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>> M&M & M <<

( The hospital. Another Third Wednesday ) Who the hell is up at this hour? Nobody. Chances are, if you swept through all the households in an eight mile radius around County Hospital, 99% of the inhabitants would still be deep asleep. Curled in blankets, clutching pillows or their mates, smacking their lips they would be in curious dream. Dawn is in no hurry here. Morning alarms will not be sounding for nearly another hour. But this is dead center of that radius and here things pulse. Always. And at all hours. For the gathering assembly, this was not even a first stop, not counting the coffee machine. First came morning patient rounds. Then, "Sorry Mrs. Rhetorik, I would lo-ve to hear about your son's desire to be a doctor, tsk, but uh.. I am expected,..." On the third Wednesday of every month, at 6:00 AM sharp, it was M&MandM. Most of the older hospital surgical auditoriums feel like old churches. This one too, but it went beyond that. It was also an old Dutch painting of deep dark browns and blacks come to life. Long high backed mahogany stained pews set out in a gallery of three sections, braced by four aisles, radiated from a forward annular floor sporting a central alter. Well, that was what the exam table was called. Today it had no purpose beyond its own historical mandate to be there. Today, patients with difficult to solve problems or with unusual findings would not be probed on this alter. The alter demanded absolute decorum, never to be breached. Health was god. No indiscretion nor display of poor judgement by a sufferer could nudge expressionless faces from their singular mission of problem solving. Here was to be found the collective medical mind acting in the name of healing. One could expose