The Harvest

Cindy responded to the chemotherapy. She lost some hair but recovered her sense of balance; she went home from the hospital ski

She was back six months later. Her tumor, inoperable to begin with, had disseminated. Her speech was slurred and her eyesight had begun to tu

Now she was home to die. The Rhees understood this. In a way, the prognosis was kind; she was functional enough to leave the hospital and with any luck she wouldn’t end up DNR in some pitiless white room. Now Cindy was blind and could form only the most rudimentary words, but Ellen Rhee continued to care for her daughter with a relentless heroism that Matt found humbling.

He had promised he would stop by this morning, but he didn’t relish the task. It was hard not to care about Cindy Rhee, hard not to hate the disease that was torturing her to death. There was a state of mind Matt called “being the doctor machine,” in which he kept his emotions filed for later reference… but that was a difficult balancing act at the best of times, and this morning he was feverish and disoriented. He popped a decongestant and drove to the Rhees’ house in a grim mood.

There was the question, too, of what Jim Bix had told him. He carried it like a stone, a weight he could neither dislodge nor easily bear. Jim was sincere, but he might still be mistaken. Or crazy. Or maybe this really was the begi

He parked in the driveway at the Rhees’ modest two-bedroom house. Ellen Rhee opened the door for him. She wore a yellow housedress with her hair tied away from her neck. The air in the living room smelled of Pine-Sol; an old upright vacuum cleaner stood sentinel on the carpet. It was Mart’s experience that in the homes of the dying, housework is performed religiously or not at all. Ellen Rhee had taken to frantic cleaning. In the last few months he had seldom seen her without her apron on.

But she was smiling. That was odd, Matt thought. And the radio was playing. Some AM station. Cheerful pop music.

“Come in, Matt,” Ellen said.

He stepped inside. The house was not as dim as he remembered it; she had opened all the blinds and pulled back all the drapes. A summer-morning breeze swept the odor of antiseptic past him, and a more delicate waft of roses from the backyard garden.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “The house is kind of chaotic. I’m in the middle of cleaning up. I guess I forgot you were coming.”

She sniffed and dabbed her nose with a Kleenex. The Taiwan Flu, Matt thought. Wasn’t that what the papers were calling it?

He said, “I can come back another time—”

“No. Please. Come in.” Her smile had not faded.

The clinical word for this kind of behavior was “denial.” But maybe it was simply her way of coping. Carry on, smile, and welcome the guest. A new wrinkle in the etiology of Ellen Rhee’s grief. But it seemed to Matt she looked different. Less burdened. Was that possible?

“Is David home?”

“Early shift at the mill. Would you like a coffee?”

“No, thank you, Ellen.” He looked toward Cindy’s bedroom. “How is she today?”

“Better,” Ellen said. Mart’s surprise must have been too obvious. “No, really! She’s feeling much better. You can ask her yourself.” It was a macabre joke. “Ellen—”

Her smile softened. She touched his arm. “Go see her, Matt. Go ahead.”

Cindy was sitting up in bed, a small miracle in itself. Mart’s first astonished thought was: She did look better. She was still brutally thin—the delicate bone-and-parchment emaciation of the terminal cancer patient. But her eyes were wide and appeared lucid. The last time he stopped by, she hadn’t seemed to recognize him.

Matt parked his medical bag on the bedside table and told her hello. He made it a point to talk to her, though the neurologist had assured him she couldn’t understand. She might still take some solace from the tone of his voice. “I came by to see how you’re doing today.”

Cindy blinked. “Thank you, Dr. Wheeler,” she said. “I’m doing fine.”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Ellen said when he emerged from the girl’s bedroom. “Come on. Sit down.”

He sat at the kitchen table and allowed Ellen to pour him a glass of 7-Up.

“She really is better,” Ellen said. “I told you so.” Matt struggled to form his thoughts.

“She spoke,” he said. “She was lucid. She understood what I said to her. She’s weak and a little feverish, but I believe she may even have gained some weight.” He looked at Ellen. “None of that should be possible.”

“It’s a miracle,” Ellen said firmly. “At least that’s what I believe.” She laughed. “I’m a little feverish myself.”

“Ellen, listen. I’m pleased about this. I couldn’t be happier. But I don’t understand it.”

And truly, he did not. Yes, there was such a thing as a remission. He had once seen a lung tumor remit in a way that could be called “miraculous.” But Cindy was a vastly different case. Brain tissue had been destroyed. Even if the tumors had somehow vanished, she should not have been able to speak. That part of her brain was simply missing. Even without the tumors, she would have been in the position of someone who had suffered a severe stroke. Some recovery of faculties might be possible; certainly not a complete cure… certainly not what he had witnessed in the bedroom.

He did not say any of this to Ellen. Instead, he offered: “I want to be sure. I want the hospital to look at her.”

Ellen frowned for the first time this morning. “Maybe when she’s stronger, Matt. I don’t know, though. I hate to put her through all that again.”

“I don’t want us to have false hopes.”

“You think she might get worse?” Ellen shook her head. “She won’t. I can’t tell you how I know that. But I do. The sickness is gone, Dr. Wheeler.”

He couldn’t bring himself to argue. “I hope you’re right. Cindy said something similar.”

“Did she?”

The girl had spoken with deliberation, as if the framing of the words still required enormous effort, but succinctly and clearly.

“Poor Dr. Wheeler,” this emaciated child had said to him. “We’re putting you out of business.”

Strange as the incident was, here was something even stranger: He did not dwell on it or even think about it much after he left the Rhees’ house.

He drove downtown along Promenade Street where the road followed the curve of the bay. There wasn’t much traffic. It was an easy drive, the ocean still and blue under a feathery wash of sky. Hot August noon and nothing stirring.

He felt as strangely placid as Buchanan looked. Matt had blamed it on the fever—this empty calm, his own, the town’s—but then it occurred to him to wonder.

Maybe Jim is right, he thought. We’re all infected. Machines in the blood. A sort of plague. The Taiwan Flu… hadn’t he dreamed about it? But these thoughts, too, slipped away beneath the glassy surface of the day.

It turned out that Jill, the receptionist, hadn’t shown up for work—phoned in sick—but A