To afford medical school, Thomas Merrick took on two summer jobs. By day, he worked at LeClaire’s Market, a butcher shop, wearing a stiff white coat stained with blood and fat. By night, he switched roles at St. Ambrose Hospital, trading cleavers for stretchers as an orderly on the graveyard shift, his coat now clean over scrubs. One late night, he was sent to prepare a patient for surgery—Room 216, an elderly woman needing an appendectomy. Calmly, he guided the gurney beside her bed and helped the nurses get her ready. She was frail, her eyes cloudy but alert. As he adjusted her straps, she suddenly froze, eyes wide with terror. Then, as if struck by lightning, she sat up and screamed, “God save me! It’s the butcher!”
