6
Dr. Leonard practiced medicine in his own house, on the main street of the oldest town in the county. He refused to work in a hospital. “Hospitals were never worth the trouble, and they’re damn sure not worth it these days,” he would say.
Elijah sat in Dr. Leonard’s living-room-turned-waiting-room in quiet contemplation, finding it difficult to think of anything other than the strangeness of it all. He had been working with Dr. Leonard for over a month, but he had not yet gotten used to working in such a lived-in setting.
The house was kept very clean, but it did not feel austere in the same way regular doctor’s offices did. It felt to Elijah more like how a place of healing should feel. He found an implacable comfort in the dark wood floors.
His ears perked up when he heard the door opening. A young woman was coming inside, ushering an old man across the threshold.
“Get off me!” the old man growled at her, shaking his arm out of her grip.
Elijah looked toward the kitchen-turned lab where Dr. Leonard was looking at slides under his microscope. He whipped his head back to the woman and the old man, who were looking around as if they were lost.
“Can I help you two?” Elijah said, smiling nervously.
“Yeah, my dad has an appointment,” she said. “Where’s Dr. Leonard?”
“He’s back in the kitchen—he’s, um, in the lab at the moment, but I can help in the meantime! What’s been going on?”
The woman looked at Elijah and blinked.
“I’d really rather talk to the doctor, if you don’t mind,” she said.
Elijah felt his heart sink as he smiled and nodded at the woman.
“I completely understand! Let me go get Dr. Leonard.”
Elijah turned to the kitchen and almost walked right into the doctor, who had suddenly materialized.
“Natasha, welcome!” Dr. Leonard said without missing a beat. Elijah jumped in his skin. “I see you’ve met Elijah, my apprentice,” he continued.
“Mm-hmm!” Natasha looked at Elijah and smiled at him in the way that people smile at little kids. She looked back at Dr. Leonard and said, “It’s my dad. He’s not doing well.”
“Like hell I am,” the old man protested in a gravelly voice.
“It’s good to see you, Ron,” Dr. Leonard said, shaking the old man’s hand, his voice slipping into the soothing tone he used with patients. “I’m glad you brought him in,” he said to Natasha.
“Can we go somewhere private to talk?” she said.
“Yes, of course. Come with me,” Dr. Leonard said, gesturing toward the hallway that led to his office.
“Dr. Leonard, will you need any help?” Elijah said, his voice cracking.
“No, no,” he waved dismissively. “You should hang back here in case anybody else comes in.”
Elijah swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded, smiling. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
Natasha grabbed Ron by the arm, he shook her off once more, and they walked down the hallway in silence.
Elijah sat in the rocking chair in the living room feeling useless and sorry for himself. It was these daily disappointments that made him fantasize about quitting. All his life had led up to this moment of being made to babysit an empty room. He felt ridiculous.
I could walk out of here, go home, go to sleep, and never come back, he thought.
But he couldn’t quit. This was the life he had chosen.
He longed for the day when he graduated from school, leaving Dr. Leonard behind, and finally unlocking what he imagined to be boundless potential.
As if involuntarily, Elijah got up and started walking down the hallway where Dr. Leonard had brought Natasha and the old man. He looked back at the front door, considering the decision. If someone comes in, I’ll hear them, he decided. He sidled up next to the closed door of Dr. Leonard’s office.
“... acting like himself at all recently. I’m getting worried about him because there’s nobody else around to…”
Natasha’s voice was muffled by the heavy door. Elijah leaned in closer, pressing his ear up against it.
“It’s like he doesn’t know where he is, or he’s gone somewhere else.”
Dementia, Elijah thought. Alzheimer’s? Frontotemporal? Vascular? He closed his eyes and imagined the words on his computer screen, feeling the wires getting crossed.
“That shit we’re feeding them isn’t good shit.” Ron’s voice filtered weakly through the door. Elijah pressed his ear more firmly against it. “I don’t know what they’re thinking feeding ‘em that shit. Ain’t nothing wrong with the old stuff, last I checked.”
“Dad, you’re at the doctor’s office right now. You’re not at work,” Natasha said impatiently, as if she had heard this one before.
“What does he do for work?” Dr. Leonard asked.
“Chicken farmer,” the old man said, almost interrupting the doctor.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Dr. Leonard said. “Thank you for the work you do. We’d be nothing without farmers.”
“Last I checked, chickens are supposed to eat seeds. Plain old seeds,” the old man replied.
“That’s the other thing. He doesn’t talk about anything else but the chickens,” Natasha said. “We used to have real conversations.” She stopped talking suddenly. Elijah imagined her holding back tears.
Elijah heard the sound of the front door opening, and his head turned automatically toward it. He banged his forehead on the office door in the process.
“Fuck!” he whispered, putting a hand to his forehead as he tiptoed away from the door and into the living room. He saw a middle-aged woman with red hair standing there expectantly.
“Good morning! Can I help you?” he asked, trying to muster up some confidence.
“Yeah, it’s just this pimple on my finger,” the woman said, extending her arm toward him.
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