David Nickle - Eutopia

As she explained, Dr. Bergstrom led them back through the doors, along a wide hallway and up a flight of stairs. As they moved deeper, Dr. Bergstrom motioned to various rooms off the hallway: Obstetrics, Surgery, Recovery.

There were laboratories on the second floor, along with a library, and that was where Dr. Bergstrom kept his offices and some spare rooms for visiting doctors.

“You can use these rooms for your work,” he said. “There are cots there, and you and young Jason can stay there tonight. Until you find more suitable accommodation in town.”

“That will be excellent,” said Aunt Germaine.

“But first, I am curious,” he said as they stopped outside his own office, and he dug around in his pocket for a little silver key to open it. “What is the manner of the tragedy that befell young Jason’s family?” He looked to Jason and Germaine with eyebrows raised, then opened the office.

Aunt Germaine opened her mouth, blinked, and then did something of which Jason did not think her capable: she stammered.

“He—it was—well, it was an illness, Doctor.”

“Was it? Was it that—”

“It was that grave,” Aunt Germaine interrupted. “Yes.”

“Mrs. Frost, we ought to speak privately,” said Dr. Bergstrom. “Jason, could you wait in the examination room?” He pointed to a set of double doors across the hall.

Jason didn’t say anything, just nodded. There was something passing between the two adults—something that went back a long time, and started, he figured, in a place that was no good. He was not about to step into the midst of it, not without knowing a bit more. Waiting in the hall would be fine.

Dr. Bergstrom beckoned Aunt Germaine into the office and she followed, shoulders slumped a little. The door swung shut, and the latch clicked. Jason stood alone in the hallway.

Mama in Heaven , he thought, what has your sister got herself into?

Jason felt ashamed at even considering it, but he did it anyway—pressed his ear against the door to see if he could make out anything about the conversation that would explain things. It wasn’t a good plan. The doors were thick at the Eliada hospital, and even holding his breath and sitting still, he could only figure so much of their talk.

There was anger on both sides of the conversation. Some words repeated themselves: “female” was one, most often from the doctor’s lips, and once or twice punctuated by a bang that Jason guessed might be an open hand on a tabletop. Another was “fool,” and another “never” and a phrase that Germaine kept repeating: “had you been specific”—it all suggested a conversation going the wrong way for everyone. If it had been his mama in there, Jason might have just gone in. As it was—and as grateful as he was to his Aunt Germaine—Jason let her look after herself. He crossed the hall, and let himself into the examination room.

It was a big space. Everything—walls, floor, ceiling—was painted white, but the twilight admitted by two long skylights and a tall window at the far end made it purple as a fresh bruise. In the middle of the room was a sort of bed that was on iron stilts with wheels on the base; along one wall were glass-covered shelves filled with bottles and bright silver instruments next to a couple of big metal wardrobes, all behind a long wooden bench covered in strange, curving instruments of metal and glass such as Jason had never seen. There was a glass jar, filled with sliced, dried apples.

And along the other wall were shelves filled with books.

He had never seen so many, not in one place, and not all together. His mama had just a couple at the cabin—and that was only if you counted the Bible—and the Cracked Wheel Town Office had a few more. But there was nothing like this.

Jason walked along the rows. The books were about doctoring and medicine; he read titles like General Surgical Pathology and Therapeutics , History of the German Universities , and Account of the Sore Throat Attended with Ulcers .

His mama would have called this a treasure trove. For the first time in weeks, he let himself remember her.

There was that one night when he was very small for instance. It was autumn, he thought, because the wind was up and the fire was on, and the trees that had leaves in the summer were bare and rattling. All in all, things were what you might call foreboding around the Thistledown homestead, but his mama was of good cheer. If Jason remembered right, she had sold some pigs in Cracked Wheel for a better price than she expected, but it could have been another thing too.

But that was the night she’d cracked open Bulfinch’s Mythology . The book came out of a chest that she had at the back of the house. She had kept it hidden there until this cold fall day when her mood was right and Jason was big enough, and she brought it out with a flourish.

It was a fine-looking book. The cover was like cloth, a deep red, and on it was a picture of a very strong man with his arms thrust in the air, a great curling beard pushing forward from his chin. The letters were solid gold, although they were chipping a bit here and there.

“Gold!” said Jason, pointing at the letters.

“It is a treasure, that’s certain.”

“We’re rich!” he said, and his mama laughed.

That night, she read him his first tale. It was the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, and it became one of his favourites. He thought part of that may have been because his mama spared him the harder facts of the tale. She stopped reading the moment Theseus emerged from King Minos’ maze, the huge bull head of the Minotaur in one hand and the thread and sword given him by beautiful Ariadne in the other. No mention of how subsequently he abandoned Ariadne sleeping on the Isle of Naxos. Then, just to show he was a complete no-good, Theseus forgot to signal his pa that things had gone fine in the maze, subsequent to which the old man, thinking his son was dead, slew himself in misplaced grief.

Jason, who knew none of this, demanded to hear what came next. “Did Theseus go on and stick old Minos with his sword just to show him? What about Daedalus, who made that maze in the first place? He had it coming. How about sticking him?”

“Well,” said his mama, “there’s only one way to find out.”

“What’s that?”

“Read it yourself.”

Jason smiled to himself as he looked around the library at Eliada. He had flown into such a rage. He told his mama she knew full well he could not read or write, and it was unkind of her to withhold important facts on account of his infirmity. His mama had gotten mad too, or pretended to, and took the book away until he came to his senses.

Jason had stayed mad for only a little while. And now, he knew that the only reason he could read the titles at least in this medical library was because of that night. No way he would have figured out reading and writing near as well if his mama had stuck him in a schoolhouse and made him learn his ABCs with chalk and slate at the foot of some stranger. The temptation of mythology was what did it for him, and she laid it out for him, like the Devil doing good.

Out in the hall, a door slammed, and as fast, the door to the examination room cracked open. Dr. Bergstrom stepped in. He was wearing a face mask like Aunt Germaine’s, and he had his rubber gloves back on.

“Well now, young Jason. I see you are a bibliophile.”

Jason didn’t know what that meant, but he nodded like he did.

“Splendid.” He walked over to the table, and pulled out one of the dried apples. He popped it in his mouth. As he chewed on it, he opened a drawer and took from there a box of matches. “Would you,” he said, approaching a wall-sconce, “be so kind as to strip off your shirt and trousers, Jason?” He struck the match, and lit the lamp with it. “Now, please?”