State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [64]
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Dr. Swenson said, working industriously to get the last of the chicken off the bone, “but it goes to my point. It’s easy to become hypochondriacal out here but the more dangerous state is hypochondria’s opposite: the insistent voice that says you must be overreacting to things, and so in turn you begin to ignore real symptoms. Doctors, I’m sure you know, are notorious for this sort of behavior, and I think it may have been the case with Dr. Eckman. His substantial fears actually led him too far in the other direction. Every time I asked him if he was sick he would exhaust himself denying it. When it became ridiculous for him to deny it, I told him I was sending him back. No, no, no, he said to me, like some sort of child who doesn’t want to miss his part in the school pageant, he would be better in a day or two. I couldn’t make his decisions for him, Dr. Singh, though believe me, I tried. He had waited for me a long time in Manaus and he wasn’t about to turn back around without completing whatever mission he imagined it was his responsibility to complete. The next thing I knew we were setting up an infirmary. He required nearly constant attention.” Dr. Swenson looked over at Easter, who had picked a chicken bone up from his plate and was gnawing on it. She raised a hand to tap him and then lowered it instead. She let it go. “Do you see the problem here?” she said to Marina, her voice maintaining every inflection of composure. “The man who had been sent to prod me along in my work was keeping me from it. He had crossed over a line from feeling that he would recover quickly to feeling he was too ill to travel. He told me he wanted to wait until he was in a better condition. He didn’t want to be out on the river. He was afraid of the river. What he wanted was to be home, but getting home from the Amazon requires a great deal of effort and after a certain point he no longer had that in him. I liked Dr. Eckman well enough, but I don’t believe that makes any difference to the story. He was an impediment to me when he was well and he was an impediment when he was sick. I will not have him be an impediment now that he is dead. I will not attempt to retrace every moment of his illness when I cannot alter its outcome. I am sorry that his wife will have to bear that, but there was nothing I could do about it then and there is nothing I can do about it now. He made his own choices. He received the best care we could have given him considering our resources, but Dr. Eckman died. Does that shed any more light on the subject? I wasn’t with him at the end. If there were some final words, a message, I missed it.”
Marina sat at the table and thought of her friend dying of a nameless fever in some room or some hut at the end of the world. Karen Eckman made her promise she would ask if Anders was dead. Instead she asked Dr. Swenson if he had died alone. It was a sentimental question but she wanted some other picture in her mind than the one she had.
“When he died? No,” she said. Her eyes cut over to the boy for an instant and then back to Marina. “Easter was with him.”
Easter, who was possibly the age of the oldest Eckman boy, or the middle one, had seen him out. His plate was scraped clean and wiped down with bread, a neat pike of chicken bones stacked in the center. She gave him her cake and in return he gave her such a smile that she wanted the waiter to come back so she could order another piece and give him that one as well.
“It isn’t a story to bring home,” Dr. Swenson said.
“No,” Marina said.
“The story isn’t meant for her anyway.” Dr. Swenson tapped the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “It’s a story for you. Without getting into the details over dinner, you will trust me when I tell you that Dr. Eckman suffered. I mean it to be a cautionary tale.”
Marina nodded, trying to find some untapped vein of stoicism within herself as she wanted very much to cover her face with her hands at the thought of Anders’ end. “I understand