with the listless boy. They were both helpless, at the mercy of forces neither had much control of. The battle of organisms and antibiotics. The battle of Death against the Will-to-Life. She could not will his life for him; she could only be there and try to help him will it for himself.

When the nurse came in to change his dressing, Lynn left the room and walked down the hall to a small sitting room for parents. A petite, dark-haired woman, apparently younger than Lynn, sat smoking a cigarette. She looked up. Lynn smiled and nodded toward her; the woman nodded back. Lynn sat in a nearby chair.

The woman put out her cigarette and asked, "Do you have a child here?"

"Yes, a little boy."

"Me too. Seven years old."

"Mine is six."

"Really? What's he here for?"

"Appendicitis. They took out his appendix last night."

"I wish mine had something that simple."

"Oh?"

"Robert has leukemia." She lit another cigarette. "He was in remission for six months. It's back again. They're giving him chemotherapy and transfusions."

"How long has he been in the hospital?"

"Over a week now. They're trying to get his blood count right. Something like that."

"Yeah, they try to kill off the cancerous cells and replace them with normal cells."

"How do you know about that?"

"I do research in the area."

"Really!"  She paused. "What's your child here for?"

"Appendicitis."

"Oh, yes. You told me. Where's his room?"

"Down at the other end of the hall. The last room."

"That's next to my Robert's room. I guess I heard them bring your boy in last night."

"Have you been staying in the hospital?"

"Yeah. I've stayed overnight in his room all week. Don't get much sleep, though."

"I guess I'll be staying here tonight, myself." Lynn couldn't resist asking the question. "Do you work?"

"What?"

"Do you have a job? Are you taking time off from work to stay with your boy?"

"Oh, no, I can't work. I've got a little girl three years old at home besides Robert to take care of."

"Oh."

"Do you work?"

"Yes."

"Isn't it hard? Working and taking care of a family?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm glad I don't have to," the woman said slowly, taking a long drag on her cigarette. "My husband earns enough to keep us going. His insurance should cover most of the hospital bills. But we'll still have plenty to pay, I'm sure. We'll worry about that when the time comes."

Lynn didn't know what to say. She wanted to get back to Jamie. As she stood up to go, she said, "I hope your boy gets better and can leave the hospital soon." She knew that, even if the child did improve and left the hospital, there was a real possibility that he'd be back, and that he might eventually die of that insidious, malignant disease. She hoped her horrible knowledge didn't show on her face.

"Same here." The woman had a smile on her lips, but her eyes were sad.

When Lynn got back to the room, Jamie was crying.

'What's the matter, Baby?"

"It hurts, Momma. It hurts."

"I know, Darling."

That evening, Jamie's fever was still high. The doctor came in briefly and said the child seemed better but wasn't out of the woods yet. David and Melinda came during visiting hours, then left. Her mother stopped by briefly and went from the hospital back to Camden that evening. "Dad needs me, Honey. I'll come back in a day or two."

After they all had left, Lynn made up the small cot beside her son's bed. She lay down on her back and listened to his fitful breathing and the occasional short cries of pain emitted in his sleep. Silent tears ran down the side of her face. Through the wall that separated them, she could hear the woman in the next room sobbing loudly.

'She's in even greater despair than I am,' Lynn thought. 'Staying home with her child hasn't protected him from serious illness or the specter of Death. Why this eternal female despair? Men get angry and lash out at those things that threaten or frustrate them. Or they run away. We women are bound to all that causes us pain. We remain to weep for the wounded and helpless. Is it necessary, somehow, for the begetting and sustaining of life that women weep?'

She remembered another time in another hospital, three days after Melinda was born. Lynn wanted to nurse her baby, but the milk had not come in. That lovely, placid child had, with each succeeding day, become increasingly fretful. Every time Lynn went to the nursery, the baby was crying. When the nurse brought Melinda into her room, Lynn would give the baby the breast—first one, then another—but there didn't seem to be anything there. Finally, that night, she sat in the rocking chair in the corner of her room, the baby in her arms, rocking and rocking, letting her suckle. When the nurse came to take the baby, Lynn said, "Please leave us alone."

She sat there in the darkened room, holding her child at breast, weeping, rocking, weeping, for an hour, perhaps longer. She lost all track of time. Finally, exhausted and hopeless, she took the baby back to the nursery. The next morning, her breasts were engorged and painful—so full that, at the thought of her child, they began spouting little fountains of milk that ran down her sides and abdomen like tears.

[This was written during the early eighties, at a time when I was stressed about work and child-care responsibilities. Although it has been submitted several times, it has not been published]