The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

Laocoön

Jeff Seymour
jeffseymour@aya.yale.edu

“You said how many days?” Dr. Hank Agnew asked.

“At least a week.” Mrs. Claudia Raines shifted on the examination table. The paper sheet beneath her thighs clung to her skin and crinkled as she fidgeted.

“Dull pain in your lower back,” he said.

“But inside.”

“Right. Inside.”

The young doctor turned the sheet of his clipboard and scribbled. His pencil scratched in the white light’s buzz and behind him the sanitary paper crackled.

“Well, Mrs. Raines,” the doctor said, “I had a patient earlier this week with similar symptoms.”

“Something must be going around,” she said.

Dr. Agnew looked at her through his oval rims. His eyes seemed to gaze at his own lenses. Claudia turned her face to the left and right. Then, as if suddenly bored, she tilted her eyes up to the doctor, open for inspection.

“Oh, I don’t– Sorry,” the doctor said. “I was just thinking. I gave my other patient some samples…”

He turned back to the counter. The white linoleum offered cylinders of sterile swabs and tongue depressors, a box of rubber gloves. Dr. Agnew rummaged through the drawers and cabinets while Mrs. Raines dangled her feet above the floor.

Claudia Raines was a grown woman and married–a full member of a rational society that holds doctors in the highest regard but no longer finds the aura of medicine enchanting. When the doctor spun around clutching a fistful of little blue cartons, Mrs. Raines remained unmoved. She was used to getting something from nothing.

“Here,” the doctor said. “Panaxetrone. Our new wonder drug.”

“What does it do?”

“Frankly,” Dr. Agnew said, “they’re not entirely sure how it works. But it will help ease your pain and promote your body’s natural healing. And,” he said, shaking one of the boxes, “no side-effects.”

“Is it antibiotics?” she asked. She believed in her own knowledge and knew to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The doctor concentrated on his clipboard. He shook his head.

“You may get dressed, now.”

Dr. Agnew scribbled away as Mrs. Raines rose from the table. The paper stuck to her skin; she blushed as she pinned it down behind her.

“Well, do I need a prescription?” she asked.

“Those samples should be enough. Two a day until you’re out.” He looked up and said with a smile, “But do give me a call in a couple of days.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “Thank you, Dr. Agnew.”

“No problem. I hope you feel better.”

Dr. Hank Agnew lifted his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Focus washed from his eyes. A weary soldier in the middle of a tired war. Patients like Mrs. Raines made Hank question his work. And in the affluent Connecticut suburb, there wasn’t often another kind.

Holding up a box of Panaxetrone, Hank shook his head. The ethics were easily parried. How many people would have died had they not begun using penicillin until its chemistry was completely understood? If it worked and had no side effects, surely withholding it would be unethical. Only, Hank knew exactly what Panaxetrone would chemically do for Mrs. Raines: nothing.

That night, Hank took his wife, Sarah, and their two children, Daryn and Paul, to their favorite Sicilian pizza joint. Before each meal, the waiters tore rough brown sheets from a roll and spread them across the dining tables. A plastic cup of broken crayons stood beside the salt and pepper. It was great for the kids. The pizza had less crust. And Hank could talk with his wife while the kids drew on the dinner table. They deserved this.

“Hank,” Sarah said, cutting a wedge from the square slice on her plate. “If it works, then it doesn’t do ‘nothing.’”

“Maybe,” Hank replied. “But what am I doing?”

He stared in that way of his, watching his own eyes reflect in his lenses. 

“Nothing,” he answered.

A glob of tomato sauce escaped the corner of his mouth and plopped onto his khaki pants: a liquid period.

“Come on. You’re a doctor. What are you, fishing for compliments? Doesn’t TV deify you enough, already?”

Sarah dabbed a napkin in her water glass and wiped away the blob of sauce.

“You help people,” she said.

“What do I do, Sarah?” he protested. “If they have a real problem I just send them to a specialist. ‘Hi, nice to see you again, how are you, oh, your throat? I’m sorry. Here’s the number of a great ear-nose-and-throat guy.”

“Oh come on.”

“Stomach pains? I know this wonderful gastroenterologist. Really, top of the field.”

Sarah rolled her eyes.

“Infection? Take this to the pharmacy.’ Jesus, Sarah, I’m a middle man!”

“Don’t be insane,” Sarah said, with a tight smile.

“A glorified paper shuffler– ”

Sarah cut him off.

“The wives of middle men didn’t work their asses off to put their husbands through medical school.”

“A-a patient shuffler,” Hank said, quietly.

 “Is this your mid-life crisis?” Sarah asked. “Because, you’re early. Put it off a couple years; maybe it won’t be so pathetic.”

But after a moment she gripped his shoulder.

“Hank, you’ve devoted your life to helping people. Where is this coming from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, daddy.” Their daughter, Daryn, tugged at his sleeve. Beside her napkin, she had rubbed a thick streak of green crayon onto the paper-covered table and decorated it with a rough red spiral.

“It’s beautiful, honey. What is it?”

“A ca-du-ceus.”

Hank and Sarah looked at each other, incredulous, and laughed.

At home, the kids were wired from dessert. The parents waited for the sugar to fade, for the kids to crash, before putting them to bed. “No point fighting chemistry,” Hank would say. Better to let chemistry do your work for you. Even if it was just sugar.

Sarah called him into the kitchen. She held out a square piece torn from the restaurant’s disposable tablecloth. It was Daryn’s drawing. Had his three-year-old known she was drawing a snake? She was terrified of them.

“I’ll put it on the fridge,” Hank said.

“Wait.” Sarah took a pen from a drawer and wrote “caduceus” in block letters below the picture. The word transformed the green and red crayon into a rod wrapped in a snake, the symbol of Hank’s profession. Why snakes?

“Here,” Hank said. He took the pen and scrawled “by Daryn.” He pinned it to the refrigerator and stepped back. Hank’s letters ran across a dark oil stain that rendered the last three letters illegible.

“By Da,” Sarah read.

“God I hope she doesn’t become a doctor,” Hank said.

Socked feet stomped into the kitchen behind them. Husband and wife came to attention. Paul stood, silent, his face a pantomime of agony.

“My tummy hurts,” he said, holding his belly. The boy could twist his features into the most repulsive pleas for sympathy.

“Well you shouldn’t have been so greedy at dessert,” Hank said. “I warned you what would happen.”

“Hank,” Sarah admonished. “We said they could.”

“Hey, if he wants to know why his tummy aches…?”

“I don’t think he cares,” Sarah said. “Just make it better.”

Hank sighed.

“All right, sport, come on.” He lifted his son into his arms. “Let’s see what magic daddy can do.”

The next morning, Hank sat in Dr. Rosenbaum’s office for their weekly chat. Rosenbaum had raised a number of young doctors in his twenty-year-old clinic. He enjoyed working with those fresh with passion for medicine. It was still a mission, a crusade. Although he continued to work everyday, the seventy-one-year-old Rosenbaum considered himself, in some ways, to be retired. At least from medicine in the abstract.

“So, what’s up, doc?” asked Rosenbaum.

“My blood pressure,” Hank said.

“Well, Hank, guess what?” Rosenbaum rose to survey the suburban town outside his window. “You’re coming up on five years.”

“Is it? Already?”

“Yup. Next week marks your fifth year with the company.”

“The company,” Hank repeated. “Right. Do I get a plaque?”

“That’s ten years. After five, they usually buy themselves a Mercedes. And start thinking about their own practice.”

Hank tried to view his mentor’s features in the reflection of the window.

“So, you don’t have to buy many plaques, then,” Hank said.

“That’s the idea.”

Rosenbaum turned and faced the young doctor.

“You know, Mrs. Raines called this morning, quite upset.”

“Really?” Hank said, surprised. “The lower back pain?”

“Did you know that Mr. Raines is a cardiologist?”

“Oh, Christ,” Hank said. “Fuck.”

Dr. Rosenbaum looked up. Their eyes met through layers of spectacles.

“I gave her Panaxetrone,” Hank said.

“This isn’t a large town, Hank. Mrs. Raines’s opinion means something to a lot of people. Other clients.”

Hank left in a flurry of apologies and rushed to his own office. He pressed the intercom button on his phone.

“Helen,” he shouted, “hold my patients. And get me Mrs. Raines’s file.”

Continued
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