The Select

by F. Paul Wilson

  So far the board had paid him a little lip service, but no new admissions directives had been issued.

  Well, he'd see what he could do for this young thing. For some reason he could not quite fathom, Walter felt attached to her. Maybe he'd seen something of his old self in this youngster as she'd looked at those patients, something in her eyes, the desire to do something for them, the need to act.

  And then an epiphany: his daughter. This girl reminded him of Clarice. Clarice was twenty-five in Walter's mind. Would always be twenty-five. That was when a drunk had run a stop sign and brought her life and her mother's to a fiery end. A void had opened in him then. He still carried it with him every minute.

  "So, Miss Quinn Cleary," he said after she'd seated herself across from him. He smiled to allay the tension he sensed in her. "Let me ask you the question I must ask, the question you know you're going to be asked, and get that one out of the way: Why do you wish to become a doctor?"

  "Because I..."

  Her voice trailed off. She sat there with a tortured expression, twisting her hands together.

  "Is something wrong?" he said.

  "I...I had a whole speech prepared and now I can't remember a word of it."

  "Good. I've been listening to speeches all afternoon. Let's deviate from the prepared text, as the politicians say, and get down to the real you. Why a doctor?"

  "Because I can't remember ever wanting to be anything else."

  "That doesn't answer the question."

  "Well...because I know I can do it, and do it well. I can be the best damn doctor you've ever seen."

  Walter couldn't help but believe her.

  "Now we're getting somewhere. Because you can do it and do it well...I haven't heard that one in a long time. I hear a lot of altruistic jimmer-jammer but competence is the bottom line, isn't it. A doctor who can't get the job done is no doctor at all. But what about helping people, bettering the lot of your fellow man?"

  Walter had heard that ad nauseam this week...and last year...and the year before...

  Quinn Cleary shrugged. She seemed to be relaxing.

  "That's important, I guess."

  "You guess?"

  "Well, benefiting mankind is great, but that's not what's driving me. I mean, you don't spend four years in pre-med, four years in medical school, then two, three, maybe five more years in a residency just to 'help' people. Plenty of people need help right now, today, this minute. If helping people is all you care about, why put it off for ten years? Join the Peace Corps or go work in a mission feeding the homeless."

  How refreshing she was. Walter felt his afternoon lethargy slipping away.

  "You're not an altruist, then, I take it?"

  "I care a lot about people—sometimes too much, I think— but there's got to be more to becoming a doctor than that."

  "Oh, yes," Walter said, allowing a smile. "How could we forget? There's the status, the respect, and maybe most important, the money."

  The girl returned his smile. "Money...that would be a new experience. But at the risk of sounding holier than thou, when I visualize myself as a doctor, it's not driving a Mercedes, it's in a hospital or an examining room. Doing it—doing the job, and doing it right. That's what matters."

  Again, Walter found himself believing her. But he made himself sound dubious. "Does it really now?"

  "Yes," she said, her cheeks coloring. "And if that sounds corny or phony, I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel."

  Spunky too. Walter decided he was going to do his damnedest to get this young lady into The Ingraham.

  But he could do only so much. A lot—everything, one might say—depended on the test tomorrow. She'd have to correctly answer those special questions. He couldn't help her with those. Nobody could.

  MONITORING

  Louis Verran sat at the main console in the monitoring room in the basement of the Science Center and struck a match. Elliot and Kurt weren't due in for another thirty minutes, so he had the place to himself. He held the flame to the tip of his panatella and puffed. This was his domain, the only place on the whole goddamn campus where he made the rules, and he did not have one against smoking here. Never would. He savored the coolness of the early puffs, even inhaled a little.

  Nothing in the world like an after-dinner cigar. All he needed was a snifter of VSOP to feel one hundred percent mellow. But that would have to wait. No booze while he was on the job. His rule.

  He scanned the readouts, checking to make sure the pick-ups were tracking their target data.

  The dorm was hopping. The hopefuls had all been fed—nicely stuffed on chicken francaise and all the trimmings—and escorted to their rooms. Now time for them to settle in, settle down, and go beddie-bye by lights out at 11:00.

  Everything was operative. One hundred and four sets of readouts, one for every room in the V-shaped dorm's two wings. Half of them were occupied by hopefuls tonight. A pair in each of those rooms. One hundred nervous, twitchy bodies in all.

  He decided to run some random checks. He activated the audio in 241. A couple of girls in that one...

  CHAPTER THREE

  "...think this could be some sort of test too?"

  It was the third time Trish had asked that since dinner—which Quinn was still marveling at. She glanced over at where her roommate for the night sat with an MCAT review course manual open on her lap. Trish was pudgy, with long frizzy hair and mild acne. The seams of her jeans, made for someone two sizes smaller, were stretched almost to the breaking point over her thighs.

  "I don't know what you mean."

  Trish rolled her eyes and sighed as if it were all so obvious.

  "This." She gestured around her. "This room. Spending the night in the med students' rooms. They could be testing us to see how well we respect their rules. What do you think?"

  A handsome room—a two-room suite, actually. Cedar paneled walls, a thick rug on the floor, and their own cheerfully tiled bathroom. The outer room had the beds and a view of the woods; the elaborate headboards looked like mahogany and were built into the walls, with drawers and bookshelves and compartments of various sizes; two huge closets also built in. The inner half was a sitting room with two built-in desks that also seemed like mahogany, plus a neetly upholstered, Laura Ashley-looking couch, a round table, and two comfy chairs. A far cry from the cinderblock box she called home at U. Conn.

  "Isn't this the most incredible dorm room you've ever seen?" Quinn said.

  "Got to be. Do you think it's true about the daily maid service?"

  "That's what I've heard."

  "But do you think they're testing us by putting us in here?"

  "Could be. They certainly have enough rules around here."

  The Ingraham, she'd heard, had a reputation of exerting an unusual amount of control over its students, and that seemed to stretch to its applicants as well. All applicants—and they reminded you endlessly that you'd been invited to be an applicant—had to attend the full orientation and spend the night prior to the test in The Ingraham's dorm.

  As soon as she'd arrived, Quinn had been handed an orientation booklet which had laid down the rules in no uncertain terms. And in bold type had been the requirement of spending the night here. As if to say, if you don't stay the night, don't bother showing up for the test. Why, Quinn wondered, were they so adamant about that?

  And these dorm rooms, all that stuff about not opening any drawers or closets, respecting the residents' belongings and privacy, as if she had any intention of prying into people's drawers.

  Quinn was grateful for the free room and board. But why were they so strident?

  "Well, the whole thing beats me," Trish said, "but I'm going to keep my hands off everything in here. Not even going to use the desk lamp."

  "Maybe we shouldn't even get in the beds," Quinn teased in a near whisper. "Maybe we should just leave the spreads pulled up and sleep on top."

  "You think really so?"

  "Or maybe should sleep on the floor," Quin
n continued, wondering when Trish would catch on. "That way we won't wrinkle the spreads."

  "Oh, I don't..." Finally she caught it. She smiled. "You're putting me on, aren't you! I must sound a little nuts, huh?"

  "No. Just nervous. Like me."

  "You too? You don't show it."

  Next to Trish anyone would look calm, but she saw no need to point that out.

  "I guess I have a different way of showing it."

  "So, aren't you going to study?"

  "I don't think this is the kind of test you can study for. But you go ahead. I think I'll take a little walk."

  She strolled out into the hall and headed for Matt's down on the first floor. The hall was almost like an expensive hotel corridor, well lit, carpeted, and clean—no graffiti, no cigarette burns, no litter. She wondered at the size of the maintenance crew it took to keep things in this shape.

  Tim and Matt had somehow finagled a room together. Quinn begrudgingly admitted to herself that she had warmed to Tim over dinner. She'd actually had fun laughing at his unsuccessful attempts to conjure up some white wine to go with the chicken francaise. She found him stretched out on the couch, reading a Cerebus comic—and still wearing his shades. Matt sat with his feet up on the table, listening to his Walkman. He looked up and waved.

  Tim said, "Ah, the Mighty Quinn. Welcome!" He plucked up a fold of a new sweatshirt he was wearing emblazoned with The Ingraham. "How do I look?"

  "'Like a patient etherized upon a table.'"

  "Ah! A T.S. Eliot fan."

  "But what poem?"

  "'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'—first stanza." He lifted his sunglasses and looked at her cross-eyed. "You saw the comic book and thought you'd slip one by me, huh?"

  "Not if it's a Cerebus, but isn't it hard to read with those things?"

  "Very. Especially at night."

  "Then why wear them?"

  Matt lowered the headphones to the back of his neck and answered for his roommate. "Because as Andre Agassi says, 'Image...is everything.'"

  Quinn had her own idea about that: Image had nothing to do with it; Tim Brown was hiding behind those lenses.

  "How'd you two manage to get assigned to the same room?" she asked, dropping into a chair.

  Tim said, "I traded with the guy who was originally here."

  "You sure there's isn't a rule against that?" Quinn said.

  "I didn't see one," Matt said, "but I'll bet there's one somewhere."

  Tim put down his Cerebus and sat up. "Hell of a lot of rules, don't you think?"

  "Their ball, their gloves, and their playing field," Matt said. "So they call the shots."

  "Yeah," Tim said, "but what's this deal with you've got to sleep over in the dorm the night before the test? Where's that come from? If you don't like institutional food, or you'd rather stay in the Holiday Inn, why should they care?"

  Quinn had been thinking about that. "Maybe they want us all to start off tomorrow morning on equal footing. You know, same dinner, same amount of sleep on the same kind of mattress, same breakfast, that sort of thing. Another level of standardization for the test."

  Matt nodded. "Maybe. Their booklet does say they've learned over the years that they get the best results from their applicants under these conditions."

  "Well, I don't know about you guys," Tim said, "but this kind of thing makes me feel like some sort of a lab rat."

  "Maybe the whole point," Quin said, "is seeing if you're willing to do things their way."

  "Obviously this place isn't for the wild and free spirits of the world," Matt said.

  "But the price is right," Quinn said. The price is very right.

  Tim shrugged. "No arguing that."

  "What's not to like?" Quinn said. "The place is like a resort. The dorm is like a Hyatt, the caf is like a fine restaurant, you've got a physical fitness center with a lap pool, a great game room, and a top-notch faculty—"

  "Even a pub," Tim said.

  "Makes you wonder, though, doesn't it?" Matt said. "I mean, what are they getting out of it?"

  "Simple," Quinn said. "The cream of the crop."

  "Yeah...maybe."

  "TANSTAAFL," Tim said, and pointed to Quinn with raised eyebrows.

  She guessed it was her turn to identify a reference.

  "Easy," she said. "It means There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein."

  "Hey, very good," Tim said, nodding and mock applauding. "The lady knows SF too."

  Quinn was surprised to find herself enjoying in his approval. She shook it off and said, "Who wouldn't want to go to medical school here?"

  "Nobody," Matt said, "until you realize that you must spend all four years right within these wall."

  Quinn felt a flash of resentment. Easy to say when money was no object. But she knew Matt didn't deserve that. He was a sweet guy despite the silver spoon he'd teethed on.

  "My point exactly," Tim was saying. "What's the big deal? Why must you spend all four years in their dorm?"

  Quinn shrugged. "I don't know. But they're very serious about it. I understand they make you sign a contract to live on campus all four years. You don't sign it, you don't register."

  "And if you quit, you pay," Tim said.

  Quinn was startled. She hadn't heard about that. "Pay? Pay what?"

  "All your back tuition, room, board, book and lab fees."

  "But that could be—"

  "Lots," Tim said. "Upwards of thirty thou a year."

  "But if you get sick or hurt—"

  "No. Only if you transfer to another medical school. If you get sick or hurt or change careers, it's goodbye and good luck. But if you want to graduate from another med school, watch out."

  Quinn figured Tim must have read every line of fine print in the booklet.

  "What if you want to get married?"

  "You wait," Tim said.

  "Or you marry a fellow Ingrahamite," Matt laughed. "But seriously, speaking as the son of a high-priced lawyer, let me assure you: contracts can be broken."

  "Not this one," Tim said. "Not yet, anyway. Some parents took The Ingraham to court a few years ago. Their kid wanted to transfer to Cornell after two years here. They spent years battling it, and lost. They had to pay."

  "Well, they won't have to worry about me," Quinn said. "If I get in, I'm staying." And she meant it with all her heart.

  But Tim's remark about no free lunch nagged at her.

  Matt was staring at Tim. "Where'd you learn so much about The Ingraham contract."

  "Time had an article on it awhile back." Tim lifted his sunglasses and rubbed his right eye with his index finger. "Let's see...it was the October 15th issue, page 12, lower right-hand corner."

  Quinn stared in amazement, then glanced at Matt for his reaction. He was grinning at her.

  "He's kidding, isn't he?" she said to Matt.

  "Didn't I tell you?"

  Tim sat up. "Tell her? Tell her what?"

  "About your weird memory."

  Tim placed a hand over his heart and let out an exaggerated sigh. "You had me worried there. For one very bad moment I thought you'd told her about my...other weirdness."

  "Oh, God, I'd never do that!" Matt said.

  Quinn knew when she was being put on. She stared at Matt with feigned shock.

  "Sure you did. You said he's got a shoe fetish and his philosophy of life is somewhere to the left of 'Whoopee!'"

  Matt laughed but Tim was on his feet, wagging his index finger at her.

  "I know that line! I know it! It's from...A Thousand Clowns. Murray Burns discussing his sister. Right?"

  "Incredible," Quinn said. Matt hadn't exaggerated. Tim Brown's memory was phenomenal.

  "But how do you know that line?" Tim said.

  "For a long time it was my favorite movie."

  "Yeah, well, Jason Robards was great, but—"

  "It just was."

  Quinn didn't want to get into how as a teenager she'd
fantasized about taking the place of Murray Burns' nephew—she'd have been Murray's niece—and being raised by such a lovable non-conformist. Her parents were such staid, stick-in-the-mud, normal people. For years she'd longed for a little kookiness in her home.

  She glanced at her watch. It was 10:50. "I'd better be getting back."

  "Right," Tim said. "I've heard you turn into a pumpkin if you're late."

  "Really? Was that in the Time article too?"

  "A curfew!" Matt said, sitting up on his bed. "Can you believe it? I haven't been here a full day yet and already this place is getting on my nerves. And have you seen all the video cameras around the campus?"

  Tim pressed a finger to his lips. "Careful, my friend. The walls may have ears."

  MONITORING

  "You bet they have ears, wise ass," Louis Verran muttered as he switched to another set of pick-ups.

  "Mattress sensors positive all over the place, boss," Kurt said from his console.

  "All right," Verran said. "It's almost eleven. Nighty-night time. Let's get some slow waves going."

  He flipped the power switch and gave the rheostat a clockwise turn on the slow-wave inducer. Getting them to sleep before midnight was always the trickiest part of entrance exam week. Most of these kids were uptight about the test tomorrow and wired on their own adrenalin. That was why all the coffee in the caf had been decaf—even the pots marked regular. Without a little help, too many would spend the night chewing their fingernails and tossing and turning on the unfamiliar mattresses. Big no-no. They had to sleep. All of them. For at least five full hours.

  So each suite was hard-wired with—among other things—slow-wave/spindle inducers. A huge expense, considering that they were used only one week out of fifty-two. The inducer created an electromagnetic field in the rooms that connected with human brain waves, inducing sleep spindles on the EEG, and making the pattern most comfortable in the slow-wave form—the sleep pattern. Worked great on the kids if they were lying in bed; thirty to sixty seconds and they were in dreamland. Took a little longer if they were sitting up, but eventually they'd give in to this sudden, overwhelming urge to lie down...just for a few minutes...just to rest their eyes.