Douglas Kennedy - Five Days

‘If it’s the beginning of the end? Yes, I’m afraid that’s one of the clinical fringe benefits of my trade — the ability, after almost two decades of looking at the bad stuff, to visually ascertain far too quickly whether it’s Stage One, Two, Three or Four. As such I’m usually privy to this news before the radiologist. Thankfully there are very strict rules about technologists never informing a patient whether the prognosis is bad or not — though, if pressed and the news is good, I’ve developed a code which most patients understand and which gives them a sense that there is no cause for concern. And our radiologist, Dr Harrild, will only talk to a patient if he has discerned that the all-clear can be sounded.’

‘So if a radiologist doesn’t come to talk with you after a scan or an X-ray. ’

‘It all depends on the hospital. In a big hospital, like the place down the street, Mass General, I’m certain that there’s an enforced protocol about never speaking to the patient. But we’re not a world-renowned hospital. As you know we’re completely local. So we bend the rules a bit when it comes to Dr Harrild meeting with the patient if the news isn’t sinister.’

‘Which means if he doesn’t meet with you. ’

‘That’s right. It’s probably pretty damn dire.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘Hopefully you’ll never get a diagnosis like that,’ I said.

‘The truth is, we’re all going to eventually get a diagnosis like that. Because my work is, in part, all about risk assessment. So I too am looking — in a wholly different way — at the frailty of others. Trying to ascertain whether they are the type whose heart will explode before they’re fifty-five due to lifestyle and the usual self-destructive habits. Or perhaps a family predisposition to cancer. Or the fact that, to my trained eye, they just look so beaten down and defeated by life that they are simply not a good bet.’

‘So you too have a trained eye.’

‘Well, if someone walks into my office carrying three hundred pounds in weight and looking like they have had trouble getting up the stairs to meet me. no, I am not going to agree to a one-million-dollar life policy.’

‘Then again, they might live well into their eighties, despite all that weight. Generic roulette, right? And there’s one empirical fact that none of us can dodge — the price of admission for being given life is having it eventually taken away from you. Anyone who says they don’t think about it all the time—’

‘I think about it all the time.’

‘So do I. That, for me, is an ongoing preoccupation since stumbling into middle age — the realization that time is such an increasingly precious commodity. And if we don’t use it properly. ’

‘Does anyone really use it properly?’ he asked.

‘Surely there are people out there who think themselves fortunate and fulfilled in their lives.’

‘But the truth is, no matter how successful or happy you may consider yourself to be there is always a part of your life that is problematic, or deficient, or a let-down in some way.’

‘That’s all a bit actuarial, don’t you think?’

‘Or just completely realistic. Unless you think otherwise?’

Before I could pause and appear to think this through I heard myself say:

‘No, I’m afraid you’re absolutely right. There is always something not working in your life. Then again, the great hope is. ’

I stopped myself from finishing that sentence, and was relieved when the waiter arrived with our coffees. I added milk to mine and stirred it many times, hoping Richard would not ask me to complete the thought. But, of course, he said:

‘Go on, finish the sentence.’

‘No need.’

‘Why “no need”?’

‘Because. ’

Oh God, I want to say this and I so don’t want to say this.

‘Because the great hope in life is being with someone with whom you can weather all the bad stuff that life will inevitably toss into your path. But that’s perhaps the biggest fairy tale imaginable. The idea of—’

The check arrived, allowing me not to finish the sentence, which was a relief. I suggested we split it.

‘Absolutely not,’ he said.

‘Thank you for such an excellent lunch.’

‘Thank you for being here. It’s been. well, wonderful is the word that pops to mind.’

‘And what are you planning to do next?’

‘As in tomorrow, the day after, the week after, the month.?’

‘Very funny.’

‘I have no plans for the rest of the day.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘Shall we invent some plans?’

‘Absolutely.’

Another smile from Richard.

‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Can I show you where I plan to live?’

‘You’re moving to Boston?’

‘I’m moving just down the street to the corner of Beacon Street and the Common.’

‘And when are you doing that?’

Without taking his eyes off me he said:

‘In the next life.’

I MAY NOT know the world beyond the eastern corridor of the United States, but I can’t imagine I will ever encounter anything more perfect than the inherent perfection of a perfect autumn day in New England. Specifically, this day, this afternoon. The sun still radiant, but bathing the Common in coppery late-afternoon incandescence. The sky pure unadulterated blue. A light breeze, the mercury still hovering somewhere between the vanished summer and the impending dark chill of winter. And the foliage festooning the Common in its autumnal eruption of primary colors. The reds and golds of the oaks and elms electric in their intensity.

‘Can foliage festoon a park?’ I asked Richard as we crossed Beacon Street and entered the Public Gardens. Had I asked Dan such a question he would have rolled his eyes and accused me of one-upmanship for showing off my love of ‘big words’. Richard just smiled and said:

‘“Festoon” works. And it’s more poetic than “embellish” or “adorn” or “decorate”.’

‘“Decorate” is a synonym I would definitely sidestep.’

‘It depends how it is used. For example, “Back then, the Common was decorated with the corpses of the condemned, dangling from trees.”’

‘My God, where did that come from?’

‘Once upon a time, in the early moments of our country, this Common — our first public park in the then-colonies — was also the public hanging grounds. Being Puritans with a rather bleak view of human nature, they believed that public executions set a fine example for the community.’

‘And do you know where exactly the executions took place?’ I asked. ‘Is there a three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old tree in the Common with a plaque on it, informing all visitors that this was the spiritual home of the death penalty in America?’

‘I tend to doubt that the Boston tourist board would want to promote such a thing.’

‘But up in Salem you can see where all the witches were tried and, no doubt, burned.’

‘They actually hanged a witch here on the Common, Ann Hibbens, in 1656.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘History is a pastime of mine. Especially colonial American history. And the reason why the folks up in Salem have cashed in on the witchcraft trials is because they understand that they can make a tourist dollar or two by playing to that aspect of American Gothic which everyone embraces. It’s the Edgar Allan Poe part of our nature. Our love of the Grand Guignol, of the freakish and unsettling. The belief — and this is the big one which all the evangelical Christians embrace — that the apocalypse is coming, that we are in “the end of days” and it’s only a matter of time before the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse show up to announce that Jesus is returning to re-establish his dominion on earth, and all the born-agains will get shuffled off to heaven, leaving the rest of us heathens here to live out our lives of eternal damnation.’