He was not at all physically afraid. But he knew suddenly that he was not going to jump, simply because it would not be worth the money he could earn that summer if he were to injure himself in a way that would hamper him as a doctor or prevent him from becoming a surgeon. He turned around and started down the ladder.

“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” Benson asked over the microphone. “DO YOU WANT SOMEBODY TO COME UP AND HELP YOU DOWN?” The crowd’s buzzing came up at him like an insect sound.

He paused and signaled that he was all right and needed no assistance, but this forced him to look straight down for the first time, and suddenly he was not all right at all. He proceeded downward very carefully. He was less than halfway down when the booing and jeering began; there were a lot of young bloods in the audience.

Benson was furious when he reached the bottom.

“Are you sick, Silverstone?”

“No.”

“Then get the hell up there. Everybody gets scared once in a while. They’ll give you a bigger hand than anybody if you go up again and dive.”

“No.”

“You’ll never dive professionally again, you yellow little Jew bastard. I’ll see to it!”

“Thank you very much,” Adam said politely, meaning it.

The next morning he took a bus back to Philadelphia and the day after that he went to work in the hospital as a surgical technician, a job which allowed him to learn a great deal about operating room procedure.

Three weeks before the beginning of the fall semester he read a notice on the bulletin board at the medical school.

If you are interested in anatomy and
need money I may have a job for you.

Apply at the coroner’s office.

Gerald M. Lobsenz, M.D.

Medical Examiner

Philadelphia County,

Pennsylvania.

The County Morgue was an old three-story stone building badly in need of a sand-blasting, the Coroner’s office a cluttered, dusty museum-piece on the first floor. A skinny Negro girl sat behind an oak desk and made a typewriter clatter.

“Yes?”

“I’d like to see Dr. Lobsenz, please.”

Not pausing on the machine, she moved her head, indicating a man working in his shirt sleeves behind a desk at the rear of the room.