machine,” said Homer Wells. “It was someone who had a better breathing machine than the one Doctor Larch built for Fuzzy. It's a family that knows all about breathing machines. It's the family business,” he added, “breathing machines.”
“Lucky Fuzzy!” someone said.
Homer knew he had convinced them when Snowy said, “Good night, Fuzzy.”
Homer Wells, who was not yet sixteen, an apprentice surgeon, walked down to the river. The loudness of the river was a comfort to Homer, more comforting than the silence in the sleeping room that night. He stood on the riverbank. The boy was saying good-bye to his own childhood.
“Good night, Fuzzy,” Homer said over the river. The Maine woods let the remark without an answer. “Good night, Fuzzy!” Homer cried as loud as he could. And then he cried louder, “Good night, Fuzzy!” He, the grown-up boy, cried it again and again.
“Good night, Fuzzy Stone!”
4. Young Dr Wells
“In other parts of the world,” wrote Wilbur Larch, “there is society. Here in St. Cloud's we have no society – and there are no options. That's why an orphan is eager to become a member of any society.”
Wilbur Larch was thinking of Homer Wells when he wrote about “options.” Homer had no choice concerning his apprenticeship. What else could he learn if he didn't learn obstetrical procedure?
By 194—, Homer Wells (who was not yet twenty years old) had delivered many children himself, with Dr Larch always present, but Larch had not allowed Homer to perform an abortion. It was understood by both Larch and Homer that Homer was able to perform one, but Larch believed that Homer should complete medical school – a real medical school – and serve an internship in another hospital before he performed the abortion. The operation was not complicated, but Larch believed that it should be Homer's choice. Larch thought that Homer should know something of society before he made the decision, by himself, whether to perform abortions or not.
Wilbur Larch loved Homer Wells – he had never loved anyone as he loved that boy, and he could not imagine his own life at St. Cloud's without Homer. But the doctor knew that Homer Wells had to encounter with society if the boy was going to choose his life. Larch dreamed that Homer would go out in the world and then choose to come back to St. Cloud's. But who would choose such a thing? Maine had many towns, but there wasn't a place as charmless as St. Cloud's.
East of Cape Kenneth, the tourist trap, there was a pretty harbor town – the town of Heart's Haven; to the west of Heart's Haven there was another small town – the town of Heart's Rock.
The people of Heart's Haven didn't like Heart's Rock, nearby Drinkwater Lake, and the summer cottages on its muddy shores. The lake was the only place where people from Heart's Rock could spend the summer. The summer camps and cottages on the lakeshore were also used during the hunting-season weekends in the fall. The lake was dirty. People didn't drink the water of Drinkwater Lake, and there were many jokes on that subject in Heart's Haven.
Not all of Heart's Rock was so ugly. It was a town on quite open, neatly farmed land; it was fruit-tree country. There were beautiful orchards. In 194—, Ocean View Orchards, a big apple farm, on Drinkwater Road, which connected Heart's Rock to Heart's Haven, was pretty and plentiful. The farmhouse had patios, there were rose bushes; the lawns spreading from the main house to the swimming pool were beautiful.
The owner of Ocean View Orchards, Wallace Worthington, was from New York. He was not good at farming, but he knew almost everything about money and had hired the right people to run Ocean View (they were the men who really knew apples).
Worthington was a constant board member at the Haven Club; he was the only Heart's Rock resident who was a Haven Club member. Wallace Worthington employed half of the local people of Heart's Rock to work in his orchard, so he was loved in both towns. Wallace would remind Wilbur Larch of someone who he met at the Channing-Peabodys', where Dr Larch went to perform his second abortion – the rich people's abortion, as Larch thought of it. To Homer Wells, Wallace Worthington would look like a real King of New England.
Wallace Worthington's wife, Olive, looked like a queen but she had come from a miserable part of town.
Olive Worthington grew up selling clams out of the back of a pickup truck. Her mother smoked a lot and died of lung cancer when Olive was still in high school.
Cheerful Wallace Worthington was generous and kind. He adored Olive and everything about her – her gray eyes and her ash-blonde hair, and her New British accent which she had learnt at college. (Her brother, who was very successful as a well-digger, had paid for Olive's education, and that was the reason why she tolerated his visits at Ocean View Orchards, when he walked around the house in his muddy boots.)
Wallace Worthington was a real gentleman; he was very kind to his workers (he provided them with health insurance policies at his expense). But there was one problem – he seemed drunk all the time, so everyone in Heart's Haven and in Heart's Rock agreed that it was not easy to live with him.
Yet no one doubted that Wallace Worthington was faithful to Olive. They had a son, who was twenty in 194—. The young man was as big and handsome and charming as his father, with his mother's gray eyes; he even had a bit of her New British accent. Wallace Worthington, Junior, was called Wally. From the day of Wally's birth, Wallace Worthington was called Senior by everyone.
If Dr Larch spent some time around Senior Worthington, Larch might understand that the man was unfairly judged; of course he drank too much. But Senior was not a drunk. He had the classic, clinical symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, which were failure of memory, restlessness, hyperactivity and defective judgment. But the townspeople didn't know the difference between drunkenness and Alzheimer's disease.
They misjudged Olive Worthington, too. She knew how to work. She saw, instantly, that Wallace Worthington was good about money but wasn't an expert in apples, and so she decided to help him. She found out who the knowledgeable foremen were and she paid them more money; she fired the others, and hired a younger, more reliable crew. She baked apple pies for the families of the workers who pleased her, and she taught their wives the recipe, too. She went to the university and learned how to plant a new-tree orchard; she learned more about the new chemicals than the foremen knew, and then she taught them. She took the farm out of Senior's careless hands, and she ran it very intelligently for him.
There are things that the societies of towns know about you, and things that they don't see. Senior Worthington was puzzled by his own state; he also thought that it was the result of the evils of drink. When he drank less – and still couldn't remember in the morning what he'd said or done the evening before; still hopped from one activity to the next, leaving a jacket in one place, a hat in another, his car keys in the lost jacket – when he drank less and still behaved like a fool, this confused him so much that he began to drink more. He was a victim of both Alzheimer's disease and alcoholism.
In this one respect Heart's Haven and Heart's Rock were like St. Cloud's: nothing could save Senior Worthington from what was wrong with him, and nothing could save Fuzzy Stone.
In 193—, Homer Wells began Gray's Anatomy — at the beginning. He began with the skeleton. He began with bones. In 194—, he was making his third journey through Gray's Anatomy.
“Heart is a hollow muscular organ of conical form, enclosed in the cavity of the PERICARDIUM”, Homer Wells could recite from Gray's Anatomy. By 194— Homer had looked at each of the hearts in the three dead bodies, or cadavers, that Dr Larch had gotten for him.
The cadavers were female, which was necessary in the process of educating Homer Wells in obstetrical procedure. There was always a problem getting a body. Homer remembered the three cadavers very well. By the time he got the third body he had developed enough of a sense of humor to give the body a name. He called her Clara after David Copperfield's mother – that poor, weak woman who was tyrannized by the terrible Mr Murdstone.
Body number two gave Homer the essential practice that prepared him for his first Caesarean section.
When Dr Larch was at the railroad station arguing with the