I wade through the furniture towards him. There are doctors and nurses on all the chairs, and on the two sofas near the fireplace. There are even people perched on the coffee table between the sofas. Everyone is smoking and drinking. The air is a fog of smoke and I can hear the musical notes of the ice shifting in the glasses as I clamber over legs and feet on my way to Dr. Christiansen.
“Good to see you!” He slaps me on the back.
“Yes, sir. You too.”
“You made it!”
I know that he means that I have made it to the party, but I also take it to mean that I have successfully completed the difficult journey across the bodies in the living room to get to him.
“I did, sir.”
“Fetch yourself a drink, Flint. There’s a bar in the kitchen. Agatha will see to you.”
I make the return journey over the limbs of the doctors and nurses.
Agatha is by herself in the kitchen, standing by the sink and loading little glass dishes of cocktail sausages and olives onto a silver tray.
“You’re meant to see to me,” I say. “Orders from your husband.”
“Is that so?” She grins. “Would you like me to pour you a drink then, Dr. Flint?”
“No, thank you. I don’t really like drinking. I’m not much good at it.” I think of the handful of drunken parties I attended in medical school, every one of which ended up with me hanging over a toilet bowl being violently ill later in the evening.
I look back through the open door into the living room. Dr. Hepner is moving around on all fours on the carpet and there is a nurse astride his back, hitting his behind with a rolled-up magazine.
“They all seem to have been here ages ahead of me,” I say.
“They just got right down to business,” says Agatha. “No time was wasted in pleasantries.”
“I don’t know that I can go back out there,” I say.
“Here.” Agatha passes me the tray of hors d’oeuvres. “You can hide behind this.”
We work together. She loads the tray with food and I weave through the bodies in the living room, delivering the devilled eggs, sausages, olives on toothpicks, cream cheese pinwheel sandwiches. When the tray is empty, I clutch it to my chest like a battleground shield and head back to the kitchen so that Agatha can fill it up again.
As she asked, and as I promised, we do not kiss or touch, but it feels good to be around her nonetheless, and maybe, if anyone was watching, they would notice the easy way she leans towards me when handing me the stack of paper napkins, or the way my body slouches in her direction when I balance against the counter, waiting for the tray to be refilled.
“As soon as they’re drunk enough,” she says, when we’re standing by the stove, waiting for the sausage rolls to heat up, “you can flee this sinking ship.”
“I wish you could too.”
She gives me a strange look.
“I live here.”
“But you don’t belong here.”
“Maybe not.” Agatha opens the oven door. “But it’s where I have to be.”
When there are as many party guests passed out as standing, I make my escape, grabbing my jacket from the hall closet, not even bothering to put it on, but sprinting out into the night, the quiet darkness a balm after the mayhem inside the Christiansen home. It’s more than a few miles back to my cottage, but I am not worried about that. I could have called for a taxi, but I welcome the long walk. It will help to clear my head.
I start down the drive, and when I’m past the line of parked cars, I turn and look back at the house and see Agatha framed in the lighted kitchen window. I wave and she blows me a kiss.
THE NEXT DAY is Wednesday. Dr. Christiansen is to come with me on my rounds on Thursday. I need to be seen to be doing my job. I need another recruit. But the problem with life at Weyburn is that, for some, it is just too familiar and comfortable a place and there is not a lot of interest shown by the patients in making a change to the unfamiliar outside world.
I try the kitchen again, but there are no takers. I corner a man mopping the ward hallways, practically forcing him out a window in my eagerness to enlist him in my scheme, but he wriggles out from under my arm and runs off, leaving his mop and bucket and a length of dirty hall.
It is no use. The only way I am going to get the patients to agree to what I want is to get to know them. I decide to have dinner on the ward tonight. There isn’t time to let Bill know that I won’t be able to make it out to the stables to join him, but I figure that he will work out that I’m not able to come when I simply don’t show up.
Everyone is quiet when I take a seat at the table in the ward kitchen. It is not like the last time I was here, when each man petitioned me with personal requests. Has it been that long since the last time? Do they regard me suspiciously now because I haven’t dealt with their problems and don’t even know their names?
“Please pass the potatoes,” I say to the man next to me, and he shoves the bowl along the table.
“Could you pour me a glass of water?” I ask another patient, and he upends the water pitcher into my glass so that some of the water sloshes out and runs over the edge of the table onto my foot.
So they are upset with me. I don’t mean anything to them, and I don’t know how to mean something to them. I look out at the impassive faces of these strangers and I can’t see how I will ever be able to change their minds about me, how I will ever be able to do the job that I was hired to do.
After dinner is over I go out to the stables to apologize to Bill for not dining with him tonight.
When I walk into his stall, I find him sitting on the edge of his bunk with his dinner tray on his lap, the food uneaten.
“What’s the matter?” I ask. “Why haven’t you had your supper?”
Bill looks up at me, his face tired and pale.
“I was waiting for you,” he says. “I didn’t want to start without you.”
I’M IN MY office early the next morning, going through the notebook where I had my patients write down their requests. It had occurred to me in the night that I could perhaps turn this into something I had already done, not something that I was ignoring and would perhaps never do. What if I pretended to Dr. Christiansen that these petitions from the men had already been dealt with? What if this list of complaints was actually a list of successes? I start writing the items down on a separate piece of paper, under the heading Results.
I don’t notice Agatha standing in my office doorway until she clears her throat and I look up at the sound. It is a surprise to see her there. I jerk upright when she enters the room and bang my knees on the underside of the desk.
“Hi,” I say.
Agatha has never once come to my office before. All of our meetings take place at my cottage, aside from our chaste time serving food at the party the other night.
“Hi, yourself.”
She stands in the doorway, not moving, just looking at me. I can’t read her eyes, but she looks sadder than usual, and maybe also more loving.
“What is it?”
She sighs and steps into my office, closing the door gently behind her.
“This feels worse than I thought it would.”
“What does?”
“I have to tell you something,” Agatha says. “And it’s not something that will make you happy.”
The shiver I feel through my body when she says those words tells me that I have deeper feelings for Agatha than I had suspected.
“Please. You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Well, no, I didn’t. If you remember correctly, I didn’t say anything. You asked, but I didn’t answer.”
I know she is right. I remember the taste of peach on her tongue, so sweet and soft.
“So you do intend to hurt me?” I ask.
“This is so much harder than I thought it would be,” she says. She advances into the room. “I have told Luke about us.”
“But why would you do that?”
She wa
s the one who swore me to secrecy at the beginning of our affair. She was the one who was so worried about being caught that she wouldn’t go swimming with me or be seen anywhere on the hospital grounds with me.
“Well, I didn’t name you in particular, if that helps. I just told him that I was having a sexual relationship with one of his doctors.” Agatha takes another step towards me and then changes her mind, stays where she is, a few feet inside the door. “Don’t worry, he won’t guess that it’s you. You’re too young. You won’t fall under suspicion.”
“But why would you do that?”
She ignores my question, even though I have asked it twice now.
“He’s sending me back to England. Banishing me for my sins. He can’t have a wife that strays, not when he’s such a bigwig, doing all his important experiments.” She smiles weakly, and suddenly I understand everything.
“You’re going back to your children,” I say.
“Yes.”
“It was your plan all along.”
“Yes, it was. But I’m sorry. I truly am. It’s not that I didn’t care for you. I just couldn’t bear to be separated from them.”
“You used me.”
“No.” Agatha is forceful in her denial. “Please don’t think of it that way, Leonard. It isn’t that I used you, but rather that you were able to help me.”
ALMOST RIGHT AFTER that distressing meeting, Luke Christiansen comes to the ward to get me. He appears at my office door, looking more official than usual, carrying a clipboard, his breast pocket bristling with pens.
“Flint,” he says. There is no trace of sadness or disappointment in his voice over his wife’s recently confessed infidelity. “Lead me through your kingdom.”
I don’t really have a plan for how I am to make the morning unfold in a satisfactory manner, but, thank god, I do have a place to start.
“Let’s go to the mattress factory, sir,” I say. “There’s someone I want you to meet there.” I fold up the piece of paper with my false Results on it and jam it into my lab coat pocket, in case I need it as backup.
We head outside, down the path behind the hospital, push open the doors to the mattress factory and hear, immediately, the fast whine of the sewing machines.
I ignore the supervisor, who’s waving at me from his office, and lead Dr. Christiansen down the rows of sewing machines to Rusty Kirk. My plan is to introduce them and to explain to Dr. Christiansen how Rusty Kirk is to go to work in the automotive garage starting next week. I’d hoped there would be some discussion between them, that Dr. Christiansen would question Rusty as to his new job, would express his enthusiasm for the venture. I had hoped to actually waste a substantial portion of the morning showing off Rusty Kirk, because I have no other recruits to present to Dr. Christiansen. But none of this happens. What happens instead is that the supervisor, having given up on trying to wave me into his office, chases me down the row of sewing machines and catches me where Dr. Christiansen and I stop in front of Rusty Kirk.
“I’ve been trying to find you, Dr. Flint,” he says. “I’ve been trying to track you down. We’ve got a problem.”
This is exactly what I don’t need to hear.
“What sort of problem?” I ask nervously. I can feel Dr. Christiansen snap to attention beside me at mention of the word “problem.”
“Henry Tudor’s gone missing. He’s run away.”
It seems that Henry Tudor has been absent since yesterday after supper. The supervisor did try to find me to tell me this, but couldn’t locate me in the dining room on the ward, where I was meant to be. I was, at that time, sitting out with Rabbit Foot Bill in the stables, watching him eat his dinner, trying to calm him down from his agitated state.
“Henry Tudor is a pyromaniac,” says Dr. Christiansen. “It is not good to have his whereabouts unknown, not good at all.”
“It’s downright dangerous in fact,” says the supervisor.
They both look at me.
It doesn’t seem worthwhile to try to defend myself. I am in the wrong. It is probably my fault that Henry has gone missing. It is certainly my fault that he has been missing for so long without anyone really knowing about it. I listen to Dr. Christiansen and the supervisor discuss whether or not the police should be called as though I was not there, standing between them. Rusty Kirk, I notice, has gone back to his sewing, even though Dr. Christiansen and the supervisor are talking right over the top of his head.
When the discussions have ended and it has been decided that the police should indeed be called, and that there should be a search of the hospital buildings and grounds by the staff, Dr. Christiansen and I walk back outside. The moment the mattress factory doors close behind us, he lets me have it.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Flint?” he says, the anger in his voice palpable, spitting the words out at me. “How could you let something like this happen?”
“I don’t know, sir.” But I do know. I just can’t say. I can’t tell him about Bill. I must keep that to myself. The way I have been conducting myself with Bill would be an even greater transgression than a missing patient.
“I had my concerns about you from the start,” says Dr. Christiansen. “But I always gave you the benefit of the doubt. I thought you were just young and inexperienced, that I could mould you, that working in a place this size could be overwhelming, but you’d step up to the job. I thought the job would make a good doctor out of you. But obviously I was wrong.” He runs his hand through his hair and I notice that his hand is shaking. Luke Christiansen is upset after all; perhaps just with me, but perhaps also with Agatha and her earlier devastating news.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m overwhelmed by everything. I don’t think I am a good doctor.”
“No, you’re not,” says Dr. Christiansen. “Henry Tudor was your patient. You’ve let him down and possibly put his life in danger and the lives of people in this hospital and the community. He’s not a stable man. What if he sets a fire? What if he hurts someone?”
“I’ll look for him,” I say. “I won’t stop looking until I’ve found him.”
“Not good enough.” Luke Christiansen lowers his clipboard, which he’s been holding up against his chest like a shield. “I’ll have to let you go, Leonard. I can’t have you remaining in a position of responsibility over my patients. It’s not safe.”
I had expected a reprimand, a stiff warning, but I hadn’t expected to be fired. It shocks me to think I might have to leave here, and my first thought is, I can’t go. I can’t leave Bill.
“Please, sir,” I say. “Just give me another chance. Let me prove to you that I can do this job.”
“Too late,” says Dr. Christiansen. “I want you out of here.” He realizes the harshness of his last remark and his face softens. “It’s too bad, Leonard,” he says. “I didn’t think you were someone who required a paternal hand. I thought you were old enough not to need fatherly strictness, but I can see that I should have been harder on you. I should have given you more supervision. Your failure is also my failure, and letting you go gives me no satisfaction.”
I WANDER AROUND my hospital ward in a daze. Most of the men are out working, and there are only a few in the sitting room, playing board games, leafing through magazines. It all looks so benign. I can’t believe I couldn’t handle my job here. I can’t believe that I’ve been given the weekend to gather my things together and that I’m expected to leave on Monday morning. Where on earth am I going to go?
The men who are on the ward look up as I wander past, their faces registering suspicion and only occasionally recognition. One of them says hello to me, and one of them waves. I haven’t helped them at all. I haven’t done a single good thing for anyone since I’ve been here. My failure is not Dr. Christiansen’s failure. It is entirely my own.
WILLIAM SCOTT IS in his office when I go to say goodbye.
“I’m leaving,” I say from the doorway. “I’ve been fired. I’ve come to say goodbye.”
“What?
”
“I’m a terrible doctor. I don’t know why Dr. Christiansen ever hired me in the first place.”
But then I remember what he said about thinking he could mould me, and about what Agatha said about Luke being a bigwig and doing his important experiments, and I do know why I was hired. The experiments were the important thing, and Luke Christiansen surrounded himself with doctors who would easily go along with what he was doing. I was young, inexperienced, easily malleable. William Scott believed in emancipation, and the LSD experiments could be posited that way, as being about freedom. I don’t know the other doctors well, but my guess is that they would all have traits that mesh with Luke Christiansen’s professional ambitions. I feel now that I have perhaps been equally used by both husband and wife.
“Why would you be fired?” asks William. “You haven’t even been here a season. You must still be on your probationary period.”
“I lost Henry Tudor. Or, Henry Tudor became lost while under my care. He’s a pyromaniac. And unstable. This whole place could go up in flames any minute.”
“Jesus.” William takes off his glasses and puts them down on his desk. “It’s serious business to lose a patient.”
“A fireable offence,” I say. “Apparently. No pun intended.”
“Maybe you could find him? Maybe if you found him, Christiansen wouldn’t let you go?”
“Do you think so?”
I should look for Henry Tudor. I said I would. But I don’t really know the man at all and have no sense of where he would go.
“Yes. If you were able to find him, then Christiansen might change his mind about letting you go.”
“But where would I start?”
“The ward? It’s where he lives. His dormitory room? Use your imagination.” William Scott smiles at me. “Don’t give up, Leonard.”
It seems unreal to me, the fact that I have failed so miserably in my job and that I have been fired, that I will have to leave this place I have barely arrived at, that I will have to leave Bill. This last thought sends a chill through me. How can I be parted from Bill? It was hard enough the first time. It seems impossible now that we’ve been reunited and are close again.
Rabbit Foot Bill Page 10
