Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

Mark took another sip of tea. “My mother died two years earlier, meningitis – an accidental stick with a needle from an infected patient – so after his death, my aunt Margaret moved in to raise me.” He paused and smiled. “Crotchety, rough as sandpaper on the outside, but someone real special where it counted. I sure knew I was loved…”

As Mark talked about his childhood, he noticeably skirted how his father had died, and Earl didn’t ask. Losing both parents so close together had to have scarred the boy. Yet here he was, apparently tough-minded, certainly personable, and, Earl suspected, a dedicated doctor. He’d have to be, choosing to work solo in such an isolated place that held so many devastating memories for him. Or maybe keeping to himself was the legacy of what he’d been through.

“… I didn’t take over my father’s practice so much as resurrect it. Aunt Margaret, like my mother, had also been a nurse, so when he died, she advertised for a new doctor to come in and replace him. It never happened. His patients ended up going all the way into Saratoga Springs. But as my residency neared the finish, just about everybody in the community besieged me to pick up where he left off.” Mark leaned back in his chair and studied the bottom of his cup, momentarily lost in his own thoughts.

“And why did you?” Years of eliciting painful histories from reluctant patients also taught when a nonthreatening prompt or two would keep a person talking.

“Drawn to it, or maybe lured is the word. The shrinks would say I was probably looking for the dad I lost by trying to be like him. And for happiness. I had it there, until everything changed.”

“Did Aunt Margaret have anything to do with it?”

“I know what you’re thinking. That she encouraged me to follow in Dad’s footsteps. In fact, she did just the opposite. To her dying breath she made me promise to get out of Hampton Junction. ‘Anybody living in hills by choice wants to keep the world out,’ she used to say. ‘Go and doctor people where they want to let the world in, and you’ll be happier.’ ”

“Was she right?”

He shrugged, still cradling the empty cup. “Depends on what day you ask me. I get to do more in the boonies than I ever would in Manhattan. That makes me strong clinically, and I love that. But I do crave my trips out. It’s conferences, ski trips, diving, and theater, whenever I can swing it.”

Earl smiled. Mark’s openness, even about what must be painful for him, suggested someone rock solid despite his childhood trauma. It also probably meant he didn’t get much of a chance to talk about himself. He’d have to be lonely up there, intellectually as well as emotionally, with no colleagues to rub elbows with day to day. “I bet you’d put a lot of us city docs to shame,” he said.

“I hold my own. And I do get to teach. Residents often come to me from NYCH for their rural rotation. In fact, one’s due in another week or so. That part I love. But sometimes, lately, while I can look straight up at the stars to the end of the universe, the trees and hills close in from the sides so heavily it’s like nothing else exists.”

Earl never wanted to feel that trapped.

Later that same Sunday,

11:55 A.M.

Amtrak’s Empire for Albany rolled out of Penn Station and up the shores of the Hudson, first stop Yonkers. Mark managed to find a window seat on the side overlooking the river. As the train wound along its edge, he watched the mighty waterway rush in the opposite direction toward the ocean. He always found release in the transition from the press of New York and trackside buildings to the gentle sweep of bulrushes, distant trees, and faraway hills. He felt it even when the season drew the landscape in bleak, prewinter blacks and browns, and the low sky, laden with snow, ran north like an empty gray highway. The ability to see farther here coupled with the sense of relief of no longer having so many people crowded around inevitably allowed him to breathe easier and think more privately, maybe even more clearly.

The sway of the car rocked him to the edge of sleep, and his mind’s eye wandered along images of Samantha and Chaz at odds over Kelly, Melanie Collins eulogizing Kelly, Earl crying over Kelly’s letter. How differently he’d begun to see Kelly these last few weeks. A woman who had ducked confrontation with her estranged parents and never resolved the problems that alienated her from them. A woman who ran rather than worked things out – even running from Earl. Someone who sought her sense of self and security through others – the Bradens, Earl, his own father. Even, in a way, through medicine. She must have been driven, succeeding at med school the way she did. No, Kelly was neither the flawless saint who had been put on a pedestal at the service nor the victim who had so enthralled Earl. Instead, he began to construct the picture of a very troubled woman who escaped from one problem directly into another.

The car lurched, startling him from his twilight reverie.

He focused instead on what he and Earl had decided. It was to be a simple division of labor. Earl would do the legwork in New York, despite the risk of singling himself out as a suspect. What a hardnose he’d been about that. Little wonder the guy had such a record for finding trouble. And did he treat everyone as if they were his intern and he’d be in charge? Shit, that had grated. Even so, he liked the man.

For Mark’s part, he would use his position as coroner to request the hospital to identify the two patients whose mortality and morbidity reports they’d examined. He’d first try persuasion, falling back on his old ties with NYCH. He’d made a lot of friends there during med school and his residency, some as influential as the Bradens. If that failed, he’d resort to official channels and exert his power of subpoena. Problem was, the process would begin in county court, wind its way through judges in Albany, and probably get him a response from Manhattan by next Easter. Better he get results with honey than have to try vinegar.

He also intended to chip away at Chaz Braden’s alibis in Hampton Junction during the week of Kelly’s disappearance. The town had its share of people like Nell, with sharp eyes and long memories. One of them might have noticed Chaz when he was supposed to have been in New York.

Earl had suggested it might be useful to stir up local memories, very circumspectly of course, regarding Samantha McShane around that time. Circumspectly indeed… with all the nosing around he was going to do under the watchful eyes of Nell and her network.

Not that he’d have trouble getting people to tell him things. One of the burdens of a small-town practice was knowing the secrets of an entire community: the lies, the concealed failures, the hidden disappointments, the masked betrayals, the deeply buried hatreds – all eventually told to him, as surely as the threads of a web led to its center. These days people seemed to feel more comfortable confessing to a physician than to a minister, priest, or rabbi. He figured it had to do with a doctor’s obligation to be nonjudgmental.

The train slowed, and the stop for Poughkeepsie, a gray brick station blackened with grime, eventually slid into view. As he watched the people get off, his cellular rang.

“Hey, where are you?” he heard Dan say as soon as he pressed the TALK button. “I expected you back last night.”

“You sound like a wife.”

“No, just a mother hen.”

“Something came up in New York. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. Should be there by three-thirty.”

“Would her name be Mandy, by any chance?”

“No, Mother! And if you’ve nothing better to do than carry on like Nell-”