Montaro Caine A Novel

11





DR. MOZELLE STOPPED PACING AND STOOD BEHIND HIS DESK TO face Montaro Caine. Then he began the story Elsen and Anna Hilburn knew so well but had rarely spoken of in the past two-and-a-half decades. “About twenty-six years ago in the spring—on April seventeenth, to be exact—Elsen was diagnosed as having a quite fatal disease, a type of cancer that is usually unforgiving. To be brief, we explored every option open to us: cancer specialists, the usual institutions, the unusual ones as well. We even made ourselves available for experimental procedures, as long as they held out the slightest glimmer of hope.”

Howard Mozelle said that he had already received three pessimistic opinions about his wife’s prognosis when he arrived at the office of famed cancer specialist Dr. Rudolf Kempler. At first, Dr. Kempler’s prognosis was hardly different from the others that Howard and Elsen had heard from the previous physicians; the cancer had spread too far to respond to treatment, and the only option was palliative care.

“And you see no chance?” Mozelle asked. “None?”

“Early diagnosis is the key to what few victories we’ve had,” Kempler said apologetically.

“Dr. Kempler,” he asked. “Is there any research going on anywhere? Here? In Europe? Anywhere at all?”

“There is nothing that I know of that would reverse what I would characterize as a terminal situation,” said Kempler. “There is, of course, the Hattie Sinclair case, but there has been no scientific verification for the treatment she was supposed to have received, so that case remains little more than an intriguing dilemma.”

“What case was that?”

At first, Dr. Kempler seemed reluctant to tell Howard Mozelle the story of Hattie Sinclair, for fear that it might give the doctor and his wife unreasonable cause for hope. But after Mozelle pressed him, he told the story.

“Hattie Sinclair’s case was an intriguing dilemma out of which we have learned nothing, regretfully,” said Kempler.

“What intriguing dilemma?” asked Mozelle.

“She was cured.”

“How?”

“It’s a very bizarre story, Dr. Mozelle. I wrote a paper on it. It might be interesting for you to read. But again, I assure you, nothing about it can be applied to your wife’s situation.”

“Still, I’d like to hear about it if you don’t mind.”

The story Dr. Kempler told began in this way: Earlier in his career, Kempler had worked as a physician for a family named Gulkievaugh in Great Neck, Long Island, who employed a maid named Hattie Sinclair. Sinclair came from New Providence, one of the hundreds of islands that make up the Bahama Islands, and the seat of the Bahamian government. Sinclair’s family was typically poor and semiliterate and, at the age of seventeen, Hattie had come to New York and found her job as a maid with the Gulkievaugh family for whom she worked for fourteen years. She had ignored all the early warning signs of her disease, and when she finally did seek help, she went to an outpatient clinic at a local hospital where she was misdiagnosed. By the time the family brought her to see Kempler, she was terminal.

When Hattie finally understood that nothing could be done, she went back to her family to die. The Gulkievaugh family received a couple of letters following her departure, and from the contents of those letters, they understood that her condition was rapidly deteriorating. They heard no more from her and assumed that she had died.

But a year later, they received a phone call from Hattie. She said that she was in New York, she was cured, and she wondered if she could have her job back. The family couldn’t believe it. They were delighted, though shocked. They brought her to Kempler to examine her. He was unable to find any trace of the disease.

Sinclair maintained that she had been treated down in the Bahamas by a man with no formal medical training and none of the equipment necessary to ascertain the facts of her condition. The man lived on a virtually primitive island with a population of 150, and no running water or electricity. The only thing resembling modern accommodations on the island was a small tourist hotel in a remote fishing village. This particular gentleman lived a few miles away from that hotel in an isolated hut at the top of a hill.

One day after the terminal diagnosis Hattie had received from Dr. Kempler, her father had called and said he had made contact with this gentleman who would try to help her. Some family members were opposed to the idea because it would entail moving her to be near the stranger, but her father insisted and eventually took her to the island himself on a native sailboat, and left her there.

As Sinclair later described her treatment, the man, whose name was Matthew Perch, had boiled a variety of roots, leaves, and bark into a brew and fed it to her three times a day. Each feeding was a combination of different roots, leaves, and barks, which was all she ingested for three months. After that, he added solid foods to her diet, in addition to reduced portions of the brew for another two months. At the end of five months, she returned to her family in New Providence. They took her to a local hospital where she was examined and found to be free of the disease.

Baffled but intrigued, Dr. Kempler and some of his colleagues traveled to the Bahamas, hoping to meet with the man, but he refused to see them. Hattie Sinclair’s father interceded on their behalf, telling Perch that the doctors wanted only to talk to him. He refused nonetheless. The government was very supportive of Dr. Kempler’s efforts, but they were unable to provide any help. Finally, Kempler and his colleagues went to the island on their own, checked into the hotel in the fishing village, and found their way to the hut on the hill where the man lived. They waited for four-and-a-half hours and were about to return to the hotel when he suddenly appeared, stepping out of the woods into a clearing to stare at them. As the doctors started toward him, he began backing into the woods.

“We’re doctors,” they called after him. “We only want to talk about Hattie Sinclair.”

But with a shake of his head, the man refused. The doctors begged him, tried to tell him of the importance of what he had done. Perch just turned and walked back into the woods. That was the last they saw of him. Kempler returned the next day and the day after that. But the man never reappeared.

Kempler later learned from Hattie Sinclair that Matthew Perch had been born and raised on that little island. His family history could be traced back as long as records had been kept on his island, which was not all that long, and the records were probably not all that accurate. He had attended a makeshift one-room school until he was twelve years old, at which time he went to work with his father farming tomatoes, root vegetables, corn, and peas. Apparently, a knowledge of root medicine ran in the Perch family; Matthew’s father dabbled in it and so had his grandfather.

Over the years, news of Matthew Perch’s gift of healing spread. Rumor had it that every sick person on Perch’s island wanted to be treated by him, but he nearly always refused. He had treated only eight people aside from Hattie Sinclair over the course of fifteen years, and he had treated each with a method different from the one he had used on Sinclair.

Kempler persuaded Sinclair to accompany him to the Bahamas one more time, with a list of questions for Perch, hoping that the man would answer if she were the one to pose those questions. In fact, Perch did see her, but he did not respond to any of the questions, and Kempler never learned anything further.

“It’s unfortunate that we were not able to obtain his cooperation because there might have been something we could have learned about in that combination of roots, leaves, and barks he used,” Dr. Kempler told Howard Mozelle shortly before he called an end to their meeting. “Or it could have been something in the solid food diet he put her on, or the water, or her faith, or hell, even his personality or his attitude. It’s hard to say. Well, as I told you, it is a fascinating story. Not a very helpful one for you, though. I’m truly sorry about that.”

“But he did see eight people, even though it was over a period of fifteen years. He did see them, right?” Mozelle asked.

“Yes, he did.”

“And whatever their problems were, they’re still alive as far as you know, right?”

“We don’t know anything about them. But there’s no reason not to think so.”

The two men looked at each other in silence for nearly half a minute before Dr. Mozelle stood up and extended his hand to Dr. Kempler. “You’re right; it’s truly a fascinating story,” he said.