Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

“Boys,” Marina said. “He had three boys.”

Dr. Swenson nodded. “Well, you could see it. I don’t suppose I’d thought of this before but surely a great part of my sympathy for Dr. Eckman came from his kindness to Easter.”

The original waiter returned and put a piece of tres leches in front of Marina, who shook her head at the sight of it. She was thinking of those three boys on the sofa, the ones whose hearing was so acute that adult conversations were forced into the kitchen pantry and conducted in whispers.

“I ordered it for you,” Dr. Swenson said, and sent the waiter away. “It’s good cake. It goes with the wine.”

Marina saw the boy eyeing her dessert, caught between the joy of his own meal and the longing for hers. “How long was Anders with you before he got sick?”

“It would be hard to say since I don’t actually know when he was infected. In retrospect, I think he may have picked up something here in Manaus and brought it out with him. I didn’t know Dr. Eckman before this. It’s possible that I never saw him when he was completely himself.”

“You did,” Marina said. “You met him at Vogel before you left. He was on the review committee for your financing.” She pictured Anders leaning against her desk. He had been so certain Dr. Swenson had liked him.

Dr. Swenson nodded, her attention given over fully to her chicken for the moment. “Yes, of course, he told me that. But I didn’t remember him. I wouldn’t have any reason to remember him.”

“Of course,” Marina said, and for the first time it came to her with certainty: She does not know me.

The older doctor took a bite of rice. “It’s difficult to trust yourself in the jungle,” she said. “Some people gain their bearings over time but for others that adjustment never comes. It’s simply too foreign. We can’t find a common application for what we already know. I’m not just thinking of moral issues or rules of law, though both of those apply, but the simple concrete facts of existence aren’t what we’re used to. Take the insects, for example. Hundreds of thousand of new species are discovered around the world every year, and who knows how many other species vanish. The means by which we separate out the deadly from the merely irritating are extremely limited considering that the insect that just bit you might not have even been classified yet, and at what point does constant irritation itself become deadly? You’re bitten by so many things, there’s no way of keeping track. You simply have to accept the fact that whatever it was probably isn’t going to kill you.” She motioned to Marina with her fork. “Did you know your arm is bleeding, Dr. Singh?”

Marina had let the shawl slip behind her in the chair and she could see now that there was a thin line of dried blood about six inches long that came from a puncture of her right biceps. Dr. Swenson took the unused napkin from the fourth place at the table and dipped it into her water glass. “Here,” she said. “Clean yourself up.”

Marina took the napkin and wiped her arm, taking a minute to apply some pressure to the wound as washing it had started up the bleeding again.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Dr. Swenson said, working industriously to get the last of the chicken off the bone, “but it goes to my point. It’s easy to become hypochondriacal out here but the more dangerous state is hypochondria’s opposite: the insistent voice that says you must be overreacting to things, and so in turn you begin to ignore real symptoms. Doctors, I’m sure you know, are notorious for this sort of behavior, and I think it may have been the case with Dr. Eckman. His substantial fears actually led him too far in the other direction. Every time I asked him if he was sick he would exhaust himself denying it. When it became ridiculous for him to deny it, I told him I was sending him back. No, no, no, he said to me, like some sort of child who doesn’t want to miss his part in the school pageant, he would be better in a day or two. I couldn’t make his decisions for him, Dr. Singh, though believe me, I tried. He had waited for me a long time in Manaus and he wasn’t about to turn back around without completing whatever mission he imagined it was his responsibility to complete. The next thing I knew we were setting up an infirmary. He required nearly constant attention.” Dr. Swenson looked over at Easter, who had picked a chicken bone up from his plate and was gnawing on it. She raised a hand to tap him and then lowered it instead. She let it go. “Do you see the problem here?” she said to Marina, her voice maintaining every inflection of composure. “The man who had been sent to prod me along in my work was keeping me from it. He had crossed over a line from feeling that he would recover quickly to feeling he was too ill to travel. He told me he wanted to wait until he was in a better condition. He didn’t want to be out on the river. He was afraid of the river. What he wanted was to be home, but getting home from the Amazon requires a great deal of effort and after a certain point he no longer had that in him. I liked Dr. Eckman well enough, but I don’t believe that makes any difference to the story. He was an impediment to me when he was well and he was an impediment when he was sick. I will not have him be an impediment now that he is dead. I will not attempt to retrace every moment of his illness when I cannot alter its outcome. I am sorry that his wife will have to bear that, but there was nothing I could do about it then and there is nothing I can do about it now. He made his own choices. He received the best care we could have given him considering our resources, but Dr. Eckman died. Does that shed any more light on the subject? I wasn’t with him at the end. If there were some final words, a message, I missed it.”

Marina sat at the table and thought of her friend dying of a nameless fever in some room or some hut at the end of the world. Karen Eckman made her promise she would ask if Anders was dead. Instead she asked Dr. Swenson if he had died alone. It was a sentimental question but she wanted some other picture in her mind than the one she had.

“When he died? No,” she said. Her eyes cut over to the boy for an instant and then back to Marina. “Easter was with him.”

Easter, who was possibly the age of the oldest Eckman boy, or the middle one, had seen him out. His plate was scraped clean and wiped down with bread, a neat pike of chicken bones stacked in the center. She gave him her cake and in return he gave her such a smile that she wanted the waiter to come back so she could order another piece and give him that one as well.

“It isn’t a story to bring home,” Dr. Swenson said.

“No,” Marina said.

“The story isn’t meant for her anyway.” Dr. Swenson tapped the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “It’s a story for you. Without getting into the details over dinner, you will trust me when I tell you that Dr. Eckman suffered. I mean it to be a cautionary tale.”

Marina nodded, trying to find some untapped vein of stoicism within herself as she wanted very much to cover her face with her hands at the thought of Anders’ end. “I understand that.”

“I don’t imagine that anyone has been too worried about this back at the pharmaceutical plant, but Dr. Eckman’s death was difficult for me as well. I was cautious to begin with and now I am doubly so. I’m not looking to take on a new responsibility. If you want to know how my work is going I will tell you: I am behind schedule. This is a delicate piece of science. I give it every waking moment of my life but at this point it still requires more time. I understand that it is not an unlimited number of years I have in which to finish this, both from Vogel’s perspective and from my own.” Dr. Swenson signaled the waiter to bring the check and drank the last of her water. “Someday I would like to leave the Amazon myself, Dr. Singh. I am used to this place but I am not in love with it. I have every possible incentive to complete this project as quickly as possible. Mr. Fox seems to think that I’m enjoying myself so much that I would need a series of Vogel emissaries to remind me that the goal is to finish. You may report back that I have not lost sight of the goal.”