Now and Again by Charlotte Rogan Page B

have to do with the damaged babies?”
    Before the doctor could answer, the second-to-last patient of the day came into the waiting room, drenched from a pelting rain and calling out behind her, “Okay, Frankie. Come back for me in half an hour.”
    The woman had suffered a miscarriage and seemed both teary and relieved. After assuring the doctor she was fine, she started sobbing. “It’s just that Frankie came back from the war without his feet. Some days it’s all I can do to take care of him. What would I do with a baby? And Frankie has trouble sleeping, so then I have trouble sleeping too. Can you give him something to help with that?”
    “This is a women’s clinic,” said the doctor, but then he relented and took out his prescription pad.
    “These pills are for you,” he said. “It’s against the law to share them.”
    “Oh,” said the woman.
    “However, I doubt anyone would find out if you did.”
    “And he stopped going to physical therapy. He says there isn’t any point.”
    “I can’t solve everything,” said the doctor, tearing the leaf off the pad and giving it to the woman. “He needs to see his own physician.
    “I can’t solve everything,” he said again when Dolly put her hand on his arm and said, “You’re a good man.” Of course the doctor had hopes and dreams! Of course he had a beating heart!
    “Tell me, then. What would a good man do if he knew what I know? Would he make that knowledge public even if it ended his career, or would he close his eyes and continue to help his patients the best he can?”
    Dolly was certain the doctor was talking about the report on munitions safety he had mentioned several weeks before. She took a deep breath and asked, “Was it the report on birth defects and munitions safety that was altered?”
    The doctor looked startled, as if he hadn’t meant to speak his thoughts aloud. “Oh, that,” he said. “Whatever caused the birth defects, it wasn’t the munitions. The revised report was absolutely clear on that.”
    “The revised report,” said Dolly carefully. “What did the original say?”
    But the window was closed now, closed and shuttered. And then the doctor was glancing at his watch and asking about the last patient—wherever had she gotten to? Did she think he had all night? While they waited for her to arrive, he talked pompously about the heroic things he had done, the influential people he knew, the exotic places he had traveled to, the new car he was going to buy. “So I really don’t have time to wait,” he said.
    “Doctor,” whispered Dolly. “Do you have copies of both reports?”
    “Do I have copies?” asked the doctor absently. His eyes had lost focus, and Dolly couldn’t tell if he had been drinking again or if he was merely lost in thought.
    “Yes, of the two reports.”
    The storm was turning the orange clay of the parking lot into an orange pond. The owner of the building had dumped a load of pea gravel in a corner of the lot, but no one had ever come to spread it, so it sat like a miniature mountain near the rusting trash receptacle. Dolly liked to imagine the improvements she would make if she were the owner of the facility: curtains at the windows instead of broken mini blinds, pots of geraniums at the entrance, a fresh coat of paint on the flaking stucco, and in the waiting room, a basket of magazines and comfortable upholstery rather than metal folding chairs like the one the second-to-last patient was sitting on while she waited for someone to pick her up.
    “Do you have a ride?” asked Dolly.
    “Yes,” said the woman. “We got the truck fitted out with hand controls. Frankie’s still getting used to them, so he says I’m not to worry if he’s a little late.”
    “I guess she’s not coming,” Dolly said when fifteen minutes had passed and the last patient had failed to arrive.
    The doctor put on his coat. “Who would have thought?” he muttered. “Who in tarnation would have