But he said nothing, got up, put money on the table, and sighed.
“We sick people probably often ask you inappropriate questions,” he said. “But, generally, is it a dangerous illness or not? …”
The doctor glanced at him sternly with one eye through his spectacles, as if to say: Accused, if you do not keep within the limits of the questions put to you, I will be forced to order you removed from the court.
“I’ve already told you what I consider necessary and appropriate,” said the doctor. “The analysis will give further evidence.” And the doctor bowed.
Ivan Ilyich went out slowly, climbed dejectedly into the sleigh, and drove home. On the way he kept going over what the doctor had said, trying to translate all those complicated, vague scientific terms into simple language and read in them the answer to the question: bad—is it very bad for me, or still all right? And it seemed to him that the sense of everything the doctor had said was that it was very bad. Everything seemed sad to Ivan Ilyich in the streets. The cabbies were sad, the houses were sad, the passersby and the shops were sad. And that pain, the obscure, gnawing pain, which did not cease for a moment, seemed to have acquired, in connection with the doctor’s vague words, a different, more serious meaning. With a new, heavy feeling Ivan Ilyich now paid heed to it.
He came home and started telling his wife. His wife listened, but in the middle of his account his daughter came in with her hat on: she and her mother were going somewhere. She forced herself to sit down and listen to this boredom, but could not stand it for long, and the mother did not hear him out.
“Well, I’m very glad,” said his wife, “so now see to it that you take your medicine regularly. Give me the prescription, I’ll send Gerasim to the pharmacy.” And she went to get dressed.
He could not breathe freely while she was in the room and sighed heavily when she left.
“Oh, well,” he said. “Maybe in fact it’s all right …”
He began to take medicines, following the doctor’s prescriptions, which were changed on account of the urine analysis. But then it just so happened that, in this analysis and in what should have followed from it, there was some sort of confusion. It was impossible to reach the doctor himself, and meanwhile what was being done was not what the doctor had said to him. He either forgot, or lied, or was hiding something from him.
But all the same Ivan Ilyich started following the prescriptions precisely and in following them found comfort at first.
Ivan Ilyich’s main occupation since the time of his visit to the doctor became the precise following of the doctor’s prescriptions concerning hygiene and the taking of medicines, and paying heed to his pain and to all the functions of his organism. People’s illness and people’s health became Ivan Ilyich’s main interests. When there was talk in his presence of someone being ill, or dying, or recovering, especially of an illness similiar to his own, he listened, trying to conceal his excitement, asked questions, and made applications to his illness.
The pain did not diminish; but Ivan Ilyich tried to make himself think that he was better. And he could deceive himself as long as nothing worried him. But as soon as there was some unpleasantness with his wife, a setback at work, or bad cards at vint, he immediately felt the whole force of his illness; he used to endure these setbacks, expecting to quickly right the wrong, to overcome it, to achieve success, a grand slam. But now any setback undercut him and threw him into despair. He said to himself: I was just getting better, and the medicine was beginning to work, and here’s this cursed misfortune or unpleasantness … And he became angry at the misfortune or at the people who had caused him the unpleasantness and were killing him; and he felt how this anger was killing him, but he could not repress it. It seems it ought to have been clear to him that this anger at circumstances and at people was aggravating his illness, and that therefore he should not pay attention to unpleasant occasions; but his reasoning was quite the opposite: he said that he needed peace, looked out for anything that might disturb that peace, and at the slightest disturbance became irritated. His condition was also made worse by his reading of medical books and consulting of doctors. The worsening went on so gradually that he could deceive himself comparing one day with another—the difference was so slight. But when he consulted doctors, it seemed to him that it was getting worse and even very quickly. And despite that, he constantly consulted doctors.
That month he visited yet another celebrity: the other celebrity said almost the same thing as the first, but put his questions differently. And the consultation with this celebrity only increased Ivan Ilyich’s doubt and fear. The friend of a friend of his—a very good doctor—defined the illness in quite another way still and, though he promised recovery, his questions and conjectures confused Ivan Ilyich still more and increased his doubts. A homeopath defined the illness in still another way and gave him medicine, and Ivan Ilyich, in secret from everyone, took it for a week. But after a week, feeling no relief and losing confidence both in the former treatments and in this one, he fell into still greater dejection. Once a lady acquaintance told about healing with icons. Ivan Ilyich caught himself listening attentively and believing in the reality of the fact. This occasion frightened him. “Can I have grown so mentally feeble?” he said to himself. “Nonsense! It’s all rubbish, I mustn’t give way to anxieties, but choose one doctor and keep strictly to his treatment. That’s what I’ll do. It’s over now. I won’t think, and I’ll strictly follow the treatment till summer. Then we’ll see. These vacillations are over now! …” That was easy to say, but impossible to do. The pain in his side kept gnawing at him, seemed to be increasing, becoming constant; the taste in his mouth kept becoming stranger; it seemed to him that his mouth gave off a disgusting smell, and his appetite and strength kept weakening. It was impossible to deceive himself: something dreadful, new, and so significant that nothing more significant had ever happened in his life, was being accomplished in Ivan Ilyich. And he alone knew of it. Everyone around him either did not understand or did not want to understand and thought that everything in the world was going on as before. This was what tormented Ivan Ilyich most of all. He saw that his household—mainly his wife and daughter, who were in the very heat of social life—did not understand anything, were vexed that he was so cheerless and demanding, as if he was to blame for it. Though they tried to conceal it, he saw that he was a hindrance to them, but that his wife had worked out for herself a certain attitude towards his illness and held to it regardless of what he said and did. This attitude was the following:
“You know,” she would say to acquaintances, “Ivan Ilyich cannot keep strictly to the treatment he’s prescribed, as all good people do. Today he takes his drops and eats what he’s been told to and goes to bed on time; tomorrow suddenly, if I don’t look out, he forgets to take them, eats sturgeon (which is forbidden), and stays up till one o’clock playing vint.”