DOC JOHNSON

 

 

“I think you'd better take the call on oh-one," Jessie said, poking her head into the consultation room.

 glanced up from the latest issue of Cardiology and looked at my wife. It was Monday morning and I had a grand total of three patients scheduled.

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

That's what I get for hiring my wife as my nurse-receptionist, but I had to keep overhead down until I built up a decent practice and could afford a stranger...someone I could reprimand without paying for it later at home. I had to admit, though, Jessie was doing a damn fine job so far. She wasn't letting the pregnancy slow her down a bit.

"Who is it?"

She shrugged. "Not sure. Says she's never been here before but says her husband needs a doctor real bad."

"Got it."

Never turn down a patient in need. Especially one who might be able to pay. I picked up the phone.

"Hello. Doctor Reid."

"Oh, Doctor," said a woman's voice. "My husband's awful sick. Can you come see him?"

"A house call?" After all, I was a board-eligible internist. House calls were for GPs and family practitioners, not specialists. "What's wrong with your husband, Mrs....?"

"Mosely—Martha Mosely. My husband, Joseph, he's...he's just not right. Sometimes he says he wants a doctor and sometimes he says he doesn't. He says he wants one now."

"Can you be a little more specific?"

If this Mosely fellow was going to end up in the hospital, I'd rather have him transported there first and then see him.

"I wish I could, Doctor, but I can't."

"Who's his regular doctor?"

"Doc Johnson."

Ah-ha!

"And why aren't you calling him?"

"Joe won't let me. He says he doesn't ever want to see Doc Johnson again. He only wants you."

I hesitated. I didn't want to get into the house-call habit, but as the new kid in town, I couldn't afford to pass up a chance to score some points.

"All right. Give me the address and I'll be out after dinner."

 

 

* * * * *

 

He doesn't ever want to see Doc Johnson again.

 

I thought about that as I drove out to the Mosely house. An odd thing to say. Most people in Ludlum Bay swore by Johnson. You'd think he walked on water the way some of them talked. Which wasn't making it any easier for me to get started in the Bay. I'd been living—quite literally—off the crumbs he left behind. Joseph Mosely appeared to be a crumb, so I was on my way to gather him up.

I turned south off Port Boulevard onto New Hope Road, watching the homes change from post-World War II tract homes to smaller, older houses on bigger lots. The January wind slapped at my car.

This was my first winter in Ludlum Bay and it was cold. I grew up in Florida, went to med school and did my internal medicine residency at Emory in Atlanta. My idea of cold and these New Jerseyans’ idea of cold differed by a good twenty degrees.

The Bay natives like to say the nearness of the Atlantic tends to moderate the severity of the weather. Maybe that's true. According to the thermometer, it doesn't seem to get quite as cold here as it does inland, but I think the extra moisture sends the chill straight through to the bone.

But now the cold was locked outside the car and I was warm within. I had a bellyful of Jessie's tuna casserole, the Civic's heater-defrost system was blowing hard and warm. Snow blanketed the lawns and was banked on the curbs, but the asphalt was clean and dry. A beautiful, crystalline winter night for a drive. Too bad Jessie wasn't along. Too bad this wasn't a pleasure drive. People attach such rosy nostalgia to the house call, but here in the twenty-first century the house is a lousy place to practice medicine.

I slowed as the numbers on the mailboxes told me I was nearing the Mosely place. There: 620 New Hope Road. As I pulled into the driveway my headlamps lit up the house and grounds. I stopped the car halfway through the turn and groaned.

The Mosely house was a mess.

Every neighborhood has one. You know the type of house I mean. You drive along a street lined with immaculately kept homes, all with freshly painted siding and manicured lawns, all picture-perfect...except for one. There's always one house with a front yard where even the weeds won't grow; the Christmas lights are still attached to the eaves even though it might be June; if the neighborhood is lucky, only one rusting auto will grace the front yard, and the house's previous coat of paint will have merely peeled away, exposing much of the original color of the siding. If the neighborhood is especially cursed, the front yard will sport two or more automobile hulks in various stages of refurbishment, and the occupant will have started to paint the derelict home a hot pink or a particularly noxious shade of green and then quit halfway through.

The Mosely house was New Hope Road's derelict.

I turned off my engine and, black bag in hand, stepped out into the cold. No path had been dug through the snow anywhere I could see, but I found a narrow path where it had been packed down by other feet before me. It led across the front lawn. At least I think it was a lawn. The glow from a nearby streetlight limned odd bumps and rises all over the front yard. I could only guess at what lay beneath. A blanket of snow hides a multitude of sins.

I got a closer look at the house as I carefully picked my way toward it. The front porch was an open affair with its overhang tilted at a crazy angle. The paint was particularly worn and dirty up to a level of about two feet. Looked like a dog had spent a lot of time there but I saw no paw prints and heard no barking. The light from within barely filtered through the window shades.

The front door opened before I could knock. A thin, fiftyish woman wearing an old blue house dress and a stretched-out brown cardigan stood there with her hand on the knob.

"I'm terribly sorry, Doctor," she said in a mousy voice, "but Joe's decided he don't want to see a doctor tonight."

"What?" My voice went hoarse with shock. "You mean to tell me I came—”

"Oh, let him in, Martha!" said a rough voice from somewhere behind her. "Long as he's here, might as well get a look at him."

"Yes, Joe."

She stepped aside and I stepped in.

The air within was hot, dry, and sour. I wondered how many years since they'd had the windows open. A wood stove sat in a corner to my left. The only light in the room came from candles and kerosene lamps.

Joseph Mosely, the same age as his wife but thinner, sat in a rocker facing me. His skin was stretched tight across his high forehead and cheekbones. He had a full head lank hair and a three-day stubble.

Something familiar about him. As I watched, he sipped from a four-ounce tumbler clutched in his right hand; a half-empty bottle of no-name gin sat on a small table next to him. He stared at me. I've seen prosthetic eyes of porcelain and glass show more warmth and human feeling than Joe Mosely's.

"If that was your idea of a joke, Mr. Mosely—"

"Don't bother trying to intimidate me, Doctor Charles Reid. It's a waste of breath. Take the man's coat, Martha."

"Yes, Joe."

Sighing resignedly, I shrugged out of my jacket and turned to hand it to her. I stopped and stared at her face. A large black-and-purple hematoma, a good inch and a half across, bloomed on her right cheek. I hadn't noticed it when she opened the door. But now...I knew from the look of it that it couldn't be more than a couple of hours old.

"Better get the ice back on that bruise," he said to her from his rocker. "And careful you don't slip on the kitchen floor and hurt yourself again."

"Yes, Joe."

Clenching my teeth against the challenge that leaped into my throat, I handed her my coat and turned to her husband.

"What seems to be the problem, Mr. Mosely?"

He put the glass down and rolled up his right sleeve to show me a healing laceration on the underside of his forearm.

"This."

It ran up from the wrist for about five inches or so and looked to be about ten days to two weeks old. Three silk sutures were still in place.

My anger flared. "You brought me all the way out here for a suture removal?"

"I didn't bring you anywhere. You brought yourself. And besides—” He kicked up his left foot; it looked deformed within a dirty sock. "I'm disabled."

"All right," I said, cooling with effort. "How'd you cut yourself?"

"Whittling."

I felt like asking him if he'd been using a machete, but restrained myself.

"They sew it up at County General?"

"Nope."

“Then who?"

He paused and I saw that his eyes were even colder and flatter than before.

"Doc Johnson."

“Why'd he leave these three sutures in?"

'Didn't. Took them out myself. He won't ever get near me again—ever!" He half rose from the rocker. "I wouldn't take my dog to him if she was still alive!"

"Hey! Take it easy."

He calmed himself with another sip of gin.

"So why did you leave the last three in?"

He looked at the wound, then away.

" 'Cause there's something wrong with it."

I inspected it more closely. It looked fine. The wound edges had knitted nicely. Doc Johnson had done a good closure. I found no redness or swelling to indicate infection.

"Looks okay to me."

I opened my bag, got out an alcohol swab, and dabbed the wound. Then I took out scissors and forceps and removed those last three sutures.

"There. Good as new."

"There's still something wrong with it." He pulled his arm away to reach for the gin glass; he drained it,

then slammed it down. "There's something in there."

I almost laughed. "Pardon me?"

"Something's in there! I can feel it move every now and then. The first time was when I started taking the sutures out. There! Look!" He stiffened and pointed to the scar. "It's moving now!"

I looked and saw nothing the least bit out of the ordinary. But I thought I knew what was bothering him.

"Here." I took his left hand and laid the fingers over the underside of his forearm. "Press them here. Now, open and close your hand, making a fist. There...feel the tendons moving under the skin? You've probably got a little scar tissue building up in the deeper layers next to a tendon sheath and it's—"

"Something's in there, damn it! Doc Johnson put it there when he sewed me up!"

I stood. "That's ridiculous."

"It's true! I wouldn't make up something like that!"

"Did you watch him sew you up?"

"Yeah."

"Did you see him put anything in the wound?"

"No. But he's sneaky. I know he put something in there!"

"You'd better lay off the gin." I closed my bag. "You're having delusions."

"Shoulda known," he said bitterly, reaching for his bottle. "You doctors think you've got all the answers."

I took my coat off a hook by the door and pulled it on.

"What's that supposed to mean? And haven't you had enough of that for one night?"

"Damn you!" Eyes ablaze with fury, he hurled the glass across the room and leaped out of the rocker. "Who the hell do you think you are to tell me when I've had enough!"

He limped toward me and then I remembered why he looked familiar. The limp triggered it: I had seen him dozens of times in the Port Boulevard shopping area, usually entering or leaving Elmo’s liquors. He’d lied to me—he wasn't disabled enough to warrant a house call.

"You're drunk." I reached for the doorknob. "Sleep it off."

Suddenly he stopped his advance and grinned maliciously.

"Oh, I'll sleep, all right. But will you? Better pray nothing goes bad with this arm here, or you'll have another malpractice case on your hands. Like the one in Atlanta."

My stomach wrenched into a tight ball. "How do you know about that?"

I hoped I didn't look as sick as I felt.

"Checked into you. When I heard we had this brand-new doctor in town, fresh from a big medical center in Atlanta, I asked myself why a young, hot-shot specialist would want to practice in the Bay? So I did some digging. I'm real good at digging. ’Specially on doctors. They got these high an' mighty ways with how they dole out pills and advice like they're better'n the rest of us. Doctor Tanner was like that. That office you're in used to be his. I dug up some good dirt on Tanner but he disappeared before I could rub his face in it."

"Good night."

I stepped out on the porch and pulled the door closed behind me.

I had nothing else to say. I thought I’d left that malpractice nightmare behind me in Atlanta. The realization that it had followed me here threatened all the hopes I'd nursed of finding peace in Ludlum Bay. And to hear it from the grinning lips of someone like Joe Mosely made me almost physically ill.

 

 

* * * * *

 

I barely remembered the trip home. I seemed to be driving through the past, through interrogatories and depositions and sweating testimonies. I didn't really come back to the present until I parked the car and walked toward the duplex we were renting.

Jessie was standing on the front steps, wrapped in her parka, arms folded across her chest as she looked up at the stars under a full moon. Suddenly I felt calm. This was the way I had found her when we first met—standing on a rooftop gazing up at the night sky, looking for Jupiter. She owned two telescopes she used regularly, but she's told me countless times that a true amateur astronomer never tires of naked-eye stargazing.

She smiled as she saw me walk up. "How was the house call?"

I put on an annoyed expression. “Unnecessary." I wouldn't tell her about tonight. At least one of us should rest easy. I patted her growing belly. "How we doing in there?"

"You mean the Tap Dance Kid? Active as ever."

She turned back to the stars and frowned. I followed her upward gaze.

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know. Something weird about the stars out here."

They looked all right to me, except that I could see a hell of a lot more of them than I'd ever seen in Atlanta.

Jessie slipped an arm around my back and seemed to read my expression without looking at me.

"Yeah. I said weird. They don't look right. I could get out a star map and I know everything would look fine. But something's just not right up there. The perspective's different somehow. Only another stargazer would notice. Something's wrong."

I had heard that expression too many times tonight.

"The baby wants to go in," I said. "He's cold."

"She’s cold."

"Anything you say."

 

 

* * * * *

 

I had trouble sleeping that night. I kept reliving the malpractice case and how I wound up scapegoat for a couple of department heads at the medical center. After all, I was only a resident and they had national reputations. I was sure they were sleeping well tonight while I lay here awake.

I kept seeing the plaintiff attorney's hungry face, hearing his voice as he tore me apart. I'm a good doctor, a caring one who knows internal medicine inside and out, but you wouldn't have thought so after that lawyer was through with me. He got a third of the settlement and I got the word that I shouldn't apply for a position on the staff when my residency was up. I supposed the big shots didn't want me around as a reminder.

Jessie wanted me to fight them for an appointment but I knew better. Every hospital staff application has a question that reads: "Have you ever been denied staff privileges at any other hospital?" If you answer Yes, they want to know all the particulars. If you say No, and later they find out otherwise, your ass is grass.

Discretion is the better part of valor, I always say. I knew they’d turn me down, and I didn't want to answer yes to that question for the rest of my life. So I packed up and left when my residency was over. The medical center reciprocated by giving me good recommendations.

Jessie says I'm too scared of making waves. She's probably right. She usually is. I do know I couldn't have made it through the trial without her. She stuck by me all the way.

She's right about the waves, though. All I want to do is live in peace and quiet and practice the medicine I've been trained for. That's all. I don't need a Porsche or a mansion. Just Jessie and our kids and enough to live comfortably. That's all I want. That's all I've ever wanted.

 

 

* * * * *

 

Wednesday afternoon, two days after the Mosely house call, I was standing on Doc Johnson's front porch, ringing his bell.

"Stop by the house this afternoon," he’d said on the phone a few hours ago. "Let's get acquainted."

I’d been in town seven months now and this was the first time he’d spoken to me beyond a nod and a good-morning while passing in the hall at County General. I couldn't use the excuse that my office was too busy for me to get away, so I accepted. Besides, I was curious as to why he wanted to see me.

I’d spotted Joe Mosely on my way over. He was coming out of the liquor store and saw me waiting at the light. He looked terrible. I wasn't sure if it was just the daylight or if he was actually thinner than the other night. His cheeks looked more sunken, his eyes more feverish. But his smile hadn't changed. The way he grinned at me had tied my stomach into a knot that was just now beginning to unravel.

I tried not to think of Mosely as I waited for someone to answer my ring. I inspected my surroundings. The Johnson house was as solid as they come, with walls built of the heavy gray native granite that rimmed the shore in these parts. Little mortar was visible. Someone had taken great pains to mate each stone nook and cranny against its neighbor. The resultant pattern was like the flip side of one of those thousand-piece Springbok jigsaw puzzles that Jessie liked to fiddle with.

His verandah here high on East Hill—the only real hill in town—offered a clear eastward view of the length and breadth of the bay all the way down to Blind Point; beyond the barrier island the Atlantic surged cold and gray. To the west lay the Parkway—the low drone of its traffic was audible most nights, but that was a minor concern when you considered how easy it made getting to places like picturesque Cape May to the south and glitzy Atlantic City to the north.

And beyond the Parkway, the deep and enigmatic Jersey Pine Barrens.

I could get used to this.

I thought about Doc Johnson. I'd heard he was a widower with no children, that his family had come over with Ludlum Bay's original settlers back in the seventeenth century. Doctors apparently came and went pretty regularly around the Bay, but "the Doc"—that's what the natives called him—was as constant as the moon, always available, always willing to come out to the house should you be too sick to go to him. If you were a regular patient of the Doc's he never let you down. People talked as if he'd always been here and always would. His practice seemed to encompass the whole town. That was impossible, of course. No one man could care for 20,000 people. But to hear folks talk—and to listen to the grumbling of the few other struggling doctors in town—that was the way it was.

The handle rattled and Doc Johnson opened the door himself. A portly man in his sixties with a full, friendly, florid face and lots of white hair combed straight back, he wore a white shirt, open at the collar, white duck pants, and a blue blazer with a gold emblem on the breast pocket. He looked more like a yacht club commodore than a doctor.

"Charles!" he said, shaking my hand. "So good of you to come! Come in out of the chill and I'll make you a drink!"

It wasn't as chilly as it had been the past few days but I was glad to step into the warmth. He was fixing himself a Sapphire gimlet with a dash of Cointreau and offered me one. I was through for the day, so I accepted. It was excellent.

He showed me around the house that one of his ancestors had built a couple of centuries ago. We made small talk during the tour until we ended up in his study before a fire. He was a gracious, amiable host and I took an immediate liking to him.

"Let's talk shop a minute," he said after I refused a refill on the gimlet and we’d settled into chairs. "I like to feel out a new doctor in town on his philosophy of medicine." His eyes penetrated mine. "Do you have one?"

I thought about that. Since starting med school I'd been so involved in learning whatever there was to know about medicine that I hadn't given much consideration to a philosophical approach. I was tempted to say Keeping my head above water but thought better of it. I decided to go Hippocratic.

"I guess I'd start with 'Above all else do no harm.''

He smiled. "An excellent start. But how would triage fit into your philosophy, Horatio?"

"Horatio?"

"I'm an avid reader. You will forgive me a literary reference once in a while, won't you? That was to Hamlet. A strained reference, I'll grant you, but Hamlet nonetheless."

"Of course. But triage...?"

"Under certain circumstances we have to choose those who will get care and those who won't. In disasters, for instance: We must ignore those whom we judge to be beyond help in order to aid those who are salvageable."

"Of course. That's an accepted part of emergency care."

"But aren't you doing harm by withholding care?"

“Not if a patient is terminal. Not if the outcome will remain unchanged no matter what you do."

"Which means we must place great faith in our judgment, then, correct?"

I nodded. "Yes, I suppose so."

Where was this going?

"And what if one must amputate a gangrenous limb in order to preserve the health of the rest of the body? Isn't that doing harm of sorts to the diseased limb?"

I said, "I suppose you could look at it that way, but if the health of the good tissue is threatened by the infected limb, and you can't cure the infection, then the limb's got to go."

"Precisely. It's another form of triage: The diseased limb must be lopped off and discarded. Sometimes I find that triage must be of a more active sort where radical decisions must be made. Medicine is full of life-and-death decisions, don't you think?"

I nodded once more. What a baffling conversation.

"I understand you had the pleasure of meeting the estimable Joseph Mosely the other night."

The abrupt change of subject left me reeling for a second.

"I don't know if I'd call it a pleasure."

He barked a laugh. "There'd be something seriously wrong with you if you did. A despicable excuse for a human being. Truly a hollow man, if you'll excuse the Yeats reference—or is that Eliot? No matter. It fits Joe Mosely well enough: no heart, no soul. An alcoholic who abused his children mercilessly. I patched up enough cuts and contusions on his battered boys, and I fear he battered his only daughter in a far more loathsome way. They all ran away as soon as they were able. So now he abuses poor Martha when the mood suits him, and that is too often. Last summer I had to strap up three broken ribs on that poor woman. But she won't press charges. Love's funny, isn't it?”

“It is,” I said. “But codependency isn’t.”

“You’ve got that right. Did you notice his mangled foot, by the way? That happened when he was working at the shoe factory. Talk is he stuck his foot in one of the machines on purpose, only he stuck it in farther than he intended and did too good a job of injuring himself. Anyway, he got a nice settlement out of it, which is what he wanted, but he drank it up in no time.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said, remembering his rapidly dwindling level in his gin bottle.

"And did you notice the lack of electricity? The power company caught him tampering with the meter and cut him off. I've heard he's blackmailing a few people in town. And he steals anything that's not nailed down. That cut on his arm I sewed up? That was the first time in all these years I'd ever had a chance to actually treat him. He tried to tell me he did it whittling. Ha! Never yet seen a right-handed man cut his right arm with a knife. No, he did that breaking into a house on Armondo Street. Did it on a storm window. Read in the Gazette how they found lots of blood at the scene and were checking ERs in the area to see if anybody had been sewn up. That was why he came to me. I tell you, he will make the world a brighter place by departing it."

"You didn't report him to the police?"

"No," he said levelly. "And I don't intend to. The courts won't give him his due. And calling the police is not my way of handling the likes of Joe Mosely."

I had to say it: "Mosely says you put something in the laceration when you sewed it up."

Doc Johnson's face darkened. "I hope you will consider the source and not repeat that."

"Of course not. I only mentioned it now because you were the accused."

"Good." He cleared his throat. "There's some things you should know about the Bay. We like it quiet here. We don't like idle chatter. You'll find that things have a way of working themselves out in their own way. You don't get outsiders involved if you can help it."

"Like me?"

"That's up to you, Charles. You can be an insider if you want to be. 'Newcomer' and 'insider' aren't mutually exclusive terms in Ludlum Bay. A town dies if it doesn't get some new blood. But discretion is all important. As a doctor in town you may occasionally see something out of the ordinary. You can take it as it comes, deal with it, and leave it at that—which will bring you closer to the inside. Or, you can talk about it a lot or maybe even submit a paper on it to something like the New England Journal of Medicine, and that will push you out. Far out. Soon you'd have to pack up and move away."

He stood and patted my shoulder.

"I like you, Charles. This town needs more doctors. I'd like to see you make it here."

"I'd like to stay here."

"Good! I do my own sort of triage on incoming doctors. If I think they'll work out, I send them my overflow." He sighed. "And believe me, I'm getting ready to increase my overflow. I'd like to slow down a bit. Not as young as I used to be."

"I'd appreciate that."

He gave me a calculating look. "Okay. We'll see. But first— " He glanced outside. "Well, here it comes!" He motioned me over to the big bay window. "Take a look!"

I stepped to his side and gazed out at the Atlantic—or rather, where the Atlantic had been. The horizon was gone, lost in a fog bank that was even now rolling into the bay itself.

Doc Johnson pointed south. "If you watch, you'll see Blind Pew disappear."

"Excuse me?"

He laughed. "Another reference, my boy. I've called Blind Point 'Blind Pew' ever since I read Treasure Island when I was ten. You remember Blind Pew, don't you?"

N. C. Wyeth's painting of the moonlit character suddenly flashed before my eyes. It had always given me the chills.

"Of course. But where's the fog coming from?"

"The Gulf Stream. For reasons known only to itself, it swings in here a couple of times a winter. The warm air from the stream hits the cold air on the land and then we have fog. And I do mean fog."

As I watched, lacy fingers of mist began to rise from the snow in the front yard.

"Yes, sir!" he said, rubbing his hands together and smiling. "This one's going to be a beauty!"

 

* * * * *

 

Mrs. Mosely called me Friday night.

"Doctor, you've got to come out and see Joe."

"No, thank you," I told her. "Once was quite enough."

"I think he's dying!"

"Then get him over to County General."

"He won't let me call an ambulance. He won't let me near him!"

"Then I'm sorry—”

"Please, Doctor Reid!" Her voice broke into a wail. "If not for him, then for me! I'm frightened!"

Something in her voice got to me. And I remembered that bruise on her cheek.

"Okay," I said reluctantly. "I'll be over in a half hour."

I knew I'd regret it.

 

 

* * * * *

 

The fog was still menacingly thick, and worse at night than during the day. At least you could pick out shadows in daylight. At night the headlights bounced off the fog instead of penetrating it. Like driving through cotton.

When I finally reached the Mosely place, the air seemed cooler and the fog appeared to be thinning. Somewhere above, moonlight struggled to get through. Maybe the predicted cold front from the west was finally moving in.

Martha Mosely opened the door.

"Thank you for coming, Doctor Reid. I don't know what to do! He won't let me touch him or go near him! I'm at my wit's end!"

"Where is he?"

"In bed."

She led me to a room in the back and stood at the door clutching her hands between her breasts as I entered.

By the light of the room's single flickering candle I could see Joe Mosely lying naked on the bed, stretched out like an emaciated corpse. In fact, for a moment I thought he was dead—his breathing was so shallow I couldn't see his chest move.

Then he turned his head a few degrees in my direction.

"So, it's you." His lips barely moved. The eyes were the only things alive in his face.

"Yeah. Me. What can I do for you?"

"First, you can close the door—with that woman on the other side."

Before I could answer, I heard the door close behind me. I was alone in the room with him.

"And second, you can keep your distance."

"What's the matter? Anything hurt?"

"No pain. But I'm a dead man. It's Doc Johnson's doing. I told you he put something in that cut."

His words were disturbing enough, but his completely emotionless tone made them even more chilling—as if whatever emotions he possessed had been drained away along with his vitality.

"You need to be hospitalized."

"No use. I'm already gone. But let me tell you about Doc Johnson. He did this to me. He's got his own ways and he follows his own rules. I've tailed him into the Pine Barrens a few times but I always lost him. Don't know what he goes there for, but it can't be for no good."

I took out my stethoscope as he raved. When he saw it, his voice rose in pitch.

"Don't come near me. Just keep away."

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm here. I might as well see if I can do anything for you."

I adjusted the earpieces and went down on one knee beside the bed.

"Don't! Keep back!"

I pressed the diaphragm over his heart to listen—

—and felt his chest wall give way like a stale soda cracker.

My left hand disappeared up to the wrist inside his chest cavity. And it was cold in there! I yanked it out and hurled myself away from the bed, not stopping until I came up against the bedroom wall.

"Now you've done it," he said in that passionless voice.

As I watched, a yellow mist began to ooze out of the opening. It slid over his ribs and along the sheet, and from there down to the floor, like the fog from dry ice.

I looked at Mosely's face and saw the light go out of his eyes.

He was gone.

A wind began blowing outside, whistling under the doors and banging the shutters. I glanced out the window on the far side of the room and saw the fog begin to swirl and tear apart. Suddenly something crashed in the front room. I pulled myself up and opened the bedroom door. A freezing wind hit me in the face with the force of a gale, tearing the door from my grip and swirling into the room. I saw Martha Mosely get up from the sofa and struggle to close the front door against the rage of the wind.

The bedroom window shattered under the sudden pressure and now the wind howled through the house.

The yellow mist from Mosely's chest cavity caught the gale and rode it out the window, slipping along the floor and up the wall and over the sill in streaks that gleamed in the growing moonlight.

Then the mist was gone and I was alone in the room with the wind and Joe Mosely's empty shell.

And then that shell began to crumble, caving in on itself piece by piece, almost in slow motion, fracturing into countless tiny pieces that in turn disintegrated into a gray, dust-like powder. This too was caught by the wind and carried out into the night.

Joe Mosely was gone, leaving behind not so much as a depression in the bedcovers.

The front door finally closed with Martha's efforts and I heard the bolt slide home. She walked up to the bedroom door but did not step inside.

"Joe's gone, isn't he?" she said in a low voice.

I couldn't speak. I opened my mouth but no words would come. I simply nodded as I stood there trembling.

She stepped into the room then and looked at the bed. She looked at the broken window, then at me. With a sigh she sat on the edge of the bed and ran her hand over the spot where her husband had lain.

 

 

* * * * *

 

My home phone rang at eight o'clock the next morning. It didn't disturb my sleep. I’d been awake all night. Part of the time I'd spent lying rigid in bed, the rest here in the kitchen with all the lights on, waiting for the sun.

An awful wait. When I wasn't reliving the scene in the Mosely bedroom I was hearing voices. If it wasn't Joe telling me that Doc Johnson had put something in his wound, it was the Doc himself talking about making life-and-death decisions, about triage, all laced with literary references.

I hadn't told Jessie a thing. She'd think I was ready for a straitjacket. And if by some chance she did believe, she'd want to pack up and get out of town. But where to? We had the baby to think of.

I’d spent the time since dawn going over my options. And when the phone rang, I had no doubt who was calling.

"I understand Joe Mosely is gone," Doc Johnson said without preamble.

“Yes.”

...a hollow man...

"Any idea where?"

"Out the window." My voice sounded half dead to me. "Beyond that, I don't know."

...calling the police is not my way of handling the likes of Joe Mosely...

"Seen anything lately worth writing to any of the medical journals about?"

"Not a thing."

...the diseased limb has to be lopped off and discarded...

"Just another day in Ludlum Bay then?" Doc Johnson said.

"Oh, I hope not." I could not hide the tremor in my voice.

...sometimes triage has to be of a more active sort where radical decisions must be made...

He chuckled. "Charles, my boy, I think you'll do all right here. As a matter of fact, I'd like to refer a couple of patients to your office today. They've got complicated problems that require more attention than I can give them at this time. I'll assure them that they can trust you implicitly. Will you take them on?"

I paused. Even though my mind was made up, I took a deep breath and held it, waiting for some argument to come out of the blue and swing me the other way. Finally, I could hold it no longer.

"Yes," I said. "Thank you."

"Charles, I think you're going to do just fine in Ludlum Bay."