Free The Doctor's Wife by Elizabeth Brundage Page B

starts to cry. “I will find him, Mrs. Knowles,” the detective promises. “I will find him.”
     

 
    PART TWO
     
     
    Flesh
     

 
    12
     
     
    ALBANY WAS A CITY that wept bitterly and did not apologize for its weeping, a city of pale brick buildings, faces like spoiled potatoes pulled from the dirt, acres of row houses, churches, firehouses, pale stricken faces, and faces yellowed like the pages of old books. Michael Knowles was the youngest of three partners in a small private obstetrics and gynecology group adjacent to the hospital, in the Medical Arts Building on Hackett Boulevard. St. Vincent’s Hospital was a sprawling edifice with overcrowded floors, overscheduled doctors, and discontented nurses. Dour nuns roamed the narrow corridors, which were painted a sallow shade of mustard yellow and reeked of paint whenever they ran the heat, which was almost always, no matter the temperature or season. The windows had been painted shut that summer, and the air-conditioning, which hissed and chortled in earnest, wafted sticky malodorous air all throughout the building. Michael had been born there, as had his own children, and it was the oldest teaching hospital in the city, one in which many of the attending physicians, including himself, engaged in bedside teaching. He worked tirelessly, and when he left the office at the end of the day it was never without a heady sense of relief. Over the years, he had grown accustomed to the routines of private practice, the growing bonds he felt with the nurses and residents, the patients who looked to him for guidance. The satisfaction he felt in healing them. His patients were various and wore the scars of a complicated age. Some came with bruises, strange torturous marks. One patient had severe burns on her ankles; she was three months pregnant at the time. When he questioned her she shrugged dumbly, her apathy obvious as her cologne. She gave birth in the fifth month to a mangled creature the size of his fist. Abuse of one form or another was common, even routine. There were days when he questioned his whole existence. There were days when he wondered why he’d become a doctor and even regretted it. The work was often grueling and continually exhausted and frustrated him. But then there were good days, when a patient would confide in him, when she would share her deepest admissions and seek his advice. Or when he treated a difficult problem, either with drugs or surgery, returning the health that the illness would have devoured, watching pain vanish from a face that has been distorted by suffering, that made all the rest of it worthwhile. It was what kept him going.
     
     
    It was why he agreed to help Celina James.
     
     
    She paged him one morning in early August, just after he’d finished his rounds. He called the number and a woman answered the phone in a chipper voice. “Free Women’s.”
     
     
    “It’s Dr. Knowles,” he said. “Somebody paged me.”
     
     
    “Oh, yes, please hold for Dr. James.”
     
     
    A moment later she came on the phone. “Hello, Michael.” Her voice brought on a swarm of memories.
     
     
    “Celina. I can’t believe it. What’s it been, ten years?”
     
     
    “Twelve, darling. Time flies when you’re having fun.”
     
     
    “How’ve you been?”
     
     
    “Dandy. And you?”
     
     
    “Working like a dog,” he said.
     
     
    “I’m intensely curious to see how you’ve aged.”
     
     
    “Badly,” he said.
     
     
    “I doubt that.”
     
     
    “All work and no play.”
     
     
    “Poor baby.”
     
     
    “What can I do for you?”
     
     
    “Actually, I have a proposition for you,” she said softly. She hesitated, then asked if he would meet her for lunch.
     
     
    He didn’t usually take lunch, but he supposed, for her, he could make an exception and told her so.
     
     
    “Oh, goody.” Her voice warmed with enthusiasm. “How about Lombardo’s, one o’clock?”
     
     
    “All right.” When he hung up