The Select by F. Paul Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

seventies.
He'd spent the latter half of the eighties and early nineties
buying up nursing homes and turning financially-troubled hospitals
into medical centers, a move considered by many to be eccentric and
financially risky. Still, the medical centers and nursing homes
controlled by Kleederman Medical Industies, a multinational
conglomerate that included the innovative and extraordinarily
profitable Kleederman Pharmaceuticals, were considered the best
managed, most cost-effective healthcare facilities in the world.
Tim even could see an old photo of the reclusive, balding,
mutton-chop-sideburned Kleederman in the upper left corner of the
page.
    But the Kleederman equation? Nothing
in the article about that. No picture came. Just the
answer.
    Tim gave a mental shrug and blackened
the "B" box next to 200 on his answer sheet. Who cared? When the
sheet went through the grading computer, the machine wasn't going
to ask how anyone got the answer. It was only going to note if the
response was correct or incorrect.
    And correct was definitely
better.
    The next two questions also referred
to the Kleederman equation. These answers too popped unbidden into
his mind. So be it. He marked them down and went on.
    The questions changed after that.
Science segued into general knowledge. Tim had seen some of this on
the MCAT, but there was much more of it here—from who won last
year's World Series to the name of the Impressionist who painted
"Starry Night" to the first name of the 18th-century British
cabinet maker for whom the Chippendale style was named.
    Tim smiled to himself. He
knew what The Ingraham was up to: trying to weed out the science
nerds, the oddballs who spent their entire lives hunching over
microscopes or squinting at computer monitors without ever looking
out the window to see what was going on in the world. They might be
brilliant, they might be able to breeze through the toughest p-chem
questions, but they fit the definition of culturally deprived.
They'd make great researchers, but a medical degree would be wasted
on them. They could be doctors but never physicians . And the Ingraham wanted
to graduate physicians .
    After the general knowledge section
the questions got weird.
    They baffled Tim. Strange questions
involving values and decision-making: about being a general in a
battle and deciding who was expendable, about being a surgeon in a
M.A.S.H. unit surrounded by wounded soldiers—instead of goofy
jokers like the TV show—and having to decide who would be treated
now and who would have to wait until later.
    Triage.
    There didn't seem to be any one
correct answer to these.
    Tim felt paralyzed. He'd spent years
matching the right answer to the right question. But now there was
no right answer.
    Maybe that was the point. Maybe The
Ingraham wasn't looking so much for answers to the questions as it
was looking for answers about the person taking the
test.
    The realization galvanized Tim. This
was great. All he had to go was dive into these and cut loose. But
not too loose. He had to consider the kind of answer these folks
were looking for.
    *
    Finished.
    Tim glanced at his watch. Ten minutes
to spare. Everything done. All his four hundred multiple choices
had an A, B, C, D, or E box blackened to the right of it. No sense
in going back and rechecking. Too many. And besides, he was
drained. He couldn't bear to read and answer one more goddamn
question about anything.
    He glanced over at Quinn. She was
still working down at the bottom of the last row. She'd finish in
time. He was turning away to check on Matt when he noticed two
unanswered questions at the top of one of her columns. He checked
his exam booklet. Those were two of the Kleederman
questions.
    It hit him that maybe Quinn wasn't
familiar with the equations. Maybe she'd drawn a blank on Johann
Kleederman. Why else would she leave them unanswered?
    And Christ, the Kleederman Foundation
was the pocketbook for The Ingraham. They might dump on anyone
missing