Nobody's Fool

tried to teach everyone on the planet. What Miss Beryl looked for in each adult face was the evidence of some failed lesson in some distant yesterday that might predict incompetence today. In this young doctor, Miss Beryl was looking to justify in advance her decision not to follow any advice she didn’t like. One surely was not required to follow the advice of one’s own “C” students, if they could be identified.
    â€œI did,” she admitted, in answer to his prescient question about the light-headedness that had preceded her gusher. “Now that it’s all over, I feel lighthearted,” she added.
    The young man surrendered a tolerant, professional half smile, “lighthearted? Do you mean reinvigorated?”
    Miss Beryl made a face. Like most young professionals of Miss Beryl’s recent acquaintance, this young man had no sense of play about him, nolove of language, probably no imagination. As a boy Clive Jr. had been the same way. Every time she’d tried to play with him, he’d just frowned at her, puzzled. This young doctor was too bright to have been a “C” student, probably, but she could see herself putting a B-minus at the top of one of his adolescent compositions twenty years ago and waiting for him to complain. What’s wrong with it? he’d have wanted to know. Where had she taken off points? Where had he lost credit?
    But, yes, reinvigorated was precisely how she’d felt after the nosebleed. And so she raised his grade to a B-plus now, just as she probably had then, after a stern lecture that life wasn’t a matter of simply avoiding mistakes, of losing credit, but rather of earning. She decided to confide in him. “I kept thinking it was snowing,” she said, feeling a little foolish. “I could
see
it snowing.”
    The doctor nodded, apparently not at all surprised by what struck Miss Beryl as the most bizarre of her symptoms. He let the air out of the sleeve all at once then and pulled apart the Velcro seam. When she rubbed her flesh, he said, “Did that cause discomfort?”
    â€œIt hurt, if that’s what you mean. Are we finished?”
    â€œJust about. I think it would be wise to order some blood work done, though,” he said.
    Miss Beryl flapped her sore arm like a wing. “Am I correct in assuming you’ll want to use
my
blood?”
    Another trace of a smile. “Well, we could use mine, but then we’d know about me.”
    Miss Beryl stood, then sat back down again when the doctor, who was sitting across from her, did not get to his feet. “You fellows are like the police. You’re never around when you’re needed. If you’d been at my house at six o’clock this morning you could have had the blood you wanted, and you wouldn’t have required a syringe to get it either. You could have used a salad bowl. Now you want more.”
    â€œJust a little,” he assured her. “You aren’t afraid of the needle, are you? It won’t hurt.”
    â€œWill I feel any discomfort?”
    â€œMaybe a smidgen,” he conceded seriously, tossing the blood pressure sleeve carelessly onto the desk and crossing one knee over the other. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated and closed it again.
    â€œThis is the part where we converse meaningfully, ain’t it,” Miss Beryl said.
    â€œIt is,” he said. “You have a family physician in Bath?”
    Miss Beryl said she did.
    â€œYet you didn’t go to him about this?”
    â€œHe’s a snitch,” Miss Beryl explained. “Reports directly to my son. The only reason I’m here is that I promised Donald.”
    â€œDonald?”
    â€œSullivan,” she said. “You probably don’t know him.” Indeed, she had promised Sully she’d go to the doctor. It had been the only way she could get him out of her flat so she could clean up the bloody mess she’d made. In fact, Sully had insisted on driving her to the doctor over the noon hour, had promised to drop by and pick her up. Probably he’d forget, but the way her luck was going this would be the time he’d remember, so she made an appointment at the clinic in Schuyler, called Mrs. Gruber for company, explaining that she’d been referred to the clinic for her annual checkup, and left Sully a note on the door, explaining that she’d gone to the doctor without mentioning which one or where, confident that