The air whooshes like a coffin lid closing as the door clanks shut behind me. There is no turning back. The school is different today. There are nurses, tables, cotton balls, and Band-Aids. The antiseptic smell of alcohol fills the air, giving birth to a creature in my brain that elevates my pulse and disrupts my fluids – sweaty palms, dry mouth, gotta pee.
My dreams last night were filled with dark places, sharp edges, and cliffs. I walk to my classroom, sit down, and slide my hands dry on my pants. I can barely focus on Miss Caron’s reading lesson, checking the clock every few minutes. When will we be called? I jump when the speaker in our room clicks.
“Miss Caron’s class to the gym.” She lines us up alphabetically, and we slowly trudge to the gym, Dead Man Walking.
Why couldn’t I have a last name like Abbott or Adams? No, my name is at the end of the alphabet, and I have to wait. I try not to look, but I have to. I step to my left and see the objects of my fear – syringes, glass in those days, wrapped in brown paper. Dr. Jonas Salk has developed a vaccine, a possible prevention of polio. In the 1950s, parents and children lived in fear of polio. A child could be healthy one day, stricken the next. Death, paralysis, iron lungs, and braces were frightening images of the time. Now his vaccine promises a way out. But, in order to be sure, a randomized, double blind human trial has to be carried out. The school children of Massachusetts are divided into two groups, one to receive the vaccine, the other a placebo. The brown wrappers ensure that neither doctors, nurses, students, nor parents know which one is being administered or received.
So the students of Atherton Hough Elementary School in Quincy, Massachusetts are in single file, ready to do their part. I see Marjorie Bigelow at the head of the line wearing a sleeveless dress. A nurse swabs her arm with an alcohol filled cotton ball, and a doctor, in one swift motion, darts her arm. She doesn’t flinch. She looks right at the needle and smiles as the nurse puts a Band-Aid on her arm. Marjorie glides easily past me, and I step back in line, looking down at the floor, struggling to keep my breakfast down. We inch inexorably forward as each needle puncture victim walks by me, smiling, left arm displaying a Band-Aid badge of honor. Oh, to be one of them. Finally, only one student is in front of me. I try to swallow, but my mouth is Death Valley. He is inoculated, and there is no one between me and the doctor. The nurse grabs a cotton ball, the doctor reaches for a brown needle, and I try to remain upright. I feel a hand on my back, but I don’t move. My feet are stuck to the ground, but I’m pretty sure that if I do a 180, I can outsprint the doctor.
“Come on,” he says, “We can’t have one baby mess up the third grade.” He’s annoyed. I‘m wasting his time. But he has hit the weak spot of the creature in my brain. I can’t be the only one who chickens out. Marjorie Bigelow did it, and she’s a girl. I offer my arm. Don’t look at the needle! I feel the icy alcohol, the bee sting, the Band-Aid. I feel triumphant, but the doctor is unimpressed. I turn around and walk out on wobbly legs, thankful that my last name isn’t Taylor, Watts, Wyatt, or Young.
There is a long wait for the results, and my parents regularly check the newspaper. Finally, an article appears. There is good news and bad news. The Salk vaccine works, but I’m in the placebo group, and I will have to endure three more shots and a booster. Fortunately, I have a teacher who is sensitive to my distress, and he brings me to the front of the line so I don’t have to endure the wait. For our efforts, we are given pins that say Polio Pioneer. Somewhere there is a box with my Polio Pioneer button, my Ted Williams baseball card, and my Woodstock tickets. I hope I find that box again someday. Also, it would be nice to run into Marjorie Bigelow. I wonder how her life went.