The Doctor's Man

(The first noted in a handful of recurring dreams)

The Man left my cell before the lady on the air announced that morning had once again arrived to our little town in Maine, particularly the street of 1961 Culmen Vitae. Hers was the type of voice that settled into the depths of your bones and exhumed your soul; it came from nowhere in particular save everywhere. It is currently six past the hour and a pleasant fifty-seven degrees, she persisted, announcing similarly unimportant things before the tone rang in your ears to announce her departure.

I like the lady, I think. Her steadfast nature was similar to the tockery of the Doctor’s apparatuses, to the same end though never quite the same. Yes, hers was one that could be counted (even in pairs, if you wished) - unlike the knife cut mesh of my cell. The black and white checkered tiles tend to merge into one another, the drab creme walls an abyssal tide that crept just up to your toes and then quickly stole away. The little orange bottles never held the same count, their contents never the same color. Nothing was worth a second glance and should you try to commit it to memory like you would the wrinkles of a lover’s hand or the gleam in an idol’s eye, you would find yourself abandoned.

It was drowning in this abandonment that Doctor found me today, offering greeting in the form of a sturdy hand that was not unlike a beacon in the murkiest of waters. Upon expelling the foul liquid from weak lungs and thoroughly drying off these weathered clothes, I noticed a third spectre of shadow privileged our company on the rickety pier of my cell. He was a man immediately familiar whom I did not recognize, the strain of years evident in the face as the stain of beers was evident in his gut. He wore simple clothes that did not match and a beaten pair of tennis shoes that clothed two different socks. He wore them like that to see if anybody would notice, and few apparently did, though they rather stood out when he indulged in the temptation revealing itself in a pair of jean shorts.

He was a sturdy man who was shaking something terrible. It was ever so slight, really, but it was surely something terrible and I only wish I knew what plagued him so. His sweaty hands kneaded a faded cap in and out, occasionally fanning his face and more than once dropping to the floor while Doctor interpreted a myriad of cold, heartless equipment. [Doctor’s] nose was bowed under the weight of leaden spectacles while wrinkles and cancer spots broke up the solemnity of his face.

The tight lips seem have attached to them a heavy something on either end as they so slowly dip into the slightest of frowns - one more of apparent misunderstanding than anything - as Doctor absentmindedly rapped a finger upon the screen of a device standing just a little taller than I, in my reclined state.

“Blood pressure is low..” he muttered, but seemed to think better of it with a crisp turn of the heels, gesturing to the man to follow. The man cast a hesitant glance at me, but I trust the doctor and thus I gave him a curt nod - people are beside themselves, at times, and it is important to lend a helping hand occasionally. So I informed the man that it was surely okay to follow Doctor, even though this was an obvious conclusion.

Nevertheless, he rose from the bedside chair that had just recently held him and fumbled slowly after Doctor, who was waiting patiently next to the imposing iron door of my cell. With deftness that deceived his frailty, Doctor closes the door and they both disappear beyond these realms of reality with nothing but a soft click of the latch to say otherwise.

They can’t be too far gone, however, because voices still tease my senses though they are largely mush. One is very frantic and overwhelms the other, but it must have not taken too much effort to cure the terror contained within said voice, for before long the door once again opened and
Doctor gestured this man back into my cell. No words were shared, though it seemed to be understood that I was now much better suited to carry whatever burdens this man carried than he himself was.

Furtively, tentatively, the man balks over to my bed. One foot followers another, though each has apparent doubt that the other would carry his weight. The walk was much more difficult than it should have been judging by the effort he appeared to be exerting. Funny, it is, that I imagine those were the longest ten paces he ever strode from the door of my cell to the chair at my left.
Sitting, it would seem, possessed masked trials of its own. His chin fit into the extended hand much as if it was not a hand but instead a bony shoulder, for he kept repositioning his face in what might have been a comical manner should he not be so pensive.

The villain (or hero) was unveiled in the end, however. Abandoning the hand much like a sinking ship, he shook his head free of whatever snares were and finally settled on a reclined position, though it was not casual in the least. Now his face was the uncomfortable chin, trying on so many expressions and offering so many half syllables I must admit I gave up on counting.
Finally, forgoing whatever eloquence was intended, he stated simply,

“I quit smoking” and on another thought, “For what it’s worth”.

With the camaraderie in recognizing a strife trudged through, I responded

“We made it, then.” and the words, it appeared, had a much more profound effect on him than such a meaningless observation should have. With the resignation one finds not in the realization that yesterday’s troubles do not exist as much as the realization that they are no longer important, he slowly commenced:

“I believe that all men have one thing in common.” Deep breath, “They all want their sons to be better men than they were.” He pauses for a moment, letting his gaze fall past me while rubbing his lips together.

“The good news is that the bar usually isn’t set very high, in retrospect. We promise ourselves that we’ll be the father ours should have been, will never let ourselves become the ___hole that was ours”. Shaking his head, he continues “Alas, all of us know we’re following in our father’s footsteps, and we know where that path leads to - yet, in the boldness or arrogance of audacious hope, we believe that we will be the one.” And then, “Somehow, I succeeded, in a roundabout way”.

The Doctor’s Man was within a foot or two of me, but he had began to seem very distant. For fear that he would wither away into a tendril of smoke - or worse, stop talking - I offered, “How did you manage that?”

Clearing his throat, “He got to watch liquor and cigarettes work their will on daddy all his life. Sometimes I fear that’s all he saw of me.” With a deep, trembling breath, “And in promising himself he would not grow up to be like me, he took the first step in becoming all I hoped he would.”

Abruptly, the story he was painting dripped off the canvas. With a sweaty hand he made to wipe the perspiration from his face, unsuccessfully. His mustache was quivering while his eyes were shimmering. Credit, alas, as the Doctor’s man realized the inevitable and, with some frustration, simply continued.

“I taught that boy everything I knew, from how to swing a hammer or how to play a game of hearts. How to see the peace in a thunderstorm, how to be amazed and humbled at the simple nothing in a glance towards the stars. How to see the beauty in all stages of a flower, and somewhere along the line,” he looked to me with scorn, “how to be stubborn as a mule”.

I held his eyes in mine, intrigued by the intensity conspiring within. Such a blazing passion foreign to this world of cold, heartless machinery. An emotion the tockery of Doctor’s machinery could never hope to capture, for such a thing could not be measured. Such a thing was limitless, with no bounds in the realm of man.

“There was one thing I never taught him”, the man faltered.

Recalling a phrase the Doctor was fond of, I reply; “Better late than never”.

The eyes looking into thine open a fraction wider, searching for something he knows is there but can’t seem to find. “The one thing” he whispers, slow and measured, “was that I never taught him how to be happy. I never explained to him that while he was searching for beautiful butterflies, he would overlook the one most beautiful of them all.”

He drops my gaze, encumbered with the solemnity of guilt, “One can succeed in all of life and still be a failure if he does not know how to smell the roses. A life without the appreciation of happiness is a waste.” At this he closes his eyes, “Amidst everything else, I am sorry for this alone”.

In this realization, the realization that the woes of yesterday can not leave their time and are thus not important - I impart my own wisdom upon the man. “Don’t apologize”. His startled eyes open quicker than a child’s burnt hand withdraws from a stove. “Time is too short”, I continue - though, oddly, no words escape the maw of my soul. Confused, I open my mouth for a second attempt which is similarly speechless - though this time due to a foreign sensation, one I have never felt before.

I can not place it, but I see it before my eyes - tis the sensation of a hand gripped firmly around mine. I have never known a grasp of iron resolve to tremble, though this one shook so thoroughly that he surely would have been swallowed in the wakes of a lonely current had my own hand not kept him firmly tethered to the lonesome pier within the third cell on the second floor of 1961 Culmen Vitae.

He is crying, I realize. Not the type of crying you see from men in movies, the pathetic attempt that only shows the hollowness of today’s people in this world of ours. This crying was a full bodied type of crying, with free flowing tears that deepen the mysterious ocean about us. He is crying like the only time I’ve ever seen him cry, when the doctor somberly announced that I was not capable of happiness. The type of crying where you realize the importance of yesterday in the face of today. The type of cry that it takes to make you appreciate life.

In my momentarily detachment, I had not noticed that the beginning of my detachment began in that very moment. The loss of color seemed surely intended at first - the shock of tears was so much that the forces of our world lost grips with itself. All sixteen billion eyes fixated on the saline drop trekking down the wrinkled cheek of the doctor’s man, so intent on their looking that the rest of the world was robbed of importance.

Yes, in the face of these tears surely whatever god reigns must have ever so suddenly forgotten to feed rainbow yarn through the loom of his universe, just for the sole purpose of getting a clearer view at the face of interest- to make sure his eyes were truly bleeding out their viscosity and it was not just a masterful sleight of hand. Then in the amazement of sight’s verisimilitude, he leaned in for a closer look and ever so slightly blocked out the radiant, beaming grin of the sun - ersatz, it gleams!

Yes, the world had surely dimmed as all of its effort was strained past peak to observe the one, two, three, more! tears bleeding from the tobacco stained soul of the jean-short wearing man with the mismatching socks. And in this awe of focus, they forgot to turn the color on. They punched out or threw in their towels, content that the world could survive in shades of black and white for just this one night.

Never before had those in power taken an evening off, it was simply unheard. It was held that there must always be color, must always be sound. Must always be everything, for this is life. Stupefied by the withdrawal of weavers of color and directors of light, sound too dropped their percussion or whatever odds and ends they made due with. It happened not all at once, no, but like a wave - indeed, not unlike a wave easing its way along the shore of this very ocean.

The boldest of them dropped his doohickey first, and the individuals followed him who were followed by pairs who were followed by trios who were followed by larger crowds of quintets and sextets galore! It started with just mere degrees of silence, as if a frustrated parent had turned down their child’s radio in the slightest, a compromise to keep the noise in check. Then it went faster and faster, eventually hitting such a breakneck pace that I could not help but utter out as so I would not be lost in the impersonal clutch of an infallible ocean of life,

This is goodbye.

I know not whether the words were stated in the realms of man or blundered to his ears like a newborn calf learning to stand in this world half ethereal, but it would indeed seem that he heard me, all the same. His mouth opens in response though I have fully entered the world of silence by the time those mysterious words race outwards to grope at my ears much like the circles flee in mock terror from a pebble tossed into the water.

In peripheral vision I can see his hands clutching mine, shaking them for all he’s worth as that infamous iron resolve finally comes crashing down. I had not realized I am widowed also to this sensation of touch, hastily remarried instead to a vast nothingness.

I am victorious in the end, for the black and white realm of the Doctor’s cell blur into grey and I finally overcome his dictatorous hold upon my very being. All of his endeavors for exactness and perfection be damned as all his terrible mastery holds realm over me no longer, after so long being prisoner I finally am warden.

Colors fade to a neutral grey and all the tockery of his inhuman devices fade into one foul being, then nothing at all as I take hearth in the warmness of self. It is while caching my strength next to the fire of soul that the numbness sets in, first in the immeasurably far away depths of my toes and then in the tips of my fingers, ever so precariously crawling closer and closer to the burning embers with a reserve of water taken from the depths of this dark ocean before us.
Slowly, so slowly, the numbness marches onward by a trail of ice straight to my heart and I am struck with the curiously fleeting smell of this unique little flower that calls home the grounds about the edge of my family’s cemetery. The frigid scent goes stronger and stronger until it is invincible and I am overcome by the sweet stench, succumbing to an overcoming urge to gasp - but the stale air catches in the depths of my lungs without the strength to aid me any longer.


En response I strive for one more breath and then another to find that I no longer hold the capacity to breathe. It is a strikingly calm sensation- even pleasurable, I suppose. As if you were on the verge of a much deserved rest after a particularly long day of work. I patiently await my respite, until finally! Slowly but definitively, the most beautiful butterfly that any man can ever know fluttered finally beyond sight of the pier, never to return.