WILLIAMS AS DOCTOR AND ARTIST
by Adam Watson
"I am not a musician," says a character of a William Carlos
Williams story, "but writing must have some music in it to be
readable" (1). One can use the same metaphor for a medical professional. I
am not a doctor, but I believe doctoring must have some artistry in it to be
truly successful. There is an artistic skill necessary in doctoring, beyond the
ability to recite Latin terms and write prescriptions. It is the insight to
peer into the heart of a patient, and all humanity, seeing beyond what an x-ray
can show. The Doctor Stories (compiled by Robert Coles, M.D., New
Directions:
In "Mind and Body," Williams shows a primary skill of doctoring: listening. Ingrid, a patient with stomach pains and problems, does almost all of the "talking" in the story. In fact, it is not until the second page when the doctor "ventures to ask" a question that the reader discovers it is a first-person story from the doctor's point of view, not Ingrid's (2). Some of Ingrid's details are barely relevant to the state of her health, if related at all. However, like a good doctor/writer, Williams wants to hear (and wants us to hear) her full story. Indeed, her family's medical history, woven into her narrative, helps the doctor diagnose her (3,11). Another point that is revealed in this story and other works of Williams's is his admiration of the physical. I would use the phrase love of the sensual if it did have such an ominous, malpractical sound for a doctor to love the human body, especially of the female. The doctor compliments Ingrid early on, calling her appearance "[m]arvelous . . . I knew she was in her forties, but she looked clear-eyed, her complexion was ruddy, her skin smooth" (4). He also notes that "she was built like a man, narrow hips, broad deep chest and barely any breasts to speak of" (10). In this instance, however, the physical once-over helps the doctor make a diagnosis against cancer: "From what you say . . . [and] the fact that you have not lost weight, that you are ruddy and well" leads him to believe she has "what we used to call mucous colitis" (10).
The role of doctor allows him access inside houses, where he meets "The Girl With a Pimply Face," another story of Williams's. The doctor is making a house call to check on a sick baby, but this simply becomes a means to an end; after a few questions and a cursory glance, "[f]or the moment at least I had lost all interest in the baby" (44). (Indeed, he tells his wife later that he "sure met a wonderful girl . . . [s]ome tough baby. I'm crazy about her," but he "forgot to ask" for the infant's name [51].) The baby's fifteen-year old pimply-faced sister becomes the object of his admiration. "She wasn't in the least presumptive. Just straight," he says (44). Again, there is sensualness: "[S]he wasn't such a child. She had breasts you knew would be like small stones to the hand, good muscular arms and fine hard legs" (44). Yet his admiration of her "fine hard legs" notices the poison ivy/mosquito bites that is plaguing her (44). A short but effective summation of the poverty of her home is evident in the doctor's discovery of a "big brown spot there on the back of [her] foot": it is dirt (45).
In contrast to the doctor admiring the girl, there is his negative assessment of the mother. She becomes an archetype of an immigrant mother. First, she plays a shell game about paying the doctor. In the same breath she goes from "I no got money" to "I pay you. I pay you everything" (47); later, "I pay you twenty dollar. Doctor, you fix my baby" shortly before "I got today no money" (49-50). She is also mistrustful of the doctor's examination of the baby. The mother hesitates in undressing her, and "kept hovering over the baby as if I might expose it" (48-49). When the doctor discovers the infant has a bad heart, the mother becomes hysterical. When he comes back for a checkup visit, the mother again pleads, "You do something fix my baby. And before I could move she took my left hand in both hers and kissed it through her tears. As she did so I realized finally she had been drinking" (53). At this point, in spite of himself, the doctor "felt deeply sorry for her" (53).
This tension of sympathetic guilt with cruel loathing is at the heart of a doctor/artist; the convergence of the humane and weeping soul of a poet with the cold and sterile intelligence of a physician. When the narrator doctor meets another doctor later, the true facts of the family come out. The husband makes good money and could easily pay for medical care, despite the mother's lies to the contrary. "Natural maternal instinct," the narrator muses; "Whiskey appetite, if you should ask me," replies the doctor, to which the narrator replies back, "Same thing" (54). And the "pimply faced little bitch," the doctor tells the narrator, is a street whore (55). Despite all of this, the narrator doctor still goes back to check in on the infant and the girl.
In "A Face of Stone," there is more of the love/hate relationship
the doctor has with poor immigrants. A couple with a baby shows up in the
doctor's office; the man is "dirty" and the woman is
"smelly," with the "usual smell of sweat and dirt you find among
any people who habitually do not wash or bathe" (78). "Half idiots at
best," huffs the doctor (78). Again, there are pleas for the doctor to
"fix up" a sick infant (79). Again, there is a mother, "in an
agony of apprehension" who keeps "interfering" with his
examination "at every move" (80). And again, the doctor eventually
begins to appreciate people who seem to not deserve appreciation: "I
looked at [the baby] more carefully then [in a later visit by the couple], a
smart looking thing and a perfectly happy, fresh mug on him that amused me in
spite of myself" (83). Even the woman the doctor was disgusted with
earlier favorably rises in stature. When he examines her for pains in her legs,
he remarks, "What a creature. What a face. And what a
body. . . . Well - No use getting excited with people such as these - or
with anyone for that matter . . . [n]o one can do two things at the same time,
especially when they're in two different places" (84). It is a backwards
compliment, but it also examines the sensuality that is present between a
doctor and patient of the opposite sex, and the doctor's recognition and
professional dismissal of it; it is an artist's honest confession. Finally, it
is again through the doctor's listening that he recognizes the cause of the
woman's illness. When he discovers she grew up in
The physician's battle over his patients, and over illness itself, is in "The Use of Force." He meets the parents, who "[eye] him up and down distrustfully," before meeting the stubborn child, Mathilda, who will not open her mouth so he can take a culture sample from her throat. She attempts to scratch his eyes out; still, although the "parents were contemptible" he has "already fallen in love with the savage brat" (57-58). Mathilda fights on, biting and breaking a wooden spatula to hold her mouth open, but the doctor realizes he cannot give up. If he waits and comes back when the child has calmed down, she might die in the interim. But he is also enjoying the fight: "I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it" (59). Finally, the doctor is victorious, in prose that would make a bullfighter blush: "In the final unreasoning assault I overpowered the child's neck and jaws. . . . And there it was - both tonsils covered with membrane. She had fought valiantly to keep me from knowing her secret" (60). He feels selfish pleasure in the unselfish act of saving her life.
Williams Carlos Williams succeeds in giving a human face to doctors, revealing their passions, prejudices, and pleasures. Yet even when he, the doctor, grumbles about his choice of career, and the difficulty of his patients (and patience), the artist not only assists in the diagnosis but helps him see the beauty behind the sick face. He realizes the struggle, but he also realizes that he cannot give up on being humane, he cannot give up on humanity.