Chapter Ten #2
“Sympathies,” the man said, looking down at his own two massive knees straining at his sweatpants, each nearly the size of Miles’s head.
“Yeah,” said Miles.
“Well, settle in. You are in for quite a wait,” said the man, in a trying-to-start-up-a-conversation kind of way.
“Doesn’t look too bad,” answered Miles in an I’m-open-for-a-chat-with-a-stranger tone.
“Not too bad?” said the man. “Not from around here, are you?”
“No,” said Miles, then elaborating, “California.”
“California?” said the man. “And you came all the way here to see a doctor?”
Miles laughed. Then he added, “Skiing.”
The man looked at him as if to size up his intelligence.
“Skiing. Thanks for telling me, because I was worrying those boots and poles were some kind of Valentine thing.”
—
His name was Reginald, though most of his friends called him Bentley, after Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, the famous photographer. Because he, too, took photographs of snowflakes; he, too, had published a book of snowflake photos, available on . Miles could look it up.
“You’ve heard of Snowflake Bentley, haven’t you?” the man asked.
Of course, Miles had heard of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley.
It was impossible to live in Vermont and not hear of Snowflake Bentley.
Bentley was Vermont royalty if there ever was, as big as Grandma Moses, maybe bigger.
Indeed, it seemed at times that knowledge of Bentley was a Vermont citizenship test, a fact that made Miles wonder whether, if other states and nations treated their eccentric turn-of-the-century photographers of snowflakes with the same reverence, there might be many fewer problems in the world. Maybe no problems in the world.
In Greensbury, there was a room of Bentley photos at the college museum, the children did Bentley snowflake projects at school, and the waiting list at the library to check out the four Snowflake Bentley books was so long that they had to bring in copies on Interlibrary Loan from out of state.
And this was Southern Vermont. Miles could only imagine the devotion as one moved closer to Jericho, Bentley’s hometown, in Chittenden County, a hamlet of five thousand souls, whose biblical name only deepened the atmosphere of sanctity.
Miles had never met a snowflake photographer, and he had questions about the process, questions that Bentley was happy to answer, and from there the conversation branched outward, not unlike the many-reticulated arms of a snowflake itself.
Since they were on the topic of regional attractions, Bentley asked if Miles had visited the marble museum in Proctor, which Miles hadn’t, or the granite museum in Barre, which he also hadn’t.
And Miles fell a little more in love with this state that had museums for granite and marble, two different museums. Then, since they were on the topic, or near the topic, Bentley told him about the organ museum in Brattleboro, which had the world’s largest collection of melodeons, not to be confused with the old Melodeon Factory in Poultney, Southern Vermont once having been the New England epicenter for the production of concertinas, melodeons, and accordions, not to mention pipe organs, reed organs, and pump organs.
Miles had expected an interesting conversation with an individual from a different walk of life, but he had never imagined that he would strike such gold, and soon an hour had passed, and then two, and he had scarcely noticed.
Vaguely, he was aware of the arrival of other people, of comings and goings, of a frazzled nurse who would pop her head out of the door and call a name, but never his, never Bentley’s.
And part of him was getting a little cold, and part of him (his knee) more than a little stiff, but he felt magnanimous, and if there were local people who were in more urgent need of the scant local medical resources, then he was happy to wait his turn.
Conversation had turned to the weather, which led, as it often did, to the slow disappearance of winter, and Bentley said that with global warming, one didn’t find the kind of snowflakes that the first Bentley had found a hundred years ago.
No, instead of those perfect, symmetric crystals from winters past, the snowflakes of the modern age were mutant, melted, misshapen little things.
Not that he was saying this was the worst tragedy of climate change, like fires, like the food supply, like islands.
But, rather, a canary, of sorts. A lot of cold, wet, lopsided little white canaries.
“Say,” said Bentley after a long time, “what do you do?”
Miles wasn’t really in the mood to talk about his dissertation, so he said that his wife was visiting faculty at the college, and he had come along.
“A man of leisure,” said Bentley. “I envy that.”
There was a pause.
“Not to beat a dead horse,” said Bentley. “But you realize you are farther from the front of the line now than when you started.”
Miles looked about. Indeed, he had been so engrossed in conversation that he hadn’t realized that the emergency room was now almost entirely full with other cupids, multiracial, coeducational hues of green, bent double, their identical little wings fluttering as they threw up.
Bentley went on. He wasn’t a doctor, he said.
Granted. But, having occupied an ungodly portion of his adult life and, unfortunately, a not-insignificant part of his childhood in emergency rooms, he knew them like an oenophile knew the subtleties of wine, he had amassed not an inconsiderable amount of medical knowledge, and if Miles was able to hobble, which he’d seen with his very own eyes, there wasn’t much the Vermont Mountain Medical Center could do for him tonight.
Were he to be seen—and, given the urgency of the gastrointestinal Valentine’s Day massacre that was unfolding around them, this was not likely something that was going to happen for a sacred hour—it would not be by a certified M.D.
, but by another quote-unquote health professional, in this case most likely Kyle, a physician’s assistant, a very nice young man of twenty-four with a bachelor’s degree and one year of practical training.
Now, Kyle, whose last name on his name tag was covered by a series of stickers, understandable given the threats one often overheard rising from behind the curtains of the examining rooms—Kyle Heart–Bear–Rainbow–Hello Kitty—was nominally under the supervision of one Dr. Awes, whose name paid homage not to the emotion one felt upon seeing the quality of his handiwork, but to the homophonic wizard who was never seen.
And this young Kyle would—if the dozen other knees that Bentley had seen come and go through VMMC were precedent—wiggle Miles’s knee back and forth, and send for an X-ray.
Then, sometime later, and God knows when, one of the two nurses sitting at their station, just within earshot of the miserable midnight patients, talking about some inane topic that seemed selected with the sole purpose of punishing the ill and injured citizens who had the audacity to darken the halls of the emergency room during those witching hours, would, at a moment identical to any other, notice the PA’s orders, rise with saurian inertia, and drag the X-ray machine across the floor, being certain to grumble that, were it not for the recent buyout, this job would have been executed a long time ago by a dedicated X-ray tech, a woman named Pamela, now struggling to make ends meet in Oakfield, with a husband who had cancer and an adult son with severe autism.
At which moment, Miles’s building ire would begin to shift, from the mocking nurses, the kind-but-over-his-head Kyle, the invisible Awes.
To a different nemesis, murky, many-tentacled, and merciless.
“Private equity?” asked Miles, who had read an article.
“Citizen, don’t get me started,” said Bentley, who, having started several hours ago, and restarted with the latest surge of angels, went ahead and started again.
—
They were halfway through the 2019 sale of the land beneath them, and the subsequent leasing of the same land back to the hospital, when Miles’s cellphone began to buzz.
In truth, his phone had been going off for quite a while with texts from Kate, which Wesley had helped to assign their own special buzz.
But it had seemed insensitive to interrupt this gentleman, who clearly was so eager for conversation, and Miles was genuinely interested in the story of the nursing layoff, and the sale of the CT scanner, and the shuttering of the mental-health unit, and the murky shift in ownership between OathMD and VRN Health Solutions, which were actually the same group of investors.
But a phone call was something different, and he excused himself and answered.
Kate asked him if he had seen her texts.
“I think there isn’t very good reception,” said Miles.
“Look at them,” said Kate.
Miles peered closer. “I am not sure what I am seeing,” he said.
“Look closely.”
“Is that the carpet?” asked Miles.
Kate told him.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.” Miles looked at his phone again. “Really?”
“Really, Miles.” There was a pause. Across the snowy mountains, husband and wife both took a very deep breath. “I’m guessing you haven’t seen the doctor yet?” asked Kate.
Miles looked around at the room, which, with its winged, fallen, groaning cherubs, seemed so distinctively…Miltonian. Should he take a photo she could use in one of her lectures?
“You know,” he said. “I’m feeling better, honestly. I can come home. I’ll ask about a cab.”
He hung up, still trying to get his head around what she’d just told him, the photos hovering on his phone. King Damij.
“A cab?” asked Snowflake Bentley. “You kidding?”
It was not hard to feel some admiration for the dog. To have gone straight through the carpet?
“I’ll take you,” Bentley said.
Miles looked up. “Oh, no, that isn’t necessary.”
“I believe it is,” said Bentley.
“Don’t you need to see a doctor?”