The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty [2]
When he returned to the examining room he sat in the patient’s chair.
“Laurel,” he said, “I don’t want to do this operation myself.” He went on quickly, “I’ve kept being so sorry about your mother.” He turned and gave what might have been his first direct look at Fay. “My family’s known his family for such a long time,” he told her—a sentence never said except to warn of the unsayable.
“What is the location of the tear?” Laurel asked.
“Close to central,” he told her. She kept her eyes on his and he added, “No tumor.”
“Before I even let you try, I think I ought to know how good he’ll see,” said Fay.
“Now, that depends first on where the tear comes,” said Dr. Courtland. “And after that on how good a mender the surgeon is, and then on how well Judge Mac will agree to take our orders, and then on the Lord’s will. This girl remembers.” He nodded toward Laurel.
“An operation’s not a thing you just jump into, I know that much,” Fay said.
“You don’t want him to wait and lose all the vision in that eye. He’s got a cataract forming on his other eye,” said Dr. Courtland.
Laurel said, “Father has?”
“I found it before I left Mount Salus. It’s been coming along for years, taking its time. He’s apprised; he thinks it’ll hold off.” He smiled.
“It’s like Mother’s. This was the way she started.”
“Now, Laurel, I don’t have very much imagination,” protested Dr. Courtland. “So I go with caution. I was pretty close to ’em, there at home, Judge Mac and Miss Becky both. I stood over what happened to your mother.”
“I was there too. You know nobody could blame you, or imagine how you could have prevented anything—”
“If we’d known then what we know now. The eye was just a part of it,” he said. “With your mother.”
Laurel looked for a moment into the experienced face, so entirely guileless. The Mississippi country that lay behind him was all in it.
He stood up. “Of course, if you ask me to do it, I will,” he said. “But I wish you wouldn’t ask me.”
“Father’s not going to let you off,” Laurel said quietly.
“Isn’t my vote going to get counted at all?” Fay asked, following them out. “I vote we just forget about the whole business. Nature’s the great healer.”
“All right, Nate,” Judge McKelva said, when they had all sat down together in Dr. Courtland’s consulting office. “How soon?”
Dr. Courtland said, “Judge Mac, I’ve just managed to catch Dr. Kunomoto by the coat-tails over in Houston. You know, he taught me. He’s got a more radical method now, and he can fly here day after tomorrow—”
“What for?” Judge McKelva said. “Nate, I hied myself away from home and comfort and tracked down here and put myself in your hands for one simple reason: I’ve got confidence in you. Now show me I’m still not too old to exercise good judgment.”
“All right, sir, then that’s the way it’ll be,” Dr. Courtland said, rising. He added, “You know, sir, this operation is not, in any hands, a hundred per cent predictable?”
“Well, I’m an optimist.”
“I didn’t know there were any more such animals,” said Dr. Courtland.
“Never think you’ve seen the last of anything,” scoffed Judge McKelva. He answered the Doctor’s smile with a laugh that was like the snarl of triumph from an old grouch, and Dr. Courtland, taking the glasses the Judge held on his knees, gently set them back onto his nose.
In his same walk, like a rather stately ploughboy’s, the Doctor led them through the jammed waiting room. “I’ve got you in the hospital, they’ve reserved me the operating room, and I’m fixed up, too,” he said.
“He can move heaven and earth, just ask him to,” said his nurse in a cross voice as they passed her in the doorway.
“Go right on over to the hospital and settle in.” As the elevator doors opened, Dr. Courtland touched Laurel lightly on the shoulder. “I ordered you the ambulance downstairs, sir—it’s a safer ride.”
“What’s he acting so polite about?” Fay asked, as they went down. “I bet when the bill comes in he won’t charge so polite.”
“I’m in good hands, Fay,” Judge McKelva told her. “I know his whole family.