Read Online Underground Time by Delphine de Vigan - Free Book Online
Authors: Delphine de Vigan
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flat and two of his fingers were hanging loose at the point where they joined his hand. They drove to the nearest town. In the hospital they waited for the duty surgeon.
The two fingers no longer had any blood-flow and were too badly damaged for an operation to repair or reattach them. A few days later, the ring finger and pinkie on his left hand had to be amputated. Two dead and swollen things of which there would remain no trace but a smooth white surface above the palm.
His dream had been cut short. Cleanly. His dream lay at the bottom of a bin in a provincial hospital whose name he had never forgotten. He would never be a surgeon.
After his time as a house officer, Thibault began as a locum for the doctor in the village where he had grown up, one week per month and two months in the summer. The rest of the time he worked for a home-help network. When Dr M. died, Thibault took over his practice.
He did consultations in the morning in his consulting room and devoted the afternoons to house calls. He covered an area with a fifteen-mile radius, paid off his student loan and went to lunch at his parents’ on a Sunday. In the village of Rai in the Orne region, he became a respectable man whom people greeted at the market and invited to join the Rotary Club, a man who was addressed as Doctor and to whom girls from good families were introduced.
Things could have gone on like that, followed their course along the dotted line. He could have married Isabelle, the lawyer’s daughter, or Élodie, the daughter of the Groupama insurance agent in the neighbouring town. They would have had three children. They would have extended his waiting room, repainted, bought a people carrier and found a locum so they could go away for the summer.
Things would probably have been nicer.
After four years, Thibault sold the practice. He put some belongings in a case and caught the train.
He wanted the city, its movement, the heavy air at the day’s end. He wanted the bustle and the noise.
He began working for Paris Medical Emergencies, at first doing relief cover, then as a temp, then as a partner. He continued to come and go, here and there, according to the patients’ calls and his shifts. He never left.
Perhaps he has nothing else to give but a prescription written in blue pen on the corner of a table. Perhaps all he will ever be is someone who passes through and leaves.
His life is here. Even though none of it fools him. Not the music that comes through windows, nor the illuminated signs, nor the bursts of voices around television sets on evenings when there’s football on. Even if he has known for a long time that the singular trumps the plural and how fragile conjunctions are.
His life is in his crappy Renault Clio, with its empty plastic bottles and crumpled Bounty wrappers on the floor.
His life is in this incessant toing and froing, these exhausted days, these stairways, these lifts, these doors which close behind him.
His life is at the heart of the city. And the city, with its noise, covers the complaints and the murmurs, hides its poverty, displays its dustbins and its wealth, and ceaselessly increases its speed.
The glittering tower rose up before her in the spring light, a strip of cloud reflected in its glass sides. The sun seems filtered from below, diffracted.
In the distance, Mathilde recognised Pierre Dutour, Sylvie Jammet and Pascal Furion. They were smoking outside the building. When she reached them, they stopped talking.
That’s how it began, with this silence.
This silence that lasts a few seconds, the embarrassed silence. They looked at each other. Sylvie Jammet began fishing for something in her bag. Eventually they acknowledged her with: ‘Morning, Mathilde.’ They pretended to continue their conversation but something stayed hanging in the air between them, between them and her. Mathilde went into the building, got out her card and swiped it in the time clock, which was showing 10.45. She
The two fingers no longer had any blood-flow and were too badly damaged for an operation to repair or reattach them. A few days later, the ring finger and pinkie on his left hand had to be amputated. Two dead and swollen things of which there would remain no trace but a smooth white surface above the palm.
His dream had been cut short. Cleanly. His dream lay at the bottom of a bin in a provincial hospital whose name he had never forgotten. He would never be a surgeon.
After his time as a house officer, Thibault began as a locum for the doctor in the village where he had grown up, one week per month and two months in the summer. The rest of the time he worked for a home-help network. When Dr M. died, Thibault took over his practice.
He did consultations in the morning in his consulting room and devoted the afternoons to house calls. He covered an area with a fifteen-mile radius, paid off his student loan and went to lunch at his parents’ on a Sunday. In the village of Rai in the Orne region, he became a respectable man whom people greeted at the market and invited to join the Rotary Club, a man who was addressed as Doctor and to whom girls from good families were introduced.
Things could have gone on like that, followed their course along the dotted line. He could have married Isabelle, the lawyer’s daughter, or Élodie, the daughter of the Groupama insurance agent in the neighbouring town. They would have had three children. They would have extended his waiting room, repainted, bought a people carrier and found a locum so they could go away for the summer.
Things would probably have been nicer.
After four years, Thibault sold the practice. He put some belongings in a case and caught the train.
He wanted the city, its movement, the heavy air at the day’s end. He wanted the bustle and the noise.
He began working for Paris Medical Emergencies, at first doing relief cover, then as a temp, then as a partner. He continued to come and go, here and there, according to the patients’ calls and his shifts. He never left.
Perhaps he has nothing else to give but a prescription written in blue pen on the corner of a table. Perhaps all he will ever be is someone who passes through and leaves.
His life is here. Even though none of it fools him. Not the music that comes through windows, nor the illuminated signs, nor the bursts of voices around television sets on evenings when there’s football on. Even if he has known for a long time that the singular trumps the plural and how fragile conjunctions are.
His life is in his crappy Renault Clio, with its empty plastic bottles and crumpled Bounty wrappers on the floor.
His life is in this incessant toing and froing, these exhausted days, these stairways, these lifts, these doors which close behind him.
His life is at the heart of the city. And the city, with its noise, covers the complaints and the murmurs, hides its poverty, displays its dustbins and its wealth, and ceaselessly increases its speed.
The glittering tower rose up before her in the spring light, a strip of cloud reflected in its glass sides. The sun seems filtered from below, diffracted.
In the distance, Mathilde recognised Pierre Dutour, Sylvie Jammet and Pascal Furion. They were smoking outside the building. When she reached them, they stopped talking.
That’s how it began, with this silence.
This silence that lasts a few seconds, the embarrassed silence. They looked at each other. Sylvie Jammet began fishing for something in her bag. Eventually they acknowledged her with: ‘Morning, Mathilde.’ They pretended to continue their conversation but something stayed hanging in the air between them, between them and her. Mathilde went into the building, got out her card and swiped it in the time clock, which was showing 10.45. She
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