Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

“You know,” I said, “forty dollars doesn’t seem like a lot of money.”

“I don’t plan to get rich doing this.”

“Then why do it at all?” I asked.

“I fill a need,” Cisco said. “Believe it or not, people do fall through the cracks of the health-care system. Some don’t have insurance. Some are illegal immigrants. They’re intimidated by ERs, the crowds and the waits and tension there. I provide a service.”

“And, of course, they pay you,” I pointed out, playing devil’s advocate.

“I’m part of what the World Bank calls the informal economy,” Cisco said. “It’s accepted practice in many countries.”

“But you said you don’t have the equipment you’d like,” I pointed out.

“You’d be surprised what’s available from medical-supply houses,” he said. “No drugs, of course. But I’ve been able to get much of what I need for my practice here, which is mostly minor injuries, burns, things like that. I’m also able to give reassurance to people with small problems, like yours. And when people have more serious problems, I’m an early-warning system. When people come to me with symptoms that trouble me, or conditions that are beyond my capacity to treat, I tell them in no uncertain terms to get to a clinic or hospital.”

“About how many patients do you find yourself sending away to a real doctor?” I said.

The warmth died away from Cisco’s dark eyes. “I am a real doctor,” he said.

“I didn’t mean-” I said.

But it was too late; I’d said the wrong thing. “I think we’re finished here,” Cisco said, rolling backward to put a little more space between us. “Good night, Sarah.”

Shiloh and Irented the first floor of an older two-story house. It afforded more privacy than you’d expect, because behind it, on the other side of a barbed-wire fence, was an open field and then the railroad tracks on their raised man-made berm. I pulled into the narrow driveway alongside the house and went in through the back door. The outer screen door gave way grudgingly, creaking. It was stiff, in need of maintenance I hadn’t yet given it.

The place had been Shiloh ’s before it had been mine, and it was still largely his personality that was imprinted throughout the gently shabby interior. Probably a number of women would have made their own mark by now, but I wasn’t one of them. I’d always felt a certain peace among Shiloh ’s eclectic paperback books and weathered furniture.

I flicked the kitchen light on and set my shoulder bag on the cluttered kitchen table, pushing aside a stack of unread mail and the legal pad on which I’d been trying to compose a letter to Shiloh. I was much more physically tired than the evening’s work accounted for, but I understood why. The visit to Cisco’s had been wearying. Genevieve, a veteran interrogator, had taught me that lying is hard on the body: it speeds the heart and demands more oxygen for the bloodstream.

I went into the bathroom, reached for the faucet handle in the bathtub, and turned on the hot water. Then, on impulse, I put the stopper in the drain rather than starting a shower. Sitting on the edge of the tub, I watched the water begin to pool.

The last piece of advice my mother ever gave me was not to take baths in motel rooms, because you never know who’s been using the bathtubs or how well they’ve been cleaned. Strange advice, but we were in a motel at the time.

It was ovarian cancer that had claimed my mother: swift, silent, deceptively painless in its early stages. After treatments at our local hospital in rural New Mexico were unsuccessful, my mother had sought treatment at a research university in Texas. My father had approved of the idea. They’ll fix you up, he’d said glibly, in denial to the end. He did not come along, but sent me to accompany her.

When my mother went in for her exploratory surgery, I waited in the oncologist’s office, drinking a Dr Pepper and looking through the glossy four-color books Dr. Schwartz kept out for visitors and their families. At nine, I didn’t read as well as I should have, but if the book had a lot of pictures, I would have my nose buried in it, looking studious and rapt to the world outside. That’s what I was doing when Dr. Schwartz returned a half hour later.

Still in his surgical scrubs, he walked past me into his inner office, picked up the phone on his desk, and dialed. At nine, I had the preternaturally good hearing that many children do, and both ends of the conversation were audible to me.

“Sandeep, it’s me,” he said. “If you want to move your schedule up a little bit, you can. I’m already done with the exploratory I had at eleven-thirty.”

“That was quick.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” my mother’s doctor said. “Totally metastasized. When I saw how far it had gone, I just closed up. We were out of there way ahead of schedule.”

Dr. Schwartz made another phone call immediately after that one, and this time, I immediately recognized the voice on the other end.

“I think it’s time you drove out here,” Dr. Schwartz said, lighting a cigarette. “I’d like to talk to you in person.”

“You can talk to me now, Doctor,” my father said. “Is my wife not in shape to travel by herself?”

“Actually, you should be prepared to stay here awhile,” Dr. Schwartz said.

A long pause. “You’re not telling me Rose’s case is terminal, are you?”

Dr. Schwartz looked up to see me looking at him. He took the phone away from his face. “Sarah, sweetie,” he said, “why don’t you run down the hall and get yourself something to drink?”

“I still have half of the Dr Pepper you bought me,” I said, pointing.

“Then can you get me a diet something? Coke or Sprite, doesn’t matter.”

In the hall, I’d asked a tall black orderly what terminal meant. He’d said, “I dunno, kid.” I’d been young enough to believe him.

A gurgling noise interrupted my thoughts. The water in the tub had reached the drainplate. I shut it off and hunted under the sink for a jar of bath salts, poured a generous amount into the steaming water, and got in. As I did, I thought for no reason of Marlinchen Hennessy, my visitor of four days ago.

The association seemed to come from nowhere, but it couldn’t have. Did the bath salts- cleanly herbal instead of cloyingly floral- bring up a scent she’d been wearing? No, that wasn’t it.

Marlinchen had told me about her mother’s premature death; I had just been remembering my mother. There was the link. She’d said her mother had died ten years ago, which would have made her seven at the time.

I had mishandled Marlinchen Hennessy. Some of that was undoubtedly due to the way she’d looked. My first impression of Marlinchen Hennessy had been of a young woman of perhaps 21, and even after she’d told me she was 17, I hadn’t really internalized it. I’d spoken to her as bluntly as I would have to an adult, forgetting that even adults are sometimes shaken up by a cop’s natural directness.

Certainly, Marlinchen hadn’t helped her own case with her evasions and defensiveness. But I’d been a cop long enough to know that sometimes people need help the most when they appear to deserve it the least. Ultimately, Marlinchen had made it clear that the burden of finding her brother had fallen on her, and had reached out to me for help, and I’d run her off.

Perhaps there was something I could do to remedy that. If nothing else, Hennepin County didn’t pay me to look the other way when one of its citizens behaved strangely, rushing away rather than answering seemingly harmless questions.

The deputy in Georgiawho’d taken the missing-persons report on Aidan had a slight smoker’s rasp riding over his thick, interrogative accent. “You have some information about Aidan Hennessy for me?” he asked.