11

Dr. Gildas Cayla

General Medicine

Office Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

House Calls: Afternoons

The mottled-brass plaque had to date back to the opening of the esteemed doctor’s office at 15 Rue des Tonneliers in Ribeauvillé. Nearly lost on a façade covered with ampelopsis vines, the sign, it seemed, hadn’t been polished in ages.

The physician’s reputation was well established, according to those who had recommended him, and his office was never empty. Faithful to the spirit of country doctors, he treated poor patients free of charge. Never, ever, would Dr. Cayla be responsible for the endemic deficit of the National Health Care System.

“Wait for me in the café across the street,” Benjamin told Virgile as he extricated himself from the convertible with some difficulty.

“Don’t you want me to go with you, just to keep you company if you wind up waiting three hours to be seen?”

“Go on, I said! And stop treating me like a cripple.”

Despite his bum leg, Benjamin had already disappeared behind the heavy door with a magnificent wrought-iron knocker.

Why the devil are waiting rooms so inhospitable, Benjamin wondered as he took in Dr. Cayla’s office. A dozen uncomfortable-looking chairs lined the walls. Ragged gossip magazines were piled on a low table in a corner, and under a window that lacked curtains, a dried ficus begged for water, if only a few drops. Three other people were waiting.

“Hello,” the winemaker said, trying to sound cheerful. Two people looked up from their magazines. The third didn’t bother. His eyes were glued to his cell phone. He appeared to be a businessman, as he was wearing a gray three-piece suit. He was thin, and his coloring was sallow. To his left, a girl with short hair, a navy-blue sweater, and tight white pants reminded Benjamin of the actress Jean Seberg, one of his favorites. The third patient gave Benjamin a surprised look.

“Why, hello,” she said, venturing a smile.

Although her eyes were the same lichen color, her face was gaunt and white. Her right arm was in a sling, and Vincent Deutzler’s daughter-in-law seemed to have lost the youthful charm he had seen the day he had visited the home of the Ribeauvillé winemaker.

“What happened to your arm?” Benjamin asked as he slowly lowered himself into one of the rigid chairs. He was careful to keep the leg that was throbbing fully extended. He felt a bit ridiculous, as he couldn’t get his Lobb on the bad foot. He had been forced to wear his wool slipper.

“Nothing serious,” the Deutzler daughter-in-law answered tersely. “Just a little problem with my wrist. The doctor thinks it’s a flare-up of my carpal tunnel.”

“Carpal tunnel at your age?” Benjamin asked.

“Yes, it comes and goes.”

“I’m sorry,” Benjamin said. “I was also saddened to hear about your father-in-law. How are you holding up?”

“We’re all right. Thank you for asking.” Véronique lowered her eyes and plunged back into her gossip magazine.

Benjamin eyed the young woman, recalling she was pregnant, and smiled, remembering the joy he felt when he held Margaux in his arms for the first time. Then he winced. The pain in his right foot was getting worse. Strain, sprain, dislocation, fracture—all these terms danced in his head. He dreaded Dr. Cayla’s verdict, although he knew nothing of the man in whose hands he was entrusting himself.

He thought about picking up one of the magazines, but he had no interest in celebrities and their cheating scandals. Why didn’t doctors ever have anything more intellectually stimulating to read? Like the man in the three-piece suit, would he have to resort to checking his e-mails and browsing the Internet on his cell phone? Benjamin groused to himself and looked around the room for something to catch his attention.

The door to the inner sanctum opened. “Mr. Hamecher? Dr. Cayla will see you now. How are you doing today?”

Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Hamecher walked out of the office, and the inner door opened again. The receptionist beckoned to a woman named Mrs. Koenig.

Like clockwork, Mrs. Koenig emerged fifteen minutes later, and Deutzler’s daughter-in-law was ushered in. She rose from her chair and gave Benjamin a nod before walking through the door. This consultation, however, lasted longer than fifteen minutes—much longer. Benjamin took heart in the time Gildas Cayla was spending with the young woman. It appeared that when a patient needed extra attention, he gave it.

When it was the winemaker’s turn, Benjamin hobbled in, taking care not to put too much weight on his foot. Dr. Cayla, bald and bespectacled, shook Benjamin’s hand, but instead of asking him why he was limping, he stared at his face.

“Maybe my age is playing tricks on me, but you remind me of a man I saw recently on television. He was talking about wine. His name was Déquerre or something like that. He comes out with a book every year on the best wines in each region of France.”

“Cooker,” Benjamin said, correcting the doctor.

“Yes, that’s it. Your resemblance to each other is as close as two drops of water.”

“… of wine, you mean.”

“Excuse me? I’m a little hard of hearing.”

“Like two drops of wine,” Benjamin said, not displeased that his reputation had gained him a certain following in the medical profession. The winemaker had recently experienced a similar encounter with a physician in the Beaujolais region.

“Oh my, I can’t believe it. Benjamin Cooker right here in my office,” Gildas Cayla enthused. “If someone had predicted that one day the greatest wine expert would come to see me as a patient, I never would have believed him.”

“Let’s not exaggerate,” said Benjamin, who, in fact, felt a tad embarrassed every time someone called him the greatest wine expert. “Today I’m merely your patient—a patient who knows full well that stemmed wine glasses sometimes break, the same way our own legs can fail us from time to time.”

“So tell me. What happened?”

The winemaker told the doctor about the bad fall he took after a dizzy spell. He recounted the swelling in his ankle, his difficulty walking, and the sometimes excruciating pain that ran from the ball of his foot to his femur.

“We’ll do X-rays.”

Benjamin suddenly realized that he wouldn’t be able to attend Séverin Gaesler’s funeral. All the standing up, sitting down, and kneeling during the service, followed by the walking in the cemetery, would be more than he could bear.

“In your opinion, what’s wrong with my foot?” Benjamin asked.

“Frankly, dear friend, I’m leaning toward a trauma to the joint. A musculoskeletal injury caused by the stretching or possibly the tearing of ligaments in your ankle. Simply put, I’m betting on a sprain. But again, we need to take X-rays.”

Benjamin let out a relieved sigh. “Well, that’s a relatively simple thing to treat, isn’t it, doctor?”

“Yes, in fact it is. Do you have anyone who can drive you to Colmar for the X-rays? If not, I can take you there after lunch. I’ll be done with my patients by then.”

“That won’t be necessary, doctor. My assistant can do it.”

“You’ll be fixed up quite easily. You might need a brace and crutches, but if the sprain is mild, ice and rest may do the trick. You’ll be back on a good stem in no time. But I do advise you to see your doctor when you get back home. You should try to find out what caused that dizzy spell.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Benjamin could already feel the color coming back to his cheeks and the tension draining from his neck and shoulders. Although he’d need to go easy on his ankle, the injury didn’t appear to be anything serious.

Dr. Cayla, however, wasn’t done with him. In fact, he was quite curious. What winds had brought the winemaker to the land of Alsace? What did he think of the most recent vintage that was already being praised? What did he predict for this year’s late-harvest wines? The wine expert was happy to answer. He sensed a man with refined taste and a reliable palate. This was someone who most certainly had more than a few good Burgundies in his wine cellar, as well as wines from across the Rhine, probably bottles of Palatinat, Wurttemberg, and Hesse-Rhénanie.

“How fortunate you are to be practicing medicine in the heart of a region that produces the best wines in Alsace.”

“I’ll drink to that,” the old physician joked as he scribbled a prescription for a pain reliever.

“Take the Deutzlers,” Benjamin continued. “Now there’s a family that fate hasn’t spared, and yet they produce impeccable grand crus, like Kirchberg and Osterberg. Speaking of the Deutzlers, I was sorry to hear about Vincent Deutzler, and I just saw Véronique in your waiting room.”

“Yes, Véronique is one of my patients,” the practitioner said, pushing up his glasses. “That poor girl has been under a cloud of bad luck for some time now.”

“In the waiting room she said she was having a flare-up of her carpal tunnel. That’s a repetitive-motion injury, isn’t it? Estate owners are always telling me about their day laborers with sore arms and wrists. The workers say they can’t sleep at night, and their hands and arms are either numb or they tingle.”

“Musculoskeletal problems in the world of winemaking aren’t something to take lightly, Mr. Cooker. Wrist and hand injuries from vine pruning are common. But workers are at risk of developing other health problems, as well—asthma from exposure to pesticides, for example.”

“Asthma—that’s something that hadn’t occurred to me, Dr. Cayla. But let’s get back to the musculoskeletal problems.”

“Yes, of course. Thirty percent of these injuries are related to pruning activities, but we’re talking about other parts of the body, in addition to the arms and hands. Seven to ten percent of all pruners have shoulder pain. Twelve percent suffer from epicondylitis—”

“From what?” asked Benjamin.

“That would be elbow pain, what some people call tennis elbow. According to some estimates, a quarter of all pruners have chronic pain in the hand or wrist, or both. More than ten percent have nocturnal paresthesias, the pins-and-needles tingling that interferes with sleep. This is a common symptom of carpal tunnel syndrome, which is compression of a nerve in the wrist. Some people don’t have any feeling at all in their hands.”

“So can surgery alleviate some of the symptoms?”

“Yes, it can. And the surgery is a relatively simple procedure.”

“Tell me, Dr. Cayla, when is this type of surgery performed?”

“Usually, surgery is a last resort. First we advise the patient to apply cold packs and take frequent breaks, which isn’t always easy if you’re working in a vineyard. Sometimes we splint the wrist. If that doesn’t work, we often prescribe anti-inflammatory medications. If the symptoms are severe, we advise surgery.”

“That’s not exactly what I’m trying to get at, Dr. Cayla. When do these repetitive-motion injuries tend to flare up?”

“Oh, I’d say I see most of my carpal-tunnel patients during the pruning season. In the winter, after the first frost. They start coming to see me in January. From then on, my office is never empty.”

“Wouldn’t you say it’s unusual to have a flare-up at this time of year?”

“Unusual, maybe. But not necessarily unlikely. Remember, any kind of activity, especially strenuous or out-of-the-ordinary activity, can exacerbate an existing condition. For example, I wouldn’t advise you to take up the violin, Mr. Cooker, if you already had carpal tunnel.”

“I can assure you, I won’t be taking up the violin, even though my wrist is just fine.”

“Tell me, Mr. Cooker, you wouldn’t happen to be some kind of detective on the side, would you?”

“You might say that,” Benjamin replied, glancing at the mantel of the doctor’s small fireplace. It was piled high with medical journals and pharmaceuticals. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“It was no problem at all.” The doctor got up and gave Benjamin the smile that had certainly reassured hundreds of patients over the years. He accompanied the winemaker back to the waiting room and asked him to return the following day with his X-rays.

“Soon the sprain will be just a troublesome memory, Mr. Cooker.” The two men parted with a warm and firm handshake.

The café was nearly empty, and Virgile had settled himself on a stool at the zinc counter. From there he had a clear view of the door to the doctor’s office across the street and Benjamin’s car, which he had parked along the curb. He ordered a coffee and struck up a conversation with the woman running the place. Although her brown hair and slim figure were attractive, she looked like she was forty going on sixty. The bitterness in her eyes aged her considerably.

The conversation inevitably turned to the vineyard destruction, but the woman had nothing new to tell him. As she was speculating on the next targets, a man caught Virgile’s eye. He had walked up to the Mercedes, and now he was crouching near the rear wheels.

“I’ll be right back he said,” Virgile said, jumping up from his stool and rushing toward the car. Virgile recognized André Deutzler. Seeing him coming, André sidled over to his motorcycle—an old-model Yamaha. He put on his helmet, pretending not to recognize Virgile, and straddled his cycle.

Three minutes later a woman wearing a leather jacket and an arm sling walked over and got on the cycle behind him. Virgile was even more shocked when he realized who it was: Véronique Deutzler.

Wondering what that was all about, Virgile returned to the bar.

“Well, surprise, surprise,” the woman behind the counter said. “Véronique Deutzler making another visit to the good doctor.”

“You know her?”

“Yeah, I know her.”

“I understand she’s had a rough time of it,” Virgile said, hoping to draw out some gossip.

The woman harrumphed and continued wiping down the counter.

“First, the family’s vines were destroyed, and then she lost her father-in-law,” Virgile said. “It must be tough on her, being pregnant and all. Good thing she’s got her husband at her side.”

“At her side maybe, but I’m not so sure he’s the one in her bed.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Let’s just say there is some question about the baby being his.”

“My grandfather used to say, ‘Infidelity is an itch that it’s best not to scratch.’ Are you telling me that she scratched the itch?”

The barista smiled. “There’ve been lots of stories since she married Iselin. He doesn’t have much in the looks department, and you couldn’t blame a girl for checking a guy out from time to time. But jumping in the sack with your husband’s own brother? Now that’s something you just don’t do. I’ll say this for André: he’s shy and doesn’t have much to say, but he can put in a good day’s work.”

“And old man Deutzler?” Virgile asked. “Did he know what was going on?”

“He seemed to put up with the whole situation, although it had to grate on him that André was cuckolding his golden boy, Iselin. Actually, I heard Deutzler’s nurse was keeping him preoccupied. She was devoted—that one.”

“I’m sure he enjoyed his sponge baths,” Virgile said. “I’m guessing she threw in a massage every once in a while.”

“He threw in something, too, if you get my drift. I heard she made a trip to the hospital in Strasbourg to nip that in the bud. But who knows? Maybe the old bugger had a third son we don’t know about.”

“What a family,” Virgile said. “And what about the child Véronique is carrying? Do you think it is Iselin’s or André’s?”

“I’d guess André. He’s the one she seems to love. As for the other one, he just sits back and plays with his corkscrew.”

At that moment, Virgile saw Benjamin on the office doorstep. He paid his bill, thanked the woman, flashed her one of his smiles, and headed across the street.

“We need to go to Colmar. I have to get my foot X-rayed,” Benjamin said.

“Boss, I just spared you another incident,” Virgile said, as they slowly made their way to the car.

Benjamin lowered himself into the passenger seat. “I’m listening, my guardian angel.”

“I was careful to park your car within view of the café. Well, about forty-five minutes later, a guy began to prowl around it. I watched his every move. When he started taking too close a look at the rear tires, I jumped up and scared him off. You know who it was? Guess! You won’t believe it.”

“The younger Deutzler son,” Benjamin replied.

“How did you know?”

“My injury hasn’t affected my brain, Virgile.”

“Well, then, guess who he took off with.”

“His sister-in-law.”

Virgile stared at his boss. Even with a bum foot, the winemaker was always one step ahead.