Strong Medicine Read Online Free PDF Page B

realized
    it was a joke, clearly no one wanted to take a chance because in each
    instance she never saw the questioner again.
    Andrew laughed, gave up rowing, and let the boat drift.
    Armed with her-B.S. degree, Celia explained, she applied for a job with
    Felding-Roth Pharmaceuticals as a junior chemist. She was accepted and
    worked in the labs for two years.
    "I learned some things there-mostly that unless you're a dedicated
    scientist, lab work is dull and repetitious. Sales and marketing were
    what interested me. They still do." She added, "It's also where some big
    decisions are made."
    But making a change from lab work to selling proved difficult. Celia
    tried the conventional route of applying and was turned down. "I was told
    it was company policy that the only women employed in sales were
    secretaries."
    Refusing to accept the decision, she planned a campaign.
    "I found out that the person who would have to recommend a change in
    policy, if it happened at all, was Sam Hawthorne. You met him at our
    wedding."
    "Your boss, the regional sales maestro," Andrew said. "The one who's
    stamped approval on our having two kids."
    "Yes-so I can keep on working. Anyway, I decided the only
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way to influence Hawthorne was through his wife. It was risky. It almost
    didn't work."
    Mrs. Lilian Hawthorne, Celia discovered, was active in several women's
    groups and thus, it seemed, might be sympathetic to another woman's
    career ambitions. Therefore, in the daytime when Sam Hawthorne was at
    Felding-Roth, Celia went to see his wife at home.
    "I'd never met her," Celia told Andrew. "I had no appointment. I just
    rang the bell and barged in."
    The reception was hostile. Mrs. Hawthorne, in her early thirties and
    seven years older than Celia, was a strong, no-nonsense person with long,
    raven-black hair which she pushed back impatiently as Celia explained her
    objective. At the end Lilian Hawthorne said, "This is ridiculous. I have
    nothing to do with my husband's work. What's more, he'll be furious when
    he learns you came here."
    "I know," Celia said. "It will probably cost me my job."
    "You should have thought of that beforehand."
    "Oh, I did, Mrs. Hawthorne. But I took a chance on your being up-to-date
    in your thinking, and believing in equal treatment for women, also that
    they shouldn't be penalized unfairly on account of their sex."
    For a moment it looked as if Lilian Hawthorne would explode. She snapped
    at Celia, "You have a nerve!"
    "Exactly," Celia said. "It's why I'll make a great saleswoman."
    The other woman stared at her, then suddenly burst out laughing. "My
    God!" she said. "I do believe you deserve it."
    And a moment later: "I was about to make coffee, Miss de Grey. Come in
    the kitchen and we'll talk."
    It was the beginning of a friendship which would last across the years.
    "Even then," Celia told Andrew, "Sam took some persuading. But he
    interviewed me, and I guess he liked what he saw, and Lilian kept working
    on him. Then he had to get the approval of his bosses. In the end,
    though, it all worked out." She looked down at the water in the dinghy;
    it was now above their ankles. "Andrew, I was right! This thing is
    sinking!"
    Laughing, they jumped overboard and swam ashore, pulling the boat behind
    them.
    35
     

"When I began work in sales, as a detail woman," Celia told Andrew over
    dinner that night, "I realized I didn't have to be as good as a man in my
    job. I had to be better."
    "I remember a recent experience," her husband said, "when you were not only
    better than a man, you were better than this doctor."
    She flashed a brilliant smile, removed her glasses, and touched his hand
    across the table. "I got lucky there, and not just with Lotromycin."
    "You take your glasses off a lot," Andrew commented. "Why?"
    "I'm shortsighted, so I need them. But I know I look better without
    glasses. That's why."
    "You took good either way," he said. "But if the glasses bother you, you
    should consider contact