The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  Now the time had come. She would leave the compound to go to Orange and Alex would stay behind. Tom was doing well, but the possibility of an infection in his stump was something they would have to live with forever. If something were to happen to her on the journey, Tom would have to tell Alex. And if for some reason he didn’t, and the worst came to pass…

  “Mom?” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “Are we done?”

  He’d recognized her distraction.

  “Yeah, for the moment.”

  He ran off to play.

  Tom was in the kitchen, removing the boot from his left foot after a walk around the courtyard, when she found him.

  “How’s it feeling?”

  He sighed. “The stump? Pretty good. But the leg you took off hurts like hell.”

  The leg you took off. She wished he wouldn’t say it that way. “Phantom pain,” she said. “A common aftereffect of an amputation. I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” he said. There was a bitterness in his voice. She understood that he probably thought it was a little bit her fault, but she forgave him. Forgiveness was becoming a daily exercise in their relationship for her, just as walking around the courtyard was for Tom.

  “Will you be okay while I’m in Orange?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “You’re doing really well, Tom. I admire the way you’re working at it.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  She didn’t answer that question. After a moment to gather her strength, she said, “I want to tell Alex before I go.”

  She didn’t have to explain what she wanted to tell the boy. She steeled herself for an argument as Tom mulled over her announcement. She was surprised when he said, “Okay. But you do it. I don’t think I can handle it right now.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. She came over to Tom’s chair and kissed him on the forehead. He didn’t react.

  Janie stepped back and looked at her husband. “Please,” she said after a moment, “don’t push me away. I’m your best friend, and you’re mine. We need each other.”

  Tom would not meet her eyes. “You need me like you need a hole in the head,” he said. “I’m perfectly useless.”

  “Only until you’re healed.”

  “Right. And then I’ll be half useless.”

  “Stop it.”

  Now he looked at her. “Stop what? Thinking about what a burden I’m going to be to you and the others for the rest of my life?”

  “Tom, don’t—”

  He stared hard at her. “I wish I’d had the chance to tell you the same thing.”

  She was confused. “I don’t understand what you mean….”

  “I wish I could have told you don’t before you took off my leg.”

  For a moment, Janie was speechless. “You would have died if I hadn’t taken it off.”

  “That should have been my choice.”

  “Oh, for the love of God…”

  “You should have left it all in God’s hands, where it belonged.” He gestured at his stump. “Look at me. I can’t walk, I can’t carry anything, I can’t even take a piss without making a mess because I can’t balance.”

  “And you’re blaming me for all this?”

  “I’m just saying, maybe my leg would have healed.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m the doctor here—”

  “And the Indian chief, the way you’re making decisions. I guess I’m just the lawyer.”

  She was so hurt she could barely speak. She lashed out in anger. “Yeah. And right about now, you’re acting like one. Arguing a ridiculous case, knowing full well that everything you’re putting forth is bullshit. But you’re putting it forth anyway, because it’s all you’ve got to justify the way you’re acting.”

  “It’s not bullshit. And you had my son help you do it. What was that all about?”

  “He’s my son too, and I didn’t have him help, I let him, because he asked to. And that was a good thing, because now he has a stake in your recovery. Just like I do.” She turned and stomped off to the door, but before leaving the room, she turned back. “You’re the only one now who doesn’t.”

  Janie dashed past everyone in the house and went outside to the barn. She stood between the two cows, one hand on each of their tall shoulders, and watched them chew their cud peacefully, hoping some of that peace would rub off on her tattered psyche. After a while, the smell of the straw and the warmth of the cows worked a kind of magic on her, and she was able to focus again on what lay before her. The most important thing she had to do before leaving for Orange—which was now looking like a vacation to paradise—was to speak with Alex.

  She found him a few minutes later playing his one permitted weekly game of Civilization on the computer, at a time when the children would ordinarily have been working on math. He gave her a curious look when she entered his room, and she realized that the vestige of hurt must still be on her face.

  She willed it away. “Where’s Kristina?”

  “I don’t know, but I think she’s probably with Evan.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “She likes him.”

  That matter-of-fact assessment brought Janie a much-needed bit of amusement. “You think so, huh?”

  “Yeah. Since he got here, she’s been with him whenever she can.”

  Janie sat down next to Alex. “You and Sarah are used to having her all to yourselves,” she said. “Does it bother you that Evan’s here?”

  Alex thought about it for a moment. “Not really.”

  “You’re sure? If you want, I could talk to her about it.”

  He tapped a couple of keys and answered absently, as if he were barely hearing what she had to say. “You don’t have to. It’s okay.”

  A face popped up on the game screen.

  Monitoring Alex’s computer games had been Tom’s responsibility. Until he was ready to take that on again, she would have to pay attention.

  “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “My military adviser.”

  Janie looked closer; the digital figure appeared to have stepped out of the Middle Ages. He wore a silver-colored close-fitting helmet, and said, in a British accent, “France is now cautious of you.”

  “Oh, great,” Alex said unhappily. “A few minutes ago they were polite.”

  “Does this adviser tell you every time there’s a change in attitude?”

  “Yeah. They can be gracious, polite, cautious, annoyed, or furious.” He clicked on the adviser’s image; the head shrank rapidly and disappeared.

  “What makes them change how they feel about you?”

  “I don’t know what it is each time. But it could be that one of my battleships met up with one of their submarines, so I wouldn’t see them, but they’d see me and get mad.”

  DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 3, she thought. None of us ever knew when it happened, but it did regularly in the time before. At least in this game, they give you a hint. “Do you have spies that tell you what’s happening?”

  “Yeah, if I pay them. It costs a lot of gold to have a spy.”

  No surprise there. “What kind of information do they get for you?”

  “Oh,” he said absently as he tapped the keys, “they tell me about how many soldiers they have, where they are, and what kinds of weapons the other guys have….”

  “Wow, that’s a lot to absorb.”

  “Lots of times I forget what they have and then I get in trouble. I wish I could write it down.” He glanced at his chalkboard longingly.

  “We’re leaving in a couple of days for Orange,” she said.

  Alex turned away from the screen and gave her his attention. “Can I go, please?”

  “No.”

  “But I won’t be able to have any doctor lessons.”

  “We’ll double up when I get back. And I’ll be checking on your progress by e-mail. I’m going to leave you some homework. And you’ll be very safe here with everyone until then.”

&nb
sp; “Will you be safe out there?” he asked. His voice seemed suddenly small. She saw the worried look on his face. A few scabs remained from his night of running through the forest, but they were healing well, and Janie doubted he would have any scars.

  At least none on the outside.

  She hugged his shoulders. “Yes, I will. This is a different kind of trip than the one you went on to get the cells. All roads, no forest. Much safer. We can make it in less than one day.”

  And now, she thought, I guess it’s time to let him know how special he is.

  She let go of him and said, “There’s something I want to talk to you about, something about you that’s really neat.”

  He perked up instantly. “What?”

  All the careful phrases she’d stored up for the occasion simply vanished. She’d come up with hundreds of psychologically correct euphemisms for clone in the seven years she’d had to think about it, but now, with the child in front of her, eager to learn and understand, she’d forgotten every one.

  She swallowed hard and said, “This isn’t the first time you’ve lived.”

  Alex saved his Civilization game and moved completely away from the computer. Janie welcomed him into her arms as he climbed, unbidden, onto her lap.

  “I lived before?”

  She took a deep breath and plunged feetfirst into the treacherous waters of truth. “Yes. You did. You were brought into this world by means of nuclear transference, which means that the nucleus from a cell in your first body—which carries all the genetic material that makes you who you are—was transferred into one of my egg cells. The nucleus was already removed from that egg cell. Then all of it was implanted in my body so I could be your mother, because I wanted to be.”

  For a moment, Alex remained silent as he considered the implications of this news. Janie bit her lower lip to keep quiet. Let him ask questions, she reminded herself. There were bound to be plenty of them.

  The first was startlingly simple and insightful. “How long ago, I mean, did I live, before?”

  “Almost seven hundred years ago.”

  He didn’t say cool or wow or really; he just let out a long whew before asking, “How old was I?”

  That one proved more difficult to answer. At what point in his life? Did he want to know how long he’d lived the first time around, or something less finite? She did not want to reveal the age or manner of the first iteration’s death to the second iteration. “Well,” she began, “of course you were a little boy for the normal time that people are little. And then you were a teenager, but I think in those days it meant something different to be a teenager than it does now. After that, you grew up to be a man. A very good man.”

  Somehow, the skewed reply satisfied him. “How was I good?”

  “In the same way you’re good now. You were kind and generous and brave and smart and…well, you were just very, very decent.”

  His face began to brighten, and Janie felt encouraged. She continued her explanation with some of her own fears resolved. “You were born sometime around 1325 in Spain,” she said, “in a little town called Cervere. Your name was Alejandro Canches.”

  “Alejandro Canches,” he whispered reverently. “Is that why you named me Alex?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who were my mother and father?”

  “Your father’s name was Avram. Your mother…” For a moment, Janie was stumped. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “You never—I mean, there was nothing about her in what I read.”

  Alex looked as if he were about to speak, then he abruptly stopped. “Where did you read about me?”

  Janie knew she couldn’t tell him the whole truth; he would want to read the journal. He was still too young to learn all the details of his previous life—his hardships and losses, the long separations from loved ones that he suffered, the terrible crimes he committed in order to preserve himself and the people he loved. She simply said, “In an old book. I thought you were a fascinating person. Someone I knew in the time before had a piece of your hair and a flake of your skin. She gave them to me and I used them to get the material I needed for the nuclear transference.”

  He brightened with excitement. “What did I do when I grew up?”

  “You were a physician.”

  He clapped his hands spontaneously. “Like I’m going to be again!”

  “Yes.” She was gladdened by his exuberance. “But medicine was different then than it is now. You went to medical school in France, in a city called Montpellier. You studied under some very famous teachers, one named de Chauliac. He was the physician to two popes, and he lived in Avignon, as you did for a while. He eventually became your best friend, like Sarah is now.”

  As you did, as you do, as you are, as you were… Phrasing was suddenly an immense challenge.

  But not to Alex; he was crystal clear on the matter of his own continuity.

  “Did I know the popes too?”

  “Not really, I don’t think.” She was about to say, You didn’t write anything about meeting with them directly, but contained it.

  Alex jumped off her lap and went straight to the computer. He brought up a mapping program and went to the section for Europe.

  “How do you spell Cervere?” he asked.

  Janie spelled it aloud, and Alex searched the program for that town.

  “Here it is!” he proclaimed enthusiastically. They looked at the map together for a few moments. “What was the other place?”

  “Avignon,” she said, after which she spelled it. She traced a path between the two places with the tip of her finger. “You made a journey along this route, from Cervere to Avignon.”

  “It’s in France,” he said.

  “Yes. You spoke French. But you also spoke a lot of other languages. In those days people had to do that because they traded with people in other countries.”

  “What languages did I speak?”

  “Latin, because that was the language people learned in—you spent a lot of your life learning. And Hebrew, because that was the language your parents spoke. You spoke English at a time when it was just becoming popular as a language. It’s different than it is now, but it’s the same language.”

  “Different, how?”

  “Well, languages change over time.”

  “Why?”

  Oh, God, why indeed? “Here, let me show you an example. Where’s the CD that has the classics of literature on it?”

  He stood on his chair and poked around on the shelf above the computer, eventually drawing out the requested disk. When it was up and running, Janie searched out The Canterbury Tales.

  “Here, take a look at this,” she said.

  With us ther was a doctour of phisik; In al this world ne was the noon hym lik, To speke of phisik and of surgerye…

  He struggled to read the unfamiliar words aloud.

  “That’s English, from Alejandro’s time. The writer is talking about a doctor.”

  He thought but did not say: Who tells a tale about a knight who kills his daughter rather than allow her to be married to a man who would destroy her spirit….

  “It doesn’t sound like English.”

  “It is. Languages grow over time. And you know what else? You knew the man who wrote these words. His name was Geoffrey Chaucer.”

  “No way!”

  “It’s true.”

  Alex disappeared into himself for a few moments, as if he were considering the ramifications of what his mother had just told him. When he spoke again, his tone was more somber. “Why don’t I remember anything about it?”

  This was a question she hadn’t considered.

  “I don’t really know, Alex. You’re still very young.” She thought about Kristina, who had no memories of her previous iteration at all.

  But her son didn’t seem unhappy with her vague answer. His face brightened. “Wow,” he said. “I lived before.”

  They’d watered the animals well before departing for Orange and expected they would
make the trip without having to stop, but the day was warm for spring, and when they passed close to a stream about two hours into the journey, Jellybean headed straight for it.

  “Let’s make a quick stop,” Janie suggested. “I could use a minute in the bushes, anyway.”

  James and Evan brought the horses to the edge of the water; Janie and Kristina went into the brush in separate directions.

  Janie found a secluded spot and looked around carefully. As she was undoing her button she thought, What an idiot you are, Crowe. Like anyone would be out here to see you pee. She dropped her drawers and assumed the position.

  A twig cracked as she did her business. The sound came from her left; the horses and the others were off to her right. She froze with her pants still down. Her spine began to tingle, but she remained motionless. After a minute, her thighs began to ache and she rose up.

  The zipper made too much noise; she’d just finished rebuttoning when there was another crack, closer, still to the left. She turned and faced in that direction. Crouching down—It’s harder to hit a small target, Michael had once told her—she peered through the brush. Slowly and carefully, she inched up her pants leg and grasped the knife, though her hand was trembling.

  She heard a hiss and hoped that the others had heard it, but knew they were probably out of earshot. Knife in hand, she stood, easing her way to vertical over the course of many seconds. Now turn, walk away slowly, escape….

  But it was too late. She was alone, separated from the herd for the inconsequential reason of modesty. The cougar made a throaty, almost monkey-sounding howl and bounded in her direction, with claws outstretched and teeth bared. The velocity with which the cat soared through the air astonished her as she watched, nearly frozen. Janie shrieked once in fear, then instinct took over. She thrust out her arm as far and as firmly as she could as the cat closed the last few feet between them. Her knife caught the leaping feline in the throat; it gurgled in wild pain, but its momentum was barely lessened. When the leaden weight of the animal landed on her chest, its claws ripped right through her jacket and shirt, tearing open the skin of her shoulder. She felt the pain and understood in some deeply primal place that she was wounded, though probably not badly. The weight of the cat dragged her arm down and the rest of her with it; as she tumbled to the ground, she turned her head just enough to see Evan and Kristina tearing through the woods in her direction. Evan had something in his hand, though she couldn’t see what. She heard a sharp, loud crack and saw the cat go totally limp.