In a collection of memories resembling pages snatched from a scrapbook, a leading physician and academic researcher reflects on the unpredictability of life. Medical school at Vanderbilt led to a series of life-altering experiences. A brief stint collecting blood samples from freshly slaughtered cattle in a Nashville abattoir left him with bespattered shirts and a dark apprehension of the closeness of death. Throughout his career, the polarity and inseparability of life and death have haunted him, a platform for savouring good times and exotic destinations when they came his way. This tragic sense has also fuelled Dr Brigham's avocation of writing fiction, including several published novels in which university hospitals provide the backdrop for tales of mystery, ambition, and suspense. Now retired, the author looks back at a life that carried him to a series of academic pinnacles -- The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore; the CDC in Atlanta; the University of California, San Francisco; once more to Vanderbilt, in Nashville; and then, finally, to Atlanta's Emory University.