by Gen LaGreca
“I thought I could match him before. Then, I could have offered him so much! But now, look at me,” she said, shrugging. “Of course,” she added, her voice brightening, “if the second surgery works . . .”
He squeezed her hand with the clasp that meant Listen, this is important. “Nicole, I want the second surgery to work more than I ever wanted anything. But it’s experimental, and you mustn’t count on it. I can’t raise false hopes.”
“But it does give me a chance—my only chance—doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s the thing I live for. I know you don’t like that, Doctor, but it’s true.”
He had no reply; it was the thing he lived for, too.
“If the Phantom ever came for me as I am now, he’d have to play nursemaid to me in my blindness, helping me with this and that and getting me sweatshirts when I dirty myself.”
“Do you know that blind people get quite adept at taking care of themselves? And that the people who care about them don’t mind helping?”
“I would never want to depend on the Phantom that way, to cling to him like a barnacle. I’d pretend I hated him first, so he’d find someone else—”
“Nicole, Nicole,” he gently admonished, “it sounds as if this poor guy would be so thrilled to be around you that he might not even notice your blindness.”
“But how could he not be repelled by a . . . major . . . handicap?”
“Maybe other things are more important. If your dancing gives him the hope to fight for his dream, then it seems there’s something about you that’s more significant to him. After all, everybody has eyes, but how much do they see? Maybe you have a vision that nobody else around him has, a vision that’s still within you, even though you don’t know it.”
Her eyes retained an eerie alertness as she considered his words. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Then think about it, you hear?”
She nodded.
“Now let’s see what this friend of the floral industry has to say for himself.”
He unfolded the letter and read:
Dear Nicole,
When you fell, the light you hung in the room of my soul came crashing down. The joy that had so comfortably taken residence there was crushed. Your laughter, the bright décor that gave warmth to that stark place, suddenly vanished. I wanted to wring the neck of circumstance and storm the unjust court of chance, demanding they give you back to me.
If only I could find the key that locks you from your joy, Nicole, how fast I would reunite you two! I know you’ll find that lost key. You used it to unlock the heavy door of my despair and flood my house with your sunlight. I want to hold a mirror to the radiance you poured into my world, so you can see your own sublime reflection.
I sent roses to honor the endless summer that once made its home on your sweet face and that yearns to return to its rightful place. The dainty rose comes from hearty stock. Its roots run deep to brave the harshest winter. You, too, will blossom again in a new spring.
He handed her the letter. She pressed it to her lips, then placed it under her pillow. She lay back, closing her eyes, savoring the words. He knew whom she was envisioning. Beyond his wildest imagining, the blind presence before him had the capacity to see the beauty in his words and the truth in his soul. This revelation was a new torture for him. He could not risk complications with this case, above all others, and that included emotional ones. He warned himself: The Phantom must remain just that.
She opened her eyes and glanced in the direction of the man she had come to like and trust. “Doctor, thank you for reading the letter—and for listening.”
“But you haven’t finished your story. You said that you tracked the Phantom down because you wanted to tell him something and to ask him a question. What did you want to tell him?”
“That we can’t confine our dreams to the world we see on the stage.”
“Is that what you think he’s doing?”
“He writes with such yearning for the joy he finds in me and my show, as if that kind of happiness isn’t possible in his actual life.”
David’s mind burned over visions of his thwarted research, his quarrels with his wife, his disappointment in his father, his unspeakable exile from the OR, and the wrenching prohibition against performing Nicole’s next surgery. “Maybe happiness isn’t possible to him, Nicole.”
“I hope that can’t be true.”
“What about the question you were going to ask him?”
“I wanted to ask him why he wrote to me, but once I saw his face, I knew the answer.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was obvious.”
“What was?”
“The predatory way he looked at me. The reason he wrote was clear. That man wanted me.”
“So you’ve got this poor guy’s condition completely diagnosed, haven’t you? Maybe he wouldn’t appreciate being such an open book to you!”
“Why, Doctor, you’re protecting him from me. Now I’m amused!”
Just then Nicole detected the faint smell of starch, her only awareness of a properly dressed doctor in a crisp white jacket who had entered the room.
“Good morning. My, what beautiful roses! I wish my husband would send me flowers like that,” a female voice said gaily.
“What are you doing here?” snapped David.
“I came to meet Nicole.”
The patient sensed uneasiness in the room.
“Nicole, this is my wife, Marie Lang. She’s a doctor at the hospital.”
Marie took the dancer’s hand and held it. “Hello, Nicole.”
“How do you do, Dr. Lang?”
“It’s Dr. Donnelly. I use my maiden name.” After Nicole’s surgery, Marie had ordered business cards in her maiden name and changed the nameplate on her office door. “I’m a general physician. Every CareFree patient must have one. It seems that you hadn’t chosen yours yet, Nicole, so the system selected one for you. Here I am.”
“But your husband’s my doctor.” Nicole removed her hand from Marie’s clasp.
“He’s a specialist. I’m your general doctor. Now, how are you feeling, dear?”
Nicole could not see a clawed hand seizing Marie’s upper arm. She only heard a tightly controlled voice say, “Would you excuse us, Nicole?”
* * * * *
David’s grip held firm as he led Marie to a vacant conference room near the nurses’ station.
“David, you’re hurting me! Let me go!”
He pushed his wife into the room and closed the door.
“Why are you doing this, Marie?” He shoved her back.
She stumbled over a chair, almost falling. “I want the honor of treating the patient whose case is wrecking our marriage and launching your new career as a public enemy. Why are you pretending you’re still her doctor when you can’t prescribe an aspirin anymore?”
“If you so much as check her pulse, I’ll show you what a public enemy I am when I beat you up. After that story hits the press, you’ll have to change your name again!”
“David, did it occur to you that I was just trying to help? What if you need to prescribe a pill for this lovely medical experiment? With your suspension, you can’t do that yourself. But now you can do it through me.”
He thought he detected a faint, gloating smile. “I don’t want you to be a clearinghouse for me to practice medicine.”
“What choice do you have, David? I’m trying to help, and for that you insinuate that I’m not trustworthy enough to care for your ex-patient.”
“You’re not to go near Nicole. She’s in my care—and mine alone!—until after the second surgery. Understood?”
“Okay, David, have it your way. But tell me, how can she be your patient when you don’t have any more patients? And how can you talk about a second surgery when there’s not going to be any?”
“The only way I won’t do that second surgery is if I’m dead.”
“You may well
be.” She sighed. “Talk to me, David. You can’t destroy our lives without discussing it. You can’t sleep in the guest room and pretend I don’t exist.”
“When you’re making your bed with my enemies, where do you expect me to sleep?”
“When you’re making enemies with the entire medical profession, who is left for me to make my bed with? Talk to me, David. Explain why you’ve got to impose your point of view on the whole system—”
“The system is imposing its point of view on me! That remark is typical of the way you see things, Marie. I can’t talk to you anymore. All that’s important to you is getting the acceptance of your little circles, but I’d have to betray myself to give you that. Once, I thought you understood the things that mattered to me. When you were a student and we worked in the lab together, you were different. What’s happening to you?”
“You were different, too, David. You were building your career, not destroying it. Back then you were quite interested in making your bed with me. Remember?” She smiled coyly, her eyes canvassing the ceiling in reminiscence. “I was the envy of the nurse brigade. They all wanted you, but I had you.”
“Is that why you married me, to have a trophy to display?” He looked at her curiously, as if pondering a puzzle that he wanted to solve.
“Every woman wants to be proud of her husband. And every father wants to be proud of his son.” She lowered her voice and spoke more cautiously, as if treading on thin ice. “David, your father is devastated by what you did. Just when the governor is about to pick him for a running mate, you bring a scandal on him. Just when my group practice is about to offer me a partnership, you publicly embarrass me. Just when Randy sticks his neck out to back you—”
His brother’s name brought the first lines of real pain to his face. “Let’s leave Randy out of this litany of how inconvenient it was of Nicole to be blinded.”
“David, please listen to reason. You can still rescue yourself and our marriage. Give up this case, apologize to your father and the governor, and maybe Warren can save you. He wants to, you know, but you have to give an inch, too.”
The anger drained from his eyes, replaced by a ruthless calm that she found more disturbing. “Marie,” he said softly, “how can you curry the favor of fools who, through some glitch of history, claim to hold power over you? How can you call what you’re doing medicine?”
“They don’t just claim to hold power. They really do. I learned to live with that fact. It’s called survival.”
“But you don’t just give in to them reluctantly, the way most of us do. You’re the first one to support the new system, which is like slapping my face, and yours, too. That’s what drives me into the guest room—self-respect.”
“I’m not slapping your face, David. You make everything so black and white. I’m just asking you to bide your time, inch in with the right people, and get in the good graces of your father. Then they’ll let you do your research.”
“You know what I think of that viewpoint.”
“I know, I know! No one has the right to trespass on the shrine you built to yourself and your passion for medicine.”
He suddenly wondered about something. “What’s your passion, Marie? What do you live for?”
“Isn’t trying to keep my head above water enough of a mission?” she said, her eyes as dull as ashes from a fire long extinguished.
He wondered if there were something in Marie’s life that meant to her what the OR meant to him and what dancing meant to Nicole. He thought of the opera and of cardiology, two areas that had sparked Marie’s spirit. But she had given them up long ago.
“It’s hard for me, David. I have so many patients. I have to watch the rules and still try to practice good medicine. And now my salary has to support the two of us.”
When his head dropped, a subtle satisfaction seemed to brighten her face, as if she were about to score the winning point in a bitter match.
“What would you have me do, David? Join you in your futile rebellion? Randy had to denounce you, and you’re okay with that. But when I merely switch to my maiden name, so I can preserve my patient base and pay our bills, which I now have to shoulder alone, you slam me. Do you know how punishing it is when you commit a blatantly self-destructive act, then reproach me for not following you off the cliff?”
He told himself that she had no choice. Like Randy, she was forced to oppose him. In fairness to her, he must try to understand her point of view. Then why couldn’t he bring himself to answer the pleading arms that she placed around his waist and the fragrant auburn hair that she swept across his chest?
“David, can’t we resolve this? Tonight let’s have a candlelight dinner and a bottle of wine.” She looked up alluringly. “Then later, when you’re relaxed,” she whispered, “we can call Warren and try to work out a way to reinstate you. I know you’re committed to this case, but there’ll be so many more victims to help in the future. For their sake, you might have to retreat now and give up this one case—”
He threw her arms off him and walked out.
* * * * *
In a room flooded with sunlight, Nicole sipped her milkshake in darkness. She had a simple desire: to place the Phantom’s letter, which she had tucked under her pillow, into her purse. That way she would not leave the precious document behind when she was discharged. But where in the small space that had become a horror chamber was her purse? In the closet near the door? In the cabinet near the window? When she tried to reach those mysterious places, she almost invariably stumbled, causing a commotion. She decided to wait until Mrs. Trimbell arrived.
Just then the air in her room was displaced by sweet cologne as someone entered. “Excuse me. May I presume you’re Nicole Hudson?”
“I am, so you may presume it.”
“How do you do?” The visitor took her limp hand, shaking it vigorously. “My, what lovely roses!”
He waited for a response, but Nicole said nothing. The forced cheerfulness of his voice reminded her of a salesman with lacquered hair.
“I’m Commissioner Wellington Ames of the CareFree Department of Disabilities, New York City Region,” he said with a flourish. “I just had to come to see you, even though I’m quite busy, with nine agencies under my directorship.” He dismissed the inconvenience with a laugh, for a case with media attention was to Ames what dessert was to other people. “In view of your unfortunate circumstance, I wanted to meet you myself, personally.”
“Why?” she asked indifferently.
“To welcome you to our family.”
“What?”
“To welcome you to the CareFree Home for the Blind for your twelve-week rehabilitation program, followed by vocational training, so you can reenter the workplace as a Braille computer operator. Our gentle guardianship is free, as a gift from CareFree to our blind,” he said, like a proud owner. “And after you rejoin the workforce, we offer affordable housing in our apartment building for the blind. There you’ll meet others with the same challenges you have who will warmly welcome you into their lives. There’s a room for social gatherings, so our blind can enjoy the camaraderie of their brothers and sisters in a caring community.”
“I’m not going to any institution, so please leave now!”
“Ms. Hudson, I’m here at the request of your physician.”
“You could not possibly be here at the request of David Lang, my doctor, so please go.”
Nicole heard the crisp sound of paper unfolding. “I have here in my pocket a message from Dr. David Lang, handwritten across the enrollment application that we issued for you. He indicated that you most emphatically were not going to the Home for the Blind.”
“So there.”
“However, Dr. Lang’s orders are now invalid.”
“What do you mean?”
Nicole’s voice was rising, its anger a thin veneer over her mounting fear. First the appearance of Dr. Lang’s wife made her worry that he no longer controlled her case, and now this unctuous man called Dr.
Lang’s orders invalid. The milkshake shook in her hand as a dusty memory stirred in her mind of a screaming, desperate child being carried away by strange men.
“I mean that Dr. Marie Donnelly asked me to enroll you. And between you and me, there’s quite a waiting list to get in, so you would be most privileged to be accepted—”
“Get out now! I’m warning you!”
“Ms. Hudson, do you realize who I am?”
“I won’t go with you, so get out!”
She heard a nun’s distant voice trying to sooth her, but she was terrified. She was being carried off roughly, violently, against her will.
“Now, really—” Wellington Ames grabbed Nicole’s arm to reassure her.
“Don’t touch me!”
Feeling that she was a helpless creature about to be overpowered, she swung desperately and flung her milkshake at him. Then she managed to locate the water pitcher, which she also hurled in his direction. The gasp from her visitor made her certain that she had hit her target.
“My goodness! What nerve! How dare you, Ms. Hudson? We need someone here to restrain you!”
“Get out and leave me alone!”
“With pleasure! We would never accept such a rude creature—” The voice stopped abruptly.
Nicole wondered why the man was suddenly silent. She did not know that with her sudden motion, the Phantom’s letter had dislodged from beneath her pillow and dropped to the floor. Attracted by the handwriting, Commissioner Ames picked up the letter and began reading. His stunned eyes made three stops: on the letter, on the roses they alluded to, and on the handwritten note by David Lang across the enrollment application for his institution. The Commissioner of Disabilities discovered a secret that the writer had not shared with anyone. Wellington Ames’s heart pounded wildly. He knew that this case was a political hot potato for Governor Burrow, the man whose favor he most ardently courted. After all, nine agencies were not the limit of Ames’s ambition.
Nicole lifted the tray containing her uneaten breakfast, ready to hurl it. “Take big marching footsteps as you go, Mr. Beef Wellington, so I can hear them fade away from me and never return. Understand?”
