The Good Doctor (12 page)

— C
hapter Sixteen
—

It's very late and neither
of them has slept. From the jangle of bells and the hum of engines, Florence can tell the trams are still running. Her sleepless eyes focus on the oozy V-shaped stripe upon the ceiling, a refuge for all the collected light from the street below. The curtains would not quite close when she tugged them before retiring, and Florence doesn't want to get out of bed now and try again. Restless though it is, the bed possesses the warmth of a refuge.

Her husband groans and moves, causing the bedclothes to slip off her, exposing her bare feet to the cool air. She lies still for a moment until she feels the prickle of a few stubbly hairs on her shins.

“Do you know what time it is?” she asks.

Her husband grunts, pretending to have been disturbed. But he's merely disgruntled, she thinks. He wanted to sink into oblivion, and her story about Grenfell and the lecture pulled him back to reality.

He turns onto his back and sighs. She takes the opportunity to haul the covers back over her legs.

“No. Can't you sleep?”

“No. You?”

“No.”

“I'm sorry.”

A bell, continuous and rising in pitch, scoops downtown toward the financial district. A fire perhaps.

“What for?”

“For stirring us both up by going to the lecture.”

“It doesn't matter. I was . . .”

He stops suddenly.

“What?”

“I was thinking about something else.”

“Hmm?”

“The waiter who brought my drink.”

“Yes?” The sheets hiss against her skin with each small movement.

“He mistook me for Grenfell.”

Now she stills herself, listening.

“He was rather nervous, overly respectful, I thought. He poured my drink like a rich person's valet. Then he bowed as he backed toward the door. At first I thought he was making fun of me. But then, as he opened the door to leave, he said, ‘Enjoy your stay, Dr. Grenfell.'”

Florence gives a dry laugh, but something in her is stirring. She has the vague but tangible feeling that the universe has just revealed something about its design, that the incidence has greater meaning than its surface might suggest.

“So, you see, I was thinking about him anyway.”

“That's quite a coincidence.”

There's another ring from the street below, this time short and sharp, maybe a tram. It seems to echo the word ‘coincidence,' such an inadequate word, and one that always seems to shield something important from view. She feels again the gnashing of teeth in the corridor outside Grenfell's lecture, hears once more the applause within. Coincidence,
she thinks,
is a lazy word. It's for those who are disinclined to meet the universe on its own terms and accept its portents as living entities, charged with significance, trailing a known history behind them. The modern world eviscerates all such meanings; we are all supposed to believe in a random creation. Yet Florence was brought up with the Bible, and her own life has mirrored the tales of oppressed people and nations, of power and intrigue, disguises, prophecies, and rewards for blind faith. There was a pattern to it all, crystalline, intricate, and even symmetrical. There was nothing random about it at all.

“Do I look like him?”

Florence considers, placing the faces side by side in her imagination: Grenfell's smiling visage tilted toward the unknown questioner; her husband's face, downcast as he shuffles through the hallway.

“You have grown to look somewhat alike, perhaps. You are the same height, a similar build.” She doesn't go on to compare Grenfell's puffy, padded features, his deep-set eyes, with those of her husband, because she knows the disparity in cause would not flatter her husband. Grenfell's thickened skin comes through years of experience of outdoor life and the cold. Her poor husband's face is bloated and reddened through drink. But it is quite remarkable, she thinks, how two opposite lifestyles have created basically the same effect.

“Huh, maybe I should exploit that!” he says, and moves uncomfortably onto his side, facing her.

“I'm sure we could put all that fame and the money to better use if we did.”

Something catches in her throat and she coughs. She turns to face him. The blue light on the ceiling has faded slightly and the night intensifies. Florence has the strangest feeling that some thin but vital membrane between so far unconnectable thoughts has suddenly been breached, releasing all manner of possibilities both terrifying and exhilarating. She daren't for the moment put them into words.

“What do you think he does with it all?” her husband asks.

“The money?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I'm sure he builds his hospitals and funds his expeditions.”

“Well, what's the problem with it, really?”

She thinks about it for a moment. Well, what
is
the problem? She sees the poor man dragged from the auditorium again, his feet scuffing along the carpet. She hears once more her husband's story told as through Grenfell's lips. And she tunnels back through quarter of a century to Grenfell and her outside Dr. Johnson's house in London, to his admitted desire to build a monument to himself.

“It's just wrong,” she says. “He's an imposter.”

She has to acknowledge the profound irony of it. She's talking to the same man who followed her and Grenfell through the London night, and later forged a letter in Grenfell's hand. Once he was the ultimate imposter. Now he seems honest to the point of self-defeat. The reversal of her perceptions seems almost universal. She thinks of the people in the auditorium tonight and realizes how much she thinks as her husband thinks; she sees the suits of woven silk, fox furs, and mink coats as the very garbs of deceit. They were all imposters, every one save her and the other protester. None of them, save she and he, came within a mile of understanding the meaning of human dignity. The trapper from the north, the very subject of the lecture, was dragged by force from the theatre.

She remembers the drunken, middle-aged sailor she and Grenfell had treated twenty-five years ago and her future husband's objections when Grenfell tried to lecture to him; he had a right to his own philosophy, her future husband had said. It surprises her that it has taken her so very long to completely understand his words.

“Aren't we all imposters?” he asks gloomily, just when she believes he may have fallen asleep.

“You're not,” she says and doesn't elaborate. But she thinks of his work. As a doctor he still does his very best, and still accepts payment in kind from almost half of his patients with no overarching charity to support his work or the sick for whom he cares.

“Well,” he says. “I would be an imposter if I thought it would do any good.”

The words take her aback, partly because they imply a lack of judgment against Grenfell, an acceptance of his methods, but mostly because they correspond to the images scattering through her own thoughts.

“You would act like Grenfell?” she says.

“I wouldn't beg on behalf of my own patients. I'd be a more complete imposter.”

“How do you mean?” The sheet sighs against her nightdress once more. She stills herself.

“I'd take all the risk myself. I wouldn't expose my real patients to ridicule or judgment.”

“Your real patients?”

“I'd pretend to be some fellow like Grenfell collecting for a mission far away, for faceless people who won't be blamed for taking charity. But I'd be collecting for the people I treat already.”

Florence is afraid to speak, afraid that this plan—subversive, brilliant, and at its heart noble—might fizzle into the hypothetical world if prodded too hard. Doesn't the Bible say somewhere that no moral act is free from the risk of imprisonment?

Her blood races with the possibilities and she waits for her husband to sleep, praying silently that he remembers the idea in the morning.

— C
hapter Seventeen
—

1910: Portland, Maine

***

The slide show has captured
the audience as it usually does, dispelling the doctor's feeling of unease. The rhythmic wheeze of an unseen audience member disturbed him a while ago, made him think of a wounded animal in the darkness, a malign and vengeful presence.

Florence presses the switch again and a little communal gasp sounds as the audience views the close-up image; shrunken flesh stretching impossibly over a man's ribs, clavicle and scapula protruding like the bones of a half-eaten chicken. The doctor nods at Florence. She presses the switch once more. And this time shrieks of horror rise from the darkness. He lets the outrage work for a moment.

“And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the same young trapper's son. As you see, we have protected the identities and shown only the torsos of these poor starving people. Though they may be a thousand miles away, we think it important to use only the images we have permission to use, and to protect the privacy of those afflicted by poverty and want.”

He remembers the boy and his father well enough. They
had
originally come from a thousand miles away but from the south, not the north. They had been domicile in the New England states too long, however, to blame Dixie for their half-starved condition. The family, mother now dead, made the mistake of believing that farm life for half-breeds would be better in Maine than in Carolina, and so they had harvested the wheat and the corn, slept in leaking barns, and, becoming sick, had been laid off. Moving from one farm to another, they had clung to one another, not noticing the slow degeneration of clothes into rags, sinewy shoulders into skeletal shapes.

The boy's consumption was terribly advanced already. His father's thinness was so far the result of hunger rather than disease, though disease would surely follow. As he set up the equipment to take their picture, the doctor watched the child cough into a blood-purpled rag he had long been using as a handkerchief. He caught a longing tug in the look from child to man. The boy wanted reassurance that he was merely the younger version of his father, that the blood was some rite of passage.

The doctor had to turn from them and busy himself with the camera and stand until the thought passed, but Florence came up behind him with the flash, saw the moisture in his eyes, and gave him a sad smile.

“I'm not going to include your heads in my photographs,” the doctor, head buried under the cloth, said. “I wish to preserve your anonymity.”

The man's eyes, yellowed in the corners, seemed to question, but he didn't speak.

“Now hold it,” said the doctor. Florence flashed. The doctor removed one plate and put in another. “One more time. This time the boy. That's right.”

A second flash.

“Doctor,” said the man, his voice stronger, more resonant than would have seemed possible from such an emaciated body. “Who will you show these pictures to?”

“To people in the cities,” the doctor replied, busying himself by removing the second plate. “So they may see the terrible hunger and disease that exists.” He hated lying, hated the idea of adding “in America,” or “in this very state,” and avoided doing so by allowing the hearer to infer it.

“Isn't there also hunger and disease in the cities?”

There was the hint of a smile, sardonic and wise, on his face now. He has tried the factory circuit, too, of course. He knew as well as anyone.

“There is,” said the doctor, handling the slide carefully, passing it to Florence, “but people are disinclined to notice the hunger that lives among them. It's easier if it's someone else's fault.”

“You can do what you like with the photographs, Doctor,” he said, rising from the seat, taking his boy's hand. “You treat us for nothing. We're grateful.”

He caught the eyes of the man's son. They were soulful, confused, yet hopeful. Inhalations could not cure him and the thought of it seemed unbearable when placed next to the hope of a child. Father and son shuffled wifeless and motherless toward the kitchen and the back door beyond. Florence whispered encouragements while she led them, but the words and the soft rustling tone seemed to promise something of the next world rather than the one they were in.

***

Florence clicks again and again. The trick, they have found, is to start slowly, and then accelerate through the photographs, an assault to the senses leading to thankful darkness. A moment more and the slide show is over.

“That, my friends,” he says, “is the sum of the pictures I have to show you tonight. Blame the railway company for mislaying the rest.” A ripple of unforced laughter stirs the audience. The doctor is amazed at how remarkably easy it is for a famous man to elicit the required response. The worry that nagged him before, the sense of a malign, watching presence, has died away.

As Florence leaves the projector and takes her seat by his side, he's as confident as he can be the rest of the evening will go smoothly.

“I have touched upon the dreadful hardships of those who trap inland upon the Labrador during the winter, and pursue the fishery in summer.” A lone electric light buzzes over the lectern, sending a ghostly blue pallor over the faces in the front row. “I've talked of the diseases of malnourishment, the children who are stillborn who might have been saved. But one question remains and it's a central one, a question that corresponds to one debt I intent to pay, and that I never tire of paying.”

The silence is impressive. He senses they are turning upon his hook, open-mouthed and helpless. “When did it all start for me, a lowly, humble intern learning his skills in London's East End?” A barely audible murmur sweeps through the audience. No one has asked this question, but this is the crux of the story.

“It was nearly thirty years ago, late, very late at night. It was early fall and I was trudging through the normally blackened East End streets. Tired and worn down by the sights and smells of poverty, haunted by the knowledge I had just delivered a new babe to a family with no means of support in the smallest and dingiest corner of a city slum. In an open space between the slums, I noticed a tent rising improbably beneath the autumn moon, its canvas yellow with burning lamps, Arabesque with spires and dune-like dips.”

Someone suppresses a cough, and the doctor again hears the laboured breathing, the early signs of emphysema. Now the sound is not so much spectral forewarning as the most touching kind of faith. The poor man, who should be at home, has come to be inspired. He thinks of the boy with consumption, his hopeful eyes, and the worry etched on the thankful face of his father.
My mission
,
he reminds himself. Most of his supplies, most of his mortgage, are paid for these days by the lectures. Some weeks more than two-thirds of his patients are non-paying.

“Despite my tiredness, the idle curiosity of youth drew me toward the entrance. Once inside I instantly breathed the pure, fresh air of faith.” He pauses, remembering the moment, feeling again the communal breaths, the startling cries of “Praise the Lord” from Moody's congregation, the honest, naked desperation, the need of these people for their lives to mean something. “Although hundreds of eyes fixed on him,” the doctor continues, “the man on the podium commanded my attention like an osprey catching the shimmer of a tail fin far below. He gave a nod of recognition, a special kind of challenge glistened in his eyes. What did he say that night to claim my energies for the unsentimental service of good?”

The lectern light flickers for a moment and buzzes louder, as though about to blow. The doctor feels his legs shift and wonders if his concentration might fail, but as the filament dims and then brightens again, he realizes the wavering light has merely focused the audience's attention even more, as occurs in hypnosis. “In truth,” he continues, “I hardly remember. But the energy and the sincerity emanating from the man I would later come to know as D. L. Moody, the great evangelist, was palpable. And his message was timeless. It was simply this: come follow me. Forget the pomp and sham of religion, the hollow ceremonials. Come to the poorest and hungriest places on earth, and once there lend your talents to the service of humanity.”

Save for the soft buzz of the light and a mouse-like scratching from someone apparently taking notes at the far end of the front row, the silence hangs like a pall. The intensity of the man's writing—his pencil now scurrying across the paper as though the mouse senses food—gives the doctor a momentary pang of fear, which dies away as he reminds himself that he and Florence will soon be on the train, clunking through the night.

“My friends,” he says, “I will conclude here. You will notice that my secretary has at her feet a donation box.” Florence nods and tightens the grasp of the fingers upon her lap. “Please do not feel compelled. The hotel generously donated space so we do not need to cover our costs. The box is for cash which goes straight to work in our mission. We do not accept cheques because we respect the anonymity of our donors. Please be governed merely by yourselves.” He gives a slight cough and feels heat under his moustache as he nods, a modest shadow of a bow to let them know it's over. “Meanwhile, I would be delighted to mingle and answer any questions you might have individually.”

It's rather a scruffy ending, and he notes that this part of the presentation needs more work. But it's about to come right. A single clap, loud and obliging, announces a tumult of applause ready to break.

“One question, sir,” says the wheezing man. He stands up but with some difficulty. His eyes are large under pebble glasses, his face thin, perhaps through consumption. The coming applause is suspended.

“Of course,” the doctor replies. He hasn't yet sensed catastrophe but does wonder why he's addressed as “sir” rather than “Doctor.”

“You say you accept only cash?”

The sense of danger returns—the malignant, watching presence as the audience hushes. The doctor's eyes dart toward the high, narrow windows, the long poles and brass hooks intended to open them, and in an instant he knows it's all over.