I raced up the stairwell heading towards St. Joseph’s East. I remember the excitement and sheer terror I was feeling. I had heard he was on duty that night on one of the wards. One of my classmates knew of my plan and had clued me in to his whereabouts. I had to get there before he left the floor or before I lost my nerve altogether.
It was the fall of 1963 and our Junior Dance was fast approaching. There was a buzz among some of my closest friends. Several of the girls were planning to ask doctors to escort them to our winter dance. It was going to be held at some fancy hotel in mid-town Manhattan. Although it sounded like a great idea to me, I really wasn’t on a first name basis with any of this year’s Interns. I admired them from afar and as a matter of fact I actually avoided interactions with them for fear I would say some juvenile, idiotic thing that would make me look like a total fool. After all, I was only 18 years old and lived in a time when student nurses stopped what they were doing and stood at attention when a doctor entered the Nurses’ Station. In fact, if there wasn’t an extra seat available, I had been instructed to offer him mine. And, it is no mistake that I use the pronoun, him, since female physicians were still a rare breed and typically not a part of this elite group of professionals.
This was the environment I was living in when I made the monumental decision to ask one of the Interns to my dance. Once I made up my mind to do this, I knew immediately which one of the doctors I would ask. If I was going to make a complete fool of myself, I might as well reach for the stars. In my eyes, he was the brightest and the best. He was also tall, dark and handsome. I thought he was absolutely gorgeous and totally unattainable. The problem was that he didn’t know me from a hole in the wall and I didn’t know him much better. I simply checked him out and admired him from a distance. Armed with this background, you can better understand why my heart and mind were racing as I flew up the flights of stairs.
As I got closer to the ward - right there in the stairwell - I ran into another classmate. In retrospect, I really had no idea where she was going or why she happened to be there. The likelihood of her having had the exact same intention at that very moment in time was probably slim to none but, in my excited frenzy, I blurted out, “Oh, are you also on your way to ask Dr. Coyne to our dance?
Maybe she was, or maybe she just then decided that it sounded like a pretty good idea. Whatever the case, she answered yes, she was planning to ask him to the Junior Dance. Today, all these many years later, I can still feel the letdown I felt at that moment. Nevertheless, I’ve never been the type to give up easily and I wasn’t about to lie down and play dead. My mind processed this information quickly and I immediately came up with an idea. Why don’t we flip a coin to see which one of us will ask him to the Dance? She nodded OK and I grabbed frantically for a coin in my pocket. We chose our sides and I flipped the coin and let it hit the ground. It bounced down a couple of steps before it landed. I was frightened to look and sure enough when I leaned closer, the news wasn’t good. I could plainly see I was the looser.
Even in my immense disappointment I felt a bit of relief. At least I don’t have to stand face to face with him, I thought. I really didn’t think I could actually open my mouth and have words come out. Marie had won the coin toss and as I walked back down the stairwell and through the hospital corridors back to my room in the Nurses’ Residence, I realized it probably made more sense that someone like Marie should be the one to take him to the dance. Marie was everything I wasn’t. She was blond and beautiful and very sophisticated and she didn’t come from Brooklyn.
(.......to be continued)
Are your talking about John Coyne?
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