by Joe Stanley

Over the next few months, I enjoyed a growing esteem among the people of the village. More than mere patients, they became friends. I was often invited to dinners and parties and when the weather had turned to autumn I found myself at the harvest festival.

I do not consider myself to be either a very handsome or very unattractive man, but, perhaps owing to my profession and status, there had been some effort to unite me with various available young ladies. I had felt no connection with any of these, but one already mentioned had grown to hold a place in my heart. As wild and festive music played I saw her standing alone at the wall.

She watched the dancing seeming fascinated and heartbroken at the same time. Though she was a fetching woman, she was ignored by men who were, if I may say, a bit too crude to appreciate or deserve her. And the yearning I saw in her eyes as she watched the happy dancers, compelled me to approach her and extend my hand. She stared in wide-eyes surprise, but it was a pleasing surprise as I could see.

“Bernice,” I asked, “would you honor me with a dance?”

Taking full advantage of her shocked surprise, I grabbed her hand and we twirled onto the dance floor laughing and smiling. I will admit that I am not much of a dancer, but I believe she did not mind. When the merry music came to a stop, we laughed and gasped and looked into each others eyes. I think it was a special moment for her as much me as for once, maybe for the first time in her life, she was no shrinking violet. No, I could see that she knew exactly what she wanted and to the pleasure of my heart, it was me.

And I caught a glance of our host quickly scurrying up to the band. After a quick whisper they began a sweet slow tune and my host turned to me with a wink and a smile. I took Bernice in my arms again, savoring the sweetness of her homemade perfume and the warmth of her hands in mine. In that moment, I was as happy as I have ever been, in the way that only those who know it can understand.
But like the golden grasses which danced in the summer wind, the moment was followed by the shadows of a twisted forest and doomed to end.

As the music fade there came a call from a terrified young fellow, “Doctor! Doctor! Please come quickly! My brother, he’s very sick.”

Reluctantly, I turned from love and to my duty. I knew that the challenge I had long anticipated was at hand. We gained the boy’s wagon, only stopping at my office to grab a case I had prepared for this event, and we dashed through the night to the farm of William Montgomery.

The autumn scenery, with claw-like trees and dead leaves swirling in a wind that blows ever colder, might be unnerving to a sensitive soul. But at first sight of the farm, its profile black against a deep violet sky, I was struck with a sense of some unseen menace, as if death and doom hung in the very air around the place.

At the sight of William, who had become the man of the house at the tender age of seventeen, lay in the grip of some terrible condition, largely out of his senses. He groaned and shifted fitfully in his bed, sobbing as much as his weakened state would allow. I nearly leaped to his side and began my examination.

I performed every test, even searching his body for signs of snake or spider bites. His condition was baffling. I thought at once of consumption, of anemia, of exotic disease, but nothing seemed able to fit with what I could observe. The thought of my predecessor and his hopeless exasperation came to me.

Young William was delirious and with the help of his wife and brother, managed to get him to take a sedative. It was all I could do, having never seen such a baffling lack of definitive symptoms before. He sighed and appeared to rest peacefully, but in a moment his eyes opened with clarity.

“Who are you?” he croaked.
“I am a doctor.” I whispered gently, “I’m here to help you.”
“A doctor?” he asked with a bitter laugh, “There’s nothing you can do for me…”
“Listen to me, William, I am going to do everything I can.”
“But you can’t do anything!” he cried. And the truth of this was as certain to me as the rising and setting of the sun.
“I’m going to die!” he sobbed, and the statement seemed to fall back upon him with a great shock. He looked to me and asked, “Am I going to die?”
I could say nothing and only stared in to his teary eyes, and a terrible coldness washed over his features and he repeated himself.
“I’m going to die.”
I made his case my top priority. I raced back and forth over the next couple of days between my lab and the farm. He was right. Despite all my efforts, there was nothing I could do. He was so awfully right.
In those few, short days, he just drifted away and died.

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