the boy?
Homer Wells had a good, open face; it was not a face that could hide feelings and thoughts. He had strong hands and kind eyes; Dr Larch was worried about the life stories Homer had to hear. He was worried not about the dirty details, but about the dirty philosophy.
There were no curtains at St. Cloud's. The hospital dispensary was a corner room; it had a south window and an east window. Nurse Edna thought that the east window made Dr Larch such an early riser. The white hospital bed always looked untouched; Dr Larch was the last one who went to bed and the first one who rose, so there was a rumor that he never slept at all. If he slept, he slept in the dispensary. He did his writing at night, at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office. The nurses had long ago forgotten why this room was called Nurse Angela's office; Dr Larch had always used it for his writing. Since the dispensary was where he slept, perhaps Dr Larch felt the need to say that the office belonged to someone else.
The dispensary had two doors (one leading to a toilet and shower). With a window on the south end and on the east wall, and a door on the north and on the west, there was no wall one could put anything against; the bed was under the east window. The closed and locked cupboards with their glass doors formed a strange labyrinth in the middle of the room. The labyrinth of cabinets blocked the bed from view of the hall door, which, like all the doors in the orphanage, had no lock.
The dispensary afforded Larch some privacy for his ether tricks. He was not always conscious of the moment when his fingers lost their grip on the mask and the cone fell from his face. He could usually hear voices outside the dispensary, calling him. He was sure that he always had time to recover.
“Doctor Larch?” Nurse Angela or Nurse Edna, or Homer Wells, called, which was all Larch needed to return from his ether voyage.
“I'm coming!” Larch answered. “I was just resting.”
It was the dispensary, after all; the dispensaries of surgeons always smell of ether. And for a man who worked so hard and slept so little (if he slept at all), it was natural that sometimes he needed a nap. But Melony suggested to Homer Wells that Dr Larch had a bad habit.
“What's the strange smell he has?” Melony asked.
“It's ether,” said Homer Wells. “He's a doctor. He smells like ether.”
“Are you saying this is normal?” Melony asked him.
“Right,” said Homer Wells.
“Wrong,” Melony said. “Your favorite doctor smells like he's got ether inside him – like he's got ether instead of blood.”
One day in the spring Melony said to Homer Wells, “Your favorite doctor knows more about you than you know. And he knows more about me than I know, maybe.”
Homer didn't say anything.
“Do you ever think about your mother?” Melony asked, looking at the sky. “Do you want to know who she was, why she didn't keep you, who your father was?”
“Right,” said Homer Wells.
“I was told I was left at the door,” Melony said. “Maybe it is so, maybe not.”
“I was born here,” said Homer Wells.
“So you were told,” Melony said.
“Nurse Angela named me,” Homer answered.
“Homer,” Melony said. “Just think about it: if you were born here in Saint Cloud's, they must have a record of it.
Your favorite doctor must know who your mother is. He knows her name. It is written down, on paper. It's a law.”
“A law,” Homer Wells said.
“It's a law that there must be a record of you,” Melony said. “They must have your history.”
“History,” said Homer Wells. He imagined Dr Larch sitting at the typewriter in Nurse Angela's office; if there were records, they were in the office.
“If you want to know who your mother is,” Melony said, “find your file. And find my file, too. I'm sure they are more interesting than Jane Eyre.”
In fact, Dr Larch's papers included family histories – but only of the families who adopted the orphans. Contrary to Melony's belief, no records were kept of the orphans' actual mothers and fathers. An orphan's history began with its date of birth – its sex, its length in inches, its weight in pounds, its name. Then there was a record of the orphans' sicknesses. That was all. A much thicker file was kept on the orphans' adoptive families – any information about those families was important to Dr Larch.
“Here in St. Cloud's,” he wrote, “my first priority is an orphan's future. It is for his or her future, for example, that I destroy any record of the identity of his or her natural mother. The unfortunate women who give birth here have made a very difficult decision; they should not, later in their lives, make this decision again. And in almost every case the orphans should not look for the biological parents.
“I am thinking only of the orphans! Of course one day they will want to know. But how does it help anyone to look forward to the past? Orphans, especially, must look ahead to their futures. And what if his or her biological parent, in later years, feels sorry for the decision to give birth here? If there were records, it would always be possible for the real parents to trace their children. That is the storytelling business. That is not for the orphans. So that is not for me.”
That is the passage from A Brief History of St. Cloud's that Wilbur Larch showed to Homer Wells, when he caught Homer in Nurse Angela's office studying his papers.
“I was just looking for something, and I couldn't find it,” Homer said to Dr Larch.
“I know what you were looking for, Homer,” Dr Larch told him, “and it can't be found. I don't remember your mother. I don't even remember you when you were born; you didn't become you until later.”
“I thought there was a law,” Homer said. He meant a law of records, or written history – but Wilbur Larch was the only historian and the only law at St. Cloud's. It was an orphanage law: an orphan's life began when Wilbur Larch remembered it. That was Larch's law.
Homer knew that his simple note written to Melony “Cannot Be Found” would never satisfy her, although Homer had believed Dr Larch.
“What does he mean, Cannot Be Found?” Melony screamed at Homer; they were on the porch. “Is he playing God? He gives you your history, or he takes it away! If that's not playing God, what is?”
Homer Wells didn't answer. Homer thought that Dr Larch played God pretty well.
“Here in St. Cloud's,” Dr Larch wrote, “I have the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should wait for those moments when it is possible to play God. There won't be many such moments.”
“Goddamn him!” Melony screamed; but Homer Wells didn't react to this remark, either.
“Homer,” Melony said, “We've got nobody. If you tell me we've got each other, I'll kill you.”
Homer kept silent.
“If you tell me we've got your favorite Doctor Larch, or this whole place,” she said, “if you tell me that, I'll torture you before I kill you.”
“Right,” said Homer Wells.
“Goddamn you!” she screamed – at Dr Larch, at her mother, at St. Cloud's, at the world.
“Why aren't you angry?” she asked Homer. “What's wrong with you? You're never going to find out who did this to you! Don't you care?”
“I don't know,” said Homer Wells.
“Help me, or I'm going to run away,” she told him. “Help me, or I'm going to kill someone.” Homer realized that it was not easy for him, in the case of Melony, “to be of use,” but he tried.
“Don't