Specimen Days

The doctor said, "Aren't we private enough here?"

She moved to the doorway, and the doctor followed. She spoke to him in a low tone. He nodded gravely.

Dan didn't speak. Lucas could feel him not speaking. The doctor listened to Catherine and produced yet another frown.

Lucas said, "The nine months' gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are advancing."

Catherine said sharply, "Lucas, be quiet."

He strove to be quiet. He ground his teeth together.

The doctor and Catherine returned. The doctor said, "I will order him some morphine. Since you're so insistent."

"Thank you," Catherine answered. "I finish here at five o'clock." "I'll see you then."

The doctor said, "I'll send in one of the sisters with the morphine and fresh bandages. I'll return when the surgery room is free."

"All right," Catherine said.

The doctor left them. They were there, they three, in the room with the sister and the murmuring man.

Catherine said to Dan, "Well, then."

Dan didn't speak, though Catherine seemed to expect it. At length he said, "I must go back to the works."

"Yes," Catherine answered.

Lucas had not thought until that moment that anyone would return to his job. He'd forgotten. He'd been his hand and his pain, he'd been Catherine. But Dan must return to the works.

Lucas said to Catherine, "Will you stay with me?" "Of course I will," she answered. "You'll be all right," Dan told Lucas.

Lucas couldn't speak. He began to realize. He'd made an interruption and nothing more. If Dan must return to work now, Catherine would return tomorrow.

"You'll be all right," Dan said again, more slowly and distinctly, as if he were uncertain whether Lucas had heard him the first time.

Lucas said, "Which of the young men does she like best? Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her."

"Goodbye now." "Goodbye," Catherine said.

Dan regarded her strangely. His face resembled Catherine's face when Lucas brought her the bowl. Something had occurred between Dan and Catherine. She had shown him the bowl she'd paid too much for. She had shown him her mangled hand. She stood defiantly, harmed and proud.

Because there was nothing to do or say, Dan left. After he had gone, Catherine said to Lucas, "You must lie down. I'm afraid it will have to be the floor."

He answered, "I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me."

"Shh. Hush now. You must rest. You must rest and be quiet."

"I am satisfied I see, dance, laugh, sing."

"Come along now," Catherine said. "You make yourself worse by raving."

She helped him to lie down on the floor. She sat on the floor herself so he could lie with his head on her lap. Here under his head were the starchy folds of her blue dress.

He said, "You will stay with me?"

"I told you I would."

"Not only today."

"For as long as I need to."

Lucas was pain and Catherine's lap. The pain was a cocoon that wrapped him like fiery bandages. In the cocoon, in Catherine's lap, it was difficult to think of anything but that. Still, he struggled. He held to himself. He had brought her here, but he'd only saved her from today. He must do something further. He could not know what.

"Catherine?" he said.

"Shh. Don't speak."

"You have to come away with me."

"Forget about that. Forget everything."

He strove not to forget. He said, "You were wrong, yesterday."

"Not another word."

"You must take the baby and go away."

"Hush. Hush."

He saw it, through the fiery cocoon. She must take the baby and go to a place like the park at night, a place of grass and silence. She must go out searching, as Walt had told Lucas to do. There were such places, not only the park. He'd seen the pictures. There were fields and mountains. There were woods and lakes. He could take her to a place like that, he thought. He would find a way to do it.

From the cot, the man murmured on.

A sister came into the room. Her black habit was alive; it had created within itself her face, which was carved from wood. She wrapped Lucas's hand in new bandages. She produced (had it been inside her habit?) a syringe full of clear liquid. She took his other arm, the undamaged one, with the practiced calm of a boot maker nailing a sole. She put the needle in, which stung like a bee, a small pain, an interesting one, differently alive, like a tiny flame. She withdrew the needle and departed. She had not spoken at all. Because her face was carved from wood, she wasn't able to speak.