Doc - Mary Doria Russell [8]
That winter, a brutal chest cold left him with a deep and painful cough that interrupted examinations and made handwork increasingly difficult. Success was proving too much for him; he simply could not keep up with the hectic schedule of patients. No amount of sleep made him feel rested. He was exhausted from the moment he awoke.
In June, he made the clinical diagnosis himself. Even before his uncle confirmed it, John Henry knew. Advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, the disease that had killed his mother. Two foci in the inferior lobe of the right lung, another developing high in the left. He might survive one or two more summers in Atlanta’s soggy heat.
Six to eighteen months—that’s all the Fates had left him.
He was not quite twenty-two.
His horrified family gathered to discuss this fresh disaster. Once again, however, Dr. John Stiles Holliday was able to say of his nephew’s condition, “This need not be fatal.” Growing evidence suggested that the dry air, warmth, and sunshine of the North American West could effect remarkable results among consumptives. There were stories of remission and even cures—some undoubtedly exaggerated, but others that sounded legitimate. With rest, a nutritious diet, and moderate amounts of healthful wine, convalescence in that climate seemed possible.
After much anxious consideration and a flurry of letters, a plan developed. John Henry would accept a partnership offered by a Dallas dentist. While his cousin recovered his health in the West, Robert Holliday would finish his studies with a different preceptor. Just before John Henry left, the boys purchased an office building together so that Robert could establish their Atlanta practice in his cousin’s absence. The sign above the door would bear both their names, in anticipation of John Henry’s return.
Aunts and uncles and cousins came together for another farewell party, but this time their confidence in John Henry’s prospects seemed glittery and artificial, their cheer more resolute than giddy. He himself spent most of the evening sitting at the piano, playing Chopin.
At the depot the next morning, Martha Anne wept.
John Henry promised to write.
He boarded the train.
And his life cracked in half.
The journey soon took on a wearisome rhythm, for the country was a patchwork of independent short-haul railways in those days. Atlanta to Chattanooga. Find a room. Change trains. Chattanooga to Memphis. Find a room. Change trains. Memphis to Jackson. Find a room. Change trains. Jackson to New Orleans. Find a room. Change trains …
At first, he passed the time with game after game of solitaire, laid out on the travel case he kept in his lap. Watching every penny, he’d buy a stale sandwich and an apple from the newsboy, and make them last all day. When the train stopped to take on coal and water, he would get a cup of tea at the railway house. If he could charm a waitress into finding a little honey in the kitchen to sweeten the tea and ease his cough, he’d leave a generous tip.
He sent his first note home from Jackson. It was to Sophie Walton, in care of Aunt Permelia: I play cards by the hour and imagine myself with you, sugar, sitting at the cookhouse table back in Fayetteville.
The cinders and smoke were inescapable. By the time he crossed the Mississippi line, his throat was raw and his chest ached from coughing. He ran out of rails in Louisiana, but learned that there was a ferry to Galveston and looked forward to the fresh air of a crossing. When he got to the dock and found how expensive it was, he could only sit on the luggage with his head in his hands, trying not to cry.
Spunk up, he told himself, but every breath hurt and his chest felt strangely hollow. He was uncertain whether the sensation was physical and genuine or merely morbid imagination mixed with memories of the cadaver he had dissected in dental school. He could sometimes see that body as clearly as if it were still beneath his hands: its cavitated and fibrous lungs