The Good Doctor by Paul Butler Page A

her eyebrows.
    â€œGood morning, Nurse Mills,” the young doctor says. “I hope you enjoyed your Sunday.” He is suddenly confident, carefree even, because he realizes the thing he has set into motion is some hours away. This rare and diminishing allotment of time is his last chance to be “ordinary” with Nurse Mills. After seven o’clock, she will view him as a creature quite separate from the rest of humanity.
    â€œI did indeed. I trust you enjoyed your Sunday, also.”
    This is much more than she usually says to him. Her sudden generosity gives him a pang of regret. If only he could remain content with such modest parcels, he might keep that small vestige of the habitual respect a good woman feels for those around her. With just the two of them here day after day and week after week, this would have been the safe course. But Grenfell has changed everything.
    ***
    All morning they work happily enough. Trepidation grows toward lunchtime; rushing on her part might signal an intention to contrive a meeting with Grenfell, after all. His scheme would be in ruins. But Nurse Mills seems slow and content to bide her time, slipping out only to visit a friend on the wards. In the afternoon, while wrapping a bandage for a child with an ulcerated sore, he catches her looking at him with some seriousness—dare he even call it respect?—over the gauze.
    â€œHold this, Nurse,” he says, giving her the handle end of the scissors.
    â€œCertainly, Doctor,” she answers.
    He struggles to keep his breathing steady. Nurse Mills has never called him “doctor” in the clinic. She rarely speaks more than a word to him at a time. Why has she chosen now to go so much further than he could have hoped? Not even “yes, Doctor,” but “certainly, Doctor.”
    With a slight tremble of the hands, he ties the two ends of the bandage together and opens his palm to receive the scissors once more. When the metal touches his skin, it’s still warm from her touch. She gazes at him again, and then shakes her head slightly as though to wake herself. As he trims the bandage edge, he steals another glance and notices that she has coloured.
    An unwelcome thought nudges itself into his brain: she had, for the moment, merely forgotten he was not Grenfell.
    ***
    The twisting lane isn’t as deserted as he hoped. Black-gowned lawyers, some in pairs, some in larger clumps, sweep through the shortcut in both directions. Small parties of tourists or theatregoers make their way through with maps or programs in hand. Some glance in his direction and seem to stare hard. Only when he takes a backwards glance does he realize he is blocking Dr. Johnson’s silver plaque from view.
    He underestimated how desperately exposed he would feel. His imagination projected a meeting in deepest shadow, an unwitnessed exchange—anger on her part, pleading on his, undiscovered love unfurling from both, a sudden violent kiss out of nowhere—or some mysterious combination of all these things. Last night’s faint gaslight and eerie silence was in his mind when he forged the letter. Now in the daylight, with a trickle of curious passersby, the whole thing seems unthinkable, terrifying.
    He glances at his watch—one minute to the hour. His feet tingle and he has a sudden urge to escape. A nanny in black and two red-uniformed schoolboys shuffle by.
    â€œI don’t want to, Nanny,” says the younger of the two, perhaps five years old. “Can’t we go back?”
    â€œYour mater says we must go, Geoffrey,” coos the old lady. They move off, and the street is silent.
    Sensing movement, he glances up to see a pigeon eyeing him suspiciously from Dr. Johnson’s windowsill. He wonders if it could be the same bird which loosened pebbles onto his hair last night. Heart thumping, he turns to the wall and stares at the plaque. He takes in nothing of the few words etched in cold silver.