Summary

Herta’s gender has proved to be a setback for her medical career. She explains her difficulties after graduating from school, “even though I’d graduated second in my class, practices were reluctant to hire a woman doctor” (76). The very Party she has been so patriotically committed to has hindered her as, “it seemed the Party rhetoric about a woman’s rightful place being at home raising children had taken root and many patients requested a male physician” (76). Struggling to support her mother and ailing father, Herta picks up extra shifts at her uncle’s meat shop.

Chapter Six takes the reader to one of Herta’s Sunday shifts at the shop, when the shop was closed to the public so “Heinz had me work there alone, so no one could see what I made for him” (77). Using her surgical training...