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"That's why he'd be a good doctor," said Dr. Larch. "Doctors who think they know everything are the ones who make the most amateur mistakes. That's how a good doctor should be thinking: that there's always something he doesn't know, that he can always kill someone."
"We're in for it, now," Nurse Edna said.
"He believes the fetus has a soul, does he?" Larch asked. "Fine. He believes that a creature that lives like a fish has a soul--and what sort of soul does he believe those of us walking around have? He should believe in what he can see! If he's going to play God and tell us who's got a soul, he should take care of the souls who can talk back to him!" He was ranting.
Then Nurse Angela said, "So. We wait and see."
"Not me," said Wilbur Larch. "Homer can wait and see," he said, "but not me."
He sat at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office; he wrote this simple, mathematical note to Homer Wells.
1. YOU KNOW EVERYTHING I KNOW, PLUS WHAT YOU'VE TAUGHT YOURSELF. YOU'RE A BETTER DOCTOR THAN I AM--AND YOU KNOW IT.
2. YOU THINK WHAT I DO IS PLAYING GOD, BUT YOU PRESUME YOU KNOW WHAT GOD WANTS. DO YOU THINK THAT'S NOT PLAYING GOD?
3. I AM NOT SORRY--NOT FOR ANYTHING I'VE DONE (ONE ABORTION I DID NOT PERFORM IS THE ONLY ONE I'M SORRY FOR). I'M NOT EVEN SORRY THAT I LOVE YOU.
Then Dr. Larch walked to the railroad station and waited for the train; he wanted to see the note sent on its way. Later, the stationmaster whom Larch rarely acknowledged admitted he was surprised that Larch spoke to him; but because Larch spoke after the train had gone, the stationmaster thought that Larch might have been addressing the departed train.
"Good-bye," Dr. Larch said. He walked back up the hill to the orphanage. Mrs. Grogan asked him if he wanted some tea, but Dr. Larch told her that he felt too tired for tea; he wanted to lie down.
Nurse Caroline and Nurse Edna were picking apples, and Larch went a little way up the hill to speak to them. "You're too old to pick apples, Edna," Larch told her. "Let Caroline and the children do it." He then walked a short distance with Nurse Caroline, back toward the orphanage. "If I had to be anything," he told her, "I'd probably be a socialist, but I don't want to be anything."
Then he went into the dispensary and closed the door. Despite the harvest weather, it was still warm enough to have the window open during the day; he closed the window, too. It was a new, full can of ether; perhaps he jabbed the safety pin too roughly into the can, or else he wiggled it around too impatiently. The ether dripped onto the face mask more freely than usual; his hand kept slipping off the cone before he could get enough to satisfy himself. He turned a little toward the wall; that way, the edge of the windowsill maintained contact with the mask over his mouth and nose after his fingers relaxed their grip. There was just enough pressure from the windowsill to hold the cone in place.
This time he traveled to Paris; how lively it was there, at the end of World War I. The young doctor was constantly embraced by the natives. He remembered sitting with an American soldier--an amputee--in a cafe; all the patrons bought them Cognac. The soldier put out his cigar in a snifter of Cognac that he couldn't finish--not if he intended to stand on his crutches, with his one leg--and Wilbur Larch breathed deeply of that aroma. That was how Paris smelled--like Cognac and ash.
That, and like perfume. Larch had walked the soldier home--he'd been a good doctor, even there, even then. He was a third crutch to the drunken man, he was the man's missing leg. That was when the woman had accosted them. She was a whore, quite clearly, and she was quite young, and quite pregnant; Larch, who didn't understand French very well, assumed that she wanted an abortion. He was trying to tell her that she was too late, that she'd have to go through with having this baby, when he suddenly understood that she was asking only what a whore is usually asking.
"Plaisir d'amour?" she asked them. The amputated soldier was passing out in Larch's arms; it was to Larch alone that the woman was offering the "pleasure of love."
"Non, merci," Wilbur Larch mumbled. But the soldier collapsed; Larch needed the pregnant prostitute to help carry him. When they delivered the soldier to his room, the woman renewed her offer to Wilbur Larch. He had to hold her at arm's length to keep her away from him--and still she would slip through his grasp and push her firm belly into him.
"Plaisir d'amour!" she said.
"Non, non!" he told her; he had to wave his arms to keep her away. One hand, swinging back and forth beside the bed, knocked over the ether can with the loose pin. Slowly, the puddle developed on the linoleum floor; it spread under the bed, and all around him. The strength of the fumes overpowered him--the woman in Paris had smelled very strongly, too. Her perfume was strong, and stronger still was the effluvia of her trade. By the time Larch moved his face away from the windowsill and the cone fell, he was already gagging.
"Princes of Maine!" He tried to call for them, but he didn't make a sound. "Kings of New England!" He thought he was summoning them, but no one could hear him, and the French woman lay down beside him and snuggled her heavy belly against him. She hugged him so tightly that he couldn't breathe, and her flavorful, tangy aroma made the tears run down his cheeks. He thought he was vomiting; he was.
"Plaisir d'amour," she whispered.
"Oui, merci," he said, giving in to her. "Oui, merci."
The cause of death would be respiratory failure, due to aspiration of vomit, which would lead to cardiac arrest. The board of trustees--in light of the evidence submitted against him--would privately call it a suicide; the man was about to be disgraced, they told themselves. But those who knew him and understood his ether habit would say that it was the kind of accident a tired man would have. Certainly, Mrs. Grogan knew--and Nurse Angela, and Nurse Edna, and Nurse Caroline knew, too--that he was not a man "about to be disgraced"; rather, he was a man about to be no longer of use. And a man of use, Wilbur Larch had thought, was all that he was born to be.
Nurse Edna, who for some time would remain almost speechless, found his body. The dispensary door was not a perfect seal, and she thought that the odor was especially strong and that Dr. Larch had been in there longer than usual.
Mrs. Grogan, who hoped he'd gone to a better world, read, in the voice of a troubled thrush, a quavering passage of Jane Eyre to the girls' division.
An orphan loves and needs routine, the women reminded each other.
Nurse Caroline, who was tough as nails and found Dickens a sentimental bore, had a firm grasp of the language; she read aloud an almost hearty passage of David Copperfield to the boys' division. But she found herself broken by the prospect of the expected benediction.
It was Nurse Angela who said it all, according to the rules.
"Let us be happy for Doctor Larch," she said to the attentive children. "Doctor Larch has found a family. Good night, Doctor Larch," Nurse Angela said.
"Good night, Doctor Larch!" the children called.
