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TICKET TO ETERNITY
(For You and Carin Fein)
A fifteen-minute
therapy session leads to a once-in-a-lifetime teaching and learning
experience about immortality.
Wearing
no rings or makeup, Carin Fein was headed to the Out-Patient wing of a reknowned
Boston hospital for a consult with the Staff Physician, but she caught a
reflection of herself in a window and almost changed her mind. Not five feet
tall with a pleated plaid dress under her hospital smock, she avoided
eye-contact with the duty nurse, Mrs. Pilcher, who handed her a clipboard and
told her in an asking sort of way, “You can take a seat over there and fill
these out, Dr. Shockaire is running late this morning.”
Carin glanced at
magazine covers proclaiming, “Spain, Germany and
Denmark Get Twenty-five Percent of Their Energy From Wind!” and “Turtles Can
Breathe Through Their Butts (You know people like that, don’t YOU?)
She joined several other patients waiting in a corner cubby area, still
avoiding eye contact with anyone as she filled out her forms. Then, she overheard
a woman say, “What’s with that pleated plaid dress?” Carin had a pleated plaid dress
but when she looked up nobody was speaking. At the nurses’ station, a female
orderly was standing across from Nurse Pilcher, writing.
When
she was done Carin handed the clipboard back to Nurse Pilcher whose face was long
and seemed round when looking directly at her, but was flat if one looked at
her from the side. “So, you are a Medical Student here, Carin Feen, right?”
greeted the nurse.
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