The Hospital
July 2005
Chapter 1
Jane would never forget the first time she set eyes on the Hospital. A massive expanse of buildings and outdoor fields occupied half of the city, stretching beyond the horizon. The buildings were a hodgepodge of ugly gray concrete, giants of glass and steel, awkward neoclassic attempts, and new, endless structures made of super-light-weight carbon nanotube fiber. The new structures took up all the outer layers of the campus, leaving a trail of the Hospital’s physical growth over the past half century. And evidence of construction continued to eat into the surrounding neighborhoods. This was the largest medical institution in the world, and she was standing on its threshold.
It was a stifling summer day. Gray cloud hung low in the sky. The air was so thick that it clogged up your lungs like a wet towel. Janie could hear her sweat gushing out as soon as she got off the air-conditioned taxi and hastened into the building that marked “Administration 16.” This was the place for new staff members to register at the Hospital upon arrival. The relief of cool air in the lobby first soothed her, but the sight of a vast, immaculate reception area suddenly filled her heart with anxiety. At this moment, in front of the luminous decorations on the wall and surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass windows, the realization that she was finally inside the Hospital suddenly slammed into her face. She froze.
Jane had been one of the few foreign clinical fellows accepted by the Hospital, an honor and great fortune of astronomical proportions to any medical doctor, not to mention newly ordained medical doctor like her. Most residents and fellows accepted by the Hospital were not only U.S.-educated, but were directly plucked from the dozens of affiliated medical schools in this state and its own post-graduate programs. And rumor had it that most of these people started preparing for a life and career in the Hospital as early as middle school or junior high school.
Janie had no such head start. She was merely the most gifted medical student at a second-tier medical school
The Hospital (10/24)
The Hospital (10/24)
Last edited by Jun on 2005-10-24 15:04, edited 24 times in total.
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helenClaire
- Posts: 3159
- Joined: 2003-11-22 20:12
这所科幻的（？）悬疑性的先进医院让人吓丝丝凉嗖嗖，‘人’的气氛严重不足。Most people (ie, healthy people) without the (one or more) genetic defects would bounce back relatively soon after a trigger event. Most people (ie, ill) with the (one or more) genetic defects either bounce back after a prolonged period or cannot bounce back on their own but needs treatment (can be medication or psychotherapy or both).
hmm, in hippocampus, the normal excitatory transmitter is Glutamate, and inhibitory GABA, I am not sure if the Hippo neurons have acetylcholine receptor, which mostly located in neuro-musclular junctions and other periphiral nervous system synapse, where signal was passed along.
I do believe medical students have some sort of neurology, pathology in lectures, did my neuroanatomy with them, and it touches upon subjects of neural signal transmission, so, Jane would have a vague memory of whatever she learnt at school, but not completely ignorant of the subject.
As to where memory resides, I believe it is a network thing. But I do like the idea of blocking short-term memory turning into long-term memory with a drug.
I do believe medical students have some sort of neurology, pathology in lectures, did my neuroanatomy with them, and it touches upon subjects of neural signal transmission, so, Jane would have a vague memory of whatever she learnt at school, but not completely ignorant of the subject.
As to where memory resides, I believe it is a network thing. But I do like the idea of blocking short-term memory turning into long-term memory with a drug.
乡音无改鬓毛衰
Thank you than you thank you thank you. 
The memory blockage thing is not entirely made up.
I read somewhere a while ago about several drugs that could potentially prevent the formation of (short-term and probably long-term) memory of traumatic events. One of the drugs mentioned was propranolol, a beta blocker.
The memory blockage thing is not entirely made up.
I read somewhere a while ago about several drugs that could potentially prevent the formation of (short-term and probably long-term) memory of traumatic events. One of the drugs mentioned was propranolol, a beta blocker.
Last edited by Jun on 2005-08-16 8:14, edited 1 time in total.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_o ... eb74ac796a
interesting article about acetylcholin and learning and memory
interesting article about acetylcholin and learning and memory
乡音无改鬓毛衰
Chapter 6
Coming out of her new office, Jane decided to forgo the underground transit system and walk around the campus.
“Ms Snow. Do you need navigational assistance?” Her INA politely pointed out her aimlessness.
“No, thank you. It’s such a nice day outside that I just want to wander around a little.” She replied.
“Just let me know when you need me.” The INA shut up promptly.
It was a crisp autumn afternoon with a sharpness in the air that implied a cold winter down the road. A wisp of white ribbon floated in the deep blue sky. Jane took a deep breath, listening to the leaves crunch under her feet. The grounds were vast with few people in sight. Jane felt like a kid who was ditching algebra exam, the vague guilt of remembering other hard-working colleagues hurrying underground only added to the secret glee she felt in her stomach.
She followed the trail that connected the countless facilities scattered around in the research campus. Most buildings in this area were older and part of the original facilities of the Hospital. Patient care areas had since moved to newer and fancier buildings with more advanced built-in technologies. The expansion of non-medical business and the growing complexity of ancillary services, however, were equally mind-boggling. Jane had learned that clinical research was a more significant component of the Hospital than most people realized and take up a sizable chunk in the organization’s enormous financial pie, commanding close to $50 million dollars in budget and generating an unknown amount of profit, because the Hospital’s research had hundreds of contracts with several multinational biomedical companies to conduct research in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and therapeutic discovery research, and their largest client, CNT Pharmaceuticals, was partially owned by the Hospital.
Outside private biomedical industry, the Hospital now also received nearly half of all grant money given out by the government. Some years ago there was grumbling of antitrust argument against the Hospital’s dominance in medical research, but ever since the privatization of NIH’s research activities, no one could deny the efficiency and results of centralization and consolidation. Few institutions in the country could compete with the resources, material as well as intellectual, commanded by this institution, and the more grants it obtained, the more powerful it grew, which in turn allowed it to produce more results and attract more grants. “Positive reinforcement,” as it was touted in the orientation session Jane attended.
Turning a corner at one of the concrete buildings, Jane was almost knocked over by a storm of ear-piercing barking. She almost jumped out of her skin at the sight of a black, ferocious dog that seemed to resemble and pitbull screaming its lung out at her.
She backed away a few steps. She was not afraid of dogs, normally. The dog trembled with excitement, drooling at the corner of his mouth, yellow glassy eyes fixated on her. Thankfully, he was pulled back by a leash almost as thick as her forearm. “Shut up, Medusa!” The owner barked at the dog as the dog barked at Jane. “Quiet!”
The dog grudgingly quieted down. Only then was Jane able to tear her attention away from the dog and recognized the owner. It took her a moment to remember the man was none other than Mike Jensen, whom she had not seen since the orientation on her first day. His hair was now a lighter shade of brown than it was a few months ago, with a touch of gold. He did worse, however, by showing no signs of remembering her.
“Mike, right?” Jane said, fairly sure of her memory. “I’m Jane. We were at the same orientation in July.”
He finally remembered. “Right! Yeah, I remember now. Hey, how’s it going?”
“Fine,” she shrugged, “How about you? Have you started … eh… Sorry, I don’t remember your specialty.”
“Dermatology.” He smiled, “so that nobody would die on me.”
Jane remembered. “Close enough to cosmetic surgery.”
“Close enough,” he nodded. “What are you doing here?”
“Just walking.”
“Nobody walks here. You can’t get anywhere by walking.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Oh, Ginger just got a calcitrin shot.” He glanced at the dog. “She’s 25% Belgian shepherd―gotta keep her instinct up. And now she’s a little antsy and needs to walk it off.”
Jane had no idea what he was talking about, but she decided not to find out.
“Where do you live?” He asked.
“I was lucky enough to get a unit on campus. The south corner.”
“I don’t like those units. Too dumpy. I rented a condo north of the Hospital in one of the developments.”
Jane couldn’t afford anything outside of the campus that are close. Just when she was about to beg off, Jensen said, “Say, are you busy tomorrow night?”
Jane shook her head.
“Hillary is having a party---Hillary Lee. She’s a surgical resident. Do you want to come? Her house is just 10 minutes from the south entrance, near where you live.”
Jane hesitated.
“OK.” She said.
“Cool. I’ll shoot you an e-mail with time and address.” He waved and walked away. Jane felt an urge to ask him why he owned such a menacing animal, but held her tongue.
The next evening, Jane wavered back and forth before convincing herself to get into her 10-year-old hatchback, clunking along out of the Hospital’s south gate. She asked INA whether it could give her directions to a specific address outside the Hospital. INA said yes, as long as she paid a monthly fee to subscribe to a commercial global positioning service, it could immediately hook up to the system via its wireless network and feed turn-by-turn directions into her ear while driving. Jane thought the monthly subscription was an unnecessary expense and asked for a free map printout instead.
Jane had not driven beyond a 5-minute radius from the Hospital since she arrived. This trip was almost an excursion. Long winding roads surrounded by flat land with high grass put a barrier between the Hospital’s already vast campus and the rest of the city. The city’s outline became sharper as she drove with shops, office buildings, and high-rise apartments.
Following the directions INA gave her, Jane made a few turns after entering the downtown district and entered an underground garage of a white apartment building. She got out of the car and left her car on a numbered parking pad by the door. In a series of loud clanking and scraping, the machinery automatically carried it away deep into a corner of the garage. Next to the entrance, a dispensing machine spit out a ticket with the number of her parking pad and time stamped on it. Jane looked at the fee rate printed on the ticket and quietly drew in a breath. Yikes. She should have known parking would be expensive on this side of the town. Saskatoon did not have this kind of garage, because space was abundant and there was never a need to pack a thousand cars into one parking garage. She had, however, seen and used car-packing garages in Toronto in one of the few trips she had gone on with her father.
Toronto was the farthest place he had ever been to as far as she remembered. She could not reconcile the man she knew with his history of being a youth who had traveled around the world. It seemed to be a myth, an unreliable legend passed down generations by oral tales; yet it must have been true, for she had seen the DVDs in the dusty, moldy boxes that she had found. The images of her mother dominated these recordings, a vibrant petite young woman under intensely deep blue skies, in the filthy and noisy streets, or walking out of shops crammed with spices, clothes, and unfamiliar things. She laughed often. She talked rapidly and with dramatic tones and facial expressions. Jane could not understand anything she said, since her mother never taught her Tamir (?) when Jane was growing up. Her father appeared only occasionally and often grudgingly under her mother’s urging. He was a tall and lanky young man with long limbs and an awkward smile in white shirts with rolled-up sleeves. He was deeply tanned, which seemed to give his eyes a semi-wild look that was entirely contradictory to his manners.
Jane walked up to the elevator and punched in Floor 16 as indicated in Mike Jensen’s e-mail. The carpeted hallway lined by uniform and tightly shut doors gave the interior a look of a hotel. She found the number 1645 on one of the doors and pressed the bell. No response. She could hear the noise of a roomful of people and music spilling through. She pressed the bell again.
The door opened. An impeccably beautiful young woman looked at her without expression.
“I’m … uh … Jane. Mike invited me.” Jane said.
The face cracked a smile but gave no clue as to whether the name Mike meant anything to her. “Hillary. Come in.” She let Jane in with a look of curiosity on his face. “Is hypermelaninia in vogue again?”
Jane did not catch it. “I’m sorry?”
Hillary gazed at Jane’s face for a moment, then shrugged with a slight awkwardness. “Oh, nothing. Thanks,” she said as Jane handed her a bottle of non-alcoholic wine, and waved her hand toward the left of the apartment. “There’s food on the kitchen table and drinks … well, all over and in the fridge. Help yourself.”
Jane had seen many perfect faces and bodies in the past few months, but Hillary might be the prettiest. She was tall and perfectly proportioned. Her skin was milky white, with tiny light freckles around her small but perky nose. She had a mixed look between east Asian and Caucasian.
Jane thanked the host, who disappeared before Jane completely tore her eyes from the room full of the people. She shrugged and poured herself a glass of soda, then started wandering around.
The apartment was not large and looked smaller because of the crowd. The view from the vast window, however, was fantastic. From here one could see the purple twilight diminishing behind the horizon that was the campus of the Hospital. The glass window and the door leading to the balcony were slowing changing from an opaque brown to transparency with a pink hue.
Most people scattered in the room looked younger than Jane, but she had learned by now not to judge people’s age by their look. Most were also even better looking than her colleagues at the Hospital and dressed in tight-fitting clothes. Jane felt a little self-conscious in the fashionable crowd while also enjoying the good looks all around her. She squeezed her way to a large couch, ignoring the couple groping at each other with blind abandon at one end, and sat herself down at the other end. The could surface responded to her weight and body shape, swallowing her into a comfortable groove.
A man sat down next to her, wine glass in hand, “Hi. Have we met before? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you.”
Jane paused a moment with eyes on his salt-and-pepper hair above a wrinkleless face. He noticed and touched his hair with a self-satisfaction, “Do you like it? Salt-and-pepper hair is going to be all the rage.”
“It’s nice.” Jane agreed. “I’m Jane.”
“Andy.” He said. “You’re very pretty. Where did you get your melanin stimulation done?”
Jane was a little confused. Remembering Hillary’s earlier comment, it dawned on her what he meant. She chuckled: “From my mother’s chromosomes. It’s my natural color.”
His eyes rested on her face for a moment, not entirely convinced, “Really? But you must have had something done. Your cheekbones are so full of personality it’s remarkable. And your full lips have been trendy for almost 2 years by now.”
Jane did not know whether she should take the assessment as a compliment or an insult. Finally she decided on a nonresponse. “I don’t know what you mean. Just about everyone in the room is prettier than I, yourself included.” She looked around and confirmed that she was at least the shortest and darkest one.
“I’m sorry. The dark-and-intense look was all the rage last summer and a lot of people got melanin enhancement done. I thought you …” Andy smiled apologetically. “But I have to disagree you. You are very pretty. You stand out immediately in this crowd.”
Jane wanted to argue that homeliness among a sea of beauty could stick out as quickly as the opposite, but she wondered if he knew a world of common looks. Come to think of it, she thought, when beauty becomes common, is it still beautiful?
Andy nudged closer to Jane on the couch with a seductive gleam in his eyes. Jane felt no urge to draw back as she normally would with a flirtatious stranger. Maybe this man-made beauty business is entirely justified. She could almost sense her own lips curling up. Our physiology certainly does not care whether it is real. He was not flawless
Coming out of her new office, Jane decided to forgo the underground transit system and walk around the campus.
“Ms Snow. Do you need navigational assistance?” Her INA politely pointed out her aimlessness.
“No, thank you. It’s such a nice day outside that I just want to wander around a little.” She replied.
“Just let me know when you need me.” The INA shut up promptly.
It was a crisp autumn afternoon with a sharpness in the air that implied a cold winter down the road. A wisp of white ribbon floated in the deep blue sky. Jane took a deep breath, listening to the leaves crunch under her feet. The grounds were vast with few people in sight. Jane felt like a kid who was ditching algebra exam, the vague guilt of remembering other hard-working colleagues hurrying underground only added to the secret glee she felt in her stomach.
She followed the trail that connected the countless facilities scattered around in the research campus. Most buildings in this area were older and part of the original facilities of the Hospital. Patient care areas had since moved to newer and fancier buildings with more advanced built-in technologies. The expansion of non-medical business and the growing complexity of ancillary services, however, were equally mind-boggling. Jane had learned that clinical research was a more significant component of the Hospital than most people realized and take up a sizable chunk in the organization’s enormous financial pie, commanding close to $50 million dollars in budget and generating an unknown amount of profit, because the Hospital’s research had hundreds of contracts with several multinational biomedical companies to conduct research in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and therapeutic discovery research, and their largest client, CNT Pharmaceuticals, was partially owned by the Hospital.
Outside private biomedical industry, the Hospital now also received nearly half of all grant money given out by the government. Some years ago there was grumbling of antitrust argument against the Hospital’s dominance in medical research, but ever since the privatization of NIH’s research activities, no one could deny the efficiency and results of centralization and consolidation. Few institutions in the country could compete with the resources, material as well as intellectual, commanded by this institution, and the more grants it obtained, the more powerful it grew, which in turn allowed it to produce more results and attract more grants. “Positive reinforcement,” as it was touted in the orientation session Jane attended.
Turning a corner at one of the concrete buildings, Jane was almost knocked over by a storm of ear-piercing barking. She almost jumped out of her skin at the sight of a black, ferocious dog that seemed to resemble and pitbull screaming its lung out at her.
She backed away a few steps. She was not afraid of dogs, normally. The dog trembled with excitement, drooling at the corner of his mouth, yellow glassy eyes fixated on her. Thankfully, he was pulled back by a leash almost as thick as her forearm. “Shut up, Medusa!” The owner barked at the dog as the dog barked at Jane. “Quiet!”
The dog grudgingly quieted down. Only then was Jane able to tear her attention away from the dog and recognized the owner. It took her a moment to remember the man was none other than Mike Jensen, whom she had not seen since the orientation on her first day. His hair was now a lighter shade of brown than it was a few months ago, with a touch of gold. He did worse, however, by showing no signs of remembering her.
“Mike, right?” Jane said, fairly sure of her memory. “I’m Jane. We were at the same orientation in July.”
He finally remembered. “Right! Yeah, I remember now. Hey, how’s it going?”
“Fine,” she shrugged, “How about you? Have you started … eh… Sorry, I don’t remember your specialty.”
“Dermatology.” He smiled, “so that nobody would die on me.”
Jane remembered. “Close enough to cosmetic surgery.”
“Close enough,” he nodded. “What are you doing here?”
“Just walking.”
“Nobody walks here. You can’t get anywhere by walking.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Oh, Ginger just got a calcitrin shot.” He glanced at the dog. “She’s 25% Belgian shepherd―gotta keep her instinct up. And now she’s a little antsy and needs to walk it off.”
Jane had no idea what he was talking about, but she decided not to find out.
“Where do you live?” He asked.
“I was lucky enough to get a unit on campus. The south corner.”
“I don’t like those units. Too dumpy. I rented a condo north of the Hospital in one of the developments.”
Jane couldn’t afford anything outside of the campus that are close. Just when she was about to beg off, Jensen said, “Say, are you busy tomorrow night?”
Jane shook her head.
“Hillary is having a party---Hillary Lee. She’s a surgical resident. Do you want to come? Her house is just 10 minutes from the south entrance, near where you live.”
Jane hesitated.
“OK.” She said.
“Cool. I’ll shoot you an e-mail with time and address.” He waved and walked away. Jane felt an urge to ask him why he owned such a menacing animal, but held her tongue.
The next evening, Jane wavered back and forth before convincing herself to get into her 10-year-old hatchback, clunking along out of the Hospital’s south gate. She asked INA whether it could give her directions to a specific address outside the Hospital. INA said yes, as long as she paid a monthly fee to subscribe to a commercial global positioning service, it could immediately hook up to the system via its wireless network and feed turn-by-turn directions into her ear while driving. Jane thought the monthly subscription was an unnecessary expense and asked for a free map printout instead.
Jane had not driven beyond a 5-minute radius from the Hospital since she arrived. This trip was almost an excursion. Long winding roads surrounded by flat land with high grass put a barrier between the Hospital’s already vast campus and the rest of the city. The city’s outline became sharper as she drove with shops, office buildings, and high-rise apartments.
Following the directions INA gave her, Jane made a few turns after entering the downtown district and entered an underground garage of a white apartment building. She got out of the car and left her car on a numbered parking pad by the door. In a series of loud clanking and scraping, the machinery automatically carried it away deep into a corner of the garage. Next to the entrance, a dispensing machine spit out a ticket with the number of her parking pad and time stamped on it. Jane looked at the fee rate printed on the ticket and quietly drew in a breath. Yikes. She should have known parking would be expensive on this side of the town. Saskatoon did not have this kind of garage, because space was abundant and there was never a need to pack a thousand cars into one parking garage. She had, however, seen and used car-packing garages in Toronto in one of the few trips she had gone on with her father.
Toronto was the farthest place he had ever been to as far as she remembered. She could not reconcile the man she knew with his history of being a youth who had traveled around the world. It seemed to be a myth, an unreliable legend passed down generations by oral tales; yet it must have been true, for she had seen the DVDs in the dusty, moldy boxes that she had found. The images of her mother dominated these recordings, a vibrant petite young woman under intensely deep blue skies, in the filthy and noisy streets, or walking out of shops crammed with spices, clothes, and unfamiliar things. She laughed often. She talked rapidly and with dramatic tones and facial expressions. Jane could not understand anything she said, since her mother never taught her Tamir (?) when Jane was growing up. Her father appeared only occasionally and often grudgingly under her mother’s urging. He was a tall and lanky young man with long limbs and an awkward smile in white shirts with rolled-up sleeves. He was deeply tanned, which seemed to give his eyes a semi-wild look that was entirely contradictory to his manners.
Jane walked up to the elevator and punched in Floor 16 as indicated in Mike Jensen’s e-mail. The carpeted hallway lined by uniform and tightly shut doors gave the interior a look of a hotel. She found the number 1645 on one of the doors and pressed the bell. No response. She could hear the noise of a roomful of people and music spilling through. She pressed the bell again.
The door opened. An impeccably beautiful young woman looked at her without expression.
“I’m … uh … Jane. Mike invited me.” Jane said.
The face cracked a smile but gave no clue as to whether the name Mike meant anything to her. “Hillary. Come in.” She let Jane in with a look of curiosity on his face. “Is hypermelaninia in vogue again?”
Jane did not catch it. “I’m sorry?”
Hillary gazed at Jane’s face for a moment, then shrugged with a slight awkwardness. “Oh, nothing. Thanks,” she said as Jane handed her a bottle of non-alcoholic wine, and waved her hand toward the left of the apartment. “There’s food on the kitchen table and drinks … well, all over and in the fridge. Help yourself.”
Jane had seen many perfect faces and bodies in the past few months, but Hillary might be the prettiest. She was tall and perfectly proportioned. Her skin was milky white, with tiny light freckles around her small but perky nose. She had a mixed look between east Asian and Caucasian.
Jane thanked the host, who disappeared before Jane completely tore her eyes from the room full of the people. She shrugged and poured herself a glass of soda, then started wandering around.
The apartment was not large and looked smaller because of the crowd. The view from the vast window, however, was fantastic. From here one could see the purple twilight diminishing behind the horizon that was the campus of the Hospital. The glass window and the door leading to the balcony were slowing changing from an opaque brown to transparency with a pink hue.
Most people scattered in the room looked younger than Jane, but she had learned by now not to judge people’s age by their look. Most were also even better looking than her colleagues at the Hospital and dressed in tight-fitting clothes. Jane felt a little self-conscious in the fashionable crowd while also enjoying the good looks all around her. She squeezed her way to a large couch, ignoring the couple groping at each other with blind abandon at one end, and sat herself down at the other end. The could surface responded to her weight and body shape, swallowing her into a comfortable groove.
A man sat down next to her, wine glass in hand, “Hi. Have we met before? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you.”
Jane paused a moment with eyes on his salt-and-pepper hair above a wrinkleless face. He noticed and touched his hair with a self-satisfaction, “Do you like it? Salt-and-pepper hair is going to be all the rage.”
“It’s nice.” Jane agreed. “I’m Jane.”
“Andy.” He said. “You’re very pretty. Where did you get your melanin stimulation done?”
Jane was a little confused. Remembering Hillary’s earlier comment, it dawned on her what he meant. She chuckled: “From my mother’s chromosomes. It’s my natural color.”
His eyes rested on her face for a moment, not entirely convinced, “Really? But you must have had something done. Your cheekbones are so full of personality it’s remarkable. And your full lips have been trendy for almost 2 years by now.”
Jane did not know whether she should take the assessment as a compliment or an insult. Finally she decided on a nonresponse. “I don’t know what you mean. Just about everyone in the room is prettier than I, yourself included.” She looked around and confirmed that she was at least the shortest and darkest one.
“I’m sorry. The dark-and-intense look was all the rage last summer and a lot of people got melanin enhancement done. I thought you …” Andy smiled apologetically. “But I have to disagree you. You are very pretty. You stand out immediately in this crowd.”
Jane wanted to argue that homeliness among a sea of beauty could stick out as quickly as the opposite, but she wondered if he knew a world of common looks. Come to think of it, she thought, when beauty becomes common, is it still beautiful?
Andy nudged closer to Jane on the couch with a seductive gleam in his eyes. Jane felt no urge to draw back as she normally would with a flirtatious stranger. Maybe this man-made beauty business is entirely justified. She could almost sense her own lips curling up. Our physiology certainly does not care whether it is real. He was not flawless
The Hospital (9/27)
Chapter 9
“You said you wanted to talk to me?” It gave Jane a few goosebumps hearing Dave Wilson’s voice through the INA in her ear, after almost a month of not getting as much as an e-mail from him.
“Yes. It’s about, um…” She searched for appropriate words but failed. She blushed, thanking God that he could not see her. “It’s about patient enrollment in the study. I sent you an e-mail three days ago. I’m calling to follow up.”
“I’m sorry I have not read it. I get literally hundreds of e-mails every day. Mary usually sort them for me.” He replied apologetically. Jane felt almost guilty.
“I’m sorry to bother you; I know you are very busy. But … it’s a little complicated and I don’t know who to talk to about it within CR.”
“Yes, yes. It’s getting on everyone’s nerves that I never have time for anyone or anything that needs taking care of. I’ll ask Mary to set up an appointment for you. Can it wait till Friday?”
“Sure.” Jane was grateful enough for just having the appointment.
The only available window on Wilson’s calendar turned out to be 6:30 in the afternoon on Friday. When she entered his office, he apologized for keeping her so late at work before the weekend.
“It’s fine.” As a fellow, she was not used to being treated with so much respect. “I’m always here at this hour.” She lied. The oak desk that separated them sprawled like the sea. The surface was divided into sections that belonged to food and drink, the mobile PC, a lamp, medical journals, files, and a mountain of photographs.
Jane tried not to show it, but her eyes had already caught the images on the photographs
“You said you wanted to talk to me?” It gave Jane a few goosebumps hearing Dave Wilson’s voice through the INA in her ear, after almost a month of not getting as much as an e-mail from him.
“Yes. It’s about, um…” She searched for appropriate words but failed. She blushed, thanking God that he could not see her. “It’s about patient enrollment in the study. I sent you an e-mail three days ago. I’m calling to follow up.”
“I’m sorry I have not read it. I get literally hundreds of e-mails every day. Mary usually sort them for me.” He replied apologetically. Jane felt almost guilty.
“I’m sorry to bother you; I know you are very busy. But … it’s a little complicated and I don’t know who to talk to about it within CR.”
“Yes, yes. It’s getting on everyone’s nerves that I never have time for anyone or anything that needs taking care of. I’ll ask Mary to set up an appointment for you. Can it wait till Friday?”
“Sure.” Jane was grateful enough for just having the appointment.
The only available window on Wilson’s calendar turned out to be 6:30 in the afternoon on Friday. When she entered his office, he apologized for keeping her so late at work before the weekend.
“It’s fine.” As a fellow, she was not used to being treated with so much respect. “I’m always here at this hour.” She lied. The oak desk that separated them sprawled like the sea. The surface was divided into sections that belonged to food and drink, the mobile PC, a lamp, medical journals, files, and a mountain of photographs.
Jane tried not to show it, but her eyes had already caught the images on the photographs
Last edited by Jun on 2005-10-24 15:05, edited 3 times in total.
-
helenClaire
- Posts: 3159
- Joined: 2003-11-22 20:12
