Joseph Caldwell - Lazarus Rising

Never when Doctor Norstar was talking did Dempsey look at Johnny or in any way acknowledge his presence. Her face passive and her lips loosely touching each other, she would look at Doctor Norstar with an almost insulting indifference. It was left to Johnny to nod his head knowingly, to lift his chin to show that the information was being received into his consciousness. At times he could sense, but not prove, that his ears, already large and pulled somewhat away from his head, were bending ever so slightly forward, the better to hear the doctor’s instruction.

And so it was that during their consultations, Johnny would be the one reaching, scratching, squeezing, nodding, straining, while Dempsey herself would limit her actions to an occasional blink, a slight flaring of the nostrils and, rarely, the raising of her right eyebrow. (The eyebrow was reserved for good news, the nostrils for bad, the blinks for the doctor’s admonitions and instructions.)

Only after Doctor Norstar’s dismissal, when they were in the elevator, would Dempsey take Johnny’s arm in hers and shed the entire experience with a sigh that involved shoulders, chest, stomach, mouth, and ribs. She would then say something like, “Doctor Norstar looked tired the way she kept closing her eyes” or “Is Doctor Norstar losing weight?” or “Is Doctor Norstar gaining weight?” or “Do you think Doctor Norstar’s coloring is just a little too pale?”—genuinely concerned, as if she had come there to check on the doctor’s condition, to diagnose the doctor’s difficulties and, once in a while, prescribe remedies: “She shouldn’t drink so much coffee.” “She could use a bacon cheeseburger and a side of fries.” “She should lay off the pasta for a while.” “A week in the Bahamas wouldn’t hurt.” No reference was made to what Doctor Norstar had said, no review of her prognostications, no comments on her commands, no speculations, no dismissals, no contradictions. Dempsey Coates had come to check up on the doctor, to offer her findings, express her concern and, with little hope that she would be obeyed, prescribe the necessary treatments.

Johnny would then draw her closer to his side as if it were a privilege beyond anyone’s deserving, stare straight ahead and wish with all his might that they could lie down on the elevator floor and make slow love for the rest of their lives.

Today it was different. Johnny had determined that this was the day he’d ask Dempsey to marry him. He’d waited an entire day, afraid she’d not only say no but dismiss him from her service for having become so needy himself. But now he had his arguments ready—the leave of absence and, finally, Father Dunphy’s offer.

He and Dempsey, as usual, sat on the orange leather couch in the waiting room. (Dempsey said it wasn’t orange, it was yellow ochre. And it wasn’t leather, it was Naugahyde.) He was reading and marking the lieutenant’s manual for the test he hoped to take in the fall; she (of all things) was knitting. When Dempsey’s diagnosis had predicted long hours in waiting rooms, she had searched out her knitting needles and some green yarn in which she’d hidden her mother’s wedding ring. (Her mother had hocked whatever jewelry she had, including the engagement ring that Dempsey only dimly remembered from seeing it in the soap dish in the bathroom until, one day, it too disappeared.)

There had been enough green yarn for a single mitten. Unable to match the color, Dempsey had knitted a corresponding red mitten and would wear them, whatever the weather, from Christmas until Three Kings. During this time she would also wear the wedding ring—third finger, left hand, where it belonged—and would then retire it and the mittens, the ring shoved into the thumb of the green mitten, held in place by a moth ball, until the end of the following Advent, when they would again be called into service, warming her hands, decorating her finger.

Dempsey was, at the moment, knitting herself a bulky turtleneck, a darker green than the mitten. Assuming that sooner or later weight loss would bring creases to her neck, and since her neck was the one vanity she allowed herself beside her buttocks, the sweater would conceal the creases and permit her to indulge in the narcissism, the self-appreciation that had been one of life’s little satisfactions since she was six.

So insistently did the needle points flash in and out of Johnny’s peripheral vision that he shifted away from Dempsey, pretending that he could deal with the lieutenant’s manual only if the book was resting on his right knee. It was then that he saw the child crawl out from behind the receptionist’s desk—a counter, really—that separated computers, cabinets, phones, faxes, and the receptionist herself from the waiting patients, a protective barrier fending off the powerless from the powerful.

The child, a boy somewhere between two and three, seemed a little too old to be creeping and crawling, but perhaps he had been exploring off-limits territory and was still trying to avoid detection. Caught in his right hand was a small stuffed tiger—a trophy of the hunt—which he pressed down onto the linoleum floor with each forward move, emphasizing the brutality of the capture. He was wearing overalls—yellow corduroy—the bib and straps holding in place a pale blue flannel shirt decorated with small clowns that made the shirt look suspiciously like a pajama top. His light brown hair was mostly uncombed, with a cowlick sticking up in back like a small tepee.

He raised his head and used the tiger to wipe hair from his eyes. Instead of looking directly at Johnny or at Dempsey, he gazed just to the side of them, too polite to stare, too proud to declare his interest. He veered to his right and crawled away from them, keeping close to the counter. After the tiger had been squashed down onto the floor two more times, the boy stopped and stood up. He looked taller standing, perhaps because the legs of his overalls were too short, showing bright blue socks sticking out of his well-worn sneakers, one of which was untied. For a few moments, he plucked at the tiger’s fur, trying to restore its nap after the squeezing and squashing it had just endured at his hand. After he stopped, he kept his fingers resting on the animal’s back, then looked up, staring directly at Dempsey.

Dempsey, as far as Johnny could tell, hadn’t seen the child at all. She was clattering away with her needles as if some evil overseer might come at any moment and accuse her of malingering. Johnny considered saying something to the boy, but felt it would make him an unwanted intruder coming between the child and Dempsey. With his yellow marker he purposely noted a passage in the manual that was of no importance whatsoever, then increased his concentration on what he was supposed to be studying.

When the boy rushed past him, to his left, Johnny was aware only of the overalls and the sleeves of the pale blue shirt. He felt the weight of the flung body against his side and saw the untied sneaker as it slid over the page of his manual, forcing it to the floor. The boy’s knee dug into his leg as his elbow knocked against his ear. The sounds he heard were half whimper, half grunt, then Dempsey’s voice saying, “Wha…?”

The boy was hitting the stuffed tiger against Dempsey’s cheek. One of the knitting needles kept jabbing Johnny in the arm, then poked him in the side, its rhythms set by the repeated motions of the boy’s flailing. “Please! Don’t—” Dempsey had pulled her head back, but the boy, after two blows against Dempsey’s neck, found again the side of her face and was banging the tiger against her cheek, her nose, her eye, the sounds rising in pitch, more whimper now than grunt.

Johnny jumped up and grabbed the boy just above the waist. Before he could pull him away completely, he had punched Dempsey’s shoulder, her breast, and the half-knitted sweater, leaving the tiger itself tangled in the yarn as if it had escaped into the protections of the high grass. Dempsey got one last kick against her leg just as Johnny swung the boy away, lifting him higher so that his feet, now peddling the air, could do less damage.