the wrinkles

7/28/2019 The Wrinkles

1/4

- view comments

- view ratings

- printable version

- iphone app

- teaching materials

- more stories by this author

- mark story for later

Share this:

Troy Keller

The Wrinkles

Stephen tells me the wrinkles methodology is a hoax, like

astrology, phrenology and those other "unsuccessful bridges

between science and superstition." This, after working three

months together, here at the clinic where we are interns,

assigned by our medical school, here where, each day, we place

our hands on the foreheads of children and check them. We tell

them to smile, frown. We record on our pads the lines that show

up in their faces. And then we diagnose them. Tell them theirfutures.

Now Stephen says he wants nothing more to do with wrinkles

after this assignment is over. But that is easy for him to say. He

has long planned to confine his practice to the city to bond

brokers and their sterile wives, and he will have little need for

the wrinkles methodology. In my frontier practice I will of course

see many children, and this knowledge will be essential. Like with

this morning's only negative diagnosis, the young Scot, fresh in

from the gold fields. His crisp horizontal indentions above the

eyebrows were an exact match to that same feature displayed by

nearly every case of manic dementia found in New England

during the past decade. Stephen had sighed as he filled out the

report that would derail the child's future. What parent would payto educate a lunatic-in-waiting?

We are taking our lunch across from the clinic, eating

sandwiches on a wooden bench while the crowds along Eighth

Avenue mesh in and through each other. I am thinking that I

certainly do not need Stephen's doubts in my head. In a way, you

could say he is biased because he has nothing at stake in any of

this. I suppose he must care so little about the wrinkles that

being critical like he is requires hardly any rigor at all.

I ask Stephen how his new opinion will affect the report we

are to deliver at the end of the term, our analysis of the popular

wrinkles methodology. He gazes at me.

"I think that you will have your report and I will have mine,"he says.

"That's no good," I say. "We will discredit each other. They will

conclude one or both of us are irrational."

"What else can I do?" he says.

Poor Stephen. He is making things so hard for himself for

us. I am afraid he still sees medicine as a science. I don't know

but I am concerned about the effect his doubts will have on the

Publishing a

Book?

www.partridgepu

Publish with India's

Leading Book

Publisher. Free

Publishing Guide!

Stories: The Wrinkles by Troy Keller http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Wrin

6/10/2013


2/4

rapidity of our graduation. This internship was to be our final

requirement but if it is discredited, I don't know.

I am almost finished with my sandwich when Stephen asks

me to look at him. "Smile," he says. "Frown." Fine, I do both. He

shrugs and tells me that I and my wrinkles are pretty much

normal, with about half a chance of suffering from severe

nightmares. I already know this. I have checked myself in the

mirror maybe a dozen times.

"How about you?" I ask.

He stares at me. "I have the forward eye creases."

"Horse manure."

He tips his head and frowns deeply, and there they are, sharp,

angling dents between the eyelids and the brows. According to

the literature, only Benjamin Franklin and a handful of other

transcendentally intelligent souls had ever displayed them.

"You hide your genius so well."

"You want the truth. It's hereditary. Ben Franklin was my

mother's grandfather. Every child in my family has them. It just

goes to show how much of this is farce."

I consider that, but I cannot let his doubts get to me. After

all, I will not get far with a practice that does not offer diagnoses

via means of the much advertised wrinkles methodology.

"The eye creases have never been more than theory," I say.

"Really, there aren't enough geniuses around to properly test

them."

"Please," he says and throws the remains of his sandwich into

the gutter for the rats.

I frown. I don't really care. I mean, I care about the patients.

Who wouldn't? But I don't care about the proving. If Stephen

wants to despise me for that, so be it.

The Scottish boy and his father come out of the clinic and

step down to the sidewalk. The black-haired man has the son by

the hand while he fumbles inside his thick coat with the other.

I ask Stephen if he would have seen the report by now, and

he nods yes. We are quiet then, and we watch them closely until

the father glances our way and pauses. He steps down to the

street and begins coming to us, son in tow.

"I believe it's your turn," Stephen says to me.

I take in my last mouthful of bread and cheese.

They reach us, and the father says, "What are we supposed to

do with this," while holding up the crisp pages of the report in

quivering fingers.

Only months earlier I held a horrible fear for these awkward

situations.

"It's the earliest sort of diagnosis," I begin, quoting from the

clinic's standard rhetoric. "Its benefit is to allow you to begin

treatment, even before symptoms of disease become evident."

The father grimaces and crumples the report, stuffing it in his

Share this:

- mark story for later

- mark author as favorite

- mark story read

- mark story as favorite

- view ratings

- rate this story:

|

| |

- view comments

- comment on this story

- more stories by this author


6/10/2013


3/4

pocket. He turns away from us for a moment, but does not leave.

The boy stares ahead with a blank expression, drooped

shoulders.

"I have just this one son," the father says slowly.

I let a dismal vision of the boy's future wash over me. I try to

think of a highly technical response, something that will confuse

this man enough to get him to just accept things for what they

are and leave us to our sandwiches.

"Tear it up. It doesn't mean anything."

That was Stephen. He shouldn't have.

The father's expression eases for a moment. Then he grabs

onto us with a firm look. "I paid fifty dollars, and it doesn't mean

anything?" he says. "It means a lot to those schools in San

Francisco."

"There are so many influences on a child," Stephen says.

"Diet, the climate, his religion. The wrinkles analysis can't

possibly account for all of it."

I touch Stephen's arm. I want to remind him we are guests in

this clinic.

"You kids aren't really doctors, are you?" the father says.

I shake my head no. Stephen grunts and looks away.

"Let me go see about this," he says, and leaves us. His tall

hips jerk along, and his and his son's matching overcoats flap

against each other like they are on clotheslines.

"Saboteur," I say. Stephen grins and sits forward, elbows on

knees, his hair stringing down his forehead.

"The thought of that kid . . ." he says, his voice stoppingshort.

"Maybe you're right," I say.

"I think so."

We are there on the bench, quiet for a moment.

"Maybe there is something to your Ben Franklin eye creases

after all," I say.

"How's that?"

"You being such a cynic. Geniuses are usually cynics, aren't

they?"

He chuckles. "So the fact that I don't believe in the wrinkles

methodology is supposed to be evidence that it works?"

"It makes sense from where I'm sitting."

He frowns and we sit some more. Nothing more to say, I

suppose.

top

If you liked this story, please let other people know:

Like 34

5


6/10/2013


4/4


6/10/2013

the wrinkles

Documents