As he entered the clinic door, he saw Doctor Dumondais’s nurse, an imposing woman who seemed to measure five feet two both vertically and horizontally, but who possessed undeniable strength in her large body, and a voluminous knowledge of folk remedies and voodoo cures applicable to any number of tropical diseases.
“Bonjour, Hélène,” Ricky said. “Tout le monde est arrivé ce jour.”
“Ah, yes, doctor, we will be busy all day…”
Ricky shook his head. He practiced his island French on her, and she, in return, practiced her English on him, preparing for the hope, he knew, that someday she would gather enough money in the strongbox she kept buried in her backyard to pay her cousin for a place on his old fishing boat, so that he would risk the treacherous Florida Straits and carry her to Miami and she could start over again there, where she had been reliably informed, the streets were cluttered with money.
“No, no, Hélène, pas docteur. C ’est monsieur Lively. Je ne suis plus un médecin…”
“Yes, yes, Mister Lively. I know what you do say to me this so many times. I am sorry, for I am forgetting once again another time…”
She smiled widely, as if she didn’t quite understand but still wanted to join in with the great joke that Ricky played, to bring so much medical knowledge to the clinic, and yet, not want to be called a doctor. Ricky believed that Hélène simply ascribed this behavior to the odd, and mysterious mannerisms of all white people, and, like the folks crowded at the clinic door, she could not care less what Ricky wanted to be called. She knew what she knew.
“Le Docteur Dumondais, il est arrivé ce matin?”
“Ah, yes, Monsieur Lively. In his, ah, bureau.”
“Office is the word…”
“Yes, yes, j ’oublie. I forget. Office. Yes. He is there. Il vous attend…”
Ricky knocked on the wooden door and stepped inside. Auguste Dumondais, a wispy, small man, who wore bifocals and had a shaved head, was inside, behind his battered wooden desk, across from the examination table. He was pulling on a white clinical coat, and he looked up and smiled as Ricky entered. “Ah, Ricky, we shall be busy today, no?”
“Oui,” Ricky replied. “Bien sûr.”
“But, is not this day the day you are leaving us?”
“Only for a brief visit home. Less than a week.”
The gnomelike doctor nodded. Ricky could see lingering doubt in his eyes. Auguste Dumondais had not asked many questions when Ricky had arrived at the clinic door six months earlier, offering his services for the most modest salary. The clinic had thrived after Ricky was set up with an office much like the one he was standing in at that moment, nudging le Docteur Dumondais out of his own, self-imposed poverty, and allowing him to invest in more equipment and more medicines. Lately, the two men had discussed obtaining a secondhand X-ray machine from a clearinghouse in the states that Ricky had discovered. Ricky could see that the doctor was afraid that the serendipity that had delivered Ricky to his door was going to steal him away.
“A week at the most. I promise to you.”
Auguste Dumondais shook his head. “Do not promise me, Ricky. You must do whatever it is that you have to do, for whatever purpose that you have. When you return, we will continue our work.” He smiled, as if to display that he had so many questions that it was impossible for him to find one with which to start.
Ricky nodded. He removed his notebook from the bellows pocket of his shorts.
“There is a case…,” he said slowly. “The little boy I saw the other week.”
“Ah, yes,” the doctor said, smiling. “Of course, I recall. I suspected this would interest you, no? He is what, five years old?”
“A little older,” Ricky said. “Six. And indeed, Auguste, you are correct. It interests me greatly. The child has not yet spoken a single word, according to his mother.”
“That is what I, too, understood. Intriguing, I think, no?”
“Unusual. Yes, very true.”
“And your diagnosis?”
Ricky could picture a small child, wiry like so many of the islanders, and slightly undernourished, which was also a typical statement, but not tragically so. The boy had a furtive look in his eyes as he’d sat across from Ricky, scared even though he occupied his mother’s lap. The mother had cried bitterly, tears streaking down dark cheeks, as Ricky had asked her questions, because the woman thought her boy to be the brightest of her seven children, quick to learn, quick to read, quick with numbers-but never speaking a word. A special child, she thought, in most every way. Ricky had been aware that the woman had a considerable reputation in the community for magical powers, and made some extra money on the side selling love potions and amulets that were said to ward off evil, and so, he understood, for her to bring the child to see the odd white man in the clinic must have been a truly hard-reached concession that spoke of her frustration over native medicines, and her love for the boy.
“I do not think his difficulty is organic,” Ricky said slowly.
Auguste Dumondais grimaced. “His lack of speech is…?” This became a question.
“A hysterical response.”
The small black doctor rubbed his chin, and then ran his hand across his glistening skull. “I remember this, just a little bit, from my studies. Perhaps. Why do you think this?”
“The mother would only hint at some tragedy. When he was younger. There were seven children in the family, but now, only five. Do you know the family history?”
“Two children died. Yes. And the father, too. An accident, I recall, during a great storm. Yes, this child was there, that I remember, too. This could be the origin. But what treatment can we perform?”
“I will come up with a plan after some research. We will have to persuade the mother, of course. I don’t know how easy that will be.”
“Will it be expensive for her?”
“No,” Ricky said. He realized that there was some design in Auguste Dumandais’s request for him to examine the child at the same time that Ricky had a trip out of the country planned. It was a transparent design, but a good one, nonetheless. He suspected he might have done more or less the same. “I think it will cost them nothing to bring him to see me after I return. But I must learn much more, first.”