The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  Alex came roaring into the kitchen and gave her a big hug. His brown eyes darted around the room, touching on each flat surface in a search for available food. “What’s for supper?” he said.

  “That,” she said, pointing at the chicken. “It’ll be another hour and a half before it’s ready, though. Just enough time for you to finish that math you started yesterday. But you look like you want something to eat.” She turned and picked up a plate of sliced apples on the counter behind her and offered it to him and Sarah.

  He beamed as he grabbed a few slices. “Thanks, Mom!” He turned to his playmate. “Come on, Sarah, math!”

  Sarah squealed in delight and ran after him. Some things about this new world, Janie mused, were all right.

  When they were gone, Janie did what she could with the bird—a descendant of the scrawny bloodline that had proved resistant to avian flu. A few crumbled twigs of dried oregano would improve the flavor, if not the texture. No one would care that it was chewy. It was good food, and they were lucky to have it.

  Janie washed and dried her hands, then headed toward the lab Tom had set up before they closed the outer gate on what was left of the world. It was small and crowded with equipment, most of which had been state-of-the-art when they first came eight years before. For all they knew in their isolation, it was still just as up-to-date; the world probably hadn’t seen much science in the time since DR SAM’s most recent iteration. In one corner, there were three climate-controlled cases—more like terrariums—in which dwelled, respectively, a coffee tree, a lemon tree, and a cacao tree. All were healthy and apparently thriving in their perfect little atmospheres, created by small but precious bits of electricity. The northern sun was simply not strong enough at this time of year to warm the air inside the cases.

  “Bloom, dammit,” she said under her breath as she inspected the trees from beyond the glass. “You have everything you need; now do your thing.”

  She thought about her last lemon, acquired the day before they came here. She’d scored the skin with her own teeth and rubbed the fruit on her face and hands so she could remember the smell. A memory of another lemon, one she’d been given in London, snuck in; she shoved it away.

  The last time they’d ventured outside the confines of their compound, Tom and Michael—the compound’s two official explorers—had returned with a dozen or so of what they called, with dark affection, SAM-pulls, which were simply cotton swabs that had been swiped over, dipped into, or smeared with something that might yield a trace of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus mexicalis. In the beginning, nearly everything they brought back was contaminated in some measure with the voracious bacterium that had crashed the world. As time passed, the percentage of contamination had decreased; the last batch before this one was twenty-four percent.

  She had to stop and think about when that last batch was taken. Time ran differently after the plague; they kept a calendar, but no one paid much attention to it except for holidays, which they tried to observe so the habit would be intact if normalcy ever returned. Within each day, the hours moved according to how much daylight was left. The dark was no longer casually illuminated, so daylight was precious. The vernal equinox was just around the corner, and everyone in the compound seemed to be relaxing a bit as more light time became available each day.

  Janie leafed backward through the stained and ragged pages of her notebook—her own equivalent of Alejandro’s journal. Following his medieval example, she’d kept it faithfully all these eight years. She ran her finger down a page from the previous year. April 24 was the date of the last group—almost a year—and she sighed with dismay on seeing that there had been an eleven-month gap in their journeys outside.

  Their life was, sadly, like a medieval siege. They were the hunkered-down keepers of the castle with foes camped openly at the base of the wall, waiting for some indication of weakness or vulnerability, knowing that eventually the food and water would run out. Their foes were not soldiers but something much smaller and far more deadly—vicious, fast-growing bacteria that had proved resistant to every pot of boiling oil they’d thrown over the wall. She thought about Alejandro’s journal and what he’d written of his time in Windsor, how he had recorded his observations of his confined world when there was little else to do. Only once during that time—at least that he’d written about—had he left the safe haven of Windsor Castle, in a desperate mission of mercy to soothe the tortured conscience of the king who’d commanded it. The journey had not turned out well, as such journeys had a habit of doing.

  She put on a mask and pulled on a pair of vinyl gloves, hoping that the last use had not been the straw that broke the camel’s back. There was no telling how many more uses she would get out of them. When they were gone, there was little she would be able to do to protect herself beyond washing her hands when the work was done. Tom had supplied the lab well; there had been dozens of boxes of gloves when they first came there. But who knew their hibernation would last eight years, with no end in sight?

  She pulled the sixteen samples out of their toothbrush cases one at a time and poked the stick end of each swab into a lump of modeling clay so the cotton tips couldn’t touch each other or anything else. As she did this, she wrote in her notebook the location where each sample had been found, which Tom and Michael had recorded as they gathered them from what remained of the surrounding towns. The numbered toothbrush cases would be sterilized in boiling water before they were used again, and the swabs themselves burned to powdery ash—two time-tested methods of bacterial eradication, just as cheap and effective as in Alejandro’s time, though few beyond himself and de Chauliac seemed to practice those methods, according to the notations in the journal. If her expectations were correct, three or fewer would show signs of infestation, and what bacteria presented itself would likely—though not certainly—be weak and shriveled. One by one, she streaked the cotton surfaces on glass slides, each of which would go under the microscope in turn.

  A sense of anticipation came to her as she did this task that she loved so much; it reminded her of the work of her previous life. Not that she didn’t get plenty of work in their compound; she’d done several surgeries, including one emergency hysterectomy—a bloody mess that pushed the limits of her tools and equipment. More than once during the procedure, Caroline had had to hold their copy of Gray’s Anatomy open in front of Janie’s eyes so she could look at some detail of a woman’s internal parts. It was some help, but not much, because when she opened Lorraine’s abdomen, she found a heartbreaking crop of tumors. There were blood smears on the pages now, a reminder, each time she looked in the book, of the draining day that had tested her skills so dramatically. She thanked God that day that she’d had the foresight to bring in enough anesthesia to last.

  “Rest in peace,” she said quietly. She missed her departed friend.

  The focus on the microscope was manual—automation took too much electricity—so she turned the ridged dial slowly until the slide came into focus. She peered into the eyepiece, expecting to see the business-as-usual assortment of odd dead cells, until something moved in one corner of her view.

  Her first thought was that she’d seen one of her own eye floaters; they’d been more frequent of late, which was a minor cause of concern. She moved the view on the slide until what had been in the corner was centered. “Okay,” she said under her mask, “let’s see you do that again.”

  It obliged with a heave of its sides.

  She increased the magnification.

  “All right, I guess you’re alive, so let’s see who you are.” A guilty sense of excitement slipped into her psyche; she was a scientist, and it was her nature to dig into things of interest, regardless of how vile and deadly they might be.

  In focus on the slide in front of her was a living bacterium, one that looked familiar.

  “But you’re not DR SAM,” she whispered. She watched with fascination as it went through the stages of mitosis and emerged as two separate beings.
/>
  It was something new. And on the very first slide, she thought with surprise as she pulled it out of the clip and set it aside. What are the odds of that? She wrote a small history of that slide in her notebook before putting the next one in place. The next two slides proved predictably boring and unremarkable.

  But the three after that were all contaminated with the same microbe.

  With a heightened sense of urgency, she worked through the remaining samples. And when she was finally finished, she went through the entire process again, just to be certain that her findings of a contamination rate of nearly seventy percent were correct.

  She covered the sample tray with a glass bell and removed her protective gear. She scrubbed her hands at the lab sink until they were red and shook them dry. Before returning to the kitchen, she looked in on Alex and Sarah just long enough to realize, for the thousandth time, how the sight of them could make her ache with love. They were working innocently on slates, talking quietly to each other, and never saw her.

  She took a quick peek at the chicken, which was just beginning to brown in the woodstove and filling the lodge with a wonderful aroma. At the back door she put on her boots, then headed out, buttoning her coat on the fly. As she trotted through the courtyard, she passed Terry, who was stacking wood, laying it carefully in neat rows so the logs would dry. She waved; he waved back.

  “Where’s Elaine?” Janie said.

  “Grinding flour.”

  A Stanford Ph.D. in economics was grinding flour. Go figure, Janie thought, finding the irony sublime, because no one understood the value of her own physical labor better than Elaine.

  “Tell her dinner will be in about an hour, if you see her.”

  “Will do.”

  Tom would be at the power plant, checking to see that everything was all right; it was his daily routine to tuck the camp safely into darkness. As she crunched down the path through the snow, Janie saw the beginnings of a sunset through the mist of her own breath. It was pink and dreamy, almost apocalyptic in its stark loveliness.

  On any other day, Janie would have stopped at the vista point for a moment to take it in. She had come, after the plague, to understand the sweetness of each moment of unexpected beauty—for they were outnumbered by moments of hardship and cruelty in this new world. But today she kept moving, because the information she had to deliver seemed urgent.

  The door to the power plant was ajar; she looked inside, but Tom was not there. There were fresh footprints in the snow outside the building; she followed them and found her husband removing snow from one of the connections that led to the windmill. He was hatless, despite the cold—a condition not ameliorated by his thinning hair. He’d grown leaner and stronger over time, from the physical requirements of survival. He often quipped that law school hadn’t prepared him for this phase of his life, but he was unfailingly good-natured about their circumstances.

  His smile was as youthful as ever. As he crunched through the snow, he said, “My beautiful wife. How nice.”

  Janie did not melt into his embrace as she usually did. She hugged him quickly, then let go. Tom pulled back when he felt the tension in her body.

  “What is it?” he said. “Is someone sick?”

  “No,” she answered with a quick shake of her head. She shivered as a chill went through her, and he pulled her closer.

  “No,” she repeated. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “At least not yet.”

  Three

  The papal palace looked much the same as it had the last time Alejandro had seen it, some seven years earlier. At that time, the infant Guillaume had been strapped to his chest, rather than sharing the saddle. Their traveling companion on that flight from Paris was a small white goat, who had obliged them with a steady supply of milk. The physician had been dirty and ragged from his journey, and, dressed as he was in common clothing, he was hardly worth notice.

  He had stopped in this very square to ask a question of a passerby.

  Where do the Jews live?

  Rue des Juifs, naturellement, was the stranger’s reply. There, he was reunited with his aged father, and for seven years had lived with him and Guillaume in the ghetto, never once venturing outside the borders—which, though invisible, were as distinct as those of any fortress.

  Perhaps de Chauliac was wise to send his messenger in the dark hours, he thought.

  I will open the door for you, the young soldier had said. He’d given Alejandro detailed directions on where to wait, in a secluded spot at the rear of the palace—a wood door to the right of the stables, with a red pull for the bell. They waited there now, still astride the horse. Guillaume’s small arms were around Alejandro’s waist, just as his mother’s arms had been when they first came out of England, before she grew into a fine young woman.

  In the bitter plague winter after her husband’s death, when there was little to keep them sane but the telling of tales, Kate had told him of the remark the young page Chaucer had made when he first saw her in Paris.

  Why, you might be a twin to my lord Lionel.

  “Grand-père,” the boy whispered.

  Alejandro snapped back to the present. “Yes, Guillaume?”

  “Are we where we are going?”

  Where were they going? He could not yet say.

  “For the moment.”

  “Then why are we still upon the horse?”

  Alejandro pondered the appropriate reply. He did not wish to frighten the boy; neither did he wish to dismiss the danger of their situation. Finally he settled on a response. “We may need to continue on,” he said. “We will know shortly.”

  “Ah,” the boy said. He seemed satisfied with the answer and rested his head against Alejandro’s back. “I am very tired, Grand-père. When can we sleep?”

  “As soon as it is advisable. Very soon, I hope.”

  Guillaume leaned against Alejandro’s back. Alejandro felt the boy’s grip relax as he drifted into a semisleep. He kept very still as they waited in the dark, silent shadow of the palace. After a short while, he heard noise on the other side of the door, and within a few moments the door opened with a long, slow creak of the iron hinges. Alejandro could not see the face of the opener in the dim predawn light, so he put his hand on his dagger and stayed very still until, with great relief, he ascertained by the voice that it was the same young man who had escorted them from Rue des Juifs.

  He nudged the sleepy boy awake and handed him down to the soldier, who placed the boy on the ground with more tenderness than expected. He wondered if de Chauliac had told the soldier about the boy’s true identity, and thought not; such knowledge would only be imparted when there was a need to know, especially by one as cautious as de Chauliac.

  After Alejandro dismounted, the soldier took the reins of their horse. He gestured in the direction of the open door, saying, “Monsieur will come shortly. Wait inside, but do not wander from the door.”

  The physician hesitated, but the soldier gestured again for them to enter, as if to indicate that it would be safe. They stepped inside; as the door closed they heard the sound of the horse’s hooves on the paving stones as the animal was led away. The soft darkness enveloped them, and Alejandro could hear the beating of his own heart in counterpoint to the drip drip of water in the deep passageway. Guillaume clung in silence to the physician’s leg. Alejandro could feel the boy’s trembling and hugged him tight to his side. Seconds felt like hours with the senses so deprived, but finally they heard the faint sound of footsteps. A dim light came into view in the passageway; its approach kept pace with the footsteps. Soon the figure was close enough to see, but the light of the torch obscured the bearer’s features.

  What if the approaching figure was not de Chauliac? He pulled Guillaume even closer to him and gripped the handle of his dagger again.

  The figure stopped a few steps in front of them. He held the torch high, forcing Alejandro to shield his eyes with a raised hand. When whoever was there said nothing immediately, Alejandro p
ulled the dagger from its sheath. The sound of the blade scraping along the leather might have been thunder in the stillness that surrounded them.

  There was a soft laugh—one that Alejandro recognized instantly.

  “You will have no need of that weapon, colleague.”

  Alejandro could not see de Chauliac’s smile, but he sensed it just the same.

  “Still always ready for a confrontation,” the Frenchman said. “God bless your constancy. You might consider that you are not as young as you once were. But I must say, you are looking rather well for a man of your advanced age.”

  As his tension drained out of him, Alejandro said, “I would say the same to you, if only I could see your face. And might I remind you, esteemed colleague, your own age is quite a bit more advanced than my own. One wonders if you hide behind that torch for a reason.”

  When the flame was lowered, the light shone upon the same commanding figure he had last seen in Paris on the night of Guillaume’s birth. De Chauliac’s chiseled-looking face was more lined and his hair nearly all white now, but the sharp intelligence in his blue eyes had not lessened a bit.

  De Chauliac stepped forward and put a welcoming hand on Alejandro’s shoulder. “It is good to see you, Physician,” he said with unmistakable sincerity. “I have yearned so many times for your company when there were thoughts to be shared.” He reached down and touched the top of the boy’s head. “And you, young Master Guillaume, have become quite a fair boy.”

  The boy looked up at Alejandro as if to ask, Who is this man, who I do not know, who somehow knows me? Alejandro leaned down and said, “Monsieur de Chauliac has been a loyal friend to us and has helped me personally many times.”

  “I was present on the day of your birth,” the Frenchman said to the boy.

  Guillaume looked first at Alejandro in surprise, then at de Chauliac. “You know my mother?” he said eagerly.

  De Chauliac cast a quick glance at Alejandro. On his nod of approval, the Frenchman said, “I do, indeed. She is a good woman and her heart would burst with pride if she could see her fine son. But we will speak more of her later; now we must hasten to my quarters.”