Coercion (40 page)

As the woman carried her daughter out, Dr. Ayden Archer wiped the sweat from his brow with a soiled rag. He still had a few clean ones left from last night’s wash, but he wanted to save those for the kids. He ventured a peek into the alley before the door swung shut. The line stretched to the far end and disappeared around the corner. He knew it was time to make the mark.

“Please come in,” he said in Farsi, holding open the door. The next woman in line bowed slightly, her baby cradled tight. Though she would not meet his gaze, Ayden knew that there was joy in her eyes.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, grabbing a bottle of iodine and stepping outside. He hated this next part of the daily ritual, but years of experience had taught him that it was the only way.

He walked east down the dusty alley, counting children as he went, offering silent smiles. It always amazed him how orderly they waited. He had not posted rules, yet the configuration never changed. Six days a week the sick children rested side-by-side along the northern wall in the thin ribbon of shade while the mothers stood across from them, baking beneath their chadors in the merciless Iranian sun. If only the women were allowed to rule the country, he mused.

When his count reached thirty children he stopped. Five more hours at six children per hour would take him to eight o’clock. He crouched down before a two-year-old girl. Lily was her name if he remembered correctly. He said, “Hello Beautiful,” and stroked her hot cheek with the back of his hand. He took the cap off the iodine and wet the tip of his index finger. He drew a semicircle on her forehead and added two dots. To him it was a smiley face, but if asked he would say it was a moon and two stars. Turning to the mother he said, “Your daughter will be the last patient of the day.”

He proceeded to mark the remaining foreheads, also with a smiley face but this time adding a third star for a nose. When he first began the practice he had numbered them, but he changed to the friendlier system when he found that no one tried to cheat. Mutual suffering bred solidarity when testosterone was not involved. As he drew he explained to the remaining mothers, “I will not be able to see your children today, but they will be first in line tomorrow. With these marks you need not come early, so let your children rest. I will see the first at eight o’clock.” Ayden knew that this was like the seatbelt announcement on airplanes—everybody present already knew the rules—but he repeated it anyway. By his reckoning, little ceremonies kept you sane.

As he walked back toward the entrance to his one-room one-man free clinic, Ayden felt a chill despite the heat. The day was soon approaching when he would not draw smiley faces with noses. His funds were dwindling. After five wonderful, horrible years, his clinic would have to close.

He felt tears begin to well.

Hope had knocked on his apartment door a few months ago. He had looked through the peephole to see an exceptionally charismatic face beaming from a bush of long tousled hair and punctuated with whirlpool eyes. “Word of your good works has spread far, my friend,” the man who introduced himself as Arvin had confided. “If you had the resources, the backing shall we say, would you be willing to do more?”

Looking at the stoic figures now standing patiently in the sun with sick children clinging to their legs, Ayden knew that he would do anything to keep his clinic afloat. Anything. At this point Arvin’s generous offer appeared to be his best and only chance, but he had not encountered the opportunity to earn that support. Not yet. Stepping back into his clinic, he prayed that someday soon he would …

The dates have been separated from the quotations’ other reference data because they do not correspond precisely with the timing of the events in the novel, and as such have the potential to confuse the reader
pointlessly. 
These quotations are not fiction
.