by Gen LaGreca
The family listened, stunned, as Randy related the astonishing story of his deal with the governor, his brother’s arrest, his resignation, the illegal surgery, and the incident with the inspector.
“I know you kids are at critical stages in your lives,” Randy continued. “You’re accustomed to having important things to groom you for your futures. Victoria, I know you want to be a champion figure skater, because you told us so when you were five years old. You work very hard at it, and you need costumes, competitions, travel, and coaches to develop your talent.
“Stephen, your gift is the piano, and you need the best teachers and the finest opportunities to develop that. When I see the thrill on your face while you’re giving a recital, I imagine you looking that same inspired way in the concert halls of the world.
“And Michelle, my baby, there’s something special sprouting inside you, too. You love your microscope, and you devour children’s science books the way other kids read nursery rhymes. You need a special school to nourish your talents.
“And Beth, honey, I know that you’re a serious painter, but you work in commercial art for the money to help fuel our kids’ futures. You’d rather be doing the fine art that you’re talented at and enjoy more.”
Each family member listened intently when addressed but did not interrupt. Even Michelle, the most talkative one of the group, seemed to sense that this was a time to listen.
“One talented child would be rare enough for a family, but having three of you very special and very expensive kids is more than your mother and I ever imagined. My job, especially my recent raise and bonus, provided a good share of what you kids need and of what we want you to have.
“But that money is tainted. To get it, I have to betray everything I believe in. I have to support people and causes I disapprove of. My job requires that I feed not only your uncle to the wolves but also every doctor and patient who want something different for themselves than the system forces on them.
“And there’s no making deals about it, either. I thought so, but I was wrong. The deal I made meant only that if I followed their course, they’d throw me a few crumbs. The deal didn’t mean that I could oppose their course and choose my own. My deal is what put your uncle in jail.”
Widened eyes and dropped jaws faced Randy.
“You see, kids, while you’re getting your special training, I’m doing something that makes me feel ashamed. But yesterday I felt different. I told the board members what I really thought of them. I felt as if I had crawled out of a cave and could breathe fresh air. And the air smelled even sweeter when I let David do his surgery. I felt like Victoria when she does a triple jump or Stephen when he plays Chopin or Michelle when David takes her to the lab. Kids, I felt excited about doing something I really wanted to do! My own dream flashed before my eyes, the dream of running an unusual kind of business in which great medical innovations would be made and brought to market. It’s one thing to manufacture a new carpet or car or television. But to produce new discoveries that restore health and life to very ill people, well, that’s the concerto that’s been playing in my mind for years. Last night I saw my music performed, instead of only hearing it in my head. For the first time in years, I can’t wait to go to the hospital. I can’t wait for David to remove Nicole’s eye patches and find out the result. I can’t wait to go to work and not get paid for a job I no longer have.
“I lost everything, but I feel great about what I did. I only regret what it’s going to do to you. We now need to live on just a fraction of the money we had before. I don’t know how long I’ll be unemployed or what disasters this will cause for you. I only know that I had to do what I did . . . because it was right.”
At first, no one spoke. Everyone seemed to be chewing the large bite they had just been fed. No one looked at anyone else; everyone seemed to be judging the matter privately.
Stephen was the first to break the silence. “Give ’em hell, Dad.”
Victoria followed. “I’m glad you quit that awful job, Daddy. It was making you mopey.”
Then Michelle chimed in. “I want Uncle David to do a new operation.”
“I don’t need a new number for my next competition,” added Victoria. “I’ll skate to my old number, with my old costume and choreography. And I’ll be fantastic!”
“And I can take a job working in a band on the weekends,” said Stephen. “It’ll be good practice for me, and the money will pay for my lessons.”
“Daddy, I can go to public school with Betty and Sarah. Then my tuition won’t a-salt you. Is that the word you use, Daddy?” said Michelle.
“Honey,” said Beth, with all eyes turning to her, “if we’re as gifted as you say we are, then we should be able to use our talents to find a way to manage. We want you to do what’s right. Don’t we, kids?”
“Yeah, Dad!”
“We’re with you, Daddy.”
“Hey, guys, let’s hear it for Dad and Uncle David,” said Stephen.
Then Randy’s family did what it had always done when one of them reached a new milestone. They cheered and they embraced.
* * * * *
The final day of October began with a deliciously nippy fall morning. Hanging in a cloudless blue sky was its only daytime ornament, a fireball burning in the eastern horizon. Like Venus on the first morning of her life, the island of Manhattan seemed to be rising on a seashell amid sun-streaked silver waters. Skyscrapers stretched horizontally in long angular shadows across the avenues of the city. The east windows of Riverview Hospital, like mirrors, shot the sun into the windows of the building across the street so that the west, too, could share the abundant light of a new day. A patient with patched eyes lay inside the hospital, warming her face in the early morning sun and wondering if she would ever see its light again.
By midmorning, the shocking news of David’s arrest and illegal surgery, along with Randy’s resignation, rocked the hospital and the city. In the hallways, locker rooms, and nursing stations and even over unconscious patients in the OR, staff members talked of nothing else. The board of directors waited for CareFree to make a statement before preparing its own. CareFree waited for the governor to speak first. Reporters hovered outside, wondering whether David Lang would be thrown in jail or declared a national hero. As he ate breakfast six days before the election, Malcolm Burrow waited, also. He waited for two small patches to be removed from someone’s eyes by a man he cursed between bites.
Without having had general anesthesia, Nicole was wide awake. Publicity about her case had necessitated her move to a secluded room, leaving her alone with her thoughts . . . and hopes. Members of the hospital staff visited to wish her well. Whenever footsteps sounded outside her room, she lifted her head from her pillow, hoping it was her doctor. Her dainty body, a robe wrapped twice around it, barely made an impression in the bed. As a tube dripped liquid into her arm, she waited for the man who could infuse life back into her soul.
Finally, two familiar warm hands reached for hers.
“David, you’re here! You weren’t . . . arrested again?”
“They wouldn’t dare. Not yet, anyway. But we weren’t going to worry about that, were we?” His voice was lighter, happier, as if being an outlaw agreed with him. He squeezed her hands. “How are you feeling?”
Ignoring the raw, throbbing wound that was her head, she smiled softly. “I feel fine.”
“You’re doing fine, very fine. The surgery went well.”
“And now, is it . . . time?”
“Yes.”
The muscles of her face tightened.
“It’s almost time. First, someone gave me this for you.” He reached for something that he had set on her bed stand. He held it before her as she sat up in bed.
“It’s a vase,” she said, her hands circling a glass hexagon, her fingers stopping at the sharp, pointed corners that told her it was crystal. “This feels beautiful. Did you say someone gave this to you?”
“Yes.”
�
��You mean the Phantom?”
“Yes.”
“He’s here?”
“Oh, yes.”
“In the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Is he really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Why doesn’t he come to see me?”
“He’s coming.”
Her dainty lips pursed in puzzlement, but David said no more.
“What kind of flowers did he send?” Her fingers touched the arrangement in the vase. “There are lots of flowers! One blossom on top of another. They’re in tall clusters on stalks that feel stiff and tapered, like swords.” She stretched an arm high to reach the top of the arrangement. “There are twenty stalks and each one has about ten blooms on it. That’s two hundred flowers, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“Could they be gladiolas?”
“They could indeed.”
“After we’ve already had the first frost?”
“The Phantom apparently thinks it’s summer.”
She laughed with a child’s delight.
“The flowers are a mixture of whites, pinks, yellows, and lavenders, Nicole. All pastels.”
“The Phantom is out of sync with the season.”
“He’s in a season of his own.”
“I adore gladiolas. They’re tall and bold. They assert themselves.”
Her hands lovingly brushed through the hardy arrangement. Then her fingers paused on an envelope. She gave it to David.
He pulled a flower from the vase and placed it in her hand, then set the others on her bed stand. She could hear the crisp sound of paper tearing as he opened the envelope. He could see the eager smile, the attentive tilt of her head toward him, the hands that caressed the flower. Sitting on the edge of her bed, he read to her:
Dearest Nicole,
Today I plant my own garden for the rest of my life. From now on I will gather only bouquets watered by my own hands. Before, when my garden was overrun with the forced blooms of others, I smelled no fragrance. I saw scrawny hothouse attempts at bloom too dull to catch my eye. Those flower impostors lacked the color and perfume of my own hearty patch. It was you, Nicole, who gave me the courage to plant new seeds in the fresh air. And the world has never looked more breathtaking than from the special plot you helped me nourish.
Now, everywhere I go I see summer. It follows me around like my new companion. I heard the curling wind of an autumn storm and mistook it for a robin. I saw the first white patch of frost by the river and thought it was a swan. I felt the little lights that decorate the trees for the winter and thought they were new buds.
When you open your eyes, Nicole, the man who hid from you and the world will be there. Whatever the outcome of your ordeal, we’ll face it in an embrace. You’ll be mine, all mine, for today I come to claim you.
Nicole listened intently as if hearing a stirring love song. She held the flower to her breast, stroking it tenderly.
“The Phantom’s changed, David. He doesn’t sound like the most desperate man in the city.”
“He doesn’t sound desperate at all.”
“Not anymore,” she said, her voice solemn, her head raised in a salute.
“Are you ready, Nicole?” She detected a slight tremble in his voice.
“David, the Phantom is the second person I want most to be with me when I open my eyes. The first is you. Would you tell the Phantom that this is our moment together, yours and mine?”
“We’ll have to see how this works out. He’s pretty insistent.”
David lowered the blinds to block the glare of the direct sun. He took the flower from Nicole’s hand and returned it to the vase.
The softness on her face disappeared. No trace of a smile remained. Her mouth tightened as if to brace for anything. She propped herself up with pillows. Her swanlike neck seemed to stretch even longer, like a pedestal to display her bandaged head. Her shoulders tensed to form a square base for the pedestal.
David lifted a hand that had begun to sweat and squeezed it. Nicole did not respond, as if the intensity of her thoughts was all consuming. She felt the quick sting of bandages pulled swiftly from her face. Then the patches were lifted off her eyes. The cool air of the room hit her lids.
“Your eyelids may feel as if they’re stuck. It may take a little work, but they’ll open.”
He walked to the door. She heard it close.
“David, are you still here? Did you leave? . . . David?”
He did not reply. He looked at her as a doctor and as a man, staring intensely in both capacities.
She tried to pry her eyelids open, but they stuck like stubborn clams. Her brow wrinkled as she gave the task a second try. The lids loosened. But lashes from the top and bottom still intertwined. Nicole kept trying. Then her eyes slowly opened. A liquid smear glistened before her. She blinked several times.
Suddenly she was thrust back in time. She was standing at the corner of a street, across from a flower shop. A man stood outside the store looking at her with an unusual intensity. The upward tilt of his head told her that she was a goddess he would worship. The downward sweep of his eyes over her body told her that she was a woman he would possess.
“I . . . I . . .” The small cry that was her voice struggled to gain volume. “I can see you! I can see you! I . . . can . . . see!” Just as she found her voice, it was muffled again, this time buried in the arms and chest that urgently fell against her. “I see this room! I see you! I see everything!” she screamed, her cries a sublime mix of laughter and tears.
His hands stroked her face, her neck, her bandaged head. He seemed to want to laugh wildly but was suppressing the urge to make a sound.
The radiant Nicole of the stage exclaimed, “You came for me after all! And I can see you! Oh my, I can see! But I must see my doctor now. Where is he?”
The man before her grinned boyishly.
“Where’s Dr. Lang? I must see him!”
He laughed quietly.
“Why don’t you speak?”
His eyes, those green lasers that seemed to burn her skin, never left hers as his mouth widened in yet more laughter. The Phantom was enjoying the moment.
“Talk to me, won’t you?”
Her eyes held curiosity; his, amusement.
She reached out to touch his engaging face, to cup it in her hands. “Why won’t you talk—?”
She paused as a thought took shape. She studied him curiously. Her hands began trembling.
“Wait a minute,” she whispered.
Then she closed her eyes. She touched his brow, his eyes, his mouth, his cheek. Her fingers paused on the telltale dimple. She opened her eyes, incredulous.
She mouthed a word, shaped it on her lips, for she could find no voice to utter it. Then she gasped, “D-David?”
“Yes, Nicole.” She heard a familiar baritone voice heavy with affection for her.
Two arms wrapped tightly around his neck. A tear-stained cheek rubbed against his face. “David, I’m thrilled!”
“You said the Phantom was the most desperate man in the city. Who better fit that description than me? The old me?”
“David, I’m so glad it’s you! I’m so happy the Phantom is you! I wouldn’t have wanted him to be anyone else!”
His lips landed on hers, choking her voice. He slipped his arms around her body, his eager fingers racing over her back and shoulders. Then they heard the ringing of a phone, and he reluctantly released her.
“Hello,” David said into his cell phone.
“What’s happening in there?” asked Randy.
“Does anybody have an eye chart?”
The door of Nicole’s room burst open. Two optic nerves that had been dormant for months were now firing rapidly to capture the lively scene that followed. Dozens of people barged in. They wore scrubs of various colors, white coats, or business suits, many with stethoscopes swung around their necks, all with hospital name badges clipped to their clothing. They cheered. They open
ed champagne, poured the bubbly liquid into plastic cups, and clicked them together as if they were fine crystal. They shook David’s hand and embraced him. They squeezed Nicole’s hands and expressed their happiness for her. David’s triumph was in some way a victory for them all, a deliverance, a rekindling of the dream of practicing a noble profession that had inspired them in the early days of their medical schooling. Their wild cheering for David and Nicole was also a glorious tribute to medicine as it might be and ought to be and to themselves as healers.
An austere-looking woman with joyful tears streaming down her face embraced Nicole.
“Mrs. Trimbell!” the patient exclaimed.
A man who closely resembled David smothered him in a robust embrace, then grabbed her face, and kissed her cheek.
“You must be Randy,” said the radiant Nicole.
Though Nicole observed the dizzying spectacle, it kept moving to the periphery of her vision, the way scenery whizzes by a carousel rider. Her eyes, as though drawn by a magnet, kept fixing on the new joy of their existence, on the tall, handsome figure who looked at her with a boy’s amusement and a man’s passion.
Word of the surgery had spread through the university, and chemist John Kendall came to congratulate both patient and doctor. “Now I know what those analyses were about!” he said jubilantly.
Resident Tom Bentley gazed at David with a look normally reserved for icons such as Louis Pasteur. “Dr. Lang,” he said, “how did you keep from giving up on your research? After all the obstacles you encountered, what kept you going through it all?”
The commotion in the room ebbed as the others turned to David to hear his response.
“A wise woman once told me that we can’t confine our dreams to the world we see on the stage. We can’t just idly dream about the things most precious to us. We have to act to gain them in real life.”
David winked at Nicole. She smiled at him in return.
Epilogue
Should a Man Receive Flowers from a Woman?
Wearing the feather boa given to her by Hope, Pandora seized Zeus’s torch and burned the ropes binding Prometheus. The valiant couple, armed with fire and hope, fought the woes that Zeus had unleashed on mankind through Pandora’s box. To the orchestra’s climactic notes of victory, Pandora and Prometheus chased all of Zeus’s Plagues back into the evil box and saved the human race.
