Mercury Read Online Free

outside the office.
    My first patient was seated in a corner of the waiting room, wearing the uniform of the local Catholic school, reading a magazine. The older girls roll up their skirts and loosen their ties, but this girl’s skirt was knee length, her tie neatly knotted. She did not look up as I said, “Good morning. I’m Dr. Stevenson.” It was her mother, in her own short skirt, who gave me a girlish smile and said that Diane was having trouble seeing the blackboard.
    â€œNo, I’m not,” said Diane quietly.
    While she continued to gaze at the magazine, her mother said they’d moved to our town in June. Diane had always been a good student, but her new teachers were complaining that she never volunteered in class, and sometimes confused assignments.
    In my office Diane read the first two charts and then guessed wildly, mistaking P for X, N for O. At last, not turning on the light, I sat down beside the chair.
    â€œWhat is it?” she said. “What’s the matter?”
    â€œStand up,” I said. “Close your eyes and walk towards the door.”
    Arms outstretched, she took a couple of hesitant steps then stopped. I urged her on, and she shuffled forward until her hand touched the door.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” she said again. “Am I going blind?”
    â€œNo”—I reached for the light—“but you are shortsighted, and no amount of willpower will change that. If you don’t wear glasses, you’ll miss most of what’s going on around you. You may have an accident, or cause one. Let me show you how things will look.”
    Diane returned to the chair. “Can’t I have contact lenses?”
    â€œWhen you’re older,” I said. “Within a week you’ll barely notice your glasses.”
    We bargained our way to a prescription. Back in the waiting room, her mother thanked me. Her voice went up at the end of her sentences in a way I couldn’t place until later, when Viv told me that she had grown up in Canada. While we waited for Merrie to finish a phone call, I asked Diane if she knew my friend Steve Abrahams, the biology teacher at her school.
    She nodded. They were doing a cool project on soil. Her mother chimed in that Diane preferred micro-organisms to people.
    So my first meeting with Hilary ended, neither of us knowing the part we already played in each other’s lives.
    I N THE MONTHS FOLLOWING my father’s death, I missed him in every way imaginable. I also found myself, as I had not since Marcus was born, with odd stretches of time, sometimes as long as half an hour, when I had no immediate task, and in those empty intervals I also missed surgery. The week after I saw Diane, I met with a patient to discuss his cataract operation. As I held out my model eye, twelve times life-size, and explained how the new lens would be folded to fit through a small incision in the sclera and then unfolded behind the pupil, I wished that I were the one sliding the lens into place.
    I put the feeling away to examine later and drove to Windy Hill. In the decades since she inherited the farm, Claudia’s great-aunt had sold off most of the land, but the stables were still surrounded by fields and woods. The nearest neighbor, half a mile away, was a fancy farm stand and nursery. As I drove up the hill to the barn, several of the horses grazing in the paddocks on either side raised their heads. I recognized Dow Jones, the bay Viv used to ride in competitions. I parked in my usual spot beside the row of horse trailers. In the large field half a dozen riders were circling under Claudia’s instruction.
    â€œShoulders back, Louie,” I heard her call.
    I was searching for the slouching rider when a flash of white caught my peripheral vision. During my years with Viv, I have, inadvertently, learned a good deal about Equus caballus . Horses have been domesticated for over six thousand years. They appear in early