The Lucky Ones(75)

With her finger Allison drew a halo over her head. Dr. Capello chuckled and got back to burning. It was a little odd, burning the old medical files. Seemed so drastic. And smelly. Then again, just a few days ago she’d put the photographs McQueen had taken of them together plus the negatives into a metal trashcan and dropped a match on them and watched them burn. She’d had to do it fast before she chickened out. They’d been mementos of her six years with McQueen but they were also so explicit she couldn’t bear the thought of anyone anywhere in the world getting their hands and their eyes on them. Was Dr. Capello as embarrassed by his medical files as she’d been of her pornographic pictures? What on earth was a bunch of children’s medical files that a simple paper shredder wouldn’t have sufficed?

“You really should be in bed,” Allison said. “I’m saying that because I know Roland’s going to ask me if I told you to go back to bed.”

“You did. I’ll vouch for you. You just sit over there and make sure I don’t faint. I’m feeling okay today but we know that won’t last. Gotta do it now.”

She pulled a white sheet off an old chair and sat down in it. She warily eyed the cabinets along the south wall, the ones that held Dr. Capello’s “collection.” How strange that a man as normal and kind as Dr. Capello kept such a gruesome collection.

“What’s on your mind tonight, doll?” Dr. Capello asked.

“Can I ask what’s up with all the creepy stuff?” Allison said.

“What creepy stuff?” he said as he tossed a few more pages into the metal basket.

She pointed at the cabinets.

“That’s not creepy stuff,” he said, sounding affronted.

“You have a speculum made out of wood. With a leech applicator.”

“All right, that one may be a little creepy,” he conceded. “But those objects over there were created to save lives. Even two hundred years ago, surgeons were drilling holes in the head to relieve the pressure on swollen brains.”

“Did anyone survive these surgeries?”

“More than you would think. Less than you would like.”

“What are you doing with it all?” she asked.

“A few of the pieces were here in the house when I inherited it. My grandfather hired doctors from all over the world to treat my grandmother, bought every machine, every treatment, every pill and potion money could buy trying to bring her around. I imagine he thought if he could heal her, he’d somehow magically be all right again himself. Where you see ‘creepy,’ I see lives saved by brave pioneers. I see surgeons trying to help others as best they could given their limited understanding of anatomy and physiology and psychology. In a hundred years people may look back on my own work in horror the way so many of us look back on medicine from the past. I hope they show me the same mercy I show the doctors of past decades and centuries.”

“I’m sure they will,” she said.

“It’s good to see where we’ve come from. This creepy stuff is living medical history. Someone has to take care of it. It’s all been cataloged. My alma mater is getting it when I’m gone. Unless you want it?” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“No, thank you. I know it was used to help people, but they can have the saws covered in Civil War soldier blood. I’m good.”

“Your loss, kiddo.”

He turned back to his work but stopped and looked over at her with a furrowed brow again. “Didn’t I tell you not to show your face until morning?”

“It’s after midnight,” she said.

“Doesn’t count. There are hotels in Portland, you know. Nice ones.”

“Oh, we got a hotel room. We rented it for an hour.”

He gave her a dirty look. “And this is the girl I want for my monk of a son?”

“I told you not to match make,” she said.

“Can’t help it,” he said as he tossed some more papers in the basket and dropped a match in. “I need something to think about other than my impending demise.”

The papers in the files must have been old because the match caught quickly and fire leapt up. In short order they turned black and gray and shrunk to mere ash.

“You’ll be happy to know then that your son and I are crazy about each other. And I have a pretty good feeling a certain monastery is going to be short one monk by Christmas.”

“Is that so?” Dr. Capello asked, leaning on the filing cabinet and grinning broadly at her.

“That’s so. We had a long talk tonight.”

“Excellent news.”

“Thought you’d like that,” Allison said.

Dr. Capello looked up at the ceiling and heaved a sigh, his eyes closed. For a moment, it seemed he was a man of prayer expressing intense gratitude and relief. She forgave him the lie about Oliver. This was a man who wanted nothing but to see his children happy.

“It gives me peace.” He placed his hand over his heart and patted it twice. “A lot of peace.”

“Good,” she said. “It’s making me a nervous wreck but as long as you’re happy...”

He laughed. “You’ll be sticking around then? Even after I kick the bucket.”

“Oh, can we not talk about that, please?”

“Let’s say I get hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s what does me in. Would you, even when I’m a greasy spot under a bus wheel, stick around here?”