Paul Theroux - Blinding Light

Years passed, girlfriends came and went. He shrank as his fame grew, that famous author of Trespassing resembling him less and less. Rather than leave his farm, he continued to enlarge it until it became an estate so vast, so productive, so valuable, that he would never need to leave.

The land was fertile. He grew much of the food he ate. The physical activity tired him and displaced his writing hours. He started stories, he sketched out ideas for novels, for plays, for an opera. The publishers wanted another Trespassing, but that book he knew was written and done, and he told them so: there would be no other. He took comfort in the fact that among his summer friends, the most secure and happiest were those who had done one thing well — a book, a movie, a play, a picture — the unique thing by which they were known.

Growing flowers, cultivating vegetables, gave him consolation and wearied him enough to ease the passage of time. Whatever he began to write on any given morning, doodling at his desk, he always ended up abandoning the effort and digging in his garden. And when he was not hoeing or watering, he would sit on the cast-iron love seat at the garden’s edge and peer at the plants and exult in their size, imagine that he was watching them grow. He put in a heated greenhouse, an enormous tent-shaped conservatory of glass, so the whole year was his for cultivation.

The labor of gardening was a gift. He spent days lifting heavy sacks of manure for his potato field, bending and straightening, heaving and slinging them over the high fence that kept out the deer and the rabbits. When that chore was done he lay inert in his bath, stewing his aching bones and muscles. And one day when he looked in the mirror he saw that his left eye was crimson where there had been white: the eye was full of blood, opaque and frightful.

What surprised him was that there was no pain in the bloody eye. Still, it shocked him enough that he overcame his hatred of hospitals. He drove himself to the Vineyard hospital, squinting, shutting the right eye, apparently using the gory but functioning left one. He registered, was told to wait — a Thursday night in early May, hardly anyone around. He found a mirror and marveled at his hideous eye.

A woman in white appeared. “Mr. Steadman, please come this way.”

He was friendly with the woman, wondering if she was the doctor. She was small, compact, efficient — those white silent shoes. She asked him if he was taking any medication, and was he allergic to antibiotics, and what exactly was the reason for his visit? After the woman recorded his answers, she smiled and asked him to wait. She was the nurse.

Another woman entered, older, bigger, dressed in white. She took his temperature, strapped his arm for his blood pressure, then jotted down the numbers. She led him to a small room and left. So it was a series of steps, a gaining admittance by degrees, wait here, now wait there, refining the questions, advancing toward the final room by passing through a set of subtle antechambers.

“Yes?”

Another nurse, probably, another stage of waiting, more questions. But she said, “I’m Dr. Katsina,” and shook his hand.

He was at first anxious and then inexpressibly relieved, for she was attractive — long-legged, thin-faced, lanky light hair, full lips, her lovely blue-gray eyes staying on him with a curious and intelligent gaze. He guessed she was in her mid to late thirties, athletic, brisk, with a bike rider’s calves, a good grip from handlebars and hand brakes.

As she washed her hands she said, “You’ve been doing some hard work.”

Steadman looked at his hands and wondered what she had seen.

“What have you been lifting?”

He loved her coming straight to the point, the swift deduction, the summing up.

She smiled and put her scrubbed pretty face close to his. She was warm and clean and her nearness was like a remedy for the yearning in him. Placing her thumb near his left eye and the other fingers at the back of his scalp and tilting his head, she looked into his eye as if through a keyhole, and then she used an instrument to peer.

“Any pain?”

“No.”

“Not too serious.”

“What is it?”

“A subconjunctival hemorrhage. A burst capillary. That’s real blood. You were bending, lifting something heavy.”

He smiled at the accuracy of her diagnosis. “Do I take anything for it?”

Dr. Katsina shook her head and, washing her hands again, said, “It looks scary, but you’re fine. It should subside in a week. If it doesn’t, come back. Was there anything else?”

Steadman was so relieved he felt excited, grateful, restored to health. He wanted to hug her. He said, “What can I do for you?”

“I’m okay,” she said, finding this funny.

Detecting a trace of unease, for he was staring at her with his bloody eye and looking eager, Steadman said, “How about a drink?”

“That’s against hospital rules — and unprofessional. I’m a doctor. You’re my patient. Anyway, I have a woman in labor. She’s due any minute but I have a feeling it will be two A.M. It always is.”

Dr. Katsina made a gesture of helplessness and departure that was also a signal of dismissal — time’s up.

“How do you deal with someone in labor?”

“I wait until I’m paged.”

“Maybe we could wait together.”

She equivocated with her shoulders. It was like a yes, but she said, “Not today.”

He didn’t insist, because he felt she was cooperating, and now that he knew her name, he was certain he wanted to see her again. Instead of phoning her, he wrote her a note, wondering when she would be free. She did not reply. He told himself that doctors were busy. He tried again, giving her his telephone number.

She called him a few days later, saying, “This is Ava Katsina,” and it took him a moment to recall who she was, for she hadn’t said “Doctor.”

He said, “I want to see you — please.”

“Okay,” she said, “but this means I can’t be your doctor.”

“I’ll agree to anything.”

Her laughter reassured him. She said she was free the following day. He waited by the emergency door of the hospital, gladly at ease, watching through the window, seeing her dress tighten against her body as she bent forward over the counter to sign out.

“I have to leave my pager on,” she said, getting into the car. “I have another woman in labor. I can’t go far.”

He drove to Oak Bluffs, parked at the Dockside Inn, and they climbed to a second-story bar overlooking the inner harbor. He was struck at once by its roughness, the sourness of spilled beer, the loud music. The place was a bit too busy for May, perhaps because there were so few other bars open, the drinkers not vacationers but islanders, an after-work crowd of shouting friends. The porch was chilly, damp, uncomfortable, noisy, and when the sun went down there wasn’t enough light to read a menu. The service was slow, and along with the discomfort and din was the chill in the air, one of those days in clammy procrastinating spring when people called out, “Not summer yet!” and the Vineyard felt more than ever like a remote island, detached and dark, the Cape hidden by low clouds, the north wind thrashing the water, making whitecaps on the ebbing tide and pushing corrugations of froth across the Sound.

Steadman had been so preoccupied with these distractions — he had hoped to find a quiet bar or cafe — he had turned away from Dr. Ava Katsina. He looked at her to apologize, to make a joke about the place being so awful, such a dive, and to smile at her.

She was crying. She saw his sudden concern, something like alarm, and she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

He was always torn by tears, anyone’s tears, and a woman’s sobbing undid him. He had no reply, he was helpless. Please stop, he wanted to say.