A Human Element (18 page)

Jim's eyes crinkled up when Laura walked into the hospital room. She bent down and hugged him.

"I'm so glad you're okay and they're treating you good here, Mr. B."

"Yes, it's like I am the grandest pontificating potentate they've ever had the pleasure to attend. You should see how many times an hour these nurses come in here to fuss over me with frivolous hullaballoo!"

Laura laughed and stood up. "I can tell you're better because you're being a malcontent about your malady with this lamenting manifesto. Someone must have snuck you a thesaurus. Am I right?"

Ben just looked at them both and shook his head, enjoying their banter.

"Of course, I had to prepare for your visit!" Jim reached under his pillow to pull out the book in question. He smiled at Laura and then turned his attention to Ben. "So, this is the young highwayman who's plundered your heart, is it?"

Laura turned red and shook her head, but Ben stepped forward and held out his hand.

"I hope not plundered, sir. Perhaps stirred, a bit?" He winked at Laura as Jim shook his hand. "It's nice to meet you, again, under better circumstances."

"Mr. B likes to beat me with words from our thesaurus game." Laura was eager to move Mr. B away from talk of romance. "We've been doing it since I was a kid. Since I started it, I should win every time."

"Actually, I'm always the winner when I'm with you Laura."

She took his hand and sat next to him.

"I can see why you think that," Ben said.

"Well, I can't thank you enough for finding me and getting me help, and for Laura too. Her headaches get real bad sometimes."

"We're headed out to find Doctor Britton after this," Ben said.

"Thank you for helping her with that. I wish I could go with you."

"You just rest," Laura said. "I want you better before you come back up the mountain."

Jim patted her hand and yawned. "Sorry, I'm just so tired." He coughed twice, and winced. He patted Laura's hand seeing her look of distress. "I'm okay. It's just damn pain from the pleurisy. I'm hoping I can go home soon if my oxygen levels are okay and the antibiotics are working. Are you all right alone up there in the cabin?"

Laura looked at Ben and nodded. "I'm fine, don't worry about me. You stay here as long as you can. We'll come back to visit."

Jim wheezed and closed his eyes, dozing. Laura released his hand to leave, when Jim pulled her closer. He opened his eyes and she bent her head down to him. "He's your match," he whispered and shut his eyes again.

"What did Mr. B say to you as we left?"

"Just that you were my match. Funny, isn't it, what old men can say?" Ben squeezed her hand then focused on the road ahead. Doctor Britton didn't live far from the Albany Medical Center.

They moved from the landscaped streets of Albany toward the seedier section of the city. It wasn't quite the ghetto, but getting there. Ben pulled up next to a small bungalow. It looked forgotten. Bushes grew up in front of the windows and tree limbs scattered about the tiny front yard. Trash cans rolled alongside of the house under a sagging car port.

"Are you sure this is it?" Laura looked around the decrepit neighborhood.

"It doesn't look like much for a doctor, except maybe one who's been out of work for years because he lost his license from medical malpractice."

They walked down the cracked walkway together toward the door. Kids playing in the street stopped to stare at them.

"Are you nervous?" Ben looked down at her.

"I am," Laura admitted. He took her hand and she felt his need to protect her. She felt safe knowing he was there to watch over her, for now. Yet, she also sensed some ambivalence from him. His clear thoughts didn't always come through. Earlier, she sensed his internal conflict about committing to her, but he didn't leave. She had to have faith he would continue to stay.

She squeezed his hand and rang the doorbell. They waited some time and rang the doorbell again. This time they heard shuffling. An elderly man with a thick head of white hair opened the door and squinted at them.

He leaned on the door frame and adjusted his glasses, looking puzzled. "Can I help you?"

Laura gripped Ben's hand harder. "Doctor Britton?"

"No one's called me that in years. What do you want? I can't afford to buy anything today."

"We're not selling anything."

The old man stared at Laura and raised his eyebrows. "Well, then?"

"I'm Laura Armstrong. You delivered me in Coopersville. My mother's name was Sarah."

The old man's eyes grew wide and he leaned harder on the doorway. His hand shook as he pointed a finger at her.

"Sarah," he whispered, more to himself. "Yes, I remember."

"Can you tell me about her?"

Doctor Britton's eyes narrowed. "What do you want to know?"

A musty, sour smell drifted from the inside of the house.

"I was raised by the Armstrongs in Coopersville, but don't have any details about my natural mother except her name and the fact she'd been a runaway. Can tell me about her?"

"Ask the Armstrongs. I don't know any more than you."

"I can't. My adoptive parents are dead."

"Well, sorry about that but I can't help you."

"Listen, Doctor Britton, can we just come in and speak with you?" Ben moved closer to the doctor. "Any detail could help us."

"And who are you?"

"A friend who wants to help."

"Well, I don't want visitors and I don't want to talk." Doctor Britton slammed the door shut.

Ben banged on the door, but Laura pulled at his coat. "What now? You can't force him to talk to us."

"Oh, yes, I can. You've spent years wondering and now we're here. The decent thing for him to do is give you some peace."

"I read his mind, Ben. He's hiding something. Also, he's afraid of me. But why?"

"I don't know but we're sure as hell going to find out."

Ben continued to bang on the door. The kids stopped playing in the street again to watch him. A face peered out from a neighbor's window next door.

"Ben, stop, please?"

She felt rage rising inside him, coming from somewhere deeper than this disheveled old man. It came from far in his past, a place he wouldn't share with her.

And then there was this old man here. It didn't seem possible he could be the one who pulled her from her mother's womb. She had hoped it would be a kind doctor, one noble and good, but he wasn't.

"Old man, open the door," Ben shouted. "Or I'll have the IRS here on your doorstep."

"What do you mean?" Doctor Britton's muffled words came from behind his door.

"Tax evasion on a large scale equals jail time." Ben lowered his voice. "Is that what you want?"

The door opened and Ben pushed his way in with Laura behind, following the doctor into the living room. The old man shuffled to a rusty orange recliner and eased himself into it then he looked up and sighed.

"How do you know about my tax evasion?"

"I have a friend who can get information."

Laura looked around the dingy room. Newspapers and magazines were strewn about on the coffee table, couch, and floor. A plastic microwave dinner tray sat on the one end table with bits of dried food stuck in it. She wrinkled her nose at the rancid smell enveloping the place. She didn't want to sit down. Everything was tinged with a layer of dirt and kitchen grease.

The doctor didn't offer them a seat so Ben grabbed two fold-out metal chairs from the kitchen adjoining the living room and placed them before the doctor.

"Go ahead, just make yourself at home." The doctor waved his hand.

"When you've told us what we want to hear, we'll leave, right Laura?"

Laura nodded.

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything," Laura said. "Tell me how you met my mother and what happened the night I was born."

"Your mother was a runaway. No one knew where she came from or her last name. She wouldn't say. She just showed up one day at the Methodist Church and your folks took her in. They soon discovered she was pregnant so your parents brought her to me. I happened to be the one practice in town then, except for Doctor Anna who just did house calls. Your mother grew quite large. We thought she might be bearing twins but we never heard more than one heartbeat. Such a young, lovely thing she was." He sighed and looked down massaging his hands, then pushed himself up out of the chair.

"It's only 10:00 a.m. but under the circumstances I'm having a drink." He didn't bother to offer one to Ben and Laura, and got himself a glass and bottle of whiskey from a small cabinet. He poured it three-quarters full and carried it back to his chair. Ben frowned.

"I'm eighty-five years old and don't give a hoot what you think, young man. I was once a good doctor, a good husband, a good man. So wipe that look off your face." He took a long sip and closed his eyes.

"And what kind of looks did your patients give you after you killed their babies because you were drunk?" Ben shot out.

Doctor Britton choked down his mouthful of whiskey and slammed the glass on the end table next to him. "Who the hell do you think you are coming here and accusing me of things you know nothing about?"

"Did you kill my mother?" Laura said.

Ben and Doctor Britton both looked at her.

"You look so lovely, just like your mother." Doctor Britton gazed at her.

"You didn't answer my question."

"No, I didn't kill her. Not intentionally, anyhow. And I wasn't a drunk then. I became one after your mother died." He wiped his nose with a dirty tissue pulled from his shirt pocket, and took a long drink. The glass shook in his hand. He spilled some on his already-stained shirt and wiped it away with the back of his gnarled hand.

"What happened the night I was born?"

The doctor laughed but a cough cut off his raspy cackle. "What happened? Something strange all right." He tapped his foot on the ground. "We had a big thunderstorm. Your mother came to me, secretly, late at night in labor. The Armstrongs didn't know."

"Why wouldn't she tell them?"

"I told her not to. But I'll get to that in a minute. The baby wouldn't come out. It was so large. Your mother fought and fought but it was just too big. I knew she would bleed to death if I didn't get the baby out."

"You mean,
me
'the baby', right? I wasn't large though. My parents said I was small, only five pounds."

The doctor snorted. "Yes, dearie, you were small. It was the other one that was so large. The mutant. Or the devil as the nurse called it." He gloated at her as she stared at him.

"Another baby?" Laura bit her lip in silence, her mind racing. "But you said she wasn't carrying twins."

"That's what we thought, yes. Our technology was different back then and the one baby was so large he hid his twin. We couldn't detect the second heartbeat that was you, Laura. Your twin came out first. A male monster weighing in at twelve pounds. A freak. A hideous thing. He was what killed your mother, not me. He ripped her so badly with his size she bled to death."

"Why didn't she have a caesarean if the baby was so large? She should have been in a hospital down here in the city. They must have performed those back then," Ben said.

Laura still sat in silence, trying to grasp the idea she had a twin brother out there. She wondered where he was, how he grew up.

"I wasn't allowed to take her to a hospital. Too many witnesses and there would be a record of it."

"What are you talking about?" Ben leaned in closer to the doctor. "Why
wouldn't
there be a record of the baby?"

"Because I was paid not to tell, you see? Are you getting it now?" The doctor raised his voice and finished his drink. "The government came to me and this nurse. She died years ago. A difficult woman. Holier than thou. Anyway, the government heard of this girl's virgin birth story and had an interest in it, for whatever reason. They wanted her baby. This government man offered us a fortune to deliver the baby, give it to them, and keep our mouths shut. So we did. And that's why we swore your mother to secrecy when delivery time came. We scared her enough so she wouldn't talk to anyone. It was easy because she took some sort of vow of silence anyways. We wanted her to come alone when she went into labor."

The doctor twisted his glass in his hand, staring through it. "She only talked to us twice during the entire delivery. It was all so perfect until we found out there were two of you. So we decided one would go to the government and one to the Armstrongs." He got up and refilled his glass, tottering back to his seat. The drink sloshed out on his shirt but he didn't bother wiping it off this time.

"What did she say?" Laura almost shouted at him.

"Who?"

"My mother, Sarah. You said she spoke. What did she say?"

The old man scratched his red nose covered in varicose veins. "First, I remember her screaming, 'don't let me see it'. She must have known it would be a freak. Then when the baby was crowning she said, 'but if it's a girl name her Laura'."