The Shadow Wife

  “You have to find a way,” Lisbeth said. She knew her sister would never be able to live with herself unless she did.

  “How?” Carlynn wrapped up her sandwich, probably saving it for later. Lisbeth’s was already gone.

  “What about during those rounds you were talking about?” Lisbeth asked. “Can you get near her?”

  “Only if the teaching physician chooses me to listen to her lungs. But that would only take a few seconds.”

  “Not if you can’t seem to hear well. Maybe your stethoscope is broken, or for some other reason you need to listen harder and longer than the other students.”

  Carlynn rolled her eyes. “They’ll kick me out of med school,” she said. “They already think I’m weird.”

  “Let’s see.” Lisbeth lifted her hands, palms up, in the air. “On the one hand, you’ll be seen as weird, but the girl might live. On the other hand, you’ll be seen as a good and normal doctor, but the girl will probably die.”

  “Ugh.” Carlynn wrinkled her nose again. “Don’t say it that way.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lisbeth felt contrite, but only to a degree. “I don’t mean to put more pressure on you, honey,” she said, “but you went into medicine because you wanted to use your gift. Medical school has been relatively easy for you. You whizzed through all the chemistry and biology courses and whatnot. The hard part for you will be finding a way to combine all that training with what you have naturally. What you never had to go to school to learn.”

  Carlynn stared at her a moment, then let out her breath.

  “You’re right,” she said. “You’re the only person who really understands me, Lizzie, do you know that?”

  Carlynn and her fellow medical students, all of them men, made their rounds with Dr. Alan Shire, the teaching physician on the pediatric floor, that afternoon. Although there were a couple of other female medical students in Carlynn’s year, the group doing their pediatric rotation was, except for her, composed entirely of men, and that was enough in itself to set her apart from them.

  The flock of students moved from patient to patient, and Carlynn grew increasingly anxious as they neared Betsy’s room. Although she was still not certain what she would do when they got there, she knew Lisbeth was right: She had to at least make an effort to help the little girl in a way none of the other physicians would even know to try.

  Carlynn did not for a moment believe she was any smarter than her twin, but Lisbeth’s intelligence was far more down to earth, more in the realm of common sense, than her own, and sometimes she actually envied that. Carlynn could solve complicated mathematical equations, but when it came to the simpler matters in life, she was often stymied. She wondered if her sister knew how much she depended on her counsel, on the wisdom Lisbeth barely knew she possessed.

  Working for Lloyd Peterson had been wonderful for Lisbeth, and Carlynn had loved watching her sister’s confidence grow over the past few years. If only her body had not grown with it. Her obesity—for that was, she had to admit, the word for Lisbeth’s weight problem—had become an armor around her, protecting her from…Carlynn wasn’t sure. Rejection? Love? Even Carlynn’s psychiatric rotation had not given her answers to Lisbeth’s situation. Whatever the problem, Carlynn had never spoken to Lisbeth about it. Lisbeth got enough negative feedback from their mother and the rest of the world. Carlynn wanted to be her one safe harbor, and she prayed she was not actually doing her sister a disservice by ignoring the problem.

  Finally, Carlynn, her fellow students and Dr. Shire reached Betsy’s room, but they did not go inside right away. Dr. Shire turned to the group outside Betsy’s door.

  “This eight-year-old female’s condition has deteriorated markedly since our rounds this morning,” he said. He discussed the little girl’s most recent vital signs and lab results, none of which held out much hope for her recovery. Carlynn did not ordinarily find this particular doctor heartless, but she thought he seemed pleased to have such a serious case to show them. She appreciated the fact, though, that Dr. Shire discussed the child’s condition with the students outside the patient’s room. So many of the doctors spoke in front of the patients, as though they were deaf as well as sick. As though they were not human beings with feelings. She liked Dr. Shire’s respect for his patients and the way he treated her like any other student, instead of someone who was less than competent by virtue of being a female. Frankly, she liked everything she knew about Dr. Shire, and she was hoping he would invite one of the students to listen to Betsy’s lungs and heart. She was counting on it, and she planned to be the first to volunteer.

  Inside Betsy’s room Carlynn stood with her fellow students in a semicircle around the child’s bed as Dr. Shire listened to the little girl’s lungs. She was ready to raise her hand the moment he asked for a volunteer, but she could feel the perspiration forming in her armpits. Did she dare do something in front of Alan Shire and the other students? She knew the male med students already found her a bit peculiar, and not just for being a woman in a man’s profession. They would chat among themselves about a particular patient, sharing their uncertainties—and, in some cases, their arrogance—but Carlynn always stood apart from them, both literally and figuratively, as she tried to think of a way to heal. Would it work if she simply poured healing thoughts into a patient as she stood in the room? she’d wonder. She’d experiment often with her gift, and she was doing so right now as she stood at the foot of Betsy’s bed.

  “How are you feeling this afternoon, Betsy?” Dr. Shire inquired, but the little girl did not respond or even look in his direction. Her gaze was fastened to some point in space, and she was as pale as her pillowcase. Carlynn could hear the rasp of her breathing. She was definitely worse than she had been that morning.

  Dr. Shire took Betsy’s blood pressure and reported the numbers to the group. Then he straightened up to his full, lanky height and motioned toward the door of the room.

  “All right,” he said, “let’s move on. We’re running late today.”

  Carlynn froze. They couldn’t leave. Not yet.

  “Dr. Shire?” she asked as the students began to walk past her. “May I listen to her lungs for a moment?”

  He hesitated, and the other students waited for him to say they didn’t have time, but the doctor studied her, an odd, inquisitive expression in his eyes, and she did not turn away.

  “Yes, Miss Kling, you may.”

  There was a groan from some of the students, but Dr. Shire moved close to the patient again as Carlynn approached the head of Betsy’s bed. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her. What mattered right now was the life of this little girl.

  Carlynn smiled at the youngster, hungry to touch her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she reached for the girl’s hands instead of for her own stethoscope.

  “Hi, Betsy,” she said. “I’m going to listen to your heart and your lungs, but first I wanted to talk to you for a moment.”

  Oh, it was hard to send her energy when she was so aware of the men behind her! Each of those young men would have simply moved toward Betsy, stethoscope in hand, leaning over the child without making eye contact with her, concentrating on the bruits and rubs they would hear through the cold metal disk. If she had her own way, if she could design her intervention any way she liked, she would spend a long time talking with a patient, then a long time touching them. But with Dr. Shire and the students at her back, she did not have the luxury of time. So she struggled to do both: talk and heal.

  Betsy was with her, though. Everyone else in the room might have been a million miles away, but Betsy was right there. Her gaze, previously vacuous, now locked onto Carlynn’s eyes, and her delicate damp hands relaxed in her gentle grasp.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Betsy asked in a small, hoarse voice.

  “About how strong you are.” Carlynn expected to hear Dr. Shire interrupt her at any moment, but she continued, smiling at the girl. “You’re very strong. Even though you are quite sick, you still hav
e the strength to ask me what I want to talk about. You’re an amazing and very brave girl.” She kept her eyes glued to Betsy’s, glad the students and Dr. Shire could not see the intensity of the shared gaze. She didn’t want to let go of the child’s clammy little hands. Any minute Dr. Shire would tell her she was wasting time, but she tried not to think about that.

  “You have warm and pretty hands,” she said. She heard the students stir behind her and imagined they, too, were waiting, hoping, Dr. Shire would interrupt her so they could get on their way. “I’d like to listen to your lungs now,” Carlynn said. “Would that be all right with you?”

  Betsy nodded and, with some effort, rolled onto her side, accustomed to the drill. Carlynn rested her stethoscope against the child’s back, but it was merely for show. She placed her hand flat over the disk, her other hand on the girl’s rib cage, just above her stomach. Closing her eyes, she breathed, imagining every molecule of her breath flowing through her hands and into the child. She held the position as long as she could without attracting any more attention than she already had from those behind her. As soon as she stood up, she almost keeled over from a sudden weakness in her own body, and she could not help but smile. The weakness was telltale: she had made a difference in this little girl’s condition.

  “Feel better, sweetheart,” she said, resting her hand lightly on Betsy’s head. Then she turned away, ignoring the looks from her fellow students.

  Dr. Shire cleared his throat. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s move on.”

  Carlynn was last to leave the room. She looked back at Betsy, whose eyes were still on her, and smiled at the little girl, as though they shared a secret. In a way, they did.

  Later that afternoon, Dr. Shire paged her over the hospital intercom. It was the first time she had heard herself paged, and it took her a minute to realize that it was her name ringing out through the corridors of SF General.

  “Miss Kling,” Dr. Shire said when she called him on the phone in response to the page. “Do you have a moment to meet me in the cafeteria for a cup of coffee?”

  It was an odd invitation, and she swallowed hard, wondering what sort of reprimand he would give her for her behavior in Betsy’s room earlier. “Yes,” she said. “I can be there in a few minutes.”

  He was waiting for her in the corner of the doctors’ cafeteria, two cups of coffee on the table in front of him.

  “Cream or sugar?” he asked, rising as she approached the table. He was being remarkably kind for someone about to chew her out.

  “Black,” she said, although she wasn’t much of a coffee drinker. She knew this meeting was not about coffee, anyway.

  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.”

  “Right now they think it’s because you’re a woman and you have this nurturing side to you that can’t resist sitting and chatting with patients.” He grinned at her, his teeth straight and white. “We’ll let them think that for now.”

  “One thing about…what I do…” She shook her head. “I don’t understand it. Why does it work
sometimes and not others?”

  “I don’t have the answer, but I’d be happy to share some of the books I’m reading with you. I have a library on the subject.”

  “Oh, I’d love to see it!” she said.

  “Then you will. It’s at my house, though. Do you mind that you’ll have to come over and—”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “We’ll have to keep that quiet, as well, you understand. A female medical student and a physician… People would really talk then.”

  She suddenly had a thought. “Do you have this…this gift, too, Dr. Shire? Alan?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t, but I wish I did. I’ve wondered if any ordinary person could develop it, but I’ve come to think not.” He ran a hand through his light brown hair and shook his head. “I just have a deep belief that we’re missing the boat somehow in medicine, Carlynn.” He looked her squarely in the eye. “I’d love for you and me to be partners in trying to find it.”

  13

  SAM RAN INTO LIAM’S ARMS ON THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDE THE nursing home, and Liam lifted the little boy up and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Leaning back in his arms, Sam placed his two small palms on Liam’s cheeks.

  “I love you, Dada,” he said, clear as day. They were his new words, and he used them frequently, but always appropriately. Delighted, Liam hugged him tighter. At fifteen months, Sam was either getting bigger, or Liam was getting weaker, because he could really feel the weight of his son in his arms now. Before, carrying Sam had been like holding a pillow filled with feathers.

  “I love you, too,” Liam said, but before he had a chance to truly savor the moment, Sam began wriggling to be let down again. Reluctantly, Liam lowered him to the ground and took a seat on the bench next to Sheila.

  “How are you, Sheila?” he asked, his eyes still on his son.

  Sam began running in circles around the white wishing well, which stood on the lawn near the sidewalk. He could actually run now, not very steadily, but with some genuine speed, and Liam grinned as he watched him chase his invisible prey.