The Devil in Jerusalem Read Online Free PDF

big fish in a small pond? Here, her classmates—most of them top of their class, valedictorians of large, competitive high schools—were all so smart, so quick to catch on. She just forced herself to work harder, and the harder she worked, the more isolated she felt.
    At the end of the first semester, her grades were passing but not brilliant. She was heartbroken, vowing to do better. But the second semester was mostly a continuation of courses she’d stumbled through in her first semester, only more difficult. She found it almost impossible to fall asleep at night, and when she awoke in the morning, her heart began to pound even before she got out of bed.
    Her hair grew out of its cut, but there was no time to go to the hairdresser, so she tied it back messily. Her meals consisted of pizza and a Coke, or pasta and cheese, anything filling and easy. She ate alone, quickly, never looking down at her food, her eyes fastened on the pages of a textbook. All the information began to merge: periodic tables and math formulas and biological terminology. It swam around in her head, like little silver fishes, flashing information at random intervals, then merging into an inseparable goo, like the combination of all colors that produces, simply, black. She was tired, irritable, lonely, overwhelmed with stress.
    On holidays, she avoided going home, telling her parents she had to study. Only Joel didn’t buy it. “You’re driving yourself nuts, Daniella. Nothing is worth that.”
    But she couldn’t fail. She couldn’t go home and face her mother’s disdain, admit she was another loser, like her father—that she’d wasted a year’s tuition.
    Besides, ever since she was small, she’d been taught to finish what she started. Piano lessons, for example. She’d started at ten and despite knowing early on she had no talent for it, she had taken seven years of lessons, practicing diligently but without pleasure, producing correct but uninspired music she—and everyone else—never really enjoyed. By age twelve, she declared her desire to become a doctor, repressing her horror of blood, her squeamish dislike of hospitals, delighted at the gleam in her parents’ eyes. It proved she was smart, capable, a winner. She, like them, was entranced by the title, the status.
    But now, second-semester finals over and her grades only marginally better than before, she felt like those little kids in her tadpole swimmers group who paddled and flailed with all their might but still only managed to keep their heads slightly above water. She decided not to take the summer off but to volunteer at a hospital.
    â€œYes, that’s exactly what you should do!” her mother agreed. “Exactly what you need to do. You know the competition out there for medical school, internships, residencies.… You need to be up on your game, Daniella.”
    â€œTake the summer off,” her father advised her.
    â€œGo to Israel and cover yourself with black mud from the Dead Sea,” Joel agreed. “Really, Dani, what you need is rest. You’re killing yourself,” he warned.
    â€œSo says the man who interned at law offices during every college break,” she mocked.
    â€œYeah, but I enjoyed it,” he answered pointedly. He knew her better than anyone.
    She joined the pre-med volunteer program at Bellington Hospital, spending her first week bringing doctors and nurses coffee, emptying bedpans, and sterilizing beds while the orderlies whose jobs these were sat and watched her. But then she was assigned to the ICU.
    A young man with leukemia arrived, unable to breathe, accompanied by his panicked girlfriend and frantic family. The young intern wanted to intubate him, but the young man resisted. “No, no!” he kept saying. “All I want is painkillers. Give me painkillers!” All the while his parents and girlfriend hovered over him, shouting, trying to convince him,