Comfort and Joy

by Jim Grimsley

  In the midst of this reverie, a voice behind his shoulder said, "Dr. McKinney."

  He could have sworn breath touched his neck. But when he turned, Dan Crell stood much too far away for the breath of that voice to have caused the tingling along Ford's skin. The single moment telescoped: Ford saw himself sitting there with the useless pencil, saw Dan hold a sheaf of disorganized papers like a shield between their bodies, noted the delicacy of the skin along the tops of Dan's hands. Each detail clear.

  Dan said, "I came down to tell you about the mess with the beds a couple of times, but you were so busy I thought I ought not to disturb you. But my boss talked to Dr. Milliken."

  "I know," Ford said.

  "Is everything taken care of, then?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  Dan watched him intently, then averted his gaze. "I guess that takes care of the problem." Smiling, but not raising his eyes.

  He was afraid, and Ford knew it. He was hungry too, and Ford felt the hunger. Ford said, "Thanks for your help." To draw those eyes up again.

  "The cleaning crews were actually already there cleaning the beds. Everything was happening the way it was supposed to happen, it's just that nobody knew about it. So I told the nurses the beds were actually being cleaned and then I called Ms. Rollins."

  "Thanks."

  The moment ended when an arriving nurse asked for orders on one of Ford's patients. Dan withdrew. Later Ford wondered why he had found no opportunity to shake the young man's hand at least. At home, later, he savored the look in Dan's eyes and the open admiration with which Dan approached him, the warmth of Dan's remembered voice, and the gentleness of his presence.

  A few days later, after twelve hours of a twenty-four-hour shift, he went to the hospital cafeteria for breakfast. Seated with Curt Robbins, Russell Cohen, Allison Roe, and a couple of other residents, he rubbed his night's growth of beard and listened to the discussion of a juvenile who had just been admitted to the ninth floor with acute diabetic ketoacidosis. Robbins described the fruity smell that accompanies the onset of this state, and Ford settled back for another ritual meal of diagnosis and discussion.

  But across the cafeteria, framed by louvered windows and yellow blinds, Dan Crell carried a breakfast tray to a seat by the window wall.

  Something in his demeanor alerted Ford to the likelihood that Dan had already seen him. Dan set his tray lightly onto the table and arranged himself behind it, unlidding hot coffee and releasing steam from the Styrofoam cup. When Dan finally looked up, he saw Ford watching him and immediately returned his attention to his tray.

  Ford found himself staring at Allison Roe's emerald and diamond ring. He lost all contact with Curt's explanation of disease process and felt his breath come short. He told himself this was not the time, meals at Grady being as much a part of teaching as grand rounds, but when he glanced at Dan again, he felt a tightening in his chest. He pictured himself sitting here through the whole meal, watching that odd face across the room, then turning his back on Dan and leaving. Consciously he believed this could not make any difference, while to walk across the room to speak to the young man now would be to declare himself publicly, in front of his peers.

  In that light he tried to focus on Curt—or was it Russell now?—discussing critical lab values and the immediate need to replenish body fluids, electrolytes. But the thought of Dan across the room made it impossible for him to concentrate. Russell tapped him on the shoulder and grinned. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

  "I'm tired, that's all." Ford shoved his chair back from the table.

  When he stood, Dan watched him. Ford took a deep breath. "I'll be back in a few minutes," he said to Curt.

  He studied all the changes in Dan's face as he crossed the room—frozen unbelief, recognition, the whiteness of terror. At the table he loomed over Dan's tray watching Dan's cereal spoon suspended in midair. "Good morning," he said. "Can I join you for a minute?"

  "Please."

  Ford sat, folding his hands in front of him, careful to place his back to the table of doctors he had abandoned. He spoke at once, in order to forestall paralysis. "I wanted to thank you again for what you did the other day. During the accident."

  Dan still watched his cereal. "I really didn't do very much."

  A line of red crept up Dan's neck into his face. At once, understanding Dan's fear, Ford lost sight of his own. He said, "I think you did enough." He wanted to make Dan look at him, and continued, "But that isn't why I sat down here."

  Dan nodded. "I figured that." His voice almost vanished. "I've been staring at you ever since I sat down. I'm sorry."

  The statement stunned Ford. An ache welled up in him, and he said, "I came over here to ask you to go to dinner with me. Sometime soon." Speaking now to keep his own breath even. "I was looking at you, too, you know."

  Ford could detect each change in the man's lowered face, initial disbelief giving way to comprehension. Dan's grip on the cereal spoon tightened till his knuckles were white. He took a long breath and looked at Ford.

  They watched each other in silence. Not since McKenzie had Ford read so much in another face. He felt himself opening and relaxing, drawn to the body across the table as if they were falling toward each other. Ford laughed. "Well. Answer my question."

  "Yes, I want to have dinner with you." Shock still registered in Dan's expression. "Have you been planning this for a while?"

  "Since last week.Whenever the accident was."

  Dan shook his head in wonder. "I've been watching you for a long time. Since you were a medical student. I can't believe it."

  Ford blushed himself, as if no one had ever admired him before. He glanced back at the table of physicians still engrossed in their medical discussion. Turning to Dan again, he said, "I need to get back to my ongoing learning experience before my senior resident comes after me. When can we do this?"

  They negotiated the date, shy of watching each other but drawing out the process in spite of Ford's need to return to his duties across the cafeteria. Ford was on call for several nights running, and Dan was busy with rehearsals for a musical at a local community theater. They settled on a Friday evening in a week, and Ford noted the engagement in his pocket calendar. This business finished, they sat.

  "I don't particularly want to go right now," Ford said.

  "I don't either," Dan replied. "I haven't eaten very much of my breakfast. But if I don't get back to my office, I'll never dig myself out from under the morning mail."

  They rose from the table together. Standing, Ford could feel the intense charge between his body and Dan's, acute now that the gates had opened. He could find no words delicate enough for the moment, but Dan said, "Thank you for doing this. May I call you Ford?"

  "Yes. Please."

  "Thank you for doing this, Ford. I've wanted to talk to you for a long time, but I've never had the guts to do anything about it."

  "I never would have either," Ford said, "before now. So listen, I'll call you next week about arrangements, right? You'll be here?"

  Allison Roe greeted Ford coolly as he adjusted his chair. "Getting acquainted with hospital administrators, Dr. McKinney?"

  "I was just thanking him for his help with the beds last week when we had the bus accident." Ford made a business of getting his napkin in place.

  This exchange seemed small enough at the time but took on more significance as days passed. The short walk across the cafeteria divided his life by apprehension, beginning with Allison Roe's silken remarks. What would she say if she knew Ford had asked the administrator to dinner? Worse, if she knew the reason for the asking? If his other friends found out?

  In his pleasant kitchen on a morning when he was free of hospital duties, he understood his courage to be failing. He poured a second cup of coffee and drank it in the early quiet on his side porch, wrapped in a thick sweater against the slight December chill. Holly in the yard gleamed deeply green. Loneliness poured into him with the stirring of winter breezes, but even i
n the cold he sat on the porch for a long time in his pajamas and sweater, bare ankles in bedroom slippers, numbed fingers on the warm coffee mug.

  He tried to remember the feeling that had led him to cross space, to sit down at the table of a stranger and ask the stranger to take a meal with him. He pictured the stranger's face but the image formed only as a blur in his consciousness. What expectations did Dan harbor? I've been watching you for a long time. Since you were a medical student.

  By the time he left the porch, he had resolved to break the date; but even that act would be public, would require courage. He must either telephone Dan or else, worse, walk into his office. Briefly Ford considered calling Dan at home but found the idea too personal, worse than any public scene. Would he tell the truth, or would it be better to pretend that his on-call schedule had changed? Dan might not get the message right away, but soon enough, when Ford refused any attempt at rescheduling, the picture would become clear. Dan was, after all, far from the kind of person Ford wanted in his life; surely even he understood that.

  This left only the question of timing. On this issue, Ford's thinking failed him. He meant to call at once. Each silent telephone reminded him. But Ford lacked the certainty that he could carry off the conversation with good grace.

  Finally he wrote a note to the young man, mailing it to his hospital address. Ford simply wrote that the dinner they had planned was proving impossible for him to schedule. He signed himself "F. McKinney" and attempted to make the scrawl as little like his usual signature as possible, in case Dan Crell attempted to make some sinister use of the note.

  He placed a call to Shaun Gould, canceling his weekly session and wishing her the merriest of holidays.

  On the Friday of the impossible dinner, with Christmas looming the next week, Ford headed through first-floor corridors toward the Pediatric Appointment Clinic where he was scheduled to see patients under Dr. Milliken's supervision. Though the clinic occupied a large area on the second floor of the hospital, Ford went to the trouble of descending one floor and crossing to the clinic on that level. Out of fear. Dan Crell's office lay on the second floor in a suite of offices between the two clinics.

  But Ford found Dr. Milliken at the juncture of corridors near the first-floor lobby, standing in a large crowd, and as Ford approached Dr. Milliken signaled him. Ford smiled the crisp smile of the proper young medical resident, heading toward his chief of service. "I want you to hear this," Dr. Milliken said, and a piano struck soft notes as across the crowded lobby Dan Crell mounted a dais and prepared to sing.

  "Let's see if we can't get closer," Dr. Milliken whispered. "He has a wonderful voice."

  Ford muffled his panic and followed, entrapped. Dan began a lullaby to the Christ child, a song Ford had heard in his childhood but not since. At the first full notes, a ripple of response passed through the gathering as the song was recognized; then rapt silence fell as the voice swelled to fill the lobby, to permeate every corner. "Lo, lay thou little tiny child," the young man sang, and the mournful tones sent a chill through Ford. He lost himself in listening. His eyes followed every movement, tracing the slim figure of the singer as the song poured from him, the radiance of the sound matched by the luminescence of his face, his wholeness. While Dan sang, he remained oblivious to everything around him, motionless but for the throbbing of his tender, touchable throat. Again his singing told those who listened that the joy of the saved is the sorrow of the savior, that the tiny child might wish another fate. Again in minor keys and throbbing tones he undercut the merry decorations of the lobby, and from within Ford responded with the same deep sadness.

  The song ended, the last pulse vanishing, and the room exploded into applause, far greater than Ford's memory of the year before. Dan received this quietly, with a look of deliberate containment. The stillness of his features burned an image into Ford. Before descending from the dais, with an air of perfect peace, he surveyed the crowd as the applause continued.

  He could hardly help but find Ford, who stood inches above every other occupant of the room. Their eyes locked, and suddenly Dan's moment of perfect beauty fled. He froze on the dais, broke off the eye contact by act of will, took a breath and gathered himself together, each phase of the change visible to Ford. His flesh went ashen, his eyes dimmed. When he could move again, he let the crowd take him.

  "He's wasting his time at Grady," Dr. Milliken said, "anybody who can sing like that."

  Ford said, all hollow, "I heard him in the conceit last year."

  Only the sickness of his patients kept Ford intact through the remainder of his shift. He moved through the clinic corridors with perfect whiteness of mind, obliterating every thought but that of his next action, the counting of a heartbeat, the proper curve of sinus rhythm on an EKG strip, the correct test to order for the white blood cell count of a child one week past strep throat. Once, in his empty exam room, before summoning his next patient, he dialed Dan Crell's hospital extension; closing his eyes, holding his breath, he told himself he would think of something to say. A crisp-voiced secretary informed him that Mr. Crell had left for the day and would not return to the hospital till after Christmas; would there be any message?

  His shift ended, and he drove to Clifton Heights. The iron control with which he had braved the long day refused to release him now, and he could hardly feel his own heartbeat. Pouring himself a large glass of gin, disdaining all lights, all television, all music, he wandered from room to room, his brain a burned-out blank. When he recalled the events of the day, he could hardly believe any moment of it after Dr. Milliken's voice in the lobby, I want you to hear this.

  He had heard. He had also remembered, past his fear.

  When the telephone rang he rushed to answer. But this voice was without resonance, was his mother asking about his plans for arrival in Savannah, would he drive or would he fly? Her mellow, cool questions returned him to the kitchen, facing wooden shelves, studying his grandmother's colanders and the telephone directory. He reached for the directory, saying to his mother, "I only have about thirty-six hours, if I drive I'll do nothing at home except sleep."

  "I agree that flying is sensible, Ford, but if you haven't booked a flight by now you'll never get a seat."

  "That's not what I told you, Mother, I said I hadn't decided which flight to take because I wasn't sure of my schedule. I have seats on two different flights and I'll know tomorrow which one I'll be on. My travel agent has everything under control."

  "I don't mean to be a bore about it, dear, but you know what Christmas means to all of us." She laughed electronically across the scores of miles. "We want to make sure you get here in time for your grandmother's party."

  "I get there Christmas Eve night," Ford said, "and I'll probably make it to the party, but I won't make dinner. Then I fly out early the morning of the twenty-sixth, just about dawn. That's the most likely schedule at the moment."

  "Do you have any shopping I can do for you, or have you managed it all?"

  Ford rubbed his brows, biting back impatience. Reaching for the telephone book, he said, "Why don't I call you about that sometime Sunday. I need some help, but I don't have myself organized about it right this minute."

  "That's fine, son, but please don't push this off to Christmas Eve. You know how much I have to do this time of year."

  Shortly afterward they said good-bye and hung up, and Ford looked up Dan Crell in the telephone book. There was only one listing under that name, on Blue Ridge

  Avenue near North Highland. Standing in the dark, taking deep breaths, Ford lifted the phone receiver again.

  After a dozen rings he gave up. Dan had indeed gone home early, or he had decided to do something else for the evening, or he refused to answer the phone. Leaning against the countertop, watching moon-cast tree shadows moving against the windows, Ford gave up for the night.

  Christmas in Savannah followed the course of every Christmas he remembered, as far as the family was concerned. But the change in him was evident t
o his family at once. His sister, Courtenay, picked him up at the airport, full of news about Smith College and warnings about Dad and Mom. "Sounds to me like they want to start matchmaking for you as soon as you get in the door. They've invited the oldest Stillwell girl to Grandmother Strachn's for eggnog."

  "Christ," Ford said, "that's all I need."

  "Chin up, Fordie. She's so shy she won't say a word. And she's only tall enough to come up to your ribcage, you can always pretend you don't see her."

  "Why can't they mind their own business?"

  Courtenay, nearly six feet tall herself, reached across the car to pat his forearm tenderly. "As far as they're concerned, Ford, your marriage is their business. Family business. Just like mine will be, whenever I get around to it."

  "Are you seeing anybody?"

  "Oh, yes. The same guy I told you about, the carpenter. Mom will love it when I finally tell her about that one."

  Ford laughed. Courtenay turned down Abercorn Street and finally onto East Gordon, where Grandmother Strachn's well-kept mansion occupied the corner off Calhoun Square. Ford convinced Courtenay to park on the other side of the square, and they walked slowly through the moss-hung trees, arms around each other's waists.

  "Cheer up, big brother," Courtenay said, sensing trouble in his silence. "You've always got me. Frankly, it suits me if you wait a long time to get married. As long as the prince of the house is single, the pressure is off the princess."

  "I doubt I ever will."

  "Will what?"

  "Find a wife. Raise a family."

  She let the statements stand for a moment. "You sound as if you've got a good reason for saying that. Do you want to share it with your sister?"

  He shrugged, affecting nonchalance, but feeling the flutter of tension in his stomach. "I'm not seeing anybody at all right now. I haven't dated since Haviland."

  "Is something wrong, Ford? Is there something you need to talk about?"