He made the short excursion to Cambridge and paced the Yard, looking at the pinkcheeked schoolboys, some with Castro beards, studying the robust, no-nonsense ’Cliffies with their green felt book-bags, feeling no sense of home-coming.

He had a reunion with Beanie Currier, now a second-year resident in pediatrics at the Boston Floating Hospital for Infants and Children. Through Beanie he met other young house officers, drank beer with them in Jake Wirth’s and listened to their talk. He realized gladly one morning that he was hardly through with medicine. He started to look the field over from new perspectives, slowly and carefully. He began to study hospitals and surgical departments. He spent whole evenings walking through the corridors of wards at the Massachusetts General, Peter Bent Brigham, Carney, Beth Israel, Boston City, the New England Medical Center. The moment he saw Suffolk County General Hospital he felt a curious abdominal fluttering, as if he had just seen a girl he wanted very much. It was a big old monster of a hospital, crammed with the indigent. He wouldn’t send his mother there but he knew it was the kind of place where surgery would be learned with a knife in his hand. It drew him, warmed his blood with its noises and smells.

Dr. Longwood, the Chief of Surgery, was less than cordial. “I don’t know that I can encourage your application,” he said.

“Why not, sir?”

“Let me be frank, Doctor,” he said with a cold smile. “I have both personal and professional reasons to be wary of foreign-trained physicians.”

“Your personal reasons are none of my business,” Rafe said carefully. “Do you mind disclosing your professional ones?”

“Like hospitals all over the country, we have had our troubles with foreign house officers.”

“What kind of troubles?”

“We’ve grabbed them as an answer to our physicians-shortage. And we’ve found they can’t always take a proper case history. And they often can’t speak sufficient English to comprehend what is necessary during emergencies.”

“I believe you’ll find I take an adequate history. I’ve spoken English fluently all my life, even before I attended Harvard,” he said, noting the Harvard degree on Dr. Longwood’s own office wall.

“Foreign medical schools haven’t covered the same broad areas with the thoroughness of American medical schools.”

“I don’t know what will happen in the future, but my medical school always has been approved in this country. It has a distinguished past.”

“You would have to repeat internship here.”

“That would be satisfactory,” Rafe said quietly.

“And you would have to pass the test of the Educational Council for Foreign Medical School Graduates. I might add that I was one of those responsible for getting the test established.”

“All right.”