Duby's Doctor (3 page)

She had not been prepared for the broad,
sculpted chest and ridged abdomen combined with the thickly muscled
biceps and thighs. In surgery, his body had been draped. When she
examined his leg and knee, she really saw only that. Until the
moment she looked up from his chart and saw the whole man
spectacularly displayed, he had simply been the biological thing
that was attached to the reconstructive surgery she had
performed.

In that moment, Mitchell Oberon had an
epiphany. It embarrassed her so much that she squelched her
thoughts, marshaled her composure, and pretended nothing whatsoever
had occurred.

Something else happened in the next minute
that was out of the ordinary. When Mitchell approached the hospital
bed, Jean quickly hid his unfinished sketch under the covers.

Mitchell gestured, wanting to see it.

Jean gestured, No.

Mitchell simply placed her hand on his
bandaged knee and applied pressure in exactly the right place.

Jean sucked air at the sudden jolt of pain.
He gave Mitchell the drawing.

It was the first time he had tried to hide
anything, as far as Mitchell knew, and she was surprised. What
could he be so reticent about? She was even more surprised when she
realized the sketch was a portrait of her. She was touched, and
more than a little flattered, by his drawing, which she thought
made her look prettier than she was. She tried to hide her pleasure
and preserve an appropriate doctor-patient relationship.

Carrying the drawing, Mitchell made a circuit
of the room, identifying other portraits hanging there among the
pictures of food.

“There’s Hector,” she said, “the chaplain,
the floor nurse, the aides ... Here’s your neurologist, huh?” She
smiled over her shoulder at Jean. He nodded bashfully, clearly
pleased that she recognized his subjects.

Mitchell tapped the portrait of the
neurologist. “Smart guy, but doesn’t build good knees like me,
right?”

Jean chuckled under his breath and shrugged
his shoulders. Even his shrug was French.

“And there’s that cute little candy striper
who volunteers on Thursday afternoons,” Mitchell pointed to the
drawing of a pretty teenaged girl. “Shame on you, Johnny,” she said
with a wink.

“Christine,” said Jean.

“Is that her name? Christine. Christine
brought you the watercolor paints, didn’t she?”

“
Oui
,” he said. “Christine.”

Mitchell took the portraits down gently and
carried them with her to the bedside. “This isn’t really my job,”
she said. “I’m not the speech therapist, but if you’re so gung ho
to say names today, tell me who this is.” She showed him a
drawing.

“Hector,” Jean said.

“Right. And who’s this?” She showed him
another drawing.

“
Madame
Erskine.”

“Miz,” she corrected. “Miz Erskine or Nurse
Erskine. Not many ladies in these parts take well to being called
‘madam.’”

Jean nodded his understanding, but then his
look changed to puzzlement. Pushing aside the drawings, he laid his
hand in the center of her chest.

Mitchell gently but quickly moved his hand to
her shoulder.

“Michelle?” he asked.

“Close,” she said with a smile. “Very close.
My name is Mitchell.”

“
Michel
.”

“Uh, right. Mitchell. Or Dr. Oberon. But M-,
uh, Mitchell is good. For you it’s just Mitchell.”

He removed his hand from Mitchell’s shoulder
and placed it on his own chest. In French, he said, “Who is this?
Who am I?”

Guessing at his meaning, she answered. “Your
name? Yeah, that’s a hard one. We don’t know your real name,
officially, so you’re, uh, you’re John.”

“
Jean
.” His tone indicated the word
was inadequate, unsatisfactory. It was the wrong answer, but he
couldn’t contradict it with a right one.

“Yes,
Jean
. Well, we say ‘John,’ but
I guess you would say ‘
Jean
.’”

He seemed to be trying to adjust to thinking
of himself by this name. “
Jean
,” he said.
“
Jean
.”

“John Doe,” Mitchell added.

“
Jean Deaux
,” he said.

Mitchell extended her right hand. “Pleased to
meet you.”

Jean shook her hand and responded, smiling,
“
Enchanté, Michel
.”

She could have corrected his pronunciation of
her name, and she could have released his hand sooner, but why? Her
name sounded sort of cosmopolitan the way he pronounced it. More
feminine, somehow. And she had never shaken hands with a nearly
naked man before, much less one who said her name in such a nice
way.

After examining what Mitchell considered to
be her knee, its attachment to another person’s body
notwithstanding, she made her notations on the chart, gathered up
the portrait drawings, bade Jean a friendly farewell, and left the
room.

At the nurses’ station, she made photocopies
of the portraits she had collected from Jean’s walls. She then
clipped the originals to his chart, to be returned to him.

Down the hall, Stone’s listening duo was
dozing at the recorders when Mitchell burst into the supply closet,
unexpected and unwelcome. She tossed the photocopies down atop the
recording equipment.

“Tell your Mr. Stone, or Agent Stone, or
Emperor Stone, or whoever he thinks he is, that this is everybody
Jean knows in the whole world – and they all work right here on
this floor. He doesn’t remember anybody else, and he’s not going
to. You people should pack up and go home.”

Without waiting for a response, she exited
the closet, slamming the door behind her.

An hour later, Frank Stone was in the supply
closet studying the portraits Mitchell had delivered.

“Do we have anything at all?” he asked the
listeners.

“I learned how to proposition a nurse in
Spanish,” the man quipped.

“He’s speaking Spanish now?” Stone was
incredulous.

The man shook his head. “The orderly,” he
said.

“And a few new swear words in French,” said
the woman.

Stone let his shoulders sag with his long
sigh of resignation. “All right,” he said. “Wrap it up.”

He left the two people to dismantle their
mole hole, and he walked down the hall toward Jean’s room. Rounding
a corner, he crossed paths with Hector, pushing Jean in a
wheelchair. They did not know him, and he pretended no recognition
on his part. As soon as they were out of sight, Stone seized the
opportunity to slip into Jean’s empty room.

Once inside, he searched diligently and
methodically, replacing every object he touched. He was a master at
leaving no trace of his visit. This search would be different,
however, because this time he would take away with him something
that would certainly be missed.

Under Jean’s pillow he found a sketch that
even Mitchell had not seen: a portrait of Carinne Averell. Kyle
Averell’s daughter.

Stone rolled up the sketch, clutched it in
his hand triumphantly, and hurried back to the supply closet. He
opened the closet door and snapped at the two surprised listeners:
“Forget it! Plug it all back in! We stay!”

He backed out, shut the door, and strode to
the nurses’ station. “Where’s Dr. Oberon?” he barked.

When Dr. Oberon answered the page from the
nurses’ station, she was told to meet Mr. Stone in the hospital
chapel. She agreed to do so, but she insisted on finishing her
rounds first. Mr. Stone would have to wait while she saw three more
patients.

Stone was pacing up and down the center aisle
of the small chapel when Dr. Oberon arrived nearly an hour later.
The room was quiet and otherwise uninhabited, as Frank Stone had no
doubt intended.

The doors were barely closed behind her when
Stone stepped forward and extended a rolled sheet of paper.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Look at it,” he said and shook it at her.
She reached out and took it.

Mitchell unrolled the page and viewed a
sketch of an attractive young woman, probably in her early
twenties. The artist had captured a wistfulness, a kind of
romanticized loneliness in the girl’s lovely face. Mitchell didn’t
need to ask who had drawn it. “Who is it?” she said.

“It’s safer if you don’t know,” Stone told
her. “But she doesn’t work in this hospital. And I think we can
safely assume he does remember her. Don’t you agree?”

Mitchell didn’t answer but merely rolled up
the page. She tried to hand it back to Stone, but he waved it
off.

“You keep it,” he said. “There’s something I
need you to do with it.”

Jean was working his knee at one of the
therapy machines in the physical and occupational therapy
department when Mitchell entered, carrying the portrait Frank Stone
had been so pleased to discover. Mitchell didn’t look pleased at
all. She sat down near Jean.

Jean smiled at her, knowing he was
recuperating well and that she would be pleased. “
Bonjour,
Michel.”

“Hi, Johnny.” She forced a smile. “How’s my
knee today?”

He had been learning some English, but he
didn’t need it to know what she said. Mitchell always asked about
the same thing. Jean pointed to his knee and nodded.
“Righteous!”

Mitchell shook her head. “Don’t let Hector
teach you English, okay? I wouldn’t even let him teach me Spanish,
if I were you. It isn’t wise.”

Then she rolled the portrait out so Jean
could see it.

His smiled changed from pride to nostalgia.
He looked at the picture for several seconds.

In French, he murmured, “She is very
beautiful, is she not?”

Mitchell caught the gist of his statement,
and she was surprised at the pang it caused her. How ridiculous
could she be? She was not some kid’s jealous girlfriend; she was a
medical doctor. And this man was a patient. And he was years
younger than she. It was irrelevant to her whether he had a
relationship with another woman.

Outwardly she displayed no emotion. “Yes,”
she agreed. “She is very pretty.”

Again in French, he said, “So beautiful. So
sweet.”

“You know her name, Johnny?”

He gave Mitchell a quizzical look.

Mitchell supplied gestures. “My name is
Mitchell. Your name is Jean. What is her name?”

“I don’t know.”

Mitchell waited, but he said no more, nor did
he look at her. He continued his exercises. She stood with a sigh
and walked away, but then she returned to him and gestured with the
portrait in her hand.

“You don’t know her name. But you have seen
her? Have you seen her?”

“
Oui
. I see.”

“Here? In the hospital? Have you seen her
here?” If this was true, Mitchell could blast Stone’s theories
apart.

“
Oui
.”

“When?”

“What?”

“When? What time, what day, what hour? When
did you see her here in the hospital?”

In French he said, “I see her at
night...”

“At night!”

“...when I sleep.”

Mitchell’s excitement died. “In your dreams,”
she murmured. “Of course. The girl of your dreams, what else?”

She rose like an old woman aching in every
joint. She placed the portrait in Jean’s hand, and he rolled it
tightly. He clenched it. It was obvious to Mitchell that he
cherished that picture. Without another word, Dr. Oberon walked
away.

Two kinds of people strolled the lavish halls
of the luxurious three-story shopping venue known as The Mayfair in
Coconut Grove: (1) wealthy locals and (2) non-wealthy tourists.

The jet set came in chauffeur-driven
limousines with entourages of sycophants, bodyguards, and package
bearers. They of the upper crust carried no cash or credit cards;
their signature was good for any amount in any store at The
Mayfair.

The tourists came in rental cars or tour
trolleys. They shopped with cash and credit cards (and limited
budgets). They carried their own packages in plastic bags labeled
“The Mayfair” in gold script. Vacation shoppers treasured the
shopping bag as much as, or more than, they valued the purchases it
held. Back home it would become the grocery bag, the mall bag, the
lunch bag, or the library book bag, and it would be carried with
the golden logo facing away from its owner, so that onlookers
received the full Mayfair effect.

While the tourists did not contribute greatly
to The Mayfair’s bottom line, they did support other businesses in
the Coconut Grove area. They visited the historic homes of Florida
settlers, bought unique original arts and crafts in the boutiques,
and sipped frozen margaritas in the sidewalk bistros. They bought
gently-used designer clothing in the posh Episcopal thrift shop.
They dodged cyclists, skateboarders, and exotic-dog walkers, and
they even threw coins into the open instrument cases of musicians
playing on street corners or in Peacock Park.

So, as a people magnet, The Mayfair served a
purpose in Coconut Grove, even though it did not necessarily serve
the common citizenry. And for the ultra-rich, it was guaranteed to
have the highest quality merchandise along with the most stringent
security. Limousines did not even drop their passengers on the
public sidewalk outside. At The Mayfair, chauffeurs used the
exclusive underground garage and portico.

For security reasons, Kyle Averell allowed
his daughter, Carinne, to shop only at The Mayfair. He occasionally
accompanied her, but even when he was absent, he made his presence
strongly felt. On this particular afternoon, Carinne was joined by
her tennis coach and paid companion, Trish, and her father’s most
trusted bodyguard, Rico.

Carinne lingered over a silk caftan by an
Italian designer (whose villa was a landmark on Miami Beach).
Judging from the price of the garment, which would never be worn
outside of Carinne’s personal suite at home, the designer’s villa
must be in need of some essential such as, say, a new chandelier
for the fourteenth bathroom. Not that Carinne even glanced at the
price tag. In fact, she wasn’t even really considering the caftan.
She merely wanted to prolong her outing, and so she fingered the
silk, held the colors up to the light, and thought about something
else altogether.