No, it’s not religious, this
particular revival, but perhaps merely a sign of the times. With the pace at
which we now live, our reading time must often coincide with other activities
that legitimatize a break–that cup of morning coffee or that cold beer at the
end of the day. And since our love of stories has never waned, what could be
more satisfying than a story short enough to reach its conclusion in the time
we have to read it.
As you can probably guess, I am a
fan of the short, short story;
Consider short stories as a part of
your reading repertoire. Find some writers who appeal and let them have the
next ten to fifteen minutes of your life as they take a chance meeting or some
common occurrence and reveal the depth and complexity of human interaction.
Here’s one to start with entitled “The
Prescription.”
He walked across the lane that ran
between the hospital and the clinic where he had his office. In response to the
tranquility of the parking lot, he rotated his shoulders and neck to relieve
the tension that had built up during his hours on rounds. He welcomed the feel
of his body relaxing; the grasping, panicky nature of the ill no longer able to
reach him. But in only seconds, the vibration of his cell phone shot the
tension right back into where it had seeped away. He sighed, pulled the phone
off his belt and answered. He listened, then brightened. It was his
receptionist calling to tell him his last two afternoon appointments had
cancelled. He snapped the phone back in its case and picked up his pace as this
sudden window of freedom appeared before him. When he reached the clinic door
he was close to jogging. He continued walking briskly down the hall, pulling
his lab coat off as he went, akin to a
kid jettisoning school clothes on the last day of the semester. His good mood
stalled a moment when he caught a glance of his mid-thirties paunch. Just one
more annoyance this career produced. He winced, but dropped that thought
determined to let nothing interfere with this opportunity.
He whipped around the door jamb of
his office immersed in making plans for the remaining afternoon. He was so preoccupied;
he didn’t see her at first. She was sitting in the adjoining exam room,
maintaining a tenuous balance on the edge of one of the two chairs in that
small boxy space; her legs thrust out in front of her crossed at the ankles,
her shoulders hunched. Her hands lay loosely clasped in her lap. She was
peering straight ahead, yet even in profile, the intensity of the blue of her
eyes caught his attention. His abrupt stop seemed not to disturb her, so he paused
in the doorway to stare.
She was an older woman, but there
was nothing withered or weak about her. His gaze eventually registered with
her, and she turned her head with deliberateness, stopping when her eyes locked
onto his. She didn’t need to speak. Her raised eyebrow and cocked head could
have surely spoken for her, but she said anyway. “Can I help you?” Supposedly,
that was his question. He felt momentarily disoriented as he crossed the room
to the other chair, which was adjacent to a table on which lay his appointment
book. He tapped his fingers on table’s marred surface for a few seconds, then
sat down.
His day had been humdrum. He was
beginning to feel more a factory worker than a doctor. An assembly line of
aches and pains filled his hours. It made him susceptible at this moment, open
to play along, and he replied, “I don’t know. Can you?”
Her response came nonchalantly,
“That depends. What’s the matter with you?”
He thought he’d call her bluff.
“Well my friends say I’ve gotten too serious, not much fun anymore.”
Instead, she laughed aloud. “You’ll
be happy to hear that’s not terminal. There are lots of pills for that, or so I
heard.”
He didn’t want to stop the
repartee. It broke a tedious pattern of days, something he’d not anticipated
about doctoring back in medical school. “What if I didn’t want to take a pill?
What would you suggest?”
“Well, that’s the harder option.
You’d actually have to do something.”
He found her candor refreshing. He
replied, “Like what?”
“Get to the root of things.”
“He paused, suddenly unsure of
himself. You mean something like psychoanalysis?”
She rolled her eyes, a sardonic
smile on her face.
“No, more like a ditch digger. You pick up the
shovel and you start to dig…into yourself.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Most everything.”
A tad unnerved by that response, he
contemplated reasserting his control over the situation when she said, “I’ve
spent decades being honest with myself. How long have you spent?” She dropped
her head and looked at him sideways awaiting his answer.
The room was as still as a stifling
summer’s afternoon. He felt her stare as he studied his appointment book. For
one short moment, he wished those two remaining appointments were still slotted
in. It would give him an easy way out. Otherwise he’d have to lie, and he knew
she’d know. He didn’t know how she’d know, but there was something about her he
found unsettling yet intriguing. “I lie a lot.”
She nodded slowly, agreeing. “Most
everyone does only they have a multitude of more respectable names for it. Her
face softened with a kind smile. It’s boring, though, because it insures that
nothing meaningful happens between the liar and the lie-ee.” She chucked at her
newly invented word.
“How can you not lie?”
“You tell the truth.”
His voice gave away his impatience.
It turned flat. No longer playful. “Surely you realize there are so many things
people don’t want to hear.”
“That’s not the problem. It’s your
discomfort at being unable to talk with them truthfully that actually bothers
you.”
He puzzled on that, pushing his ill
ease a bit further to the side. He waited.
She continued. “You see yourself as
the one with the answers. Unfortunately in your line of work there are far fewer
answers than there are questions, and that’s where the lying begins.”
“So in order to be honest, I need
to tell people I don’t know what their ailment is or I do but don’t know how to
cure it, and leave them with that?”
She felt the irritation in his
reply, but ignored it. “If you remember, I said, ‘Dig.’ Yours is a more taxing
profession than say law, because in law, you can play with the ideas that have
already been set down in case studies much like a chess game. It’s logical,
open to reason and limited only by the need to adhere to black letter law. You,
however, are in a field of endeavor that backs into infinity.”
She tucked her feet close to the
chair, stretched up, leaned back against it and clasped her hands behind her
head. Her red hair glowed in the soft settling light of the late afternoon as
it streamed through a high set of windows to the west. Her unblinking stare
rested on his face.
“So I suppose you are waiting for
me to ask what you mean by being backed up against infinity.” His response was
testy. He was ready to be done with this conversation. He had enjoyed its
novelty, but it had gone too far.
“First tell me this, for it’s not
like I have all the time in the world to spend with fools,” she said. “You’re
annoyed. Do you know why?”
It took a moment for him to push
the anger down inside. He wasn’t used to being called a fool. But he also
loathed not being able to answer questions. He took a couple of breaths, and as
he calmed himself, he recalled his once ardent sense of curiosity. His mind
drifted back to those early years in pre-med where the wonders of science
introduced him to awe. Where had that gotten lost? When had his love for
medicine diminished? And yes, why was he pissed? He sensed it was more than the
obvious. He stared at the scratched top of the small table in front of him,
shabby but serviceable. He looked around the room and felt for a moment what it
must feel like to sit in here sick and praying for relief. His eyes lifted to
the beam of light that flowed from the small windows, striking this redheaded
woman’s hair, bursting into flaming orange. Then he garnered the courage to
look at her as he accepted the reversal of their positions. She was the one
with the answers, and he was the one who felt sick, with himself, this job,
with life. But what could she possibly offer him other than that her questions
had led him to what he’d chosen to ignore—all the answers he didn’t have. Hell,
he didn’t even know why one person got sick and the next one didn’t. He had
broad sweeping generalizations, theories as they are called, but he didn’t know.
Yet he always acted like he did. And there the lying began. He snorted lightly
and pursed his lips in recognition of what he’d just realized.
“You just bumped up against
infinity.” She said this without rancor, only kindness. “It’s a big world out
there, and the way we’ve been taught to see it, interact with it doesn’t
reflect that fact. I was in science years ago, but science got too small, just
like God and religion.” She paused. “The hip bone’s connected to the thigh
bone.” She sang that bit to him. He shook his head from side-to-side and
chuckled. “It’s a big, interconnected, boggling cosmos out there… and in here.”
She pointed to her body. “The rational mind is no match for it. Consider this.
I was reading a book the other day about how we interact or should, perhaps,
with the nature of the improbable. Do you know what the law of truly large
numbers states?” He stopped scowling for the moment and paid attention. “It
implies we should expect a specified event to happen no matter how unlikely it
may be at each opportunity. Who would you be as a doctor if you had that
perspective?”
The room took on the serenity of a
cathedral. The young doctor leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling,
his hands loose in his lap. The woman continued gazing off into space. It was a
comfortable silence.
Something snapped the doctor back
from his reverie. He turned his head to look at her. She sat peacefully, eyeing
him.
“I never asked you why you were
here. Did you come for medical attention?”
“No, I just needed a quiet room and
wandered into this one, a less frenetic place than that waiting room out
there.” She gestured with her hand. “I brought a friend in for help, only…there
isn’t any. They wheeled him across the lane to the hospital. He’s not a
believer in large number theory.” Her eyes mirrored a momentary sadness and
then remained soft.
She rose from the chair, ran her
fingers through her short hair and then smiled knowingly at the young man
sitting at the desk staring at her, again. She crossed the room and stood
before him, her eyes, in the late afternoon light, now blue as Texas bluebells.
He got caught in them once more. Looking at him intently, she said, “Make
friends with infinity. You’ll be a lot more fun.” She winked at him and walked
out the door.
Over the click of her boots on the
black and white squares of the linoleum floor tiles, he heard her humming a
tune he didn’t recognize. He sat for a while longer contemplating this strange
afternoon. Before he got up to leave for the day, he pulled toward him his
appointment book where he records each patient he sees. He studied the names
he’d written there since 8:00 AM that morning. Then he wrote his own name in
the last slot of the day.
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