The Good Doctor

by Paul Butler

  But confusion stirs within the gratitude. While the young doctor’s advances are a burden from which she would like to be free, an undeniable intimacy lurked in his pleas. He opened himself up to her. It would be quite wrong for her to turn the exposed carcass of his soul to the eyes of another. So a confidence lies between them. And this confidence must shut Willy out.

  She smiles and draws near to Willy.

  “Something’s wrong,” he says, his tone midway between observation and question. She slips her arm through his.

  “Let’s walk for a while.”

  The sky is turning indigo, but a few respectable people mill around them, even a couple of white-frocked children with skipping ropes. Within the environs of the mews, she reasons, they are still half an hour from censure.

  “You should tell me, you know,” he says as their footsteps echo around the low brick canyons of the mews walls. “I am a doctor, or soon will be.”

  She laughs, but it’s a strained laugh. With the gathering darkness, the enforced secrecy seems sinister. In the household of Florence’s father, secrecy was tantamount to lying. Today she crossed a border against her will. Now she needs to return. “If I tell you,” she begins, and then realizes she’s already committed herself, “it is to unburden myself alone. I require no action from you at all. Promise me.”

  “You make it sound rather serious.” His voice is sober and thoughtful.

  “It is, Willy, but not for me.”

  “Tell me.”

  Later she will tell herself what she should have noticed: no promise has been exchanged. At the time, however, something in his voice seems to imply he’s ready to receive a confidence. She reaches into her purse, picks out the letter, and hands it to him. They slow to a standstill as he reads and reads again. Needing the distraction of the walk, she pulls him a step or two forward. He comes willingly enough. “It’s not your note, Willy. He wrote it pretending to be you.”

  “Who?”

  She tells him.

  “You met?” his face is bewildered, and almost amused.

  “Just now at Dr. Johnson’s house,” she says. Disclosing the next part of the story worries her most, but clearly it requires explanation. “He followed us, all last night, apparently.”

  Any trace of humour drains from Willy’s face. “Scoundrel!” he says and snaps the paper down to his side. He folds it in both hands once, twice, three times, sliding his thumb and forefinger along each new edge as though checking the blade of a knife.

  “He thinks he’s in love or some such nonsense,” she says, hoping this might soften him a little. He scans the brick and stone around them as if searching out an enemy. Finally, he slides the offending missive into the outside pocket of his jacket.

  “Willy!”

  He halts and looks down at her.

  “Give it back.”

  He frowns. “Why?”

  “It isn’t yours.”

  He shakes his head as though such a notion is beyond comprehending.

  “I have to deal with this,” he says.

  “Give it back.” Peeling her body from him, she holds out her hand.

  “What would you do with it?”

  His anger turns once more to amusement, an expression a father might turn upon a fanciful child.

  “Destroy it,” she decides.

  He folds his arms over his chest and taps a foot against the paving. “That’s not how it works, Florence. It’s evidence.”

  “Evidence?”

  “We have to prove our young friend is unfit to practise. Dr. Bleaker and I couldn’t possibly have such a fellow treating patients, mingling with staff, for your sake and everyone else’s, too.”

  “That’s my problem, Willy. You promised me you would take no action.”

  “How could I promise such a thing? There are oaths and ethics in medicine. The good of the patients and the good of the medical fraternity come before everything.”

  Willy stands close enough for her to make a grab. Later, she will wonder how he would have reacted had she done so; a gentleman could hardly fight off a woman, but one never thinks of this at the time. History, she will decide, must be littered with battles lost that might have been won had her sex only had the courage to exploit the few advantages it possessed. And this night people are around them, too, an old lady—a newly retired sister—returning to her lodgings, a charwoman with a tin bucket and brush working away at a doorstep of a ground-floor entrance. But she merely stands holding out her hand, knowing moment by moment the power is slipping from her.

  “It’s not yours to use,” she says. “Give it back to me.” But her arm is beginning to ache, her stare faltering.

  “It can’t be done, Florence. I’m sorry.”

  Pompous little fool. The phrase flits through her thoughts like a passing shadow. It disturbs her, the unkindness, so unlike anything she has thought about him before, so similar to the criticisms levelled at Willy by the young doctor on the day he turned up under the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Has she been absorbing, through some mysterious process, some portions of the young doctor’s philosophy?

  She doesn’t want to think of Willy as pompous. Willy and she seemed to fit together with the precision and ease of two adjacent pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Both their fathers were ministers. They approached medicine with the same energy, the same goals. And there was so much else besides. She wants back to that feeling. With brothers of her own, she understands young men, and is happy to circle around his vanity, searching the entry point. “I know you’re trying to protect me, Willy, and I appreciate it.” She lets her hand fall at last, and forces helplessness into her tone. “I want your help, otherwise I wouldn’t have told you about it. But I’d like to think the note over before I make any decisions.”

  “Florence,” he says earnestly, drawing closer and taking her hand, “you just trust me. Please.” His ardour makes things more difficult still; how does one challenge a man while he is exercising his right of stewardship? Her struggle must be obvious in the restless movements of her hand in his; he holds even tighter and his gaze scatters lovingly over her face. “Like the sweet, decent person you are, you fear the conflict that may arise when I put the letter to the use as I must. I understand. But this is about duty to my chosen profession.”

  She pulls her hand free at last, half regretting the action as she does so.

  “What about duty to me?” she says.

  His face turns pink. “Florence!”

  “I showed you something and asked for your trust.”

  “Don’t be childish,” he snorts. “I’m doing this for you.”

  “Without my permission or consent.”

  The charwoman looks up as she slops the last of her water over the step. The retired sister gives them a curious glance before disappearing through the opposite doorway.

  “Keep your voice down,” Willy hisses. Anger and boyish confusion does battle in his face now. “If this rogue means as little to you as you claim,” he whispers, “you will let me deal with the matter.”

  It’s as if an invisible hand has just swiped her across the face. Small, burning tears spring into her eyes and her breath deserts. She turns—hands cupped over her mouth—and runs through the cool air around the corner, passes the skipping children, and scoops into her own lodging’s entrance. He hasn’t followed, but she has heard a feeble and rather bewildered “no” moments after she took flight.

  ***

  Florence is equipped neither by temperament nor experience to hide her feelings. Jennifer Armstrong, the nurse with whom she lodges, and Jennifer’s aunt, Miss Armstrong, a Chelsea Infirmary matron, see Florence’s distress easily enough. That evening they absorb her story with the gentle but cavalier empathy expected from veterans of the battlefield. It’s just another job for suture and band
age, another young nurse disillusioned by the fickleness of a dashing young doctor.

  “My dear,” Miss Armstrong says over hot chocolate, “they don’t look to nurses for romance and marriage. We know too much.” She exchanges a glance with her niece and they both smile sadly in the flickering firelight. Jennifer is a year or two older than Florence. There was talk of a doctor in her past, but he had since married an heiress and set up practice in Harley Street. “They want to be the key-holders to the great mysteries of life and death, and they want to hold the knowledge alone. How else are their wives to look up to them with the godlike devotion for which they yearn?”

  “But the distrust, Miss Armstrong, this is what hurts, his suggestion that I wanted someone else to vie for my affections.”

  Aunt and niece exchange another smile, indulgent but rueful, like the smiles of parents who see the pristine innocence of their own child, and feel the sudden weight of a thousand harsh disappointments to come.

  “The vocation we have chosen,” Miss Armstrong whispers as though passing on a secret, “is one that magnifies every experience. It isn’t life or death that concerns us; it’s ulcers, infections, and a comfortable bed. We soothe and relieve one abrasion at a time. Within each separate gasp, each fever peak, there lays one soul enlarged. This is our world.” She takes a sip of cocoa, feels the steam against her face, and smiles. “The doctor sees a carpet of suffering. He views it from high above and through the pages of his textbook. Your young man’s suspicions are not even the worst of it, my dear. They spring from the desire to have and control everything that comes within his circle. Every ruffle and opposition is intolerable. Forget his suspicions. It’s the power of his wants that should give you pause. It’s his wants that will turn those who love him to dust swirling around his feet. You have had a lucky escape.”

  Despite the softness of Miss Armstrong’s voice, and the concern in her face, there dwells in her words the harshest iron.

  — Chapter Nine —

  Florence dreads the morning like none before. Through the long, dark hours she listens to the distant clopping of hooves, the occasional light shower pattering on the windowpane, and, later, the soft breezes rustling the trees in the mews. A hundred plans hatch one after the other, but feebly, like chicks born before their time, messy, confused, too delicate to stand.

  One idea recurs more often than the others. She imagines herself hiding outside the clinic, waiting to intercept the young doctor as he arrives. She could then give him early warning that Willy is in possession of his note. At least this would be some kind of action.

  But each time her brain spins through the details, the difficulties multiply. The young doctor is almost always the last to arrive. Willy will likely have been with Dr. Bleaker long enough by then to have passed the note and explained its significance. The small, plain courtyard outside the clinic entrance provides no hiding place of any kind, not even a tree, yet is too enclosed to afford a view from beyond its environs. Ambush would be impossible. And even if she could warn the young doctor, what difference would it make? Willy still has the note. He could still pass it to Dr. Bleaker any time he wishes and end the young man’s career.

  Other options twitch through her imagination. She might try to find out where the doctor lives and meet him as he sets out. But again, Willy still has the note. She thinks of appealing one more time to him. She even dares to hope he has had a change of mind; she wanders turn by turn down the winding lane he would have to follow to arrive at the conclusion he should be merciful. It just isn’t in him, she decides. Solidity is his virtue. Solidity means no change.

  A thrill of love went through her when he challenged the sailor in the clinic on Saturday last. But it wasn’t the strength of the action that moved her so much as his courage and vulnerability, the growing fluster in his voice and the way his face turned pink when the older man sidestepped his arguments so effortlessly. She loved him because he lost. The trouble with courage and determination is that ultimately they turn defeat into victory. Without the fluster, without the blushing face, Willy will lose all his allure. He will be just another doctor anchored in certainty, too aware of his own worth. She loved the boy but will not love the man.

  Her eyes are too tired to notice the dawn as it floods around her. Dimly, she blinks once, twice, aware at last that black became milky yellow some time ago. She feels humbled suddenly by the fact that a night of a thousand tortured thoughts has yielded nothing of value. One mistake looms larger than ever. She let Willy take the note. This was an error she can never reverse.

  ***

  Florence arrives at the clinic early, her movements brisk and nervy as she stows her bag and dresses for work. It’s a vain hope, but she tells herself that being on the spot might somehow provide vital thinking time and thus a solution hitherto overlooked. Willy trots in soon after, his back straighter and more proud than usual, his walk odd and angular. She guesses he’s angry, or frightened, or perhaps both. A certain haughtiness when he first addresses her—“Good morning, Nurse,” no eye contact—reinforces the impression. But the familiar dance of work, the bandages, syringes, disinfectant are soothing, like the rhythm of a journey that seems to ward off any thought of destination. When he raises the stethoscope to a patient’s chest, Florence catches a definite wince and a tremor of the hand. Whether by learned instinct or pure accident, she takes a closer look and glimpses the yellowy-red discoloration of deep bruising on the inside of his right wrist. Right away she knows. He’s been in a fight.

  The young doctor clatters in.

  “Late again, young sir,” says Dr. Bleaker.

  “Sorry, Doctor,” comes the husky reply. Florence feels the young doctor’s gaze on her. She steps a few inches from Willy, whose eyes begin to blink rapidly.

  “Help me with these, then,” says Dr. Bleaker.

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  Willy dismisses the patient—a very pale, frightened woman in her fifties with anemia and probably worse—and turns slowly, stethoscope now around his neck. “Dr. Bleaker, may I have a quick word in private?”

  “Is it urgent?”

  “Yes, Doctor, it is.”

  Dr. Bleaker scrapes his stool back and wipes his hands. His eyes peek out curiously over his spectacles. The young doctor stands by his side, a test tube in each hand, his shoulders sloping. Florence’s heart pounds. The lulling journey is over; she can hear the screeching of the rails.

  “Well then, Grenfell, follow me to the office. Wait until I return, Nurse, before you call the next patient.”

  Dr. Bleaker strides toward the alcove that hides his tiny and mysterious office space. Willy follows, wiping his hands on his lab coat and clearing his throat. The door closes behind them. The surgery becomes unnaturally silent. The young doctor and Florence stare at each other. Above his lab coat collar, red marks stand out against the pale, shaven skin. His hand rises to his neck as though to cover the blemishes. The action gives her an opportunity. She shakes her head and steps forward.

  “You know what’s happening, don’t you?” she whispers.

  His eyes widen in some surprise—she realizes this is the friendliest she’s ever been to him. Then he takes in the significance of the warning. His gaze shoots to the door.

  “He knows about the forged note,” she says. Her face burns with a shame she knows to be unjustified. “He has it. I’m sorry.” His eyes, still fixed to the door, become glassy. “I couldn’t stop him.”

  “I’ll be dismissed,” he whispers. “I’m finished.”

  “No,” she says with warmth that takes her unawares. She has no idea why she sounds so optimistic, so defiant. “We’ll think of something.”

  He stares at her, fresh astonishment on his face. She feels as though a chink in a great impenetrable rock has opened up to her, providing a view of a whole other world of which she has been given no prior knowledge. He expe
cted nothing, this man who followed her like a hunter stalking a deer, this creature who wove elaborate forgeries through the night. He anticipated no empathy and no success, and when the object of his attentions gives him even the hint of understanding, he is amazed. What a curious feature in a man to expect so little! What a contrast to Willy, who so effortlessly presumes that respect, affection, and even obedience are his due.

  Soft murmurs come from beyond the office door, and she knows they have very little time to form a plan.

  “What happened last night?” she asks. “Did you fight?” If so, a new reasoning begins to form: if they fought, any words against him might come under the pall of suspicion. A man of honour cannot defame a colleague with whom he has already fought on a matter unrelated. She knows this much about the code between gentlemen.

  “He followed me. We struggled.” His hand moves toward his lab coat pocket. There is a crinkling sound and he retrieves a crumpled note. “He was making notes at the revival meeting. I was going to show you. I wanted to persuade you he was fickle. But it’s too late now.”

  Her fingers take the note before he has a chance to pass it to her. She will later wonder why men are considered creatures of action, when in reality it is women who perform in a crisis. The rougher sex merely freezes in terror. Her eyes scan the neat handwriting and prissy, overconfident underlining she recognizes as Willy’s. Under the heading “Memoranda—Moody’s Method—Aspects to Reuse” is a baffling series of instructions. She reads it once and then a second time, trying to get some sense from it. The tone seems almost sacrilegious in its desire to mimic a new religious movement, and there is coldness at the heart of its ambition, too. She sensed this chill once before but had buried it quickly. He had been anxious to keep him as she believed him to be: honest, upright, and fearless.