Little Infamies: Stories by Panos Karnezis

Author:Panos Karnezis [Karnezis, Panos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2004-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Medical Ethics

Dr Panteleon had just started the crossword when the nurse walked in. He had spent all morning looking for his glasses, which he could not find anywhere, so in the end he had to use the magnifying lens. When he heard the door he raised his eyes.

“‘Maim”,’ he said. ‘Eight letters.’

He was coming to the end of a career that had lasted over forty years, and which had given him enough satisfaction but little money. He was a physician in a village where people seldom became ill, because they lived on a diet of dandelion and olive oil. The phenomenon was documented in an epidemiological study that Dr Panteleon had authored more than thirty years ago, a report that remained in his drawer after being turned down by every medical journal in the country on the justification that his statistics were not representative.

‘Castrate,’ replied the nurse. And added: ‘You have a patient, doctor.’

The doctor filled in the little squares under the magnifying lens. ‘Show him in.’

‘It’s not a he,’ the nurse corrected him.

‘If it’s a sheep call the veterinarian,’ the doctor said impatiently.

The patient was a girl on whom he had performed an appendectomy two years ago. Having left medical school before specialising, Dr Panteleon had no surgical training. But because landslides frequently closed the only road to the county capital where the only hospital was, he often did the operations himself, with the help of the nurse and an illustrated manual ordered by mail.

That girl’s operation had been a difficult one. When she had first complained to her mother about cramps and fever, the woman had been misled by the symptoms and tried to shake off her daughter’s fears.

‘Soon, child,’ she’d said tenderly, ‘you’ll wish this was all the trouble one gets from being a woman.’

Her words had scared the girl even more, but also shamed her, and she had said nothing for another week. Then vomiting and diarrhoea had turned her room into a stagnant swamp overnight, and her stepfather, a callous man whose favourite pastime was capturing sparrows which he fed to his cat, had moved her bed to the veranda so he could sleep in peace. When the doctor had finally seen her, he had estimated that she was two days away from peritonitis.

Dr Panteleon put down the magnifying lens. He looked at the girl like a sculptor inspecting a finished work. She had certainly grown. Her protuberant cheekbones and the tight chest-fit of her otherwise loose shirt were the undeniable signs of maturity. The only reminder of her old misfortune was a yellow tint like the enamel of old coffee cups in her eyes. The doctor was pleased — but living in the country had taught him a terse and modest language without superlatives. ‘You look well,’ he said.

The girl did not reply. She remained standing, looking at a coloured anatomy atlas posted on the wall which the doctor had put up to cover a patch of flaking plaster. The room aroused in her the sober excitement of a museum visit.

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