“All right, Mallory, we’d like you to stand at the front of the room, facing the guys.

But I decided they were med students or residents-they all wore hospital scrubs, still creased and bright navy blue, like they were fresh off the rack. There were five young men seated in a row of folding chairs they were all staring at the floor, so I couldn’t see their faces. And I guess she decided I was sober enough, because she led me through a maze of hallways until we arrived at a small windowless room. She just asked for my age (nineteen) and my date of birth (March 3), and then she compared my answers to the information on her clipboard. If she noticed I was high, she didn’t say anything. Some two hours later the doctor finally called “Quinn? Mallory Quinn?” and I walked down the aisle to meet her, dragging my heavy winter parka on the floor behind me. And after that I stopped shaking, and waiting on the floor wasn’t so bad. The rest went into a tiny piece of foil for later. Then I spat it back in my palm, crushed it between my thumbs, and snuffed like maybe a third of it. But eventually word got around that they weren’t prescreening people-which is to say, no one was going to test my urine or take my pulse or do anything that might disqualify me-so I popped a 40 in my mouth and sucked until the waxy yellow coating came off. Pretty soon there were plenty of open seats, but I stayed on the floor because I didn’t think I could move without throwing up. A couple people grumbled, but I didn’t care I had a boyfriend who bought gift cards off me for eighty cents on the dollar, so I was all set.Įvery few minutes, Susan (I think it was Susan?) called a name from her clipboard and one of us would leave the room. She read all the usual disclaimers and warnings, and reminded us that compensation would be issued in the form of Amazon gift cards, not checks or cash. She said her name was Susan or Stacey or Samantha and she was a fellow in the Clinical Research program. The vibe was a lot like the DMV except we were all getting paid by the hour so people seemed happy to wait all day.Ī doctor in a white lab coat got up and introduced herself. They had free coffee and chocolate donuts and a big TV playing The Price Is Right, but most everyone was looking at their phones. There weren’t enough chairs and I was among the last to arrive so I had to sit shivering on the floor. The directions brought me to the campus medical center in West Philly and a large auditorium filled with women, all between eighteen and thirty-five years old. A few years back I was running out of money so I volunteered for a research study at the University of Pennsylvania.

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