The Diagnosis

by Alan Lightman

  “Mr. Chalmers.”

  Bill looked up at the digital clock and saw that the numbers had already advanced to 3:46. He had little choice. Blurting rapidly, in a manner that he felt was humiliating, he began recounting the chain of events following his episode on the subway. At once, Baker took up a gold pen from his desk and began taking notes, now and then asking to clarify particular details.

  “My husband is ill,” Melissa interrupted. “You can’t fire someone for illness, can you? They can’t do that.”

  Baker nodded sympathetically but without comment. Continuing his story, Bill glanced hopefully at Ms. Stevenson, to find her staring with apparent disinterest out the window.

  As Bill neared the end of his narration, his wife suddenly burst into tears. “Melissa,” he whispered in astonishment. He could not remember a time when she had allowed herself to break down in public. Tears came to his own eyes, and he reached for her hand. What misery she must be going through, what fear and concern for him. Despite all that was not right, she did love him. She did love him. How had he ever doubted that? He gazed at her tenderly, noticing the fragile curve of her neck, the whiteness of her. Then, remembering where he was, he looked away from his wife and at Baker, who silently offered his box of tissues. For some moments more Melissa continued to sob quietly, leaning against her husband. Then, she wouldn’t let go of his arm. She dried her eyes with the back of her free hand, like a child, and put on her dark glasses.

  “We will do all that we can, Mrs. Chalmers,” said Baker, getting up from his desk. “I am at your disposal.” He hesitated, waiting another few moments. How many people had cried openly in Baker’s office, Bill wondered, telling their sad stories and tales of persecutions. He could see that the attorney, while sympathetic, was not allowing himself to become emotionally involved, any more than did Kripke. Baker was a perfect professional. Now the attorney had taken off his glasses and was cleaning the lenses. His eyes had that same calmness that Bill had seen earlier.

  “There are certain issues,” Baker said at last, in a gentle tone. “Mr. Chalmers, did Plymouth not fail to make any reasonable accommodation for your reduced manual efficiency?”

  “Yes. I mean no.” Bill stared at the attorney without comprehension, like a cow at a passing train.

  “Were people at Plymouth aware of your condition?”

  “Certainly,” answered Bill. “They had to be aware. They could not have been unaware.”

  “Good,” the attorney said and nodded with satisfaction. “That will have to be documented in our discovery.”

  At that point, Ms. Stevenson, who had remained silent from her perch on the windowsill, launched a series of incisive questions, brilliant in their simplicity. As Bill attempted to answer them, he could not help gazing repeatedly at the clock. Four twenty-three. Four twenty-four. Four twenty-five. “So we have a case?” he asked finally. It was 4:26.

  “Maybe,” said Baker. The senior attorney grasped the mouse of his computer and began clicking it randomly, like tapping a pencil. “I must tell you that medical matters are extremely difficult. The precise state of one’s health is almost impossible to prove. But in your case …” He leaned forward and gestured to Bill’s legs in the wheelchair. Click. Click. “It seems quite clear that you have a definite malady of some kind. Although, if I understand you, we don’t know what it is. Even so, I remember a case several years ago, I seem to recall that the woman was from Woburn, or maybe it was Winchester, where she was missing a hand, but there was no consensus about whether she was disabled. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 forbids discrimination against qualified individuals with a disability, but there was no agreement whether this missing hand, in fact, constituted a disability. You see what I mean.” The senior attorney then went on to give a tedious summary of related cases and the various conflicting medical reports, clicking his mouse all the while.

  Despite the importance of Baker’s comments and the preciousness of each passing minute, Bill found himself gazing out the window and across to the Public Garden. How much he would like to be down in the garden with Melissa at this moment, in one of the green-bottomed swanboats that he could see in the distance, floating quietly beneath weeping willows. Or walking among the trees, which dabbed the crisscrossing paths through the park like colored balls of cotton. At the corners of each patch of velvety grass, he could see dots of red and yellow and orange, the marigolds still in bloom, reflecting the smooth autumn light. He imagined that he and Melissa were walking there now. They had no destination, no place they had to be, they could just stroll through the garden, stop whenever they wished, look at the water or sit on a bench. Fronds from a willow tree dropped in her hair. Wind blew against his face.

  A buzzer exploded on Mr. Baker’s desk, causing Bill to jerk his head from the window. The attorney whispered into an intercom on his desk and then, with a smile, said that he would have to excuse himself for a few minutes to speak to Mr. Springer just down the hall. He glanced at the clock and recorded the time in a little book in his shirt pocket. Then, sneezing and grasping a new handful of tissues from his desk, he hurried from the room.

  “I don’t feel well,” whispered Melissa, releasing the grip on Bill’s arm for the first time. “I think I’ll go to the rest room and put cold water on my face. I’ll wait for you in the reception area.” She kissed her husband and left the room.

  When the others had gone, Ms. Stevenson dropped from the windowsill, strolled behind the desk, and occupied Mr. Baker’s chair. “I do all of his research and analysis for him,” she said and leaned back. Bill regarded the junior attorney with amazement, uncertain what she would say next. She was an attractive young woman, with angular features, high cheekbones, and perfectly coiffured chin-length hair. “In my opinion,” she said, her eyes wandering around the room in evident boredom, “you have a weak case, Mr. Chalmers.”

  “Why didn’t you speak up earlier?” Bill replied angrily. Ms. Stevenson shrugged her shoulders. “Mr. Baker did not say I had a weak case,” Bill said and glanced toward the half-open door through which the senior attorney had vanished. “He only said it would be a difficult case.”

  “He never says that someone has a weak case,” said the junior attorney with a laugh.

  Although he was suspicious of Ms. Stevenson, Bill found himself depressed by her remarks, and he laid his head back against the metal bar of his chair and stared at the wall. By now, much of his fury against Plymouth had uselessly dribbled away. Even Marbleworth. Who had the energy to fight him? “All I want is to get my job back,” Bill said in a low voice, uncaring whether Ms. Stevenson heard him or not. “In another few months I would have been a senior partner.”

  “I understand,” said Ms. Stevenson, the brashness gone from her voice. “I have ambitions, too. I want to be the youngest senior partner ever at Thoreau and McCullough. I want to argue cases in front of the United States Supreme Court.” She got up from the desk and moved slowly next to Bill, quite close, placed her hand on his shoulder, and said softly, “Tell me what’s really wrong with you. Surely you have some diagnosis after all of those doctors’ reports.”

  Bill shook his head. He was thinking of Petrov’s office with its steep cliffs of papers and reports.

  “What does your wife do?” said Ms. Stevenson. “Or does she stay at home.”

  “That’s none of your business,” Bill said and wheeled himself away from her. He now realized that he could say nothing of a personal nature to this woman. Unwittingly, he had allowed himself to be vulnerable to her. From now on, he would confine himself entirely to the facts of the case. These attorneys were despicable and arrogant and smooth. Why had he come here? He looked at the clock on the wall. It read 5:02. Then he heard a flurry of coughing and sneezing, and Baker returned. The senior attorney seemed in good spirits from his consultation down the hall and went briskly to his desk.

  “If you won’t be needing me …” said Ms. Stevenson.

  “Just a few more minutes.” Ba
ker went to his keyboard and began typing. “Mr. Chalmers,” he said, “I will send you by e-mail a list of things to do next. In fact, we can have our next meeting by e-mail. That will save time.”

  “When will you know if I have a case?” Bill asked, his stomach in knots, his head beginning to pound. The words of Ms. Stevenson were going over and over in his brain.

  “That’s hard to say,” said Baker. Bill leaned forward in his chair, trying to read what the senior attorney was typing.

  “This will all come to you by e-mail,” said Baker, continuing to type. “One thing is certain. It is critical that we have a diagnosis of your illness. We cannot do much without that.” Ms. Stevenson picked up her yellow pad and went to the doorway, where she stood with one foot out and one foot in. “You must have a definite diagnosis,” said Baker, “signed by a licensed physician. In fact, it should be corroborated independently by at least two physicians.”

  As Bill wheeled himself to the door, his head pounding, he was met by a chorus of coughs in the hall.

  DRAWINGS

  He lifts himself up at the window, sore from his sprawl on the floor. Although no one is home, he has sensed something stir. Overhead, a beam faintly creaks in the attic, a small motor groans in the distance. He leans against his wheelchair, feeling the cool metal against his back, again bends down to the floor.

  On the floor, he is tracing the shadow of a leaf. It is the leaf of a sugar maple, just beyond his second-floor window, with a central pinnacle and two side lobes. Each of these partitions further into a coastline of sharp points and round gullies. When a breeze blows outside, the leaf shadow on the floor gently quivers and sways, and he suspends his drawing and waits. Then he begins again. Every hour, he makes a new tracing. In an hour, the shadow shifts by a hand’s width, tracking the path of the sun. The first shadow each morning falls on the floor by his bureau. By midafternoon, when the day’s drawings stop, when he can no longer resist the taunting stare of his keyboard, the shadow has crept to the red writing desk. After a week, his tracings spread across the floor. As if the different drawings were all connected, a single vine twisting over his floor, or possibly one giant leaf.

  Melissa has pleaded with him to resettle downstairs, to stop the terrible trips down the steps, the confinement, but he prefers the hardship of their bedroom, the constant four walls of his illness. That is what he now calls it, no longer his problem but his illness. He is ill. He accepts that now. He is ill. His legs have become bones. His arms have become bones, miraculously still able to convey desires from his brain to his hands. Portions of his face have become numb. An ear, his chin, his left cheek. Daily, he prays for pain.

  He grips his lead pencil as tightly as his mind will allow, for he wants his drawings to be perfect, he wants to record the exact shape of the leaf at this moment in time. Every tiny bend and indentation, every nick and turn. On one lobe, five points and six valleys, each slightly different from the rest. There is a small puncture in the leaf, a hole letting light through, and he lovingly traces that, too, an inner view. The right lobe is slightly larger than the left, almost imperceptibly, the left is lower and more shallow. He has found a lack of symmetry, more beautiful in imperfection. At times, the shadow seems to him a hand, or a small face, and he pulls back from his drawing, sensing that he has invaded some intimacy. Has he become a voyeur, peering through a window? Or a supplicant, offering himself? Even when the leaf seems a leaf, his tracing is an intimacy, he knows its contours so well. The central pinnacle erect like an army captain. Each curve like a water gully or a woman’s breast. He knows the leaf so well that he can feel it despite his dead fingers, he can touch every crinkle and edge. He can feel its prickles against his cheek.

  At night, he often dreams of the leaf and awakens to find his hand moving across the headboard. Sometimes, he awakens in a sweat. Then he has been dreaming not of the leaf but of his computer screen, his hand fidgeting on the headboard now become keyboard, jabbing at the keys, struggling to keep up, to keep up, sitting white-bellied naked in front of the screen while a thousand darts of information fly at his skin. Or driver ants devouring his flesh. He bleeds. Waking, he sits shaking and stares at the illuminated clock on the vanity.

  As he drags himself about on his stomach, following the leaf shadow on the floor, it occurs to him that he is drawing a history of a sort. It is a history of the earth, a map of the movement of the earth. The earth moves in time, the shadow creeps across the floor. Nothing could be more simple. The earth moves, shadows move. Earth mother, the giver of leaves, the paradise, the blessing. He blesses the leaf and its earth mother, he traces and blesses. For he is seeing every detail in his history, he is observing every curve and movement. And is that not a blessing? He is a chronicler of small things, and big. Perhaps the universe resides in the leaf.

  And as the leaf slightly changes its posture from one hour to the next, it occurs to him also that from his drawings, from their accuracy and sequence, a person might determine the precise time and place that the drawings were made. This possibility gives him pleasure, binding him to events far beyond himself. Lying on the floor, he soars. His drawings are both history and moment. With this enlarged frame of reference, he imagines other people at this instant, gas station attendants pumping gas, bank tellers counting out fives and tens, commuters hurrying down the sidewalk between buildings, people cooking cabbage in kitchens, drivers honking, the whole teeming heave, and he realizes that none of these people is looking. None of them knows of this history unfolding. He must record. He has a responsibility as well as a pleasure.

  Observing the leaf shadow so minutely, he begins also to notice the floor. It is a yellow pine floor with wide planks, uncovered since he rolled up the rug, and its amber ridges swirl and wave in a variety of forms. In some places, the grain plunges down in long wavy streams, like paths of rain sliding on glass. In others, the grain thickens and radiates out from a warm center, like smoke rings around a fire, or amorphous blobs of amber whirling randomly within yellow seas. No two locations are the same. Patterns change abruptly from one plank to another, patterns glow in the sunlight and dim to Bach fugues in the shadows. Here and there, dark knots break the patterns, interlopers. This floor is a universe itself, he decides, faintly oily and moist against his good cheek. A world of infinite forms, with secret messages and meanings of its own. Undoubtedly also a history of the earth and living things. It is against this universe that the universe of the shadow leaf exists. The lead of his pencil creates the connection.

  Then he discovers that he the observer has not observed well enough. When he stares carefully at the boundary between the universe of the floor and the universe of the shadow leaf, he is astonished to find that the shadow has its own shadow. The coastline of the leaf is not a sharp edge, but a slow gradation of dark changing to light. Around the inner shadow is a halo shadow, less intense, filamentary, mimicking the inner shadow yet breathing its own air. The halo shadow is the more delicate of the two, a piece of fine lace. So delicate, in fact, that it wavers slightly even when there is no wind. Its tiny filaments of half-shadow flutter like cilia of some exquisite sea creature. It seems to respond to the slightest of movements, even to anticipated movement, to thought. The halo shadow is the soul of the leaf. When he makes this discovery, he wonders if he can redo his drawings, add the slow lessening of dark. But the second shadow is too fine to trace.

  To both shadows, he raises a blessing. And blesses himself and even his illness, for that is part of him also. Were it not for his illness, he wouldn’t be here on the floor, dragging his dead weight but minutely seeing. He has become a seer, a historian of the life of a leaf. If only now he had pain. With pain he could feel the parts that are missing. He would see better with pain, understand more what has happened to him. With pain he would be complete. Is the leaf listening to this? Of course not, it is only a leaf, although it is also a universe. Why shouldn’t he feel pain? What kind of illness is his, what kind of cruel disease that denies even p
ain, the clarity of pain? He will have pain, even though it is denied, and he cuts the places on his body still not numb, his good cheek, his chest, and he celebrates the pain and lets a few drops of blood drip on his tracings. Now, the drawings are even more beautiful, splotchy red like autumn leaves, and he wants everyone to see them, his minute observations, his silences.

  ————————————

  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Petrov at MGH.HARVARD.EDU

  ====> Received: from TAR.HARVARD.EDU by HARVARD.EDU with BFP

  id AQ74078; Tues, 14 Oct 11:18:32 EDT

  for WCHALM@AOL.COM; Tues, 14 Oct 11:18:51 –0400

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  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Petrov at MGH.HARVARD.EDU

  Dear Mr. Chalmers,

  The first musclar-skeletal ultrasound ddin’t how aything. I would like to do another at 10 MHz, which can get to a much finere reslution of a few millimeters. The office will be in touch with you.

  The PET examination is now scheduled for Monday October 27. We received a special allowance from your HMO. IHae thought all along that PET would give us imortnatn new information on metalboic activity. We wil be using carbon 11 and nitrogen 13 radioisotopes. Let’s kee our fingers crossed.