Duby's Doctor (27 page)

On the other hand, Nurse Erskine and her
compatriots (employees and non-employees from all levels of
hospital society) were more pragmatic and authoritarian in their
outlook. In their opinion, Jean had been irresponsible, had flouted
hospital rules—endangering his own health in the process—and
deserved censure, not praise, for his ill-conceived adventure.

A few people, Doctor Goldberg among them,
refused to take sides. When visiting Jean’s room on morning rounds,
Doctor Goldberg took the time to speak privately with Jean and to
learn all the details from him about his conversation with
Mitchell. Satisfied that progress had been made, and that Jean had
spoken to Mitchell in a manner of which Goldberg approved, the
doctor patted Jean on his (uninjured) shoulder and said, “Now, you
don’t disobey any more orders. Take your meds, and work hard on
your therapy, and we’ll get you out of here as soon as we can. Then
you can work on phase two of the plan.”

Jean received his daily visit from Mandy
Stone just after lunchtime. He told her the story of his nocturnal
Coconut Grove expedition. She, too, of course, wanted all the
details of Jean’s negotiations with Mitchell. She joined Hector’s
pro-escape faction, though she did not perform high-fives or
belly-bumps in the corridor, as some were wont to do.

No one saw, or heard from, Doctor Mitchell
Oberon that day.

On the sixth day after the rescue raid, the
hospital grapevine carried juicy news indeed: Doctor Oberon had
returned. She had been seen conducting rounds alongside Doctor
Goldberg, and it appeared that he was briefing her on “his” cases,
so that she could take over those responsibilities (again).

When Doctors Oberon and Goldberg visited room
2114 to discuss the condition of Yves Dubreau, the patient was
absent. Goldberg joked that they were “pretty sure he’s in physical
therapy at this hour, but it’s always possible he’s escaped
again.”

“Does he know you’re coming back to work?”
Goldberg asked her.

“I have not discussed my plans with Mister
Dubreau,” she answered, with careful correctness. “However, if he
has any problem with my taking over his care, I’m sure he’ll tell
me tomorrow, and administration can assign someone else.” She
smiled, closed the chart they had been discussing, and turned
toward the door. “Moving right along?”

“Sure,” said Goldberg, and accompanied her to
the next patient on their schedule.

When Mandy Stone came by in the afternoon for
her daily visit, Jean was tired and sore from working hard at his
physical therapy session earlier. She kept her visit short, but she
asked him one pointed question before departing: “Have you heard
anything from Carinne, dear?”

Jean looked surprised. “
Non, Maman
.
Should I have?”

Mandy patted his hand. “Not at all. I was
only curious. I expect she’s very busy learning to run her father’s
business these days.”

Jean nodded.

“Does it bother you?”

“Does what bother me?”

“That Carinne doesn’t call you or visit you,
after you sacrificed so much to help her,” Mandy said.

“I sacrificed nothing for her,
Maman
. I do not know
Mademoiselle
Carinne.
Anything I did was for
Michel
. Only for
Michel
.”

Mandy smiled at him with motherly pride and
affection. “That’s what I thought,” she said. “
Au revoir, mon
cher
.”

“
Au revoir, Maman
.”

After Mandy left, Jean slept for the rest of
the afternoon. He did not dream of Carinne Averell.

On the seventh day after the rescue raid,
Jean was sitting up in bed, working in his sketchpad, when the door
to room 2114 opened and a familiar lady doctor strode in, carrying
Yves Dubreau’s medical chart.

Jean’s eyes lit up from within, and a smile
transformed his face into a representation of pure joy.
“
Bonjour!”

The doctor’s smile was eighty per cent as
bright, but she kept her enthusiasm tightly controlled—aiming for
professionalism over fraternization. “Good morning, Mister
Dubreau,” she said, stepping forward and offering her hand for him
to shake. “I’m sure you remember me, I’m Doctor Oberon.”

“Ah,” he said, recognizing her official
bedside manner. “Of course, Doctor Oberon. I could never forget
you.” After releasing her hand, he gestured toward the chart. “As
you see, my legal name is Yves Dubreau. But my friends call me
Jean
.”

“If you have no objection, Mister Dubreau, I
will be taking your case from Doctor Goldberg. Of course, you are
not obligated to accept this change if you—”

“I accept.... Doctor Oberon.... If you wish
to be my doctor, I accept. Please.”

“Thank you,” she said, and her smile seemed
suddenly less rigid, softer. “Do you promise to behave? No skipping
meds, no missing therapy sessions, ... no gallivanting around town
in the middle of the night?” She winked.

“I promise,” he said, and winked back at
her.

“Let’s see what we have here, then,” Mitchell
said. She laid aside the electronic-tablet chart and manipulated
his left foot and ankle—watching him for signs of discomfort in the
knee. Then, she retrieved the chart and scrolled through the
nursing notes for the past twenty-four hours. She asked about his
pain levels, tapped notes into his chart, and scheduled him for a
knee x-ray and MRI later in the day. “We’ll get a look at what’s
going on under that cast,” she said.

They exchanged but few words, and none of
those were personal. When Mitchell had completed her notes, she
shook his hand, they both said it was a pleasure to meet again, and
she left.

Jean’s megawatt smile remained. He had told
her that if he must choose between having her as a doctor and
having her as a friend, he would choose the friend. By becoming his
doctor, she was telling him that he would not have to choose. By
keeping her visits strictly professional, she was telling him that
friendship would have to wait until he was discharged from the
hospital.

He would prefer to have both doctor and
friend immediately. However, it was all right to have doctor and
friend sequentially, if she preferred it. It was a compromise he
could accept. Until time to implement phase two of the plan.

For two weeks, Jean was a model patient,
especially during those few minutes every morning when his lady
doctor came to see him during morning rounds. Their visits were
strictly professional, doctor/patient consultations, remarkable
only because of the ridiculous grin on his face and the peculiar
light in her eyes whenever they met.

At the end of two weeks, Doctor Oberon
discharged Yves (“Jean”) Dubreau with a sturdy knee brace instead
of the cast, and with orders for two additional months of
outpatient physical therapy to rehabilitate his left knee and
shoulder.

Dubreau returned to his Do Bee 2, with the
help of Hector Velez and Dan Kavanaugh. They made certain he had
food in his galley and a cellphone for staying in touch.

Mandy Stone had registered him with
MediTransit, so that he could call and make appointments for
transportation to wherever he needed to go. It would be weeks
before Jean was allowed to drive, per doctor’s orders.

Jean had no vehicle of his own as yet. Still,
one of his prized possessions was Yves Dubreau’s driver’s license.
(Hector promised to teach him how to drive.)

After the first month of physical therapy,
Dubreau could walk to the Barnacle Gallery from the marina where
his boat was moored. He reserved MediTransit only for therapy
appointments across town.

He spent several hours each day painting in
the upstairs studio the gallery owner happily provided for him. The
movers delivered Jean Deaux’s easels, canvases, and paints to the
gallery-studio, as they had previously delivered his clothing and
(very few) personal items to the marina.

The demand for paintings by Jean Deaux
remained high, earning steady commissions for the gallery and an
adequate living for Dubreau, who, despite his restored identity,
continued to sign paintings as he always had. Nobody particularly
wanted a painting by some unknown hack called Yves Dubreau.

Disability pension payments from the DHS were
deposited electronically in his bank account on a regular basis,
assuring Jean’s modest needs would always be covered.

Dubreau settled into a semblance of a normal
life. He attended a daily tai chi workout in Peacock Park at dawn,
painted at the Barnacle studio in the mornings, went to physical
therapy in the afternoons, puttered around his boat in the
evenings. Sometimes he called one of his friends—he never called
Mitchell Oberon—and then he turned in early, so he could enjoy the
woman in his dreams. That woman was not Carinne.

On Saturday mornings, Jean volunteered at St.
Luke’s, performing any task set for him by Sister Elizabeth. The
church, daycare center, and adjacent convent had never looked so
fresh, their landscaping had never looked so healthy. Sometimes,
Dan Kavanaugh, or other parents of St. Luke’s Daycare students,
came to help groom flowerbeds or paint buildings.

Saturday afternoons, Jean swam, showered and
dressed, and then rowed ashore to meet his ride for Saturday night
mass at St. Luke’s Catholic Church.

It was a pleasant routine, a good life,
except that he always felt that a part of him was missing. He had
promised himself he would not approach Mitchell until he began
phase two of his plan. He had taken to calling it Operation Pirate
Ship in his mind, and it couldn’t come soon enough, to Jean’s way
of thinking.

Mitchell, too, had established a schedule.
Morning rounds at the hospital were less exciting after Jean’s
discharge, but she still derived a great deal of satisfaction from
her work, and hardly anyone noticed if her smile had dimmed by a
few watts. She went to a Zumba class three afternoons a week, after
work. She volunteered at St. Luke’s neighborhood clinic on Thursday
afternoons. She attended mass at St. Luke’s on Sunday mornings.

Sometimes, Mitchell drove by the Dinner Key
Marina, which was almost on her way home. And, sometimes she saw a
man on the deck of a distant sailboat, and she was tempted to park
her car, just to sit and watch those familiar muscles for a while.
But, she almost never did.

Sometimes, she took a long walk from her
house to the Barnacle Gallery and looked at the latest Jean Deaux
painting in the display window. It wasn’t too far, really, and
everybody walked in Coconut Grove. It was practically a requirement
for residency.

The first time Nurse Erskine offered Mitchell
a free kitten, Mitchell turned her down flat. “How pathetic would
that be?” Mitchell said. “I refuse to be that stereotypical old
maid with all the cats!”

“It’s not ‘cats,’ it’s just one very little
cat,” Erskine responded. “You have to have at least six of ‘em
before the stereotype kicks in.”

But, Mitchell would not be persuaded.

Nurse Erskine asked again three weeks later,
and on her cellphone showed Mitchell a picture of the adorable
kittens. Mitchell was a goner.

A day later she had a new, furry
roommate—someone to cuddle with on the couch, during the nights she
stayed awake being un-lonely. Because she was definitely not
lonely. She had a good life. Except that part of her always seemed
to be missing, somehow.

In the small South American country of
Mirador, the citizens were establishing a new normalcy as well. A
new, democratically elected government was daily becoming more
organized and efficient. Citizens were hopeful for the future,
after several years of civil strife—strife that had ended when the
CIA-backed rebels achieved victory over the man who liked to call
himself His Excellency.

A colleague of His late Excellency, the man
named Iglesias, was seeking a new life, and a new identity, in the
United States. And, he was seeking revenge upon Carinne Averell and
her bodyguard, the man who had humiliated Iglesias under a midnight
moon on the beach at Mathieson Hammock nearly two years ago.

In Iglesias’ mind, that night was the
beginning of the end for him. After that night, it was just a
matter of time before the Averell arms deal was broken up by the
DHS. Those weapons would have turned the tide in Mirador and
defeated the rebels, and their CIA helpers. His Excellency’s
wedding to Carinne had been ignominiously thwarted as well—not that
Iglesias particularly cared who or what might have shared His
Excellency’s love nest. The girl, Carinne, had undoubtedly laughed
at His Excellency’s failures, and, if she had laughed at His
Excellency, she had laughed all the more at Iglesias.

For a while, Iglesias had at least been
gratified to know that the insolent bodyguard had been executed by
Averell for his part in Iglesias’ degradation on the Mathieson
Hammock beach. Since then, however, news had reached him that the
bodyguard somehow survived. This was unacceptable. No low-level
thug would be permitted to insult and attack
Señor
Iturralde Iglesias and live.

So, while he had long-range plans to retire
to the South of Spain, Iglesias temporarily resided—under another
name—in Coconut Grove, Florida, USA. There, he kept watch on the
mansion compound where Carinne ran her new business empire, and he
frequently observed the sailboat where the surviving ex-bodyguard
lived.

Often, after mass on Saturday night, Mandy
Stone would pick Jean up at the church and drive them to a
restaurant, where they enjoyed dinner together. Neither of them
mentioned former-agent Frank Stone. Occasionally, Mandy would ask
if Jean had seen or spoken to Mitchell Oberon. The answer was
always no.

One Saturday night, when they had finished
their entrees, Jean was surprised by a sudden parade of waiters,
singing “Happy Birthday” and carrying an absurd ice cream
concoction the size of a football, with fiery sparklers fizzling on
its top. Even though the waiters sang “Happy Birthday, dear Duby,”
Jean was very pleased with the spectacle.