Late Night Conversations

The Scholar

                       "The physician's first duty is not to cure disease, but to observe it with patience. What is overlooked in haste is often discovered in silence."

— Dr. Elias Whitcombe, Notes on the Practice of Rural Medicine, 1879

Rain had a way of making Magnolia Street feel older than it was. By daylight, the town looked like every other Southern town tucked somewhere between the Alabama state line and the Mississippi River. Red brick storefronts. Weathered porches. White church steeples. Flower boxes hanging beneath second-story windows.

But after dark...

After dark, the town belonged to ghosts. Not real ghosts. The kind made from memory. The streetlights cast pools of amber onto rain-slick sidewalks, and every old building seemed to remember the people who had once walked through its doors. Even the air felt different at night. Softer. Slower. Like time itself had decided to rest. At the very end of Magnolia Street stood two buildings facing one another. On one side sat Holloway Coffee House. On the other stood Ashwood Library. The library had been there longer than anyone could remember. Its stone walls were nearly hidden beneath ivy, and stained-glass windows watched the town like tired eyes. Most people said the place was haunted. August Evermore hoped they were wrong. He had enough trouble finding living people willing to answer his questions. The archive room smelled of old paper and cedar. Stacks of leather-bound medical journals surrounded August's table until they resembled uneven city walls. One book lay open before him. Another rested across his lap. Half a dozen notebooks covered every remaining inch of the oak tabletop. Tiny, impossibly neat handwriting filled every page. He hadn't noticed the time.

Again. A grandfather clock somewhere deep inside the library chimed eleven. August ignored it. The clock chimed again fifteen minutes later.

Still nothing.

A third time.

Nothing.

The scratching of his fountain pen never stopped.

"...August."

Silence.

"August."

No response.

Finally, someone cleared their throat loudly.

August looked up.

Mrs. Bell stood beside his table with both hands on her hips.

She had worked at Ashwood Library longer than he'd been coming there.

Which, from her perspective, was twelve years.

From his...

Well.

Quite a bit longer.

Mrs. Bell glanced around at the books surrounding him.

"You've done it again."

August frowned.

"Done what?"

"You forgot."

"I don't believe I did."

She reached over and tapped the untouched paper sack sitting beside his elbow.

The sandwich she'd brought him that afternoon.

Still unopened.

August blinked.

"Oh."

"'Oh'?"

"I meant to eat it."

"When?"