The Shadow Wife

Dr. Shire smiled at her, and she began to relax. “The patient we saw on rounds this morning, the little girl, Betsy, appears to be recovering,” he said.

“How wonderful,” Carlynn said.

“Yes,” he said as he stirred his coffee, “how wonderful…and how strange. I listened to her lungs while we were on rounds, as you know, and they were crackling and wheezing and generally—” he looked perplexed “—the lungs of a dying child. I just listened to them a few minutes ago, and they are now very nearly clear.”

“That’s amazing,” she said. “The antibiotic must have—”

“She’s been on an antibiotic since the beginning,” Dr. Shire interrupted her. He looked down at his cup of coffee. “Miss Kling…Carlynn,” he said, “I’ve been observing you. I know that you are not the…usual medical student, and not just because you are a woman. You are very bright and very knowledgeable, that’s for certain, as are most of your fellow UC students. But you deal with the patients in a much more personal way than most of them do. Than most doctors do, don’t you?”

“I think it helps to view a patient as a human being rather than merely as a diagnosis. We should treat them the way we would want to be treated.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He waved his hand through the air. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?” He tilted his head, his eyes on hers as he waited for her answer.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You have some sort of…for want of a better word…gift, don’t you?”

It was Carlynn’s turn to stare into her coffee cup. “I’m still not sure what you—”

“I think you understand me,” he said. “You weren’t just listening to Betsy’s lungs this afternoon, were you? As a matter of fact, I’m not sure you listened at all.”

She felt herself color. “Of course I listened,” she said, uncertain if she was being chastised.

“Carlynn…please be honest with me.” He leaned forward. His blue eyes were clear and lovely, his long face handsome. “If you’re doing nothing special, at least nothing that you know of, just tell me and I’ll drop it. But the truth is, I have a great deal of interest in other ways of treating patients. Other than the usual, that is. I’ve studied Edgar Cayce and other purported healers, and I’ve come to believe there’s something to it. But if I’m wrong about you, I apologize and—”

“You’re not wrong,” she said. Her hands began to tremble, and she lowered them from her coffee cup to her lap. Not since those long-ago days when her mother had dragged her from soldier to soldier in Letterman Hospital had she let the outside world in on her secret.

He looked excited. “Then Betsy, and Mr…. I don’t remember his name…the man with nephritis, and that woman with what we thought was a brain tumor…they all got better unexpectedly. Did you have a hand in that?”

“I may have,” she said. “I never really know. Sometimes I’m able to do something, and sometimes I’m not.”

“Tell me everything,” he said, shoving his coffee cup away from him with disinterest. “Tell me how you do it. What you’re feeling. Is religion involved in some way? Are you praying?”

His sudden enthusiasm freed her tongue. Suddenly she was the teacher and he the student. “I don’t know how I do it, and no, religion is not involved, at least not religion as we usually think of it.”

“Do you feel it happening?” he asked.

“I’m still not certain what the it is, but yes, I do feel something happening. A surge of some sort. And I feel…” This was hard to explain. “I feel as though something’s been taken out of me and given to them.”

“You nearly fainted after you examined Betsy this morning, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I felt weak. I don’t know if I was going to faint, though. I never have.” She launched into the explanation of how she treated a person, an explanation she had given only a few others over the years. She felt not only safe with Dr. Shire, but thrilled that he might give her the opportunity to work in her own way with the patients she saw.

It grew dark outside the cafeteria windows as she told him about her childhood and how she first became aware of her gift, and about how she had determined she should keep quiet about it once she was in medical school, so as not to be seen as a kook.

“You were wise to do that, Carlynn,” he said soberly. “I’ve kept my own interest to myself, and I have to admit, I am incredibly thrilled to discover someone I can talk to about it.”

“Dr. Shire—”

“Alan. Call me Alan.”

She smiled at him. “Alan. Is there a way…I mean, if I see a patient whom I think I might be able to help…can you arrange it so that I can have more time with them? I’ve had to do this so surreptitiously.”

“Yes,” he said. “We’ll work it out. But we have to be cautious. You must know that the other students and some of the staff talk about you. They know you’re different. They just don’t understand in what way yet.”

“I know.”