Dr. Gull appears as a man of medium height and build with thick wavy black hair. He dresses in a white physician’s smock, a white shirt and tie, black loafer shoes, and a Rolex watch. He smokes Marlboro cigarettes incessantly. His bright eyes search the surroundings through a thick grey wisp of tobacco smoke that slowly floats upwards and seems to linger everywhere; Dr. Gull holds the title of Chief of Oncology Services at the big U. He likes to teach anyone who will listen, the Science of Tumor Immunology. He will instruct a student if he or she has the IQ and prerequisites to enter the halls of the Health Sciences. In a small classroom in the School of Microbiology, Dr. Gull instructs medical residents, Graduate Students, visiting professors from other countries, and even Wracks.
Good afternoon, Dr. Gull, says Wracks, I am enrolled in your course in Tumor Immunology. I look forward to an exciting and enlightening quarter here while I work on an independent research project down the hall. May I smoke also during the lecture? I like Marlboro Red cigarettes also.
Sure, says Dr. Gull. Most of my staff here and at Woodland Bethlehem Hospital are also smokers. We need the lift to get us through the day. Go right ahead and light up but bring your ashtray. Get seated, I have to start the lecture.
Mr. Simms also completed upper-division Immunology with Wracks and now sits next to Wracks in the lecture hall. Dr. Gull starts writing on the chalkboard the first topic of the course. Sir Burnet’s theory of Immune surveillance. All the medical residents pull a cigarette out of their coat pockets and light up. The room slowly fills up with smoke and Dr. Gull lectures through a thick haze of photochemical smog.
Does everyone have to smoke, says Mr. Simms. Mr. Simms stands as a tall-boned Nordic-derived student at the Big U. All the smoke makes me sick. Will everyone put out their cigarettes? Wracks extinguishes his cigarette immediately. Two of the medical Residents blow heavy smoke clouds at Mr. Simms.
Mr. Simms exclaims, if you do not stop smoking, I will drop the course and file a complaint against everyone.
The residents continue to blow smoke toward Mr. Simms until he closes his notebook with a bang and storms out of the hall. Dr. Gull tries to ignore the situation. After time assures that Mr. Simms has left for good, everyone puts out their cigarettes as if inspired by unseen forces. Dr. Gull turns to his audience and smiles.
Does everyone understand Sir Howard Burnett’s theory now that it is on the board?
Everyone nods their heads in agreement and the instructor smoking cigarette in hand continues.
Forty-five minutes later the instructor concludes and assigns case studies and term papers to the students of his class. Everyone leaves in a hurry because they all have work to do, families to go to, or a sweetheart somewhere. Wracks has his dinner at the student union waiting for him and then a long bus ride home ending in a walk up a hill at night. A wrack has no experiment scheduled now because his tissue-transplanted mice have to grow up. Then their spleens and blood will be harvested and the statistical construct begin. A wrack takes the elevator down to the first floor and emerges at the entrance to the school of medicine. A huge black onyx building is in construction and the cranes hoist enormous steel girders into place as the sun sets in a reddish flame framed by grey petrochemical smog. Today wracks will enter the student cafeteria by an alternate route. Walking underneath the suspended hallway connecting the health sciences with the biological sciences, Wracks takes the connecting road down to the front of campus past the big buildings that house the professional schools and clinics of the Big U. Up the main promenade to the student store, in the front door and then take the elevator to the second floor. Wracks exits the elevator, then walks left to the queue lines in front of the cafeteria. The budget student menu does not draw the crowd expected for such a bargain and charity offering. No other place on the west side delivers a full meal with all-you-can-drink coffee for one dollar and a quarter. Most of the student body eats instead at the fabulous exotic bars and discotheques located ten miles away. For the more affluent students, the best restaurants in the state are less than five miles away on the miracle mile. At five o’clock on a weekday, only twenty people utilize the vast resources of the student cafeteria. Adjoining the student cafeteria situates the varsity athletes’ dining room. The privileged few awesome athletes that join the fabulous and famous football and basketball teams, eat steak and hamburgers to infinity, cooked in front of them on a huge gas-fired charcoal grill. Wracks sit in front of Kirk’s Hall and smell the delicious odors emanating from the athletes’ dining room every day while enjoying a cigarette and a cup of coffee. Then an occasional nap in the huge leather armchairs decorating the picture windows in the student hall happens. Curled up in bliss, in uteri in a friendly place, with warm feet and toes, Wracks knaps in the world of opulence. The moment occurs now and tonight at five, Wracks chooses the chicken pot pie on the student menu with all-you-can-eat crackers. Wracks grabs one of the large porcelain cups provided for the coffee-drinking student body. In his usual spot, facing the entrance line, with his back to the wall sits Dahlman. Both of Dahlmans’ Parents have accolades as tenured faculty members in the health sciences at the Big U. Tonight, Dahlman dines on a sumptuous roast beef sandwich with de jour dressing, a bag of potato chips, and a tall glass of brown tea. Wracks slams his stew out of a large beige bowl into his mouth and sends the food to his stomach with shooters of hot coffee with excesses of half and half creamer. When the bowl licks clean, Wracks eats the first of his three packages of Nabisco saltine crackers.
How did the war go on the southern flank, asks Dahlman.
More of the same says Wracks. I go to class, then study for an hour in between, then go to the lab, check on my animals, go back to afternoon class, and then show up here. We go to the Research library after dinner, put in two to three hours of exam preparation, and then take the bus home. What happens on the North campus?
The same, says Dahlman, I research law books and take notes then transcribe the data to three by five cards. Only three by five cards can be admitted to a courtroom if he or she is not the defending or prosecuting attorney. Then I come here. In the morning, I sit for exams until lunch.
Why are we doing this asks Wracks.
There is no other way, says Dahlman. Academic achievement occurs as the only game in town. Everything else gets old. Let’s get going. See you at the end.
Spring starts to break at the big U. The large trees bear buds and the winter ebbs and the entire leaves have blown away three months ago. The quad sits deserted in the dark twilight and the Romanesque forums stand adamant in utter solitude. Up the steps to the marbled halls of myriad classrooms, and through the café connecting the old building with the new to the lighted entrance promenade signaling the Buckminster fuller rendition of glass that houses the research library. Up the central elevator to the fifth-floor rocket the two students. On the fifth floor, they separate because the line of sight of movement distracts attention while reading. A huge physics graduate student sits at a little desk next to the elevator and looks up to see if Wracks smokes. Satisfied, he continues reading. Sitting at his window to the opulent world Wracks surveys the beauty, organization, and technological majesty that money creates. In this world of non-olfactory money, where source seems unimportant and effect paramount Wracks digs in at the end of the short winter and promises himself, that he will not fall asleep tonight.
Let’s hit it! Yells Dahlman at Wracks, we have only 12 minutes to catch the 8:55 bus.
Wracks throws his huge heavy books into his briefcase and jumps off to the run. Trotting down the staircase, they bound through the glass frontal portal and lope across the North Campus Avenue. Trotting down the hill they cross the entrance road and stand at the pole on the island where the RTD stops on Hill Street. Just as they arrive a huge yellow bus without any passengers careens into view and stops suddenly without screeching its tires. The door opens and both Wracks and Dahlman flash their monthly student passes at the bus driver. The door closes and the huge yellow rectangle accelerates at magnum speed down the hill.
One minute later we would have missed the bus, smiles Dahlman. At a jog, it takes eleven minutes to get to Hill Street and the bus was one minute early. Ten seconds later we would have missed it. It seems prudent to allocate at least fifteen minutes to transit to the Hill stop.
I am tired says Wracks. I am glad today ends and tomorrow becomes Friday.
On the undulating bus, Wracks falls asleep as usual clasping his heavy briefcase to his chest.
Dahlman shouts this is my stop, see you tomorrow morning on the steps.
Wracks waves goodbye and Dahlman exits. Two miles later on the hill of Moonrise Avenue, Wracks becomes the last passenger to leave the bus. From here the bus travels to the ocean, turns around, and then goes back up moonrise to nightclub land. He crosses the street in the darkness and walks across the gas station turf. Up past the drug store, liquor store, and convenience market, Wracks heads up the long Quiz way and then up the hill to Bacon Way. The nights are still chill and the wind blows offshore so the waves cannot be heard echoing up the canyon and the stars twinkle because the smog blows out to sea on nights like this. The beautiful night lives and wracks cannot be enjoyed because the day as it lives tires the disciplined who must sleep to replenish the mind that drives them mercilessly. Punkin wags his tail while sleeping on his cushion in the family room. He is the only one welcoming Wracks and wracks strips off his shoe’s pants and shirt, dives into bed, and falls asleep immediately after pounding the alarm clock that rests next to his bed. Tomorrow is a new day. The Fonz is long gone.