Chapter 13 13. Harold and the Doctor

The fall broke Harold's hands and knees, and both elbows were swollen from the fall.The woman who rescued Harold saw Harold falling slowly outside through the window in the bathroom.She helped Harold up, briefly checked the contents of the plastic bag, and then helped him across the road, waving at the passing cars, "Doctor! Doctor!" She shouted.Back inside, she put him in a comfortable chair and untied his tie.The house was deserted, with a TV standing on top of a packing box and a dog barking at a closed door.Harold had always been a little wary of dogs. "Did I break anything?" he said.She spoke a few words which Harold did not understand. "There is a jar of honey," he asked more nervously, "is it broken?" The woman nodded and reached out to feel his pulse.She put her fingers on Harold's wrist and counted quietly, her eyes staring straight ahead as if she could see through the wall.She was very young, but her face was quite weathered, and the sweatshirt and pants were hanging on her body, which should be someone else's clothes, maybe a man's. "I don't need to see a doctor," Harold said hoarsely. "Please don't call an ambulance or a doctor or anything." Too much contact, I am most afraid that she will send him back.He wanted to talk to Maureen, but he didn't know what to say so that he wouldn't bother her.I wish I hadn't had a fall just now.He had wanted to keep going.

The young woman offered a cup of tea and turned the handle towards him so that he would not burn his hands.She was talking, and Harold couldn't make out what she was saying, so he tried to force a smile.But she kept looking at him, waiting for his answer.Finally she said it again, this time a little louder and slower: "What the hell are you doing out there in this weather?" Harold realized she had a thick accent, maybe from Eastern Europe. here.He and Maureen had seen news about these people in the newspapers, and the newspapers said they were here for profit.Meanwhile her dog was barking more and more, like a beast, with its whole weight on the makeshift cage, and if it broke free it would surely bite at least one of them before it would stop.It's been reported in the news too.

Harold assured the woman that he would continue on his way after drinking the cup of tea.He told the reason for the trip, and the woman listened quietly.That's why he couldn't stop or see a doctor, and he promised Queenie that he would never break his word.Harold sipped his tea and looked out the window.A huge tree stands in front of the window. Its huge root system may be eating away at the foundation of the house and needs to be repaired.The cars on the road roared past one after another.The thought of going back outside terrified him, but there was no other option.Harold turned his head and found that the young woman was still looking at him, and there was still no smile on her face.

"But your situation sucks." Without any emotion or judgment. "Yes," said Harold. "Your shoes are all rotten, I think your body is about the same, and you have glasses." She picked up a pair of glasses in one hand, "No matter what angle you look at, your condition is terrible. Why do you think you can walk to the bottom of the city?" Rick?" It reminded him of the way David had cursed him, as if carefully calculated, that his father had given him the impression that he was only worthy of the filthiest of words. "I'm—as you say—terrible." He bowed his head.The trousers were mud-spotted and frayed at the knees, and the shoes were so soaked that he regretted not taking them off at the door before entering. "I admit that Berwick is far away, I don't have the right equipment, I don't have much training, but maybe one day you will do something that has no logic at all. People will say why are you doing it? At that time You'll probably think of me and stick with it." He paused because the words caused him pain. "Sorry my shoes wet your rug."

To Harold's surprise, when he peeked up at the woman again, he found her smiling.She offered to offer him another room in the house where he could stay overnight. Before going up the stairs, she kicked the door of the dog's cage to let Harold follow.He was afraid of the dog, and he didn't want the woman to worry about his illness, so he tried to catch up with her.In fact, his knees and palms have been pins and needles since the fall, and he can no longer bear any weight on his right leg.The woman told Harold her name was Martina and she was from Slovakia.She asks him to put up with "the kennel" and the noise. "We thought this was just a temporary foothold." Harold tried hard to put on an expression that he was used to this kind of wording, and didn't want to show that he liked to judge others casually. "I swear too much." She seemed to read his thoughts. "This is your home, Martina. Of course, it doesn't matter how comfortable it is." The dog downstairs was still howling, scratching at the door with its paws.

"Shut your fucking mouth!" she yelled.Harold could see the crumbs on her teeth. "My son has wanted a dog for a long time," he said. "It's not mine, it's my parents'." She pushed open a door and stood aside to let him in. The room was empty and the smell of paint was still there.The walls are all white, the sheets and curtains are the same purple, and there are three decorative pillows of the same color on the pillow.Despite many complaints, Martina still took good care of the fabrics in the room, which moved Harold very much.The branches and leaves of the tree outside had pressed against the window.She said she hoped Harold would be comfortable here, and Harold quickly answered yes, yes.Finally he was alone in the room, and Harold lay down on the bed to relax, feeling every muscle twitching.He knew he should check the wound and wash it with water, but he just didn't have enough willpower to move.He didn't even have the strength to take off his shoes.

I really don't know how to proceed in this situation.He was scared and felt very alone.It reminded him of his teenage years, when his father drank at home, smashed bottles, and had sex with one aunt after another while he could only hide in his room.He would rather he hadn't accepted Martina's kindness just now.Perhaps she had already called the doctor.He could hear her voice downstairs, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make out what she was saying.Maybe she was on the phone with her boyfriend, or maybe her boyfriend would insist that she send Harold home. Harold pulled Queenie's letter out of the bag.Without reading glasses, every word on the letter is heavy.

Dear Harold: This letter may surprise you.I know we haven't seen each other for a long time, but recently I often think of the past unconsciously.I had an operation this year to remove the tumor but the cancer has spread and there is nothing more that can be done.I am at peace and comfortable now, but would like to thank you for your friendship from so many years ago.Please give my regards to your wife.I still miss sweet little David very much.Wish everything is well. He could almost hear her steady voice, as if she was standing right in front of him, but the terrible shame came back.He had let such a fine woman down, and made no attempt to remedy it.

"Harold, Harold!" He must go there, to Berwick!He wants to find her! "Are you OK?" He moved.This is not Queenie, but the mistress of this room, Martina.Harold found it increasingly difficult to distinguish the past from the present. "May I come in?" she called.Harold tried to stand up, but before he could stand up, the door was pushed open.The visitor happened to see his strange posture, with half of his body on the bed and half on the ground.She stood under the door frame, holding a basin of water in her hand, and two towels on her arms.She also brought a plastic first aid kit. "Show me your feet." She nodded in the direction of the sailing shoes.

"I dare not ask you to wash my feet." Harold stood up completely now. "I didn't come here to wash your feet, but you walk very wrongly, I want to see." "It's okay, there's really nothing wrong with it." She frowned impatiently, put the basin on her hips to share some weight, and said, "Then how did you treat the wound?" "Put some adhesive tape on it." Martina laughed, but not because she found the incident ridiculous. "If you're going to get as far as fucking Berwick, we're going to take care of your legs, Harold."

This is the first time anyone has spoken about the arduous journey as if it was a shared responsibility.Harold was almost on the verge of tears with gratitude, but he just nodded and sat back. Martina knelt down, braided her ponytail, and carefully spread one of the towels across the rug, smoothing out the wrinkles.The only sounds came from passing cars and the rain outside the window, beating hard on tree branches which hit the window glass.It was getting dark, but Martina didn't light the lamp, just cupped her hand and waited. Harold took off his shoes and socks, bent over the pain and tore off the freshly applied plaster.He could feel her scrutinizing her.When he put his feet side by side and observed from the perspective of a stranger for the first time, he couldn't help being surprised, as if he had just realized what kind of situation he had reached: his feet were covered with an unhealthy white layer, almost It is gray; there is a pink mark on the hem of the sock; there are blisters on the toes, heels, and insteps, some are bleeding, and some have been suppurated; A blue-purple bruise; a thick crust on the heel, cracked in places, and bleeding; and a smell, and he held his breath. "You've seen enough." "Not yet," she said, "the pant legs are rolled up." Harold shivered as the trousers brushed his right calf hot.He'd never let a stranger touch his skin.Harold remembered standing in front of the mirror on his wedding night, frowning at his own chest, worried that Maureen would be disappointed. Martina is still waiting: "It's okay, I know what I'm doing. I've been trained." Harold subconsciously hid his right leg behind his left: "You mean, you're a nurse?" She glanced at him with a sneer: "Doctor. Women can be doctors now. I did an internship in a hospital in Slovakia, and that's where I met my boyfriend. Harold, give me your feet. I won't Forced you to go home, I promise." He has no other choice.She lifted his ankle gently, and Harold could feel the warmth and softness of her palm.Seeing the bruise on her right ankle, she startled and stopped to get a better look.Fingers pressed on the injured muscle, and Harold immediately felt a burning pain coming from his right leg. "Does it hurt?" He had to tighten his hips to barely hold back his face contorted in pain: "It's okay." She lifted his leg and looked under the calf: "The bruise extends all the way to the back of your knee." "It doesn't hurt." He said again. "If you go on like this, it's going to get worse. The blisters need to be taken care of too. The big ones I'll pierce and let them drain. Then I'll wrap your legs. You'll learn how to do it yourself. Bandage." He watched without flinching as she pierced the first pustule with the needle.She squeezed out the pus, being careful to keep the epidermis hanging from the wound.Harold let her dip his left foot into the warm water, an extremely private gesture that happened almost exclusively between her and the foot and had nothing to do with the rest of him.He looked up at the ceiling in case he accidentally saw something he wasn't supposed to, which was a very British thing to do, but he did it anyway. He's always been a little too "British," and British here means lackluster.He is a man without color.Others have interesting stories to tell and interesting questions to ask.He doesn't like to ask questions, for fear of offending others.He wears a tie every day, and sometimes wonders if he's too attached to a set of rules he doesn't even know is still in place.Things might have been different if he had been educated enough to pass his preparatory school and go to university.But on his sixteenth birthday, his father threw him a coat, pointed him to the gate, and let him go.The coat was not new either, it smelled strongly of mothballs, and there was a bus ticket in the liner bag. "It's pretty sad to think he's going," said Aunt Sheila, though she didn't cry.Among all the aunts, he likes this aunt the most.She bent down and kissed him, and Harold stepped away quickly to avoid the silly gesture of hugging her. He was relieved that his childhood was over.While he did what all his fathers failed to do—get a job, marry a wife and have children, support a family, love them dearly, if only just now—sometimes he found that the silence of his early years actually followed him all the way, into their house , hiding under the carpet, behind the curtains, in the wallpaper.History is history, and you cannot escape your origins.It doesn't change even if you put on a tie. Isn't David a living example? Martina lifted his foot on her lap, carefully dried the footprints with a soft dry towel instead of drying them, and squeezed out antibiotic ointment to dab the wound.The center of her collarbone under her throat was a little deep red, and her facial features were slightly wrinkled due to her high concentration. "You should wear two pairs of socks, one pair is not enough. Why don't you even wear walking shoes?" She asked with her head down. "I wanted to buy a pair at Exeter, but I changed my mind after walking for so long anyway. Looking at the pair on my feet at that time, it seemed to be quite good, so I didn't buy a new one." Martina looked up at him and smiled.He thought that what he said at least made her laugh, and the two seemed to be a little closer.She told Harold that her boyfriend also liked to hike, and that the two planned a wilderness vacation this summer. "Perhaps you can borrow his old shoes, he just bought a new pair. The old ones are still in my closet." Harold hastened to stick to the sailing shoes, he had developed a sense of loyalty to them. . "If there are really serious blisters, my boyfriend will stick them up with adhesive tape and continue walking." She dried her hands with a paper towel, and her movements were neat, which made people feel at ease. "I guess you must be a good doctor," said Harold.She rolled her eyes. "The only job I can get in England is as a cleaner. You think your feet are disgusting? Go and see the toilet I have to clean." They both laughed. "Did your child get a dog later?" A sharp pain hit him.She stopped and raised her head, thinking she had pressed the injured part.Harold straightened and adjusted his breathing until he could speak again. "No. I wish he had a puppy too, but no. I failed him twenty years ago, and I'm afraid I disappointed him very much." Martina leaned back, as if to adjust her angle: "Your son and Queenie? You failed them both?" She was the only one who had asked about David in a long time.Harold wanted to say something else, but didn't know where to start.Sitting in a strange room with his trousers rolled up to his knees, he suddenly missed his son very much. "Not good enough. Never good enough." Tears stung his eyes, and Harold blinked, trying to hold back. Martina tore open a small cotton ball to clean the wound on his palm.The disinfectant pricked the wound like a needle, but he didn't move.He asked her to wash her hands carefully. Martina offered to lend her phone, but the signal was poor.Harold tried to explain where he was, but Maureen didn't seem to understand. "Who are you with?" she kept asking.Harold didn't want to bring up the foot injury or the fall, telling her everything was fine.Time flies. He took a mild painkiller, but still couldn't sleep well.The sound of cars outside the window kept waking him up, and the branches and leaves hit by the rain on the window glass were crackling.He checked his right leg after a while, hoping that the situation would improve, and changed positions slightly, but he didn't dare to add any weight to the leg.He thought of the blue curtains in David's room, of the closet in the room containing only his own clothes, and of the guest room where Maureen slept, filled with her scent.Finally he slowly closed his eyes. When he woke up the next morning, Harold first stretched his left hand and left leg, then moved his right hand and right leg, moving joints one by one, and then yawned big, his eyes were wet.The sound of the rain stopped, and the sun shone through the branches and leaves into the window, reflecting the tree shadows like flowing waves on the white wall.He stretched himself, fell asleep again at once, and did not wake up until eleven o'clock. Martina checked Harold's leg and said it was getting better, but it was best not to start walking right away.She had changed the dressing on the wound and asked him if he would stay another day, her parents' dog would love a playmate.She still has to work and the dog is so lonely. "I used to have an aunt who also had a dog," he said, "and he would bite me when no one was around." Martina laughed, and Harold laughed too, although that was the reason he felt lonely as a child One of them also made him suffer a few times of moderate pain. "A few days before my thirteenth birthday, my mother ran away. She was very unhappy with my father, who was drinking and all she wanted was to travel. That's all I remember. After she left , it got worse for a while, and the neighbors next door found out. They liked to come to comfort him, and my father suddenly became popular again, and brought many aunts home. So it became a public lover." Harold never Talked so frankly about my past.Let's hope it doesn't sound too pathetic. Martina's lips moved, and she curved into a smile: "Auntie? Is it an auntie who is related?" "Not real aunts. He met them in the bar, chatted a few words, and then came home together. The family changed a new perfume every month, and there were different underwear on the clothesline every day. I used to lie Looking across the grass, I have never seen anything so beautiful." She laughed even harder.Harold noticed that when Martina was happy, the contours of Martina's entire face softened, her cheeks turned a nice color, and a strand of hair wasn't pulled into a ponytail, and Harold was glad she didn't. . For a moment Harold saw Maureen's young face, looking up at him, her bright, clear, soft lips slightly parted, waiting for his next words.The joy of getting her attention back was so good that Harold wanted to say something to make her smile more, but couldn't think of anything else. She asked, "Did you see your mother again afterward?" "No." "Never tried to find her?" "Sometimes I wish I'd gone to her too. I want to tell her I'm fine in case she's worried? But she's not made to be a mother. Maureen is just the opposite, she knew how to love David from the start .” He was silent, and Martina said nothing.After explaining all this, Harold felt very relieved.It was the same way with Queenie once upon a time.He can say anything in the car, knowing she'll keep your words safe somewhere in her head and won't judge them or bring them up against him later.He thought this was friendship, and he suddenly regretted avoiding it for so many years. In the afternoon when Martina went to clean up, Harold taped the reading glasses in place and pushed open the back door to clear a small space in the small garden.The dog stared at him with interest and stopped barking.Harold found her parents' gardening tools and trimmed the edges of the lawn and trimmed the tangles of the hedges.His legs and feet were still stiff when he walked, and he couldn't remember where he put his shoes, so he walked around barefoot, and the warm dust under his feet was like velvet, melting the tension in his heart.I don't know if there is enough time to cut the branches and leaves that keep hitting the window, but it seems to be too high, and I can't find a ladder anywhere. Martina came back with a brown paper bag containing his sailing shoes, resoled and cleaned.She even got them new laces. "You don't get that kind of service in a public hospital," she said, before walking away, not giving him a chance to thank her. They dined together that night, and Harold made sure to pay a small boarding fee.She told him to see her in the morning, but Harold shook his head and made up for the delay by telling her he would start at dawn.The dog crouched at Harold's feet, with its head resting on his lap. "I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to meet your boyfriend," he said. Martina frowned: "He won't come back." Harold was taken aback.Suddenly he needed to re-examine his impression of Martina and her life. The unexpected news was too cruel. "I don't understand," he said, "where did he go?" "I don't know." Martina's face sank, and she pushed the plate away, and the food inside was not finished yet. "How do you not know?" "I bet you think I'm fucking crazy." Harold thought of the people he had met along the way.Everyone was different, but no one seemed particularly strange to him.He thought of his own life, which seemed ordinary on the surface, but actually contained so much darkness and tribulation. "I didn't think you were crazy." He held out his hand.She stared at the hand for a while, as if she never knew that hands were for holding.Their fingers touched together. "We came to the UK together so that he could work on his career better. After only a few months, a woman appeared with two suitcases of luggage and a child. She said it was his child." Martina added Her wedding ring was pressed tightly against Harold's finger. "I didn't know he had another woman and never heard of any kids. I thought he was going to throw them out when he came back and I knew how much he loved me. But he didn't. He picked up the kid , Suddenly, I realized that I didn't know this man. I said I was going out for a walk, and when I came back, they all left." Martina's skin was so pale that the blood vessels on her eyelids could be seen. "He left everything behind, his dog, his garden tools, not even his new shoes. He was a great hiker. Every morning I wake up thinking, this is his day. But he never No show." For a while there was silence in the room.Harold was amazed once again how far life was from being ordinary, and how quickly it could be the same again. "Maybe he'll come back." "He won't." "Who knows." "I know. I waited and waited and he never came back." She sniffed hard, as if she had a cold, though she couldn't kid herself. "But look at you, you're walking to Berwick." He was afraid she was going to point out that he couldn't make it, but what she said was: "If only I had a little bit of your conviction." She sat so still that Harold knew she was stuck in the past.He also knows that his so-called beliefs are actually vulnerable. Harold cleared away the dishes, went into the kitchen, turned on the hot water, and washed all the dirty dishes.He fed the rest of the meal to the dogs, thinking that Martina was waiting for a man who would never return.Thinking of my wife again, washing away the invisible stains.He suddenly had a strange feeling that he knew her better and wanted to talk to her. Later, he was packing plastic bags in his room, when there was a soft footstep in the corridor, someone knocked on the door, it was Martina.She handed him two pairs of hiking socks and a roll of blue tape, put an empty backpack on his back, and stuffed a compass into his hand.These things once belonged to her boyfriend.He was about to say that he couldn't take any more, when she suddenly leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss on his cheek, "Go ahead, Harold," she said, "no need to pay rent. You are my Guests." The compass in his hand was very warm and heavy. As Harold had said the night before, he set off at dawn.He tucked a postcard under his pillow thanking Martina for her care; and kept the coaster set because maybe Martina needed them more than Queenie.Dawn had broken in the eastern night sky, revealing a pale light that rose higher and higher until it filled the entire sky.He patted the dog on the head as he came down the stairs. Harold closed the front door softly, not wanting to wake Martina, but she was already standing at the bathroom window, pressed against the glass, watching him.She knew she should run out and talk him out of it, because it was destined to be a crazy dream that would never come true.His shoes would wear out again, and his legs hadn't healed at all.But she didn't.She remembered the light on Harold's face when he talked about the journey.She pressed her cheek to the window and watched the old man step by step out of her sight until she was alone again, with a dog and a new pair of shoes.