Entry 1

            I am a haunted doctor.
            All my patients die.
            Over thirty years I’ve built my Platform with all these ghosts-to-be. Thousands of them. They walk with me for a while, then cross ahead of me to the other side, where I can see them no longer—but perhaps they still see me.
            Here I remain, in Saint Joseph, MI, USA, holding pieces of their lives in my hands—often their very last ones. My mind overflows. And there is no silence.
            My patients frequently come to me in pairs when all is not well: a husband and wife together; a mother and her young daughter; a son and his aging father. Cancer. Suicide. Dementia. “The Mayo Clinic couldn’t help us,” they say, “so we just want you to fix it.” Medicine lacks the answers, I tell them. But we can work together to make the most of it. I will never give up, no matter what, and I will do my best to manage pain, and to listen. We can pray together if you like.
            We trade phone numbers. I speak with their key relatives far away, and we become a team. Then there is a final event—it could be anything—and one of them is gone.
            There’s an empty chair beside the survivor now, in the exam room. We notice it together every visit. The one who is missing speaks first, so we wait for them to finish.
            Sometimes my patient takes a moment to cry, then turns for the second time toward the one who is gone. The two of them hold hands, perhaps, or argue loudly in their native language. Just like they always did. They negotiate with each other and choose their course. They decide that one of them must yell at me—the survivor must do it. That’s the plan. Their problem isn’t any better, it’s just different.
            I nod. Slide my keyboard away. My patient takes a tissue.
            Remember how you found the cancer by accident?
            I do.
            Remember all those years after the gunshot wounds? And how about the time when she said it was heartburn because she felt better after she burped, but you made her go to the emergency room, twice. She didn’t want to go, but the second time it really was a heart attack?
            I remember.
            We should have listened to you, doctor, about the diabetes. The blood pressure. I’m sorry.
            It’s okay.
            At length, the two of them go quiet. One chair is occupied, the other one empty. It’s my turn, and I need it.
            This is the room where I last saw him, I explain. That was fifteen days ago. Fifteen years ago. What a boisterous laugh he had! Who could ever forget it? He asked me if he should do the surgery and I told him I would recommend it, despite the risks, because without it he had no quality of life.
            He told me, doctor, for once he would do whatever you said.
            Yes. He listened to me this time. Then he got the infection. It was unexpected. I knew about the problem right away, and every day I followed the lab results. I called the hospital and asked to speak to him, but it was too late. He was already on the ventilator. And then he was gone. I’m so sorry.
            It’s okay. Doctor, he loved you, and he respected your opinion.
            I loved him, too. I respected him, too.
            He wanted you to have these photos in case he didn’t make it. We picked them out together. This way you can remember him forever. The first one is just him, in his favorite place. And that’s the two of us together. You can keep the little one at work but take the big one home. Set it by your desk—your writing desk. That’s what he wanted.
            That’s what I’ll do, then. I know just the place.

TAT