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Summary
The linoleum of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center didn't smell like the dirt back home. The smell of the Nebraskan plains at midnight is rich, it’s dirt, rusted iron, dry hay, and the metallic tang of something cold dying in the root cellar. Dennis Whitaker grew up with that smell, a native of a rural town where the horizon was a jagged line of silos and the isolation was relentless enough to swallow anyone.
By the time he arrived at the Pitt as a fourth-year medical student, Dennis Whitaker had perfected the act of being almost normal. He knew how to stand just inside a doorway and wait half a second too long, long enough for someone to say, “Yeah, come in,” without realizing he needed them to. He knew how to laugh at the right times, how to reduce being from Nebraska to something simple and harmless—farm boy, cornfields, small towns, nothing worth examining too closely. Boring.
He met Dr. Robinivatch on the first day of his first rotation. Not in a moment that felt significant, not at first.
Or: Dennis Whitaker is a vampire blending into modern society as a med student.