Chapter 37: Assistant to the Doctors

The old pharmacy on Harbor Street opened its doors at eight on a Monday, and by ten the waiting room was full.

Daniel had painted the signs himself.

Neurology was on the left in green, and cardiology on the right in red.

The third door, at the back, said ASSISTANT in small black letters, and under it, in Daniel's hand, "(he is allowed to hold things)."

Dante stood in front of that door in a white coat that was slightly too tight across the shoulders.

"You laughed at the sign," Javier said, passing with a chart.

"I read it. It's accurate."

"It's very accurate. Go and hold the door for the man with the bad back."

Dante held the door.

The waiting room held a fisherman's wife with a toddler on her lap.

Two dockworkers with bad backs sat beside a student with a rash.

A woman had walked in from the pier because she heard the harbor doctor was free to the first fifty.

Nobody in the room knew the man in the white coat.

He liked that more than he had expected.

At half past ten the front door opened, and a cane tapped on the tiles.

Dante knew the sound before he turned.

The old elder from the family table stood on the mat in a black overcoat, with two grown men behind him.

"Don Rossi," he said, loudly enough for the whole room. "I came to see what a doctor's assistant does."

The fisherman's wife pulled her toddler closer.

"Please wait outside," Dante said to the two men behind him.

They looked at him, and at the sign by the door that showed a gun with a red line through it, and at the old man.

"Wait outside," the old man said.

They went.

"You may sit, Signor," Dante said. "The doctors see people in order."

"I am not a patient."

"Then you may sit and watch."

The old man lowered himself onto the bench between the dockworker and the student with the rash.

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