Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (2 page)

Sometimes, Fitzgerald closed his eyes and mouthed words while he memorized. Ming pretended to look out the window, allowed herself to briefly watch the half-image of his reflection speaking silently. She could see that he was immersed in the material, that he was trying to get inside it. She admired this, and longed for Fitzgerald because of it. Ming had decided to be occupied primarily with the facts in her textbooks, and less with comprehension. Ionic channels were not a wonderful riddle to her, as she knew they were to Fitzgerald. They were simply a means to an end, that end being a perfect set of grades and a medical school admission
letter. Hers was the more common attitude in the life sciences faculty, and so Ming regarded Fitzgerald as being pure and noble, if strategically unwise.

Midway through the exams, they grew into a twice daily session of going through questions. Fitzgerald proposed that they use these question sessions as breaks, and so they visited the library cafeteria twice a day. Ming considered going to the cafeteria to be an indulgent use of time, but she decided that it was acceptable as long as they discussed only academics, and as long as she didn't spend too much time actually enjoying Fitzgerald's company.

They ate, clarified the puzzles of cell membrane physiology, and talked about their need to become physicians. Others were not genuine, they agreed, and transparently wanted to become doctors for money and prestige. Ming and Fitzgerald wanted medicine for the right reasons, they told each other: service, humanity, giving. Because their motivations were clean, they were certain they deserved it more than those among them. They did not ask why they wanted to serve, be humane, or to give. These simply felt like the right motivations, and being correctly motivated should improve their chances of success. This was enough, and these sentiments felt easy and immune from questioning. If forced to reflect, both Ming and Fitzgerald would have had to admit that these convictions were, at their core, somewhat improvised. They did not challenge each other, but instead reinforced each other's sense of
moral correctness as a virtuous conspiracy of two.

Their consuming ambition was the same as those of their classmates, but they agreed that most of the people around them were fake. Ming did allow that, although she did not want to pursue medicine for the money, earning a good living was important to her.

“I like being obsessed by things,” said Fitzgerald one day. “It suits me.” He did not tell Ming that he supposed that if his attentions had happened to fall upon something other than medicine, he would have been equally engrossed with it.

 

Ming paced exams like a marathon. In a three-hour examination, she finished her initial draft within a strictly self-enforced two hours. For twenty minutes, she returned to uncomfortable questions she had indicated with a lightly pencilled star. After reworking her response she erased the star because she didn't believe in changing an answer more than once. For another twenty minutes, she focused on the crucial phrasing of the questions, ensuring that her answers corresponded. They altered questions subtly from the previous years' versions in an attempt to throw off those who studied from the prohibited, but widely available, pool of old exams. Ming was vigilant that a four-point question receive no more than four indisputably correct facts in the answer; it was possible to lose marks by including incorrect extra information. She sat straight, with her ankles crossed under her seat.

In her assigned seat behind Fitzgerald, Ming sometimes glanced up at him, saw him curled over his papers. In some sessions he wrote furiously until the invigilator came to take the paper from him. At other times, he finished writing within an hour and then fidgeted while everyone else worked. Fitzgerald constantly slipped his shoes on and off, and once accidentally kicked his right shoe two rows across. The invigilator retrieved it, and pulled out the insole to check for any hidden papers before returning it to Fitzgerald with a recommendation that his shoes stay on his feet.

 

Ming called Fitzgerald late that night, hours after she had rushed away from her half-eaten pad thai. He woke to the phone ringing, his head pounding with an early evening hangover.

She said, “You've been honest, so I should be. I am attracted to you, and now that we both understand this problem, we shouldn't study together or even see each other.”

“Does that make it more clear?”

“It's only that the whole thing will go wrong.”

Fitzgerald pointed out the competitively lonely nature of their faculty, spoke in a seemingly spontaneous and heartfelt way about the improbability and importance of human connection, and said, “Why don't we be friends, of an academic nature.” It was at this moment, as he said this in a comforting manner, that
Ming became certain that she was in love with him. They concluded that since they were adults with common priorities, and agreed that a relationship was inadvisable, there was no reason why they couldn't help each other study. After hanging up, Ming felt pleased in a longing, distanced way. She could be in love with Fitz in this protection of an agreement, with an understanding between them that there would be no romance, and so, she decided, she would not be hurt.

 

The graded biochemistry finals were the last set to be distributed in the second week of January. Fitzgerald flipped through his paper, adding up the numbers. Ming opened her locker and thrust her own exam into the bottom of her knapsack. She was unsure whether to ask Fitzgerald the sensitive question, the private issue. Some people made a show of displaying their victories, or their self-flagellation at a disappointment. Ming felt that grades were fundamentally secret successes and defeats. On the other hand, Fitzgerald lingered near her. No, she wouldn't ask. She was not afraid of him doing better than her. It was just that he might feel that she was being nosy in the publicly competitive way that she hated, or would think that she cared, which should be avoided.

“I won't make the cut-off,” said Fitzgerald. He looked up.

In the way that a mother asks a child to show her a boo-boo she said, “Show me.”

“I needed to ace this,” he said, handing her the paper.

Ming was embarrassed by his grade, by his lower lip drawn tight, and by her own result.

“The cut-off changes every year,” she said. It was believed that a magic grade point average was required in order to get an interview. Ming searched for an error in the addition of marks, hoping to find that ten points had simply not been added. She could give this to Fitzgerald like a gift, although this happening would be like finding a hundred-dollar bill lying in the street. Among the medical school applicants there were theories about
MCAT
scores, varying schools of thought about curricula vitae, and tales circulated about what so and so's brother and such and such's sister were asked in their interviews. Small groups of people who sat shoulder to shoulder in every lecture shared underground treasuries of old exams, but denied their existence to anyone outside their number. It would have been commonly agreed that Fitzgerald's grade of seventy-eight was a liability.

“How did you do?” asked Fitzgerald.

“Okay.”

“Most people wouldn't be so modest.”

“I lost two marks, but made them up with the bonus,” she said. She had to tell him. There was an accepted notion of
I'll show you mine if you show me yours,
and she felt good telling him. Whenever Ming got her marks, the numbers first gave her a sense of
relief, and only once this moment passed did she allow herself to feel some pleasure. Then came the fear that if she became pleased and complacent, she might fail in the future. She reminded herself of the ease with which perfection could be lost, and was wary of being satisfied with her grades. Now, it felt good to tell Fitzgerald that she had received a perfect score. Still looking at his exam, she said, “Get this regraded.”

“Found something?”

“I can't find marks, but you
understand
this stuff. You're losing marks on detail. The Krebs cycle—you know it better than I do. The problem is the way you study and write.” She said this not only to be kind, but because she found his answers elegant and insightful. Ming's own responses were always factually complete in point form, convenient to check off for a perfect score. Fitzgerald seemed to disregard the assigned value of questions, and in some three-inch spaces he cramped his writing into tiny letters in order to include the essay-length breadth he felt was appropriate. In another section where a page was allotted, he wrote four lines and drew a diagram that, to him, encapsulated the entire issue.

 

It was Ming's cousin Karl who had taught her the rules of academic success: be meticulous about details because it's easier to lose two marks than to earn eight, understand what will be asked and prepare to deliver it, expect that the next test will be harder and that this is
your reward for success. When Karl was eighteen and Ming was twelve, it was as a big favour to her father that her uncle had agreed to allow Karl to use some of his valuable time to tutor the B student, Ming. Karl was the shining boy who filled her uncle's mantelpiece with academic trophies. He was on scholarship in his first year of university biology while Ming blundered through junior high.

Ming's father impressed upon her the importance of learning from her cousin, of not bringing shame to her parents. She admired Karl's easy confidence and the way he grasped everything he wanted—each award, each prize. He taught her a system—a way of breaking knowledge into manageable packages that might be related but didn't have to be, that didn't even have to matter, but the facts of which must be internalized, mastered, and displayed without so much as a momentary lack of confidence. To lose sight of any of these lists, subjects, or compartments would be to fail, and if you failed any part—whatever else had been learned would not matter when the time came to see if you would be allowed to write the next, tougher test.

 

“Well, congratulations, Doctor Ming,” said Fitzgerald, his grin too wide. She knew he genuinely intended it, but that it was hard to smile through his frustration.

“That's a bit premature,” she said. She rolled his biochemistry final into a tube in her hand and said, “How was your Plato?” This was his humanities elective, and
she did not take the same course so there could be no comparison.

“Top of the class,” he said.

“Wonderful.”

“In the philosophy department, that's a seventy-one.”

“You need to strategize your electives,” she said. Hers was introductory psychology, a course that fulfilled its reputation of providing an easy A+.

“Next year,” he said. Each year, a few were admitted to medicine. Some rejected applicants decided that they had other things to do with their lives, and the remaining aspirants continued to fill out application packages and resubmit them. “I'll be more strategic next year.”

“If you don't get in, no one deserves to get in. This grade point business is a stupid, arbitrary system,” she said, profoundly believing this as someone who had completely mastered it.

“I'll be happy when you get in,” he said. “Really, truly. Lots of people say that, but I really will be pleased for you.”

“Thank you,” she said. Ming believed that he
would
be happy for her, though many would say so and it would be fake. She wanted to tell him about how she tried to save seats for him in the lectures without wanting him to see that she was doing so, about how she liked seeing him ride his bicycle around campus in the snow—pants tucked into his socks—and about how certain things scared her just enough that she couldn't indulge her present impulse to lean toward him.

Instead, she said, “I'll jinx myself, talking as if I'll get in. Don't say ‘Doctor Ming' or it'll end up being a joke.” She looked at her feet and said, as Karl had once told her, “We have to dissect your study techniques.”

The following day, Ming went through Fitzgerald's December finals and pointed out that he had mostly lost marks through a flagrant disregard for testable trivia. She introduced him to her scheduling system, in which each week was divided into a chart with half-hour time slots.

 

Monday

7:00: Wake up, wash.

7:30: Breakfast and pre-read a lecture chapter.

8:00: Bus to school.

8:30: Lecture.

9:30: Pre-read next lecture.

10:00: Second lecture.

11:00: Review morning lecture tapes while eating lunch.

12:30: Relax.

13:00: Third lecture.

 

Ming crossed out each time slot as it was completed.

Fitzgerald's note taking had previously been limited to what he felt was conceptually relevant, summarized by diagrams. Often, details were not included in the diagrams because they did not seem important to him. A tape recorder and a yellow highlighter were the core of Ming's system. After each lecture, she listened to her
tape of it and ensured that every testable fact mentioned in the lecture was included in her notes. While studying, she highlighted notes as she committed them to memory, until her entire notebook was a glaring neon yellow.

“It's not that concepts are unimportant,” Ming reassured Fitzgerald, “it's simply that they're not essential to scoring top marks.” She had mentioned that her cousin Karl was a surgical resident in Toronto, but did not explain that this was Karl's study system. Why should she tell Fitzgerald, an “academic friend,” everything?

Each night they spoke on the telephone—always at the end of the evening so that there was no disruption of the sacred studies, nor a time limit. Conversations began with questions about the day's lectures, but veered off more and more often so that they had to remind each other of their primary obligation to help the other study. They talked about what they would do, see, and allow themselves once they had fulfilled their delayed gratification of becoming doctors. Ming thought of the two of them doing these things together, far away from her family, yet she was careful not to refer to “we” while discussing these fantasies. Although everything was fragile and crucial right now, it would all be perfect once they achieved the state of being medical students. It floated before them like a transcendental and elusive plane of existence. They allowed that it would be a challenging profession, but it felt obvious that once admitted, the difficult thing would be done.