by Liam Durcan
From the kitchen, they listened as the argument between Hernan and Aguirre continued. Celia whispered to Patrick that the delivery man who brought plantains to Le Dépanneur Mondial had told her father that there had been a dispute over whether the cost of food was included in the contract that Aguirre had negotiated, and while this was being settled, the workers were caught between jurisdictions, and, without anyone to represent them, they were going hungry. The church was organizing a food drive, Celia said, but Hernan said it was crazy to rely on the church, a case of canned chickpeas or cling peaches that would arrive in September. Hernan said they needed something fresh, now. Celia was worried because this was an unannounced visit to bring provisions–and clearly Aguirre wasn’t pleased. Hernan suddenly came into the kitchen to find the two of them finished their work and listening to his conversation. He told Celia to take Patrick out back while he finished speaking with Señor Aguirre, and as they left, Patrick heard Hernan close and lock the dock behind them.
The morning, which had been uncomfortably hot, now seemed a faint, fresh memory. Heat lines swayed like a distant crop over the asphalt of the parking lot. It had been a dry summer, a fact a person could forget in the city. Here, the world was divided into places with water and places without. The grass around the compound grew in sparse yellow tufts and the ground was hard packed and lined by thin fissures. Fields of green corduroy stretched out into a vast, distant country, unimaginably fertile, veined by irrigation pipes, worked by another nation. At the edge of the parking lot, faced by a wall of cornstalks, Celia took off her shoes, putting her bare feet into the lush grass that rimmed the cornfield. Patrick tried not to look at them.
“It’s nice out here,” he said, turning to find her staring intently at a leaf that she held in her hand, pulling it apart along the parallel yellow-ridged veins, slowly, as if she was unzipping the plant. Then she gave a surprisingly forceful tug that shook the stalk and shuddered loose an ear of corn.
“It’s okay,” Celia García replied, starting on another leaf.
He wished he could remember that their conversation was deep and witty and soulful, that he told her everything about himself, how he thought she was beautiful and that he loved her, but none of that happened. He pretended to be as bored as she obviously was. They just stood there and talked about nothing and slowly destroyed a cornstalk or two.
Hernan had told them to be back at the dormitory by noon, the time when the buses that picked up the field crews were due to return. Patrick and Celia went back to the dormitory to find sixty or so men milling around the entrance to the building waiting for the front door to be unlocked. A couple of the men stepped out of the crowd to look more closely through one of the dormitory’s front windows. Another knocked on the door, to no reply. Finally, Aguirre unlocked the door and came out with a folding chair held flat under his arm. He put the chair down, opened it, and took a step up onto the seat. Patrick and Celia stood among the workers, watching Aguirre, his head barely above the crowd, balancing on the chair. He addressed the crowd, speaking slowly, solemnly, and even in Spanish Patrick could understand that this was an oration of sorts, he was making an appeal to the crowd. Patrick asked Celia what Aguirre was saying.
“Trying to save his ass.”
At one point, the crowd emitted a collective groan, and as the workers turned to each other even Patrick could pick up on a sense of grievance only partially redressed. Aguirre lifted his hand to silence the crowd and the gesture succeeded. He was working hard and it was paying off, he was beginning to earn scattered clusters of applause. Apparently heartened by this, Aguirre’s voice rose in pitch and he became more animated as he finished his speech. Then he got off the chair to lead everyone in for lunch and everybody clapped.
The men sat down to eat in the dining hall of the dormitory building, an area partitioned from the sleeping quarters. They started eating with what seemed to Patrick was less a sense of pleasure than relief. For ten minutes the building was voiceless. Patrick sat on a bench with Hernan and Celia, and from their end of the table he watched the rows of men eating, shoulder to shoulder, heads bobbing as food was scooped up. Hernan could see Patrick observing the men, and leaned over to him to explain that the workers were chosen exclusively from the area around Mexico City–all married men with families who wired home their wages and caused no trouble. In a low voice, Hernan listed the indignities suffered by the workers: a wage that would insult a teenager, harsh bosses and ceaseless haggling about the details of the contract, plus not the rumour of a benefit even though they paid into unemployment insurance and pension plans and, still, if you asked them, Hernan said, they would reply to a man that this was good work and they felt lucky to be here. He offered no explanation about Aguirre, and Patrick was confused whether the man worked for the growers or the workers or himself. He thought about Hernan and Aguirre behind the locked door of the dormitory and wondered if the reason for the locked door had been some sort of confrontation between Aguirre and Hernan. Whatever the case, Hernan was not about to share the details with his daughter or his employee.
The workers finished eating and filed back onto the buses, which disappeared in their own dust storm. After the clatter of lunch, the main room was quiet again, empty except for a few men who remained, lying on cots in the dormitory building. Hernan looked over at them and then turned to Patrick. “Come,” he said.
With a nod to Aguirre, Hernan led Patrick to a room in the back of the dormitory. Aside from the kitchen and some showers and washrooms at the back of the building, this seemed to be the only truly private space. Hernan placed on the table the small black bag he’d been carrying. The leather was worn and the bag’s hinged opening was permanently splayed, wide enough for Patrick to see it held a tangle of medical instruments. Celia hesitated by the doorway, watching her father.
A migrant worker, a young man in work clothes with his arm in a sling, appeared and Hernan waved him in. Celia gave a snort of disgust and left without explanation. Hernan untied the knot of the rudimentary sling–made up of plaid material that looked like it came from the remnants of another work shirt–and spoke to the young man in Spanish, then summarized for Patrick.
“He dislocated it a week ago, but it seems to be doing fine,” Hernan said as he moved the man’s arm through its range of motion, pausing when his patient winced. Although Hernan hadn’t reacted to Celia’s departure, he must have sensed Patrick’s confusion: “They don’t have access to medical care. Usually, it’s included in the contract but this year there’s been a problem. I help out from time to time.”
“And the food too?”
“The food is usually more dependable.” Hernan frowned. “But they need the work, and so they have to take the risk.” Hernan put the man’s arm back in the sling, offered a professional parting smile, and sent him off with a pat on his good shoulder. “They’re lucky they have the dormitory.”
Patrick stayed for the next five patients, among them a sprained ankle, a bad back, and a chronic cough for which Hernan wore a mask and made Patrick wear one too. And while Hernan was describing what he was looking for as he examined each man, Patrick found it difficult to keep his eyes on the patients. He was really watching Hernan. Patrick studied him as he performed his tasks with care and confidence. Patrick saw how the patients responded to him, how even when he had done nothing more than listen to their chests or look in their throats, they felt better. His presence had meant something, it had been enough. In the back room of that dormitory, Patrick began to appreciate that this wasn’t just a job for Hernan. This was Hernan. He knew why Hernan missed medicine so much, how the work and the man were not two separate things but fed off each other, and as Hernan ushered the last patient out of the room, Patrick understood why Hernan had come out in the middle of a field to tend to these people, and why he’d chosen to bring Patrick along.
An hour passed before thoughts of Celia returned, and Patrick excused himself to go outside to look for her, finding her at one of t
he picnic tables behind the dormitory. She had brought along some watercolour paints and a tablet of paper and to Patrick looked to be engrossed in painting the cornfield in front of her, but as he approached she started speaking without looking up to see who it was.
“He’s not a doctor any more, you know. It’s wrong, what he’s doing.”
“He said they don’t have anyone else.”
“So that allows him to break the law?”
Patrick was dumbfounded. Legal or not, Hernan’s work was necessary, vital. Would she prefer a father who operated a crane at the port all day? That was legal. Would she prefer he sit and do nothing when there were people who needed him? How could she not see what type of man her father was? Patrick felt a burst of anger at how easily she passed judgment as she dabbed at her watercolour paints and turned her back on the dormitory. “There’s more to your father than just that grocery store,” Patrick said fiercely, and turned to go back in. Try to help maybe.
Inside, Hernan was examining the last patient. Instead of having the man come to the back room, Hernan leaned over the cot where he lay. He helped the man sit up and just this act seemed to provoke a breathless grimace. Patrick hadn’t had much experience with sick people, but this man’s pale, moon-like face made an impression. He had only ever seen lips that colour on someone who had been enjoying a grape Popsicle. Hernan asked the man to breathe and in response he took a few shallow, unpromising breaths. Hernan then laid him down and studied the side of his neck, where a vein appeared and grew in prominence until it looked like a worm nibbling at the man’s ear. Hernan placed the pad of his index finger firmly against one of the man’s swollen feet and lifted it to reveal an indentation. He then knelt down beside the man and showed him the stethoscope. The man nodded and mustered a smile through his panting breaths. Both of them glanced at Patrick, who had advanced enough to announce his interest in watching.
Under the man’s T-shirt Hernan held the head of the stethoscope and was inching his way toward the man’s throat, listening intently, softly naming or describing something with each stop, as though he were a train conductor and this was his line. “Mitral valve,” he said, and closed his eyes. “Aortic valve.” In this way Hernan catalogued the parts of another person’s heart, listening to it thumping away in the dark. “S3,” he said, and gave a soft “tsk.” The sick man stared up at the ceiling and Patrick wondered if he was thinking of his family.
And when Patrick looked back at Hernan for a clue to what was happening, he was certain he saw a man caught in reverie, soothed as though he were listening to music or the singing voice of one of his daughters.
Hernan thanked the sick man, packed up his gear in his little black bag, and stood up. Patrick followed him out of the dormitory and into the soul-crushing early afternoon heat. Celia had disappeared.
“What’s wrong with him?” Patrick asked, hurrying to keep up with Hernan’s long strides.
“Heart failure.”
“Did he have a heart attack?”
“Maybe, once. More likely an infection. Chagas disease.”
“But he’s going to be all right, right?”
“He’s going to die.”
“He’s going to die,” Patrick repeated. He had never heard these words said in real life. He imagined the news of someone dying would be accompanied by shouting and sirens and an effort whose urgency would justify the declaration. But Hernan just kept walking, his pace unwavering. More than any frantic response, Hernan’s behaviour heightened the panic swelling in Patrick. The heat pressed down on him and he felt weak. Hernan was searching for something in the car, the trunk open like a disbelieving mouth.
“Are they going to call an ambulance?”
“He’ll die on the way if he doesn’t die before they get here.”
“But we should call one anyway.”
“He doesn’t have insurance, and even if he did I don’t know if he’d want to go to hospital here. He’s dying. He has a bad heart and it’s been that way for years probably.” Hernan shook his head. “They don’t have to pass a physical. If they did, he wouldn’t have been allowed to come north.” Patrick remembered the competing desires of wanting to run, somewhere, and wanting to go to the toilet. “I’ll help him,” Hernan said, noticing Patrick’s alarm. “Don’t worry, I’ll help him. Stay here.”
With that, Hernan walked away from Patrick there in the parking lot, opened the door to the Quonset hut, and disappeared inside. Patrick hovered outside for another quarter-hour, hyperventilating in the heat. Waiting.
Years later, it was still unclear to Patrick why he’d returned to the dormitory, if it was curiosity or the need to prove to himself that he wasn’t afraid, but he went in through the back, so that Hernan would not see him. He crept through the kitchen, and from there he saw Hernan sitting on a stool pulled up to the sick man’s cot. Hernan was bent over slightly, supporting the man’s head. There was a movement of hands: Hernan’s reaching for something, the patient’s fluttering from his head to his chest in a way that Patrick recognized was the sign of the cross. Hernan appeared to be saying something to the sick man, but Patrick couldn’t hear any of it. He witnessed the agony dissolve from the man’s face. When Hernan let his head rest on the small vinyl pillow, Patrick understood that he was dead.
By the time Hernan had gathered his things and left through the front door, Patrick was already outside with Celia. Hernan said nothing except to call for them to get into the car. They were going home.
They stopped at a bar laitier just outside St. Remi where Hernan offered to buy ice cream. There was no space on the terrace so they sat inside the little canteen and ate their ice creams in silence. Celia got up to use the washroom, and in an effort not to speak to Hernan, Patrick peered around the room: a little theme park of wood panelling and Arborite furniture. In the corner, a large sunburned man enthusiastically humped and slapped a misbehaving pinball machine.
Celia came back from the washroom and the sunburned guy gave up on the pinball machine. By dinner they were back in Montreal. Patrick felt stunned by the day’s sun exposure and everything else he had seen and stumbled home without a word to Celia or Hernan.
This was memory. But what was memory? Over a hundred years ago Ebbinghaus showed that details degrade within seconds. Studies showed that eyewitness testimony–including that of a sixteen-year-old boy (or even that of the Hondurans who were listened to with reverent awe at the tribunal)–was disturbingly unreliable.
He knew too well that the larger items, moments with emotional heft or novelty, were retained, burned into more permanent memories that then served as points around which a more dubious narrative was constructed. That was the moment when memory began to fail, where bias, suggestibility, and misattribution clouded the truth.
An example: he remembered Hernan listening to the sick man’s heart, looking up and saying “S3,” a term used to describe a heart sound present in patients with heart failure. Looking back, Patrick was fairly certain there was no way he could have remembered Hernan saying that. People just don’t recall arbitrary terms that they have never heard of. Patrick would have had no idea what an S3 was until medical school–five years after that moment in the dormitory. More plausibly, he reasoned, the memory had been recreated and rehearsed with the knowledge he acquired later to make sense of the situation, creating something compelling: a man lay dying, Hernan attended to his failing heart, diagnosed him properly, and served him humanely. Yes, Patrick had decided, watching all of this, he would be a doctor too.
Patrick was certain he remembered some other things that were real. The big guy and the pinball machine. The heat and the odd claustrophobia of being outside but surrounded by fields. He remembered Celia.
All the other details had been arranged and recounted in his mind so many times that they seemed part of a story he’d always known, its truth implied. But in the last seven years, from the moment Patrick met Elyse, he’d been forced to revise that history, focusing on one moment, a momen
t that he now worried Anders Lindbergh suspected and needed to know more about. What had Hernan carried from the trunk of the car to the bedside of the dying man? Patrick remembered something being cupped in Hernan’s hand as he walked by. For the longest time, this object was unimportant. Patrick assumed it could have been any of a hundred objects a doctor could be expected to carry during a day of work. A bundled tourniquet. Some gauze. A bottle of Tylenol or aspirin, anything. But Patrick hadn’t seen the object clearly, not seen enough that he could say for certain what it was. Or wasn’t. And so the memory was revised and the object altered. Had it been a vial of potassium chloride, a single shot to stun and stop the heart? Could he have seen an ampoule of morphine in Hernan’s hand? Or was it something else, similarly effective? He once wished he had the answer, but now he knew better than that.
The scene that followed made perfect sense. Hernan, seeing a man gasping for breath, a man for whom he could do nothing, chose to relieve his suffering. The morphine, if it was morphine, depressed the respiratory centres in the brain stem that controlled breathing, easing the air hunger. It was used in the care of the dying, and in the medical profession’s nervousness about euthanasia, the dose was carefully calculated to ease pain without obviously hastening death. But in the dormitory in the middle of a field, with his patient panting through dusky lips, what calculations had Hernan made? Had he made the decision, not to let the thought of death limit the relief he would provide? Minutes after Hernan went to the bedside, the man had died. Patrick remembered Hernan holding the man’s head, the way he had since seen a father hold his son’s head, whispering encouragement during a swimming lesson as the child floated on his back, kicking at the water. What did Hernan say? Did Hernan tell him he was about to die?
Anders Lindbergh lacked the air of solemn vindication Patrick imagined for a chief counsel for the prosecution who was winning his case. Lindbergh looked tired. Or bored. Maybe the drama of the case, if there was ever any, was done. Without drama, Patrick imagined the job became one that involved a series of formalities. Get the witnesses to Den Haag, record the data, and have the justices pronounce. Any interesting job could be reduced to a series of bureaucratic functions, and Lindbergh appeared to be a man content with being a well-referenced concierge of justice.