Page 38 - WTP Vol. X #7

Eggs of Ill Omen (continued from preceding page)
said she was there to see him. Mr. and Mrs. Evans told Jane to wait upstairs and showed Elinor through to the lounge.
They sat on the couch and Mrs. Evans asked if she could offer Elinor a drink, Elinor said she would like a drink of water. Then she asked her questions and Mr. Evans answered. Of course, medicine is a complicated field and not all questions can be answered, but she felt satisfied and thought he was better than their own doctor, and told him that.
After the conversation, Mr. Evans phoned Elinor’s dad. Mrs. Evans took Elinor and Jane to the kitchen where they had hot chocolate, and Mr. Evans and her father talked in the lounge for a long time. Then her and her dad walked home to next door and her dad said never to go talk to Mr. Evans again, then he gave Elinor a long sigh and looked into her eyes with a mixture of strictness, wonder and sadness that Elinor couldn’t tell apart or quite understand.
Later Elinor found ways of getting to the doctor to ask her questions, she would fake a stomach-ache, she would let herself fall and get bad bruises on her knees, arms or face. Falling on asphalt or gravel was the best then the doctor would have to sit and pick out the little stones from her body or face with tweezers, and Elinor could ask her questions.
“Sit still Elinor, I can’t do this when you keep talking,” the doctor would say.
One time she broke her arm by putting it between a table and the wall, she kept pushing it towards the table until it broke. Then she had to wear plaster for
a while and had to stroke the cat with her left hand. And her mother would look at the egg in her left hand when Elinor came to her room, and say, “My little girl, my little girl, my little bird of ill omen.” And Elinor could hardly see her mother anymore behind the hill of eggs, and it was a long time ago now, since it was possible for her to reach out and run her finger along her mother’s dehydrated hand.
~
Elinor wants to be a doctor, she’s doing well in school and she can ask Mr. Evans all the questions she wants now. She’s often babysitting for Mr. and Mrs. Evans, they have a little baby boy now, an afterthought, and Jane is away at boarding school.
She holds the little baby boy like she holds the eggs and she talks to him like she talks to the chickens,
little, quiet comforting words, and she lets her finger run along his nose like she used to run her finger along her mother’s hand. She strokes him like she strokes the cat. Sometimes she puts on a record in Mr. and Mrs. Evans’ lounge and dances around with the boy in her arms, he’s so warm. When Mr. and Mrs. Evans come home the boy is asleep in his cradle, he’s breathing steadily.
Then she sometimes talks to them in the lounge and asks her questions, and they ask her how school is, how her father is doing and her grandmother, and she asks about Jane at boarding school. “Jane,” they say and Mrs. Evans gets up in her long blue dress that almost touches the ground and goes to the kitchen.
~
Elinor does go to medical school.
She has two suitcases, she strokes the cat, she kneels down, she whispers gentle words of comfort to the chickens and she stops at her mother’s bedroom door. She can hear her mother’s long, warm whisper, “Little bird.”
Her father drives her there, it’s raining and the wipers rush over the windscreen.
~
She stays in halls, she arranges everything neatly in her room. At night, she prepares her dinner in the shared kitchen and talks to the others but when they stay up late, Elinor goes to her room.
There’s a boy there who seems to be interested in her, his name is Andrew. One night he knocks on her door.
“What is it with you?” he asks when she opens and shifts his weight from one leg to the other.
“What?” Elinor says and puts her hand on her hip. Then she asks if he wants to come in and see her room. Now every time Andrew knocks on her door, she opens with a “What?”
In the first year she learns basic things about bacteria, cells and viruses, she learns how all the organs function. On the weekends, she’s often on shift at one of the hospitals with a fourth-year student. They are at the children’s ward where little skinny kids lie in big white beds. They suffer from anaemia, diabetes and unknown stomach trouble.
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