The Good Doctor (6 page)

“Mercy,” he says. The word is little more than a cough, but it marries a lunging appeal for understanding with the plain, simple truth. It's received by Nurse Mills with a kind of shocked recognition. “You said it yourself, Nurse Mills. You came to nursing to help those who have been brought low.”

She cringes now, head wanting to shake the words away, but unable, frozen.

“You'll never find someone more in need than me. You must know that. How desperate does a man have to be, Nurse Mills, how desperate?”

She finds the mobility in her neck to move her head from side to side, but it's an uneasy, stalling action, and one hand is raised against him in a calming gesture.

“I'm reduced to following like a spy, reduced to forgery. What brings a man so low but a thirst that must be quenched?”

“You must learn to control those feelings.”

“I can't. I'm sure your Dr. Grenfell can. I'm sure he doesn't need of anything. I can tell.”

“Don't bring him into it!” she commands, fingering the weave of her bag, pulling it close again.

“I do have needs, the most profound needs known to man and God.”

“That is not my responsibility,” she says, avoiding his eyes, staring down at the concrete by her feet. “You can see people about it. Go to church.”

“I'm seeing the only person who can help. I'm seeing you.”

“I'm not the one who can help you.”

“Are you not your brother's keeper?”

She looks up suddenly, meeting his gaze now; her eyes are rimmed with red.

In truth, scripture has never been the young doctor's strong subject, and he can't even place the exact source of the quote he has just paraphrased. Something about it just seemed right. The white-frocked minister who used to come to his school's chapel bellowed some such question from the pulpit while staring at the sea of bored-looking faces below. To priests, teachers, and students the content of the sermon hardly mattered; there was one simple unifying message to everything taught in classroom and chapel:
watch your step
. The full awareness that something more potent lurks within the phrase he has just chosen dawns only when he sees its effect upon Nurse Mills.

“Please,” she says, and from the tightness of her features he can see that tears are close. “Please let me alone, at least for now.”

She half turns, shoulders hunched together like the wings of a rook in a storm. The look she throws him before she scuttles away is beyond hurt; her eyes seem to flash a kind of apology.

He can't understand what has just happened, but as he stares after her his heart tugs upwards like a helium balloon. Something has undoubtedly changed, and for the better. Despite the humiliation and the embarrassment, despite the pleas, the defeat after defeat, a dim but undeniable instinct tells him an unexpected jewel is nosing toward the surface. Bible phrases gallop around his head once more. Is there not a verse somewhere about losing every battle and winning the war? The lamp of providence seems to brighten as the breeze sweeps through the laneway. He's not defeated yet.

***

Moody's high canvas hangs over
him again. Tonight he has thrown himself into the service, the songs, the spontaneous yells, and the blessed helplessness of it all. Standing in the midst of the huddled crowd, he sinks once more into the oblivion of trust. The mystifying currents of hope tug at the seams of his imagination, loosening the shingle of half-forgotten griefs and joys, and he finds himself calling out his praises with the rest. Tears flow, and again he is ecstatic to be part of an infinite whole. He has been saved, it is true. He has ventured into dangers and has, apparently, come through hardly scathed. And there is an unexpected bonus; somehow he really has managed to affect the woman he loves.

Still held in a cloud of sublime acceptance, he shuffles out of the tent with all the rest. The hands of his fellow men come down warm upon his shoulder and he—once proud—accepts the proffered comfort, takes in the gentle but often careworn faces of his companions, and reciprocates in kind, and a murmur of comfort passes through the crowd. Just as he reaches the tent's opening, crisp night air reaching his lungs, he feels one touch firmer than the rest. It strengthens its grip upon his upper arm and he turns, ready to respond, but confronts instead the hooded eyes and the self-satisfied smirk of Grenfell.

“You have something to confess, my brother?”

His arm pulls from the hold, and even in his shock he's ashamed of the jaggedness in his movements, begins searching for some means to bring this exchange into line with the grace and harmony of the service. But words escape him, and Grenfell remains perfectly motionless and endlessly confident.

“I thought I would repay the compliment and let you know how it feels to have a shadow.”

In the presence of the crowd still milling around him, the young doctor still feels some ambient sense of comfort, and some safety, also, but he knows they will soon thin out and disperse. He thinks briefly of ducking in among their number while there is still time, but knows this would require a swift and violent act quite out of place in this setting. His heart picks up its pace, readying itself for a larger and more drawn-out confrontation.

“I followed you from your lodging tonight. Only two tavern stops. What commendable restraint!”

“I've got to go,” the young doctor mumbles and tries to turn away, but Grenfell grips both his arms at the shoulders and pulls him close, pats him briefly on the back as he does so, to give the impression to onlookers this is a warm and hearty embrace. The young doctor catches the approving smile of a lady passing with a tambourine. “If you followed me,” he says quietly, “then you're the spy now. You're no better than me.”

“I haven't forged a letter in your name and I don't spy,” Grenfell replies, teeth gritting under his smile. “I watch. I'm charged with the protection of a young woman who feels very threatened by your antics. In any case,” he says, releasing one hand for as long as it takes to pat the young doctor's shoulder a tad too hard. “I want to find out what a character like you really gets up to. I never would have dreamed in a million years I would find you in a place like this. I saw you weeping, too. Your eyes are still red.”

The young doctor has a sudden urge to spit at Grenfell. He sees clearly what he always expected was there: the kind of boy who listens with conspicuous attention to his masters at school, who is rewarded with the title of prefect, and house captain, but all in order to gather the reins of authority to himself, to side with those in charge. In the jungle of the school quad and dorm, this creature—Grenfell and his ilk—was the young doctor's natural enemy. His only recourse was the sucker punch under cover of the rugby scrum, the secret dead leg to his persecutor. But such revenge was fleeting and ineffectual. The subversive joy it carried hardly lasted beyond the moment, and merely strengthened the hand wielding the cane. More than ever the young doctor feels a desperate need to keep Grenfell from Nurse Mills. There is dirtiness beneath his assumed superiority, a lack of courage and even a lack of honesty in his “uprightness”; it's all too easy, too smug, and too danger-averse.

The crowd has filtered away and only stragglers pass them now. “I suggest you take your hands off me now,” the young doctor says, ducking his head, digging his shoes into the turf, getting ready to spring.

“In a second,” Grenfell replies with another false hug. “There's one main difference between you and me. You came here to weep and fall on your knees. I came with a clear head. The preacher gives you what he wants to give. I take from him what I want to take. I take. You get taken.”

He removes one hand from the young doctor's arm at last and slips a paper from his jacket pocket. The young doctor's freed hand reaches for it in panic, but Grenfell dodges it with a short laugh. The forged letter; how easily it could be used in evidence! He assumed until this moment that Nurse Mills was still in possession of it. She is altogether too troubled to simply hand it over to Dr. Bleaker. Not so Grenfell.

A gust of wind circles the tent's entrance, flapping the paper in Grenfell's hand. The young doctor makes another grab, and this time his fingertips touch the paper, but again Grenfell keeps it clear, but only with an effort. Grenfell abandons his shoulder clasp and now grips the young doctor's collar in one fist, still holding the paper high in the air in the other.

Wrapping his right leg around Grenfell's left, heel sinking into the turf, the young doctor pulls at Grenfell's jacket sleeve. He bends his rival's elbow, bringing the paper closer.

“Get off me!” Grenfell shouts.

Another moment finds them falling. Grenfell lands first. He gasps like a sack thrown from a cart. The young doctor falls on top of him. A growl of violence breaks from the knot of limbs and joints. There's a moment of squirming confusion. Knees and knuckles dig into Grenfell's chest. The young doctor tries to pull from the fist which twists at his collar. Grenfell's fingernails scratch at his neck. Head scorching with trapped blood, the young doctor clambers over Grenfell's ribs to the hand with the paper. He pushes his knee hard onto the centre of Grenfell's exposed wrist. The hand goes suddenly limp and opens. The young doctor snatches the paper, stands, and takes a quick step back.

Grenfell spits with pain and, sitting quickly, grips his wrist. Aware now of forms about them, three or four bewildered organizers from Moody's camp, the young doctor holds back from the kick he wants to deliver. He turns quickly and leaves—the paper hot in his hands.

***

He listens for the tread
of footsteps behind him, watches for the elongated
V
of a warning shadow cutting the gaslight, but there is nothing. Relief subsides as he turns a chilly corner close to the London wall, and a new curiosity bubbles. The paper still crumpled in his fingers seems softer, and of thicker bond, than the letter he folded into the envelope this morning. Even during the panic outside the tent, he was vaguely surprised by the bluish hue of the note Grenfell brandished. The paper he used last night had an anemic cream finish.

He slows his pace, afraid to look down, feeling a sickly new wave of worry. If this isn't his forged letter after all, it must be something else. And if it is something else, Grenfell has the forged letter still.

— Chapter Six —

The jagged V in the
young doctor's pane hisses with the dawn breeze. He knows he should try to get a few hours' sleep, but Grenfell's fussy, too-neat handwriting has him skipping over words as a caged mouse scampers over the rungs of an exercise wheel.

September 23, 1883

Memoranda — Moody's Method — Aspects to Reuse

A moment of spiritual revelation
—
the more commonplace and modern the setting, e.g. Moody's shoe store, the better. . . . Most importantly
everything
must be different from that moment onwards.

Establish I was once a skeptic
, especially when it comes to religion, its rituals etc
—
an effective way of diffusing cynicism.

Falling under the influence of a “Great Man”
if only for a short time. Advantages: absolves one from suspicion of boasting, the greatness of the moment belongs to another. One can accept one's own part in the story with modesty and awe.

Humble beginnings
, e.g. Moody's story about preaching in an abandoned railroad car, then a deserted saloon. Note: I can already use the East End.

Being among and seeking the company of those who are low in status
, being
like
Jesus without actually
saying
so.

Travelling vast distances
. Advantages: mystique, exotic stories, no verification possible or necessary.

Preach not in your own country. A prophet is never etc, etc
.

Make sure the organization I establish bears my own name. Note: might take some time.

Exaggerate hardships
, both my own and those I work among
—
be “among the lepers.”

Tell the same stories so many times I start to believe them.

Find a devoted and compliant wife like the poor creature sitting so patiently next to Moody (not English
—
English women far too assertive e.g. Nurse Mills)

He smoothes over the page once more with his palms. This has to be important, incriminating as it would be in the eyes of Nurse Mills. Yet it doesn't solve the problem of his own forged note. Unemployment and ruin are still a mere step away.

The V in the window sighs again. The glass has become milky with dawn.

Nurse Mills.

“Please,” she said, her features tight, tears coming close. “Please let me alone, at least for now.” She was thawing. He could hear the crack of ice and the slosh of meltwater.

His mind races again, the exercise wheel rattling. Would he be up at the top or down at the bottom? The object of his love may not be as completely unattainable as she was, but how does a sacked intern support even himself, let alone a wife? He sees a possible future, Nurse Mills and he covering in a condemned hovel, under garbage tip blankets, a roof open to sky and racing clouds, the sound of breaking glass just footsteps away.

He closes his eyes to the scampering inside his brain, willing himself into the skin of a respectable intern with nothing to hide.