The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

Home | About | Table of Contents| Links | Subscribe

House Calls
(continued)

“Come in, Doctor, please, come in.”

Blinderman seated himself on a couch in the living room, taking note of how well his patient appeared. Shapiro’s shirt was ironed smoothly. There were potted African violets by the window sill. Shapiro seated himself on the couch next to Blinderman, smiling faintly, hanging on the words he waited Blinderman to initiate. After a few moments of silence and gawking, Blinderman broke down.

“So, Mr. Shapiro – what can I do for you?”

“I don’t know if there’s anything you could do for me. I think I might be short of breath. I feel like there might be something in my chest – like a beating or something.”

Blinderman suppressed his smile. He had heard all he needed to hear, seen all he needed to see. But he wanted to give Shapiro his money’s worth, and so he continued on with his questioning. He asked his patient how long he had been suffering these symptoms.

“How long?” asked the older man. “That’s a good question, how long. How about a hundred years? I’ve felt this way a hundred years.”

“I see,” said Blinderman. “So you’ve had this for just a little longer than you were waiting in that emergency room.”

Shapiro laughed like he was clearing his throat. “That’s a good one, Doctor. It’s true what they say – laughter is the best medicine.” Shapiro gazed at his young doctor as if he were seeing in him the joy of his own youth. He was pleased by Blinderman’s nose, blunt and flattened at its end, and his unwrinkled skin, belied by the gray that flecked his temples. Shapiro sighed and felt the process of healing take hold.

Blinderman, meanwhile, fumbled through his black bag. Searching blindly for his stethoscope and blood pressure cuff, he removed his reflex hammer – a red rubber mallet on a bi-concave blade – and his tuning fork, a silver Y of humming metal. Shapiro’s brow unfurrowed in anticipation of all this attention.

“Ooh, Doctor, you got some big doings in that there bag of yours. You think I’m going to be okay?”

Applying his stethoscope to Shapiro’s chest, Blinderman put a finger to his lips, and his patient cheerily agreed to keep quiet. There was, indeed, a beating in Shapiro’s chest – a happy, healthy heart pounding with excitement. His lungs were like blue skies, his every pulse a wellspring.

“Well, Mr. Shapiro, I can’t find anything wrong, except perhaps a little case of nerves.”

Shapiro rose suddenly to his feet and clasped his hands before his chest, a muffled clap expressing his gratitude. “This is a cause for celebration, Doctor. I made a chicken soup this morning. I’ll heat you up a bowl right now."

“I already ate,” Blinderman lied.

“I put in a kreplach for you. Don’t you worry, you just look at it you’ll find your appetite.”

“Thank you, Mr. Shapiro, but I really have to get going.”

Shapiro furrowed his brow, pouted his lips. “I understand, Doctor. You a busy man I’m sure, running around half the city all day taking care of meshugges like me.”

Blinderman looked at himself in a mirror on the wall.

“I regret doing this at late notice, Mr. Shapiro, but there’s one thing I failed to discuss with you.”

“What’s that, boychik?”

Blinderman was startled by this address, one his own grandfather had used with affection. Shapiro had grown too familiar for Blinderman’s taste. He rose from the sofa and gave his black bag an authoritative clasp.

Shapiro quickly realized his misstep. “I’m sorry – Doctor. You have to forgive me, but you’re such a nice young man, it’s almost like you’re family to me.”

Blinderman steered clear of this avenue. “The fee for my service is one hundred dollars.”

“Ooh, now I know why you work so hard to be a doctor. I’m sorry, Doctor, but I don’t have that kind of money.”

Blinderman eyed the Baccarat vase on the coffee table.

“A gift from my mother,” Shapiro said. “An heirloom.”

Blinderman was not prepared to play collector. “Then what can you afford?”

“Right now I’m strapped for cash. Hardly a penny to my name. But you send me a bill and I pay you back, I promise.” Shapiro motioned Blinderman not to go anywhere and disappeared into his kitchen. He re-emerged with a big plastic keg of beer pretzels. “In the meantime, Doctor, you take this as temporary payment. You go home and enjoy them with your family.”

Disappointed in his first house call, but nevertheless happy to leave Shapiro’s apartment intact, Blinderman accepted the container of pretzels in near disbelief and went home to sit in the company of his refrigerator. He opened the refrigerator door hopefully, but no new produce had magically appeared. He took out a jar of deli mustard and spread it on the pretzels, which he ate as his dinner.

The weeks passed into autumn and the telephone almost never rang. Once Blinderman was called to remove a pebble from a child’s nose, but his forceps could not grasp the rock and he had to send the child to the emergency room. All of his appetites went unsatisfied: his refrigerator was empty, his daily schedule unfilled, and the only woman he saw was a framed picture of his mother atop a night stand. One night these hungers grew to a terrible intensity inside of him, and Blinderman pounded his heavy bag until not even his thoughts could keep him awake, and he fell into a deep sleep.

The telephone, however, disturbed Blinderman from his rest at two o’clock in the morning. Blinderman put the telephone speaker to his ear and, unable to hear anything, turned clumsily the handle so that he pressed his head against the receiver and mumbled something into the phone.

Continued
<- Previous 1|2|3|4|5 Next ->
Printer-Friendly Version