Chapter 14.
Tommy had an excuse. He needed medical attention.
One door was always open in a small office on main street in Immaculate. The light switched on every night at dusk and glowed yellow in the windows until midnight or later, depending on how many patients approached the door quietly in the dark. They came from the rural routes, the trailer courts, and the boondocks, all those who could not pay. The doctor saw them all, however many there were on a given night. Weekday or weekend, he accepted no money from his night patients, no gifts from those without dollars, although many offered generously in barter. Even at Christmas, when the grateful returned with tokens of appreciation, he scolded them while tasting their cookies and holding their babies. The man seemed a scholar-saint to those that came, doing what he could to treat them with the modest means available to him in his three rooms. He saw insured patients during the daylight hours and the uninsured at night, all the while practicing out of compliance with certain laws and risking malpractice to continue his silent charity. Few above the poverty line even knew of his moonlighting. A handful of doctors in Tonnamowoc and surrounding towns, physicians who condoned his quiet practice, directed needy patients to and accepted referrals from Dr. Kent Parker.
A serious man, but gentle – he smiled for the children and spoke solemnly to the adults, being as honest as needed for a given case, and given the hopelessness of some cases, he lied as required to lift their spirits to face the final months, days, and hours. Many needed more than he could give, needed more than medicine could give. They needed years to be rewound and performed with different circumstances and better decisions. Looking inside many of the backwoods patients' mouths, he often remarked that he should have studied dentistry instead.
Those who visited him thought he must be a holy man, particularly because of the small book of Psalms he kept in each patient room – but the doctor did not attend any church services. A lapsed Catholic, he still did not consider himself faithless when the question was put to him. No one knew him well, even though he spoke to everyone. As he spent his time and invested his profits on the poor of Immaculate, his reputation of doing good works grew among his quiet visitors, and they passed along to one another what he sometimes uttered in passing, saying: "Mine is the thirty-eighth Psalm." And those who bothered to page through their Bibles to find the Psalm could not fathom what the doctor meant by it, with its mourning lyrics weighted with burden. He did not elaborate, letting the Psalm speak a monologue to wonderers. Something had drowned his pride and made his humility forever buoyant.
That Saturday morning he had a customer, Tommy Blanks, who entered with his hand wrapped in a bloody t-shirt. A woman in a halter-top and leather jacket accompanied Tommy at the door. The doctor leaned back in his seat and closed a ragged book. It was the doctor's habit to read each morning for leisure, and only works written prior to the year 1600.
"Tommy Blanks," said Dr. Parker. "I see you haven't learned yet that fighting is best left to younger men."
"Wasn't a fight," said Tommy, getting up to enter the doctor's examination room. "I dumped my hog." Blanks looked at Judy.
"Your hog?" said the Doctor. "Are you raising pigs now?"
"My motorcycle. Doctor, this here is my girlfriend, Judy. She's no hog."
"Judy, hello. We haven't met." The doctor did not smile, not once. "Nice that he doesn't call you a hog, isn't it? Such a gentleman. Judy, were you on the motorcycle with Tommy?"
"No," said Tommy, his eyes wandering.
"I see," he said. "OK, Tommy. Let's see the hand."
When Tommy unwrapped his hand, he winced as the sticky cloth pulled away from the cut skin. He showed the doctor both sides to disclose that something had pierced his hand all the way through the palm.
"If you hadn't told me about the hog," said Dr. Parker, "I might have thought this was a case of stigmata."
"Is that an infection?"
"No," said the Doctor, leading his patient to a sink where he could start sterilizing the wound. "Tommy, get ready for a sting. Do not look at your hand. A long time ago, there was a man..."
"Ow!"
"…a terrific worker and manager of men, well-tuned to his accounts and responsibilities, always on-time, full of life and eager to be industrious. A railroad man, respected by both his superiors and his subordinates, by all accounts. From farming stock, robust and ready, a rock of a man. Nothing really flashy or glamorous about him, simply stable and reliable."
"Jesus, Parker, take it easy."
"One day he had an accident, where an explosion shot an iron rod through his chin and clear out the top of his head. A thirteen pound, three-foot-long iron tamping rod, rammed through his head, bottom to top."
"Are you making this up?"
"What made him remarkable is that he survived this accident and could still speak and hear and eat and, do most everything that he could do before."
"Cool."
"Yes…cool," said the doctor. "Except for one thing. This fellow was not the same after the accident, not at all. In fact, he became unreliable, took up gambling and chasing girls, drinking and brawling, all sorts of bad behavior, including frequent use of the most foul language."
Tommy said, "Why'd he do that?"
"Because he had lost part of his brain in the accident," said Dr. Parker, pulling a stitch tight in Tommy's palm. "Part of his brain had been removed by the metal rod. The severe damage to his brain, it turns out, caused a disruption in that part of the brain that governs the emotions of a man. As a result of this miraculous survival and his psychological changes, he became a celebrated science project. His name was Phineas Gage and he helped the science of the brain advance more than he could have ever imagined."
Judy said, "You haven't had any metal rods rocket through your skull, have you Tommy?"
"That was my next question," said the Doctor.
"Not that I know of," Tommy said, considering it while watching a stitch cinch in his hand.
"I have often wondered if something similar didn't happen to you as a young man," said the doctor.
"No," Tommy said. "Nothing like that. Took out a windshield with my face once."
"Yes, I remember," said the doctor. He nodded at Judy. "We may be onto something. But I remember you as a boy, and you had this same affliction before the windshield improved your complexion. If I recall, you once bit my arm so hard that I nearly cried. I still have the scar – look here. Do you remember that?"
"I've already said I'm sorry for that. Why do you have to bring that up every time I'm here?"
"I've seen road-rash, Mr. Blanks, from motorcycle accidents." The doctor grabbed Tommy's chin and inspected the eye. "And it's terribly difficult to fib an injury like this. This did not come from falling off a motorcycle. This cut, this is from something sharp. I'd bet my dog on it, and he is dear to me."
"I don't bet. I quit gambling," said Tommy.
"Sure you did. Judy," said the doctor, "be advised that you don't need to tell me anything, but did you stab Tommy?"
"No."
Tommy said, "She's tried."
"I find no fault in that, Judy," said Dr. Parker, winking at Judy. "But if Judy is not a suspect in this incident, Tommy, did you stab yourself?"
"No."
"Outstanding. Roll up your sleeve, you need a tetanus shot. Tommy, let me ask you something," said the doctor, filling a syringe. "Do you think that joining a motorcycle gang in your forties was a good decision?"
"That's how I met Judy," Tommy said, winking at her. "So yes."
"We met at The Wreck," Judy said, referring to the gentleman's club thirty miles away. "One year ago last week."
"A year ago? Happy belated anniversary," said the doctor. "Let me be the first," he said, sticking a needle into Tommy, "to congratulate you. What's that old saying? Love makes time pass; and time makes love pass. Isn't that lovely?" said the doctor, raising h
is eyebrows.
"That's beautiful," said Judy.
"I think I saw that on a tattoo once," said Tommy.
"Tommy," said Dr. Parker, throwing the needle away, "for almost ten years I have been impressed by your business. Not so much the line of work or the type of business, but mostly by the fact that your sign is still hanging. Each year it fills me with wonder."
"Thanks doc," said Tommy. "That means a lot to me. I'll tell Hank, he'll appreciate that. I know we still owe you for that help you gave us starting out. You can be a real dick, but you learned me that a real dick can be decent."
"I also wonder," said Dr. Parker, "in the day's action at your business, do you ever pause to consider who will run the business after you and Hank?"
Tommy said, "Where would we go?"
"At some point, you will – I assume – retire. I hope this isn't the first time you've heard of such a thing. And even you, Mr. Blanks, will someday expire, although you seem immortal at this point. But who will take over what you have built?"
"Hank would."
"But he's your partner. Don't you want to pass on this business, or your earnings, to children someday?"
"What about you, doc, you don't have any kids. Who's going to take care of me when you're gone? Who's going to sit in this office? "
Dr. Parker stopped talking.
"I don't see any kids running around here, Doc. And you are much older than me. I check the paper each week for your obituary. But you ain't got any kids, or do you?"
Dr. Parker changed the subject. "You will need to go to the hospital to see a specialist, Mr. Blanks. You may have cut a nerve in that hand."
"It wasn't my fault," said Tommy. "The cut, I mean."
"Not your fault? Weren't you driving the motorcycle? No hog?"
"He was dancing," said Judy, admitting the truth.
"Judy!"
"Dancing with a mixed drink in his hand."
"Ah, a tango I suppose," said Dr. Parker.
"Spilling it all over the place, he was. I think the ice cubes got underfoot and that's how he got ass-over-teakettle."
"Spectacular," said the Doctor. "But what sliced his hand?"
Judy stood and re-enacted his fall in slow-motion. "He came down with the drink in his hand, but the glass broke and he had all his weight on it."
"Broken glass. Wonderful! Go see the specialist, Tommy."
"I'll try," said Tommy.
"I have another appointment here in a few minutes."
Dr. Parker closed and locked the door with the deadbolt. Turning the wand of the blinds, cutting his office from the light of day, that he might return in solitude to his Boethius. He watched a large Jack-O-lantern disappear as the slats closed. A bird flew past the window and the doctor thought of the Greeks and their signs. A curious morning, Tommy was his third visitor already, on the eve of All Saints. He could sense the tide of the town’s pulse, and feel the blood running crazy.
The Plenty Page 15