Gene Wolfe - There Are Doors

By the company’s medical plan, then, very likely; but that was administered by Personnel. If he asked Ella for the number of his doctor, she would tell Drummond. He could not just start telephoning doctors. How many doctors were there in the city? Thousands, probably. He tried to recall what Drummond had said about this one: “Your doctor will see you as soon as you get to his office. He doesn’t take appointments. There’s no reason you can’t be back before lunch.”

No, that was wrong. Not he . It was she . She doesn’t take appointments. The doctor was a woman. There might be thousands of doctors, but how many of those were women?

Fifty, maybe. And he wouldn’t go to a doctor out in the suburbs.

There was a phone in a corner of the room, with a tattered directory on a shelf under it. He opened it to the physicians’ listings and got out his pen.

Some of the doctors had provided only initials; he decided to consider them male for the purpose of his search. At least half the women were gynecologists or pediatricians; they could be eliminated too. He crossed off all those with addresses more than six blocks from the store and his apartment and was pleased to see that only three names remained. Pushing coins into the slot, he got out his wallet and checked the name he and North had chosen in the hotel. A. C. Pine—that was it. He laid the driver’s license on the shelf.

“Dr. Nilson’s office.”

Did this doctor take appointments? He said, “This is Adam Pine. I need an appointment with the doctor as soon as possible—this morning, if you can arrange it.”

“Dr. Nilson—” Faintly someone called, “Lara! Lara!” He could not tell whether the voice was male or female; it sounded far off and scratchy.

“Would you mind if I put you on hold, Mr. Green?”

She did not wait for his answer. Her voice was gone, and after a moment or two had passed, a piano began “Clair de Lune.”

He waited, telling himself he would stand there all day if necessary. “Clair de Lune” ended, and something else began, a piece he did not recognize.

At last a new voice said, “Dr. Nilson speaking.”

“I want to talk to Lara.”

“To Lora? She just left.”

“Then I want an appointment to see you as soon as possible.”

“I don’t take appointments—it’s first come, first served. Come to my office. It’s in the Downtown Mental Health Center, and I’ll fit you in when I can.”

He tried twice before he could get out the words. “I think you’ve treated me before. That you have a file on me.” He gave his name.

Dr. Nilson’s voice became warm. “Oh, of course, Mr. Green. Believe it or not, I was looking over your case the other night and hoping you’d drop in again. It’s been more than a month.”

He started, “If you’ve tried to phone—”

“I never do, except in emergencies. It’s so much better if the patient contacts me because he wants to. Come this morning, won’t you? I’ll see that you get in.”

“Yes.”

“And now, if you’ll excuse me—Lora’s not here, and there’s someone on the other line.”

The crisp air of morning had already been softened by the sun. He strode along with his topcoat folded over his arm, glancing into the store windows he passed. His department rarely got a window—windows went to the clothes people, mostly—but when it did, he was the one most often assigned to set up the display; he was professionally interested, or so he told himself.

As he looked, he wondered what to do with the money from Mr. Sheng’s package. Prudence (his mother’s ghost) advised him to bank it against a rainy day. Caution whispered that Internal Revenue might check his deposits.

How could he explain? And there would be no explaining the fact that he had not reported the income when he had filled out his 1040A. Instead he had asked for a refund, because he always had Accounting withhold more than he needed to cover his income taxes. No, he thought, even the IRS could not blame him for not reporting the money on that return; it was for last year, and he had bought the money this year.

Or had he? There had been something oddly old-fashioned about There, now that he considered it. Most of the buildings had looked old, and even the ones that had seemed new had been old in design, built of conservative brick, with windows that slid up and down like windows in a house. The cramped little cars had felt modern enough—old cars were bigger, with fins on their tails and doors as thick as a bank vault’s. So There had modern cars, except for their long-handled gear shifts; but the TV had been all black-and-white.

He tried to recall the date on the paper in which he had read about their escape and about Joe’s match with some other boxer whose name he could not remember. It was gone, faded to invisible ink.

Maybe he could take a Caribbean cruise, like on Love Boat. No, because you were supposed to fall for somebody, and he could not fall for anybody except Lara, and he had already fallen for her. He might think he had, as he had with Fanny, getting laid for two or three thousand dollars.

He laughed at himself. There had been a time when he had gone to singles bars one or two nights a week, a time that had ended when he realized the women were looking for husbands and not for love. (No, never for love.) If he just wanted to get laid, that could be arranged a lot cheaper.

Men in blue hardhats and International Orange safety vests were at work not far from the building. Hard-edged black wires traced languid curves in the street. He stopped a workman and rather timidly asked what they were doing, and the man explained that they were taking down overhead lines that had been replaced by underground cables.

He nodded, said thank you, and stood looking at the street, recalling the significant door that would not open for him again. A meter maid touched his arm and pointed out the Downtown Mental Health Center. “It’s right over there, sir. Would you like me to take you?”

“No.” He shook his head and realized with a start that he had been crying, bawling in public for the first time since he had been a small boy. Jerking the red handkerchief out of his breast pocket, he mopped his streaming eyes and blew his nose. When he felt presentable again, he went inside.

A board beside the elevators listed Dr. Nilson’s office on the fourth floor. He discovered that he had known that already; no doubt it had been part of the listing in the telephone book. He rang for the elevator and went up.

There were three patients in the doctor’s reception room: a thin and gloomy woman, a fat boy of sixteen or so who grinned at nothing, and himself. He chose a chair, necessarily between the other two, and wondered what they thought of him, how they would describe him. As a neat little clerk, perhaps—not that he felt so neat this morning.

There was nobody at the reception desk. The telephone rang six times as they sat waiting, but no one answered it.

When it had stopped ringing, he rose and examined the desk. Its top held a potted plant, a green blotter, and a silver ball-point pen embraced by a pink koala bear. The flat drawer under the desk top contained pencils, a ball-point office pen, a gross of paper clips in a small cardboard box, and some rubber bands. False drawer fronts on the left concealed an electric typewriter bolted to a swing-up typing stand. He lifted it to see whether there was anything hidden behind it, and the gloomy woman stared at him disapprovingly.

No wonder you’re so down, he thought. You won’t let anyone have any fun.

False drawer fronts on the right slid up to reveal bins for white and yellow paper, for stationery with the Downtown Mental Health Center letterhead, matching envelopes, carbon paper, and flimsy second sheets.