Please enjoy the first chapter of my newest novel
The Old Doctor
William Lynes
October 29, 2024
Chapter One
2002
He was the old doctor, a gray shuffling man with a full head of black wavy hair sprinkled with silver highlights and a neatly trimmed salt and pepper-colored beard. Wireless spectacles covering inquisitive steel-blue eyes characterized the man. He wore his usual uniform: sports coat, slacks, and hand-tied bowtie, always meticulously groomed. His ensemble today involved charcoal brown and his bowtie, a sporty chartreuse.
His morning route, as always, involved securing his home's door with an old skeleton key and walking along the sidewalk from his ancient gray Colonial Revival two-story house along Tennyson Avenue to his medical office, one and one-half blocks to the intersection with Waverly Street, Palo Alto, California.
He wondered for the millionth time about his brown leather doctor bag dangling from his wrinkled right hand. When was the last time that he used any medical item inside? He carried the bag daily, however, and he would probably do so until the day he died.
He hurried as usual, thinking he would miss his first appointment this morning, which began at nine-fifteen AM. He generally saw two to four patients for hourly sessions three to four days weekly. However, his appointment schedule had been dwindling of late.
As he approached his office, his mind returned to a calculation that had come to him sometime before. He was 94 years old, beginning his now 64-year medical practice at the age of 30 in 1938. He made this trip to and from his office at least four times weekly. Roughly then, he had made this journey more than 13,000 times. The year was 2002. The world had changed so much.
The old doctor crossed Waverly Street and shuffled up the sidewalk, then up four brick stairs, and onto the wooden porch that encircled the front of his office. While the clapboard two-story building was painted brown, beige, and white, the front door was oddly sky blue. The door was wooden in construction but had a crystalline glass inset covering puffy white interior curtains. At the top of the lower wooden portion of the door was a bronze placard:
Elmer Joseph Whately, MD.
General Psychiatry
Doctor Whately set his medical bag on the small round table alongside his front door and reached for the skeleton key in his right breast pocket. Finding the pocket empty, he frantically searched his other pockets without luck. He was searching the doctor bag when a small round woman arrived and opened the door.
"Doctor Whately, did you forget your key?"
"Well, it is odd, Miss Hammerstein. I used it to lock my front door, but it is gone now."
Gloria Hammerstein was a plump middle-aged woman with long, graying blond hair stretched back into a bun. She wore bright red cat eyeglasses decorated with rhinestones and thickly applied matching lipstick. She was an old maid but a dedicated medical secretary to the doctor for nearly 40 years.
"Is this the key, doctor?" Miss Hammerstein reached the ground next to the doctor's foot and picked up the aging silver skeleton key.
#
The old doctor waddled to the rear of the medical building and opened his office door. He set his leather bag on a corner table, removed his sports jacket, and hung it on a coat rack beside it. Before him was a cluttered old, ornate wooden desk, behind which stood a curtained apparent picture window. To his right was a brown leather couch with two overstuffed matching armchairs and a black wooden coffee table. On the wall was a framed painted skyline of the Stanford University campus.
Miss Hammerstein appeared with a tray of tea and some biscuits. She set the tray on the coffee table. She opened the curtains behind the desk, revealing the rear yard of the office building, which was full of sun and a beautiful flower garden.
"Your first patient is Helga Martin, Doctor Whatley. She is a new patient. Here is her chart."
"Thank you, Miss Hammerstein."
#
Helga Martin was a 45-year-old white female seen by the old doctor for the first time. She was slightly overweight but a pretty woman dressed in a floral dress. She chose to lie on the couch, the doctor sitting in his chair just above her head.
"Doctor Whatley, thank you so much for seeing me. You come highly recommended by a dear friend."
"What can I do for you, Ms. Martin?" From the doctor's location next to the couch, he observed a nervous woman who fidgeted with her purse continually. She was quite emotional, nearly crying as she spoke.
"Well, Sorbet has passed."
At this point, the doctor handed the woman a small tissue box.
"Thank you, doctor Whatley." After clearing her nose, she went on. "And I am mourning her night and day. I can't seem to get out of bed. I cry continually and have taken to sipping wine all day."
The doctor took a few notes and allowed the woman to speak. "You mention Sorbet. Who, may I ask, is Sorbet?"
"Oh, I am sorry. Sorbet is my 10-year-old Himalayan long-haired cat."
"And Sorbet is now dead?"
"I prefer the term not present. Sorbet is still with me, but I cannot see her."
#
The consultation finished at the doctor's desk. With Ms. Martin sitting, the doctor cleared up his impressions with the patient.
"You're grieving, Ms. Martin, for your loved cat, Sorbet. Time will improve this, but a medication may help as well. I am going to prescribe a gentle antidepressant to be taken at bedtime called Elavil. It may make you sleepy at first. Just continue taking the medication, and the sleepiness will resolve with time. The drug will give you a dry mouth as well. Shall I call the prescription to the Clark's drugs down the street?"
"That will be fine, Doctor Whatley."
"I will have Miss Hammerstein schedule a follow-up appointment in one week."
#
The day went on. The old doctor saw two other patients before taking a break.
"I have your lunch, Doctor Whatley." Gloria Hammerstein carried in a tray with a China setting containing half of a sandwich, a crystalline glass containing water, and a yellow flower in a small white porcelain vase. "These are the Chrysanthemums from your backyard garden. They just began to bloom. The sandwich is your favorite, doctor. Sardines with cucumbers on rye bread and a drop of brown mustard. Enjoy, doctor."
The old doctor took his lunch at his desk as he finished his paperwork. "Thank you, Miss Hammerstein."
"Oh, there is a note from Mr. Rightly at Clark's Drug. He wants you to call as soon as possible."
"Harold. Whatley here. You left me a phone message."
"Yes, doctor Whatley. Thanks for calling so quickly. There is a mistranscription on a patient's prescription. Let me see, Helga Martin. You wrote for amitriptyline 40 mg. That drug, Elavil, only comes in 10's, 25's, and 50's doctor Whatley. Did you mean 25 mg, or should we have her take four 10s?"
The doctor picked up Ms. Martin's chart. He noted his diagnosis of situational depression and that his note correctly said 25mg at bedtime. Embarrassed, the doctor continued. "Harold, I am sorry. I wrote 25 mg in my note but must have written 40 on the script. Could you give the patient 25s?"
"Of course, doctor Whatley. Then you want the script to read Amitriptyline 25 mg po qhs dispense 30 with three refills. Is that correct?"
#
The old doctor trudged back to his home along Waverly St. and then to Tennyson Ave. At the door, he struggled and then panicked, rifling through each of his pockets. He felt sudden relief as he picked up the edge of the door mat, which revealed an emergency skeleton key.
William Lynes
October 29, 2024
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