Grace

When, after an awkward pause, the young doctor delivered the latest diagnosis and began somewhat perfunctorily to describe the various treatment options, never really attempting to hide his certainty that this miserable thing would ultimately kill my friend Johan Sletten, Johan closed his eyes and thought of Mai's hair. The doctor was a fair-haired young man and could scarcely help it if his violet eyes would have looked better on a woman. He never spoke the word death. The word he used was alarming. "Johan!" the doctor said, trying to get Johan's attention. "Are you listening?" Johan resented being addressed so familiarly. Not to mention the doctor's shrill voice--you would think it had never finished breaking, or perhaps he'd been castrated by parents hopeful of some future for him as a eunuch. Johan had a good mind to make a point about first names and surnames, especially in light of the difference in their ages. The doctor was younger than Johan's son, to whom he hadn't spoken for eight years. But it wasn't just a question of etiquette. It wasn't just that young people should refrain from addressing their elders familiarly as a matter of course. Johan had always been mindful of proper distances. Any intimacy between virtual strangers--like the dreadful custom of exchanging little kisses, not so much kisses as grazings of cheeks--struck him as embarrassing, even downright disrespectful. To tell the truth, he preferred anyone to whom he was not married to address him as Mr. Sletten. He ached to tell the doctor so but didn't dare; it seemed unwise to create ill will between them at this point. The conversation might take a different tack, and the doctor might start saying unmentionable things about Johan's illness simply in retaliation for having been lectured on matters of etiquette. "These aren't the results I was hoping for," the doctor went on. "Hm," Johan said, mustering a smile. "But I'm feeling a lot better." "Sometimes the body deceives us," the doctor whispered, wondering as he did whether the idea of a "deceitful" body might not be a bit much. "Hm," Johan said again. "Yes, well . . . ," the doctor said, turning to his computer screen, "as I said, Johan, there is some cause for alarm." The doctor delivered a brief monologue explaining the test results and their consequences: Johan would have to undergo a new course of treatment, possibly even another operation. When he managed to get the occasional word in, Johan endeavored to persuade the doctor that he actually was feeling much better and that surely they could agree that this was at least a good sign, whatever deceit the body might have in mind. But when, in conclusion, the doctor remarked, almost as an afterthought, that this thing was spreading, Johan gave up trying. Spreading was a word he had been waiting all his adult life to hear--waiting, fearing, and foreseeing. There is no reason, even now that he is dead, to hide the fact that Johan Sletten was an incurable hypochondriac and a catastrophist, and that this scene--a classic of hypochondria--between the doctor and himself had played itself out in his head again and again ever since he was a young man. But unlike the imagination's rehearsals, thoughtfully staged and incessantly reworked, the real scene, the one that actually took place, was hardly dramatic at all. "Spreading?" Johan said. "It doesn't mean, of course . . . ," the doctor said. "Spreading," Johan repeated. The doctor was quick to point out that this didn't necessarily mean what it meant in the vast majority of cases. That was what he said, more or less. He wanted to give his patient time to digest the diagnosis: he was sealing a man's fate here, afLinn Ullmann is the author of 'Grace', published 2005 under ISBN 9781400042852 and ISBN 1400042852.