Edith glanced through the narrow window on the imaging room door of Jenison Hospital. On testing day, she made it a point to arrive at least fifteen minutes early to ensure the machine was working properly. The children waited in a long line, stretching from the nurse’s station to the elevator bank. She shuddered whenever she saw them standing like that, with their heads bobbing atop their oversized white hospital gowns like tiny ghosts. This month, there were more than usual; she guessed about seventy. A security guard armed with a semi-automatic rifle paced in front of the line. Most of the children, all of whom had just turned twelve, stared at the floor as they waited. An orderly mopped up a yellow puddle pooled under the crossed legs of a teary-eyed girl in pigtails.
Dr. Edith Westerly wore a doctor’s coat over a cream cashmere sweater and black wool pants with the suede flats she owned in ten colors. Edith didn’t believe in high heels, which she found impractical and demeaning to women, but wouldn’t dare wear sneakers like the nurses did. A nice classic flat is the only option for a respectable doctor. Her shoulder-length chestnut hair, scattered with strands of gray, framed her slender face, and complemented her down-turned blue eyes. For most of her life, she hated her freckles, which she inherited from her mother and were the source of relentless teasing as a child. These days, she appreciated how they gave her a more youthful appearance and counteracted the fine lines emerging around her eyes since turning fifty last year.
Time to begin. Edith opened the door and called out to the security guard, “Send in the first one.”
Within an hour, she had evaluated the first fifteen children, none with significant findings. A frail boy, smaller than the others, came into the room next. He had freckles more prominent than her own and bright red hair that stood up in spikes. Edith scanned the boy’s bracelet, confirmed his name and birthdate, and pulled up his medical file on the computer. He gazed at Edith with a pleading look in his eyes. She directed him to enter the instant MRI machine, which was the final step in the testing, and almost always confirmed the results from earlier in the day. Of course, she had to evaluate all the diagnostics together to make the ultimate call.
The red-headed boy stood shivering with his arms crossed in front of him. Edith couldn’t tell if it was from nerves or the cool air blowing through the vents.
“I don’t know why they make it so cold in here. This will only take two minutes,” she said in her most reassuring voice.
As the boy entered the machine, Edith moved to the computer station behind the glass partition to read the images. The colored map of his brain appeared on the screen in front of her. She knew in an instant. Edith was not a radiologist; advances in automation had caused that specialty, along with pathology and anesthesiology, to disappear. She was a neuropsychiatrist, but she read the image as quickly as the computer. After nearly twenty years, it was still shocking when a child with puppy dog eyes, like this one, tested positive. But the machine didn’t lie, and neither did the results from earlier in the day. This one is going to the Institution. Nothing to be done about it.
“Next,” she called out so the security guard could hear her.
