MAKING A DOCTOR
Fredrick Alexander Marsh III was born in 1957 to a well-to-do doctor’s family in Brooklyn, NY, an only child. The last two Fredrick Marshes had been well-respected surgeons. It was a given that Fredrick Marsh III would follow in the family footsteps regardless if young Fredrick had other dreams.
Fredrick’s father, Dr. Marsh II, was a tall man who spoke quickly and had little patience for his son. Time was money and he made his money cutting bodies so he was never home. The hospital was his castle. This, as it turned out, was fine by young Fredrick, as he hated the smell of his father’s clothes almost as much as he hated his father. A sickening antiseptic odor seemed to adhere to anything that came in close contact. If his father would hug his son, which was rare, Fredrick would smell of the sickening residue for hours.
Dr. Marsh simply told his son he was to be a surgeon so he better get used to the smell and study hard, otherwise his life would be for shit. Young Fredrick always wondered why anyone would want to be a doctor. He never saw his father and when he did, he always seemed to have a tall vodka in his hand and be angry. Fredrick monitored his father’s drinking habits closely. One drink and you could still safely talk to Dr. Marsh. This didn’t last long, as number two came quickly. This was the point where you stayed out of the way and didn’t speak unless spoken to. Three drinks usually meant trouble and you hid in your room. Four beverages, or three very tall ones without ice, and the whole family was in peril.
Young Fredrick Marsh III didn’t like to think about one night when his father had definitely had four drinks. Dr. Marsh was stumbling about the house looking for his son. Time to have a man-to-man talk, learn how to stand up to bullies. Fredrick knew all too well about bullies and it started at home.
Fredrick was young but very intelligent. He sought refuge in the one place his father wouldn’t look for him: his own home office. When Marsh senior couldn’t ferret out his son by screaming, “Come out and be a man,” he turned his attention to a different prey, an easier target… Mrs. Marsh.
Catapulting her on top of his office desk as if she were a corpse thrown onto a cold metal slab in the hospital basement, Dr. Marsh aggressively began his sadistic patient evaluation: a four-drink special examination. Or as Fredrick referred to them later on, a Smirnoff Surprise.
Mrs. Marsh had regrettably played doctor before with her husband and knew better than to scream. She grabbed the nearest thing she could to bite down on to help ease the forthcoming pain, intent on keeping his rage to a minimum. In this case it was her son’s teddy bear, lying in the office chair she was straddled over. She never realized her son was going to witness the brutal rape at the hands of a deranged alcoholic.
Fredrick was in a fetal ball lying behind the desk chair, which was starting to sway with each forceful thrust of his very visible father’s hips. Fredrick focused intently on one of the many medical posters of humans in various stages of dissection that his father so proudly displayed on the office wall. The anatomical depictions kept Fredrick’s mind distracted so he never fully heard the live pounding flesh just a foot from his head. Muffled screams of pain and his father’s groaning seemed to disappear as if in a human vapor as the graphic anatomy charts became all-encompassing in the boy’s subconscious.
It wasn’t until the pounding sound stopped overhead and a bloody semen-soaked teddy, now a cleaning rag for his father, was discarded back to earth, that Fredrick came out of his self-induced trance. Seeing his crumpled bear on the floor directly in front of him broke his spell and like a baby gazelle sensing a moment of escape from a lion’s mouth, he quietly scrambled out from underneath the table and chair, and slipped back to his bedroom, his odd-smelling teddy tightly in tow.
Once safely under his covers, Fredrick’s hands, still noticeably shaking, somehow found the dexterity to take a pair of round-tipped scissors and cut off teddy’s right arm. The amputation gave Fredrick access to peel off Teddy’s outer covering like he would an orange’s skin, discarding the multicolored fur forever. Like Fredrick, a new teddy emerged that night, one with clean, cream-colored fabric but dangerous to the touch, sharp feathers poking out. No more bear eyes, no more smiling mouth. Fredrick hugged his bear tightly, oblivious.
In his daytime existence, Fredrick’s conscious love was art. He liked to draw and felt he was good, especially as his mother told him he was gifted in this respect, although her advice was he should follow his father’s wishes and not think too seriously about art as a career.
Fredrick never inherited his father’s statuesque genes. Instead he got his mother’s Ukrainian traits: short, stout, with oversized Popeye calves. At 16, Fredrick had reached his adult height of five-foot-six. His black curly hair never seemed to fill in completely and started receding just as puberty finished. His dark black eyes were magnified by the thick glasses he wore to correct his severe myopia. The pupils looked like puddles of mud against his blanched white skin.
High school for Fredrick Marsh was like a prison. He hated everyone except his art teacher, whom he would ask for endless tips on drawing and becoming an artist. Mr. Wells, an older man with a noticeable lisp, encouraged young Marsh. Wells promised, “Fredrick, if you really, really work hard, I’m sure you could be famous someday.” Fredrick loved hearing this from the old, odd man who could recognize Fredrick’s dream of becoming a famous artist. Fredrick studied and doodled. His notebooks were filled with images of the human torso in grotesque forms. Often he would take the human anatomy and add a face of a particularly hated person to its body. The face would be in detail and drawn well enough to recognize the individual.
Good grades came easily for Marsh, but as hard as he tried to perfect his artwork, he never seemed to get to the level he could see in others’ work.
When his high school had an art contest his senior year, Fredrick worked for two months on a gigantic canvas of skinned humans embracing. It was his masterpiece. Fredrick finally felt he had conquered the art of drawing. The hours of practice seemed to be finally paying off.
On the day the winners were announced, Fredrick’s name was missing. The trauma of not even getting an honorable mention damaged Fredrick Marsh III’s self-image permanently. He had assumed he would get recognition. After all, he was “gifted.” His mother had told him as much. And Mr. Wells was one of the judges. He couldn’t look at Wells the rest of the year as the thought of his betrayal made him seethe with anger. “I am a great artist. The world is not ready for me yet. They will be someday,” Fredrick pronounced to the mirror.
Getting out of Brooklyn was all Fredrick cared about. His acceptance letter to Boston College was his ticket out. Boston was colder than Brooklyn, but it still had great art museums. There were two factors that had determined his college selection. One, it was away from his family. Two, the city had great art. A city with an exceptional cultural matrix was critical to nurture Fredrick’s artistic aspirations. The university also had to be acceptable to his father’s standards and Boston College would suffice. It wasn’t Harvard, his father’s first choice, but close enough. Boston had great medical schools and this was a good stepping-stone. Fredrick figured he could do a couple of years in the pre-med track, then make the break to the art department. He needed the time to build up his courage or hope his father died of cirrhosis. He hoped the latter came first. Fredrick just had to wrap up high school, and he’d be free.