Heartsick

“Hello, Miz Lucy,” I would say as my father led me into the patient exam room. Miz Lucy, a diminutive retired schoolteacher, would be sitting in the chair, gussied up to the nines, with gnarled hands and feet shod in heavy stockings and thick orthopedic shoes. My father, a general internist in a small southern town, would have me touch her swollen hands as he injected the gold that would help her pain. She would exclaim about my growth, my successes in school, and would mention how the good doctor had saved her life more than once. Later, she would drive by our house in her ancient green Cadillac to make sure that he was home in case she needed him or to drop off her special cookies. At Christmas time, our kitchen counter was always covered with cakes, pies, or crocheted afghans made by grateful patients like Miz Lucy.

I remember making a house call with my father on a wintery Sunday afternoon. We drove up to a small house in which a sad, weathered-looking man with slumped shoulders sat in a wheelchair.

“Arthur,” my dad would say as he took off his coat and opened up his massive black bag, “how are you?” And the murmuring would start. I would sit on the sofa in the quiet, empty house and watch as my father talked with Arthur. Later, on the drive home, my father would tell me how, as a young man, Arthur had dived into a quarry pond and severed his spinal …