Hrm, I totally believed every word of it, which gives me flashbacks to when you were my TA in Intro to Chinese Civilization and told us a myth about how pandas came to be that was really touching, and I was stunned when you later told me you'd made it up. See, this is one of the proofs you're a brilliant writer. You can make shit up that sounds perfectly true, and it's so interesting that one doesn't even mind finding out that it isn't.

(Btw, your description of the UPenn "hospital" was spot on. I worked in a lab in one of the hospital highrises for most of my time as an undergrad--back when it was still Penn Med before the Perelmans had showered it with even more money--and it felt both neat and kind of terrifying to be part of that ecosystem)