The Unyielding Future Page 4

  “Everything all right?” he asked me, and I got the impression he was more concerned about me than I was about him.

  “Just checking on you. I’m on my way home.” I remember that I didn’t even enter his room, which was uncharacteristic of me. I simply addressed him from the hall.

  “Drive carefully, and I will see you in the morning.” He waved and turned back to the magazine he had been reading. I had been dismissed, but only after I’d been directed to drive carefully. It’s a common phrase and on the surface it doesn’t mean much beyond, I’ll be sad if you get burned up in a fiery car crash on the interstate, but that evening it seemed more like an order, or a warning that had less to do with me and more about the guy next to me on the interstate who gets burned up because I caused a fiery crash. I remember my head was filled with all sorts of these bizarre thoughts as I walked to my car that evening. I also remember using the back streets all the way home.

  When I made it home my son greeted me with the usual teenage response: Hey. My wife greeted me with a bill for the roof repair, and my dog greeted me with her Frisbee. Ah, the joys of coming home after hunting and gathering all day. At least, Mia, my youngest daughter, was excited to see me, but mostly so she could show someone else what she had created on her new laptop (a birthday present of five days earlier, the laptop would be lost and replaced, at greater cost, two weeks later after an Emmy-deserving demonstration of drama). After validating her abilities as a computer graphics genius, on a whim I asked if she could look up a couple of names for me. I gave her the name Adis and she immediately said that she had already Googled him but the search came up empty for the Hero of Northland High. I gave her the names of Shamus Cormorach and Father Liam of Oranmore. She typed those in and found nothing helpful.

  “We could search the Irish National Data Bank.” It was one of the hits that came up under Father Liam. “It will probably cost a few dollars.” I nodded my approval and reached to give her my wallet. “It’s OK. I’ll just use Mom’s card.” I retreated to the safety of the couch intending to ask my wife how our eight-year-old daughter had our credit card number committed to memory, but then thought better of it.

  Two hours later, I was stretched out on the couch slipping into a comfortable sleep when I was awoken by my lovely wife’s raised voice. “Don’t wake him, he’s sleeping.” I opened my eyes to find my daughter inches from my face, beaming with success.

  “I found them,” she said triumphantly. “I printed off their bios.” She handed me three sheets of my good printing paper, which meant that she had abandoned her laptop to use MY computer in MY office. “The priest was the easiest. He became a bishop in 1698 and lived until he was 59, which was a long time back then. The guy was kind of famous; they built a statue of him.” She took the copies from my hand, shuffled them until they were in correct order, and pointed at a picture of a birdpoop-stained statue that bore an uncanny resemblance to John Madden dressed as a monk. “The other guy, Shamus, he was a lot harder. There were more than two hundred Shamus Cormorachs in the 1600s. Our guy was a brigand. Do you know what a brigand is?” Children absolutely shine when they think they know something their parents don’t.

  “An outlaw,” I said, yawning, and my daughter deflated, but not completely.

  “Do you know what else he was?” This time it looked like she was going to explode. I shook my head.

  “He was a murderer.” She drew her last word out and beamed a smile that told me there was something more. “Do you know what else he was?” She began to bounce, and I watched her for a second longer than necessary just to tease her. “Okay, I’ll tell you. He’s your mother’s great, great, great . . . like sixteen greats, grandfather. You come from a bunch of criminals.”

  I said, “If that’s true, it explains you,” and I poked her in the chest with my finger. We were having a family moment and I didn’t want thoughts of Adis intruding; he had already done enough of that. An hour later, with all of us full of familial bliss, the three children were put to bed and my wife and I were on our way. Then, as if on cue, my phone rang. As a physician, I am always available for someone to reach out and touch me. Even on days when I’m not taking calls, more often than not an ER or referring physician with my phone number will call and chat about a patient, and again more often than not ask if I wouldn’t mind swinging by and offering an opinion. Unless I am out of town, I am never truly free. I have to admit that sometimes I resent that, but most of the time I don’t. It is a fact of life that my family and I have learned to accept.

  This time it was Carl Saiki, a hospitalist (a physician that works for the hospital seeing all the inpatients, similar to the old house doctors) who also coordinated hospital consults. Carl spent the requisite two minutes with unimportant small talk and then launched into his real reason for calling, a seventy-nine-year-old woman with a spine fracture due to osteoporosis. He assured me that there was no rush and that I could see her first thing in the morning. It was then my turn to ask him for a favor.

  “Before you go, Carl, did you get a chance to send off the psych consult and evaluation on Adis, the patient in step-down?”

  “Yeah, I have that right here. I did the mental status exam this morning, and Joe Tyson did the formal psych consult. Didn’t he call you?” Carl asked. He knew the answer already. Joe Tyson was a psychiatrist in his mid-sixties, and he thought he still lived in the mid-sixties. I have nothing against ponytails and tie-dye shirts in general, but not if you’re mostly bald and fifty pounds overweight. If you could get past his appearance Joe was a pretty good psychiatrist; he was just painfully slow, and a consult could take several days.

  “No, he didn’t call and there were no notes in the chart.”

  “Your guy is good to go. Both of us agree. He’s going to be a little concussed for a few weeks, but for an old guy he is still pretty sharp.” Carl was an excellent physician and I fully trusted him. In the twenty years I’d known him he had never let me down. At least until today. Joe Tyson also was very solid. At least until today.

  “You’re kidding me.” I was almost at a loss for words. “This morning he told me that he was 2000 years old. Straight to my face. Said it was normal for someone like him. The man is seriously delusional; I think it’s why he went into that school yesterday.”

  Carl took a moment, and I’m sure he was having the same thoughts I had about him. “I think he was yanking your chain. The guy’s a little odd, I’ll grant you that, but not delusional.”

  “Did you ask him when he was born?”

  “I can’t remember, but I’m sure I did. If you’re really worried about him, I would have social work look for a SNF bed, or you could just send him home.” A SNF is a skilled nursing facility—a step up from a nursing home used for a short time while a patient convalesces, but I didn’t think Adis would convalesce unless he received some form of treatment. And as far as sending him home, no one knew where the man lived.

  I was going to ask Carl to recheck Adis in the morning, but thanked him and hung up instead. I had the strong impression that his opinion would be the same. “The Adis effect,” I said to myself. The man had a strange permeating aura that was almost hypnotic, and a part of me was glad that I wasn’t the only one affected by it.

  The next morning, I discharged Adis to parts unknown. I had broached the subject of a SNF with him and he simply laughed. I gave him a follow-up appointment to see me in a week and gave him instructions to call me if he had any questions or problems. True to his cryptic nature, he asked if he should call if I was experiencing questions or problems.

  Chapter Four