The room Ricky occupied was nearly square, and more or less undecorated, with stucco walls once a flat vibrant white, but faded over the years into a color that seemed only one step away from the dust that hung above the street outside. He had few possessions: a radio which brought in spring training games on the Armed Forces channels, some clothes. An up-to-date calendar sporting a bare-breasted young woman with an inviting look in her eyes had that day circled in black pen. It hung from a nail a few feet away from a hand-carved wooden crucifix that he suspected had belonged to the prior occupant, but which he had not removed, because it seemed to him that taking down a religious icon in a country where religion in so many weird and conflicting ways was so critical to so many people, invited bad luck, and, so far, he thought, his luck, on balance, had been quite good. He had built two shelves against one wall. These were crammed with a number of worn and well-used medical texts, as well as some brand-new ones. The titles of these ranged from the practical (Tropical Diseases and Their Treatments) to the more esoteric (Case Studies in Mental Illness Patterns for Developing Nations). He had a thick faux leather notebook and some pencils, as well, which he used for jotting down observations and treatment plans, which he kept on a small desk next to a laptop computer and printer. Above the printer he kept a handwritten list of wholesale drug outlets in south Florida. He also had a small, black canvas duffel bag, big enough for a two- to three-day trip, which he had packed with some clothing. Ricky looked about the room, and thought that it wasn’t much, but it suited his mood and his sense of himself, and though he suspected he could easily move into far nicer digs, he wasn’t sure that he would do so, even after he ran the errands that would take up the remainder of the week.
He went to the window and stared out at the street. It was only a half block to the clinic, and already he could see people gathered outside. There was a small grocery across the street, and the proprietor and his wife, two incongruously large middle-aged folks, were setting out some wooden crates and barrels that contained fresh fruits and vegetables. They were brewing coffee, as well, and the smell reached up to him more or less the same time that the proprietor’s wife turned and saw him standing in the window. She waved gaily, smiling, and gestured at the coffee simmering over an open fire, inviting Ricky to join them. He held up a couple of fingers, to indicate he would be along in a moment or two, and she returned to work. The street was already beginning to crowd with people, and Ricky suspected it would be a busy day at the clinic. The heat for early March was oddly potent, mingling with a distant flavor of bougainvillea, market fruits, and humanity, temperatures rising as quickly as the morning did.
He looked off at the hills, which alternated a lush and enthusiastic green with barren brown. They rose high above the city and he thought to himself that Haiti was truly one of the most intriguing countries on the planet. It was the poorest spot he’d ever seen, but in some ways the most dignified, as well. He knew that when he walked down the street toward the clinic, he would be the only white face for miles. This might have unsettled him once, in his past, but no longer. He reveled in being different, and knew there was an odd sort of mystery that accompanied his every step.
What he particularly enjoyed was that despite the mystery, the people on the street were willing to accept his odd presence without question. Or, at least, no questions to his face, which, when he considered it, seemed both a compliment and a compromise and one of each that he was willing to live with.
He descended from his room and joined the market proprietor and his wife in a cup of bitter, strong coffee, thick and sweetened with raw sugar. He ate a crust of bread that had been baked that morning, and took the opportunity to examine the abscessed boil on the proprietor’s back that he had lanced and drained three days earlier. The wound seemed to be healing rapidly and he reminded the man in half-English, half-French, to keep it clean and to change the bandage again that day.
The proprietor nodded, grinned, spoke for a few moments about the local soccer team’s erratic fortunes, and begged Ricky to attend their match the following week. The team was called the Soaring Eagles and carried much of the neighborhood’s passions into each contest, with decidedly mixed and noticeably un-soaring results. The proprietor refused Ricky’s offer to pay for his breakfast, meager as it had been. This was already a routine between the two men. Ricky would reach into his pocket, and the proprietor would wave anything that emerged away. As always, Ricky thanked him, promised to be at the soccer match wearing red and green Eagle colors, and stepped off briskly toward the clinic, the taste of the coffee still strong in his mouth.
The people crowded around the entranceway, obscuring the handwritten sign that read in large, black, uneven letters, with several misspellings: doctor dumondais excelent medical clinic. hours 7 to 7 and by appointment. call 067-8975. Ricky passed through the mob, which parted to let him through. More than one man tipped his cap in his direction. He recognized some faces from some of the more regular customers, and he smiled greetings in their directions. Faces flashed replies and he heard more than one whispered “Bonjour, monsieur le docteur…” He shook hands with one old man, the tailor named Dupont, who had made him a tan linen suit far more elegant than anything Ricky thought he might need after Ricky had obtained some Vioxx for the arthritis which afflicted his fingers. As he’d suspected, the drug had done wonders.
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?”