The Love Letter(2)

Was it my imagination when I heard the whisper “Justine…” as the elevator doors slid open? I willed the odd sense of foreboding away as I trod over to the desk of the librarian’s aide. I mustered my best “ignorant science guy” grin and placed the page before her.

“I didn’t ruin one of your books, I swear,” I said in response to her raised eyebrows. “It’s kind of a weird story, actually. I got this in the mail. I have no idea where it came from or what it means. Can you help me out?”

She sat up, eyes widening in interest as she took up the page. “Oooh. A mystery! A secret admirer, perhaps?”

“Do you know what it is?”

She took less than a minute to read it. “Yep. It’s Jane Austen.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Is that like Jane Eyre?” I’d been forced to read it in high school. I didn’t remember much besides its weirdness—something about a madwoman locked in an attic.

The librarian’s eyebrows crinkled in exasperation. “Jane Austen is an author. Jane Eyre is a book.”

“Okay. So Jane Austen wrote this. What book is it?”

“Persuasion. Is that a clue, maybe? Are you being persuaded to do something?”‘

I shrugged. “Do you guys have a copy of this book, maybe?”

She appeared to suppress an eye roll. “I’m sure we have several. You up to reading it?”

My doubt must have been clear on my face because she laughed. “It’s not all girly stuff, you know. Men like Jane Austen, too. Besides… there might be a clue in the text of the novel.”

I followed her down the farthest fiction aisle, skimming the books’ spines and noting the names of authors whom I recognized but had read only under the duress of my English grade—Zola, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Conrad. At the As, I scanned the brightly-tagged book spines. Would this Persuasion be as impossible to decipher as Heart of Darkness? And would it be worth the slog through the archaic prose just for a clue to this little mystery?

“Here you are. This copy is annotated, coming complete with margin notes that give definitions of word—”

“Hey now, I’m an M.D., I do know how to read the English language.”

“Really? So you know what a ‘curricle’ is?”

At my frown, she laughed and handed me the book. “I’ll check it out to you down there. It’s a type of carriage, by the way.”

Carriage… great. I scowled. Horses, carriages, people dying of smallpox and children getting caught in soot-clogged chimneys. This will be a fun read.

***



Back in my carrel, I cracked open the novel to the first page:

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch hall, in Somersetshire, was a man, who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage—

I shot a quick glance at the margin notes though it bruised my pride to do so only three lines into the book. Baronetage –an annotated list of baronets.

I slapped the book closed and sat back in frustration, running a hand through my hair. I had rounds at the hospital in an hour. What I didn’t have was the slightest clue why I was indulging myself in two-hundred-year-old literature that didn’t pertain to any question on my board exams. Jumping up and waving to Eric, I tapped the back of my wrist and pointed in the direction of the hospital.

***

I tossed the library book and my medical tome into my locker and changed into my greens. Pulmonology boards were in four weeks. In addition, I’d be giving up precious study time to fly across the country to Rhode Island tomorrow for Thanksgiving at my sister’s. Was I actually contemplating making time to read a novel? No. This was why the Internet was invented. The search engine gods would guide me on my path to clues.

My smug resolve faded when I was faced with my last patient of the day.

“Hello, Mrs. Kellerman! I see the roses have returned to your cheeks. How are you feeling today?”

Her mouth twisted in her wrinkled face; gray hair splayed out around her head against a bleached white pillow.

“Rotten. What else is new?”

I consulted her chart. “Well, the good news is that the results of your lung plethysmography were normal.” Proceeding to the next test, I wheeled over the spirometer. Mrs. Kellerman eyed the machine as if it were a vicious dog about to rip off her arm.

I helped her to a sitting position. “Mrs. Kellerman, you were an English teacher before you retired, weren’t you?”

“I was a professor at the community college, why?” She gave me a wary look that suggested she’d picked up on my tactic of distracting the patient during an unpleasant procedure.

“I have an honest question, actually.” I took the mouthpiece of the spirometer from its resting place. “I was just loaned a novel called Persuasion. Have you ever heard of it?”