Deleted Scene: Medical School Interview, Part One

Readers: This is the first of many scenes which I wrote for IN STITCHES, but didn't make the final cut. Over the next several months I'll post many of these 'deleted scenes.'

For those of you who may wonder, yes, I did go to medical school.
I attended Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, the setting of much of IN STITCHES. Why Michigan State? Well, for one reason, they let me in.
Actually, I applied to several medical schools and got accepted to most. There was one school, though, that I applied to and received neither an acceptance nor a rejection; I never heard from them at all. Just as well. I didn’t want to go there anyway. Too far from home, too rigid a program, and the medical school interviewer freaked me out. Here’s that interview.
Oh, the school? I can’t tell you. Let’s just call it Case Eastern Reserve.
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I can’t get over this guy’s cred—the wall of his office is plastered with diplomas, awards, certificates of excellence, framed yellowed scientific journals containing articles he wrote, and pictures of him shaking hands with four different Presidents. You’d think he’d rate a bigger office. This is the size of a closet, dingy, dominated by a cruddy old desk, one visitor’s chair with the stuffing spilling out, and a lone smudgy window overlooking a dumpster.
We’re four minutes into the interview and so far all he’s talked about is himself, his career, his accomplishments, spoken in a mumbled garbled voice as inviting as someone trying to clear a throat full of phlegm. I felt nervous for the first two minutes, now I’m bored and planning my escape.
Then I notice his eyes. They go off in opposite directions. His right one’s looking at me, his left one’s looking out the window. Where do I look? I alternate and feel like an idiot. I choose the wall behind him where I focus on a photograph of my interviewer, much younger, shaking hands with a confused, stone-faced President Ford.
Finally, he speaks.
“Hmpf,” he says, rustling through a folder that I assume contains my application. “So then, Mr. Young.”
“Youn,” I say. “It’s Youn.”
“Ah,” he says. “Hmpf.”
Is it hot in here?
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More to come—

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