Somewhat unexpectedly, when he got out of the shower, he felt almost human, and although 5:30 a.m. would be arriving much sooner than he’d like, he belatedly remembered he’d promised to call his parents. With that thought in mind, he rescued his mobile phone from his pants pocket and dialed his father’s phone, knowing his dad would certainly be awake while awaiting the first financial news from Europe. With his towel wrapped around his waist, Mitt went out to sit on his brand-new couch, putting his feet up on the coffee table.
“I was so hoping to hear from you,” Benjamin answered without any hello. “Hold on, let me put you on speaker.”
Mitt raised his eyes heavenward, as he knew that if his mother joined the conversation, it would take longer. But he didn’t complain.
Mitt explained that he was calling as late as he was because he’d just gotten home. He openly emphasized he was justifiably exhausted in hopes of keeping the conversation short.
“I want to hear about your first days as a resident,” Benjamin said, completely avoiding the exhaustion issue. He was obviously impatient to hear the details.
Mitt made a sudden decision to gloss over the “bad” and emphasize the “good.” It immediately occurred to him that explaining the bad would take significantly more time and effort, neither of which he felt capable of. Accordingly, he went on to say that in just two days and one night he could appreciate what an unbelievably eye-opening experience the residency was going to be and that he’d already learned much more than he could ever have expected.
“I’m not surprised in the slightest,” Benjamin said smugly. “I told you so, didn’t I?”
“I believe you did,” Mitt fibbed. He couldn’t remember his father saying anything of the kind, but he wasn’t up to an argument.
After a little more back-and-forth, Mitt was about to say good night when his tired mind somehow recalled Dr. Harington’s surprising revelations about the Fuller Bellevue doctors. Despite his exhaustion, Mitt described what he’d been told about their relatives’ disappointing stances on a number of contemporary issues and even that Homer had been a renowned grave robber for dissection corpses. When Mitt finished, he asked his father if he’d ever heard anything at all in those veins.
“No,” Benjamin said definitively, almost angrily. “Absolutely not. That sounds totally out of character from everything I’ve ever heard. I’m shocked to hear someone would even imply such a thing. I had always heard that, if anything, all four of our physician ancestors were ahead of their times. Who is this Dr. Harington, anyway?”
“She’s an attending surgeon and a specialist at that,” Mitt said. “She’s associate chief of cardiothoracic surgery. As I understand it, she’s highly thought of professionally and personally. She’s also an ardent aficionado of Bellevue Hospital history, which is how she happened to know about our ancestors.”
“Well, I will certainly ask my brother if he’s ever heard anything along the lines of our relatives being out of step with medical advances. It’s a bit shocking, and it seems rather odd to me that someone like this Dr. Harington would try to tarnish their reputations.”
“She wasn’t calling into question their reputations,” Mitt was quick to correct. “Just the opposite. She was extremely complimentary about all our Bellevue relatives, particularly about the surgeons and their technical skills. She knew that your namesake had been only the second person in the world to fracture, or open up, a damaged mitral valve. And she was specifically aware that Homer had been able to do a mid-thigh amputation in nine seconds.”
“Well, there was a reason they called it the ‘era of heroic surgery,’ ” Benjamin said, audibly calming. “It is incredible what they were able to do without anesthesia. To tell you the truth, I cannot even conceive of doing surgery without anesthesia — from both the doctor’s and the patient’s point of view.”
“How much sleep did you end up getting?” Clara asked, interrupting the conversation. Mitt would always be her little boy, and he loved her for it.
“Not much,” Mitt said vaguely.
“Then we should let you go, so you can get some rest,” Clara said.
“Good idea,” Mitt admitted. “I’m beyond tired, and I’ll be collapsing into bed the moment we hang up.”
After goodbyes and Mitt promising to call again probably sometime Thursday evening, the conversation ended, and he tossed his phone onto the coffee table. He sat there for a moment intending to get right up, head into the bedroom, and climb into bed as he’d said, but he didn’t. Instead, he went back over the call with his parents, particularly revisiting his father’s surprise and umbrage. That thought led to his remembering Dr. Harington’s promise to email the reference she’d described. Mitt leaned forward and opened up his laptop, which happened to be sitting on the coffee table right in front of him. After a few keystrokes to get into his email inbox, he let his eyes run down the list of thirty to forty that had not been opened. Almost immediately he focused on one from HaringtonMD and clicked it open. After a brief explanatory note from the doctor in the body of the email, there was an attachment, which he opened in turn.
Quickly he scrolled through the attachment, recognizing it to be an unpublished article that had been submitted to a journal called The History of Medicine Review but returned to the author, Robert Pendleton of NYU medical school. It had been rejected by the journal’s editorial board with a letter dated October 10, 1975, containing criticisms and suggestions. Mitt had never heard of this particular journal, but it didn’t surprise him. As a medical student, he’d learned there were upward of thirty thousand medical journals, most of which were totally off his radar. The only publications he was familiar with were the main clinical journals, like The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Lancet.
The article was titled “Eight Renowned Bellevue Hospital Physicians: Those on the Right Side of History and Those on the Wrong Side.” Glancing at the letter sent by the journal’s editorial board, he noticed that they first took issue with the title, saying it was much too long. He then read that it was the board’s unanimous opinion that the article itself was also too wordy and that if the author wanted it to be published, it should be significantly tightened up. The main criticism, however, was directed at the author’s failure to mention Dr. William Halsted’s disastrous addiction to cocaine despite his being on the right side of germ theory. They felt that such an omission should be rectified.
But as Mitt read on, he saw that the editorial board’s response wasn’t all negative. They had a very positive response to the author’s newly discovered sources as revealed in the article’s appendix. The board went on to suggest that he consider publishing them in their entirety as an additional piece. They added that it was the board’s strong opinion that such material would be of enormous use for future medical historians.
Despite his numbing weariness, Mitt was intrigued, wondering what could have constituted newly discovered sources that apparently involved his ancestors. As he put off climbing into his beckoning bed, Mitt’s intention was to leaf quickly through the article with the idea of finding the appendix and at least get some inkling of these newly discovered sources. As for the article itself, he vowed to find the time to read it the following day. But as he tried to scan the article, a name on the very first page caught his eye: Dr. Homer Paul Fuller. As Mitt skimmed through the section, he was immediately intrigued. He read that his ancestor had studied under Dr. David Hosack, actively aided him in procuring bodies for anatomical dissection, and then teamed up with him to help move Bellevue, which had been a relatively small almshouse in lower Manhattan, up to a newly constructed, very large establishment in its current location on the East River.