Eva worked for years in a pediatrician’s office.
She worked before computers seriously took over and since she never became part of the computer generation she had file cabinets upon file cabinets in Dr. Robers’s office.
Dr. Robers didn’t mind. He also remembered the pre-computer world. He’d learned on one of the first computers in his college which took up an entire floor of the university. Data was entered one line at a time by punching it onto a card. Then he’d sometimes wait a day for results.
But Dr. Robers had to move forward or he’d be out of a job. So he spent a few thousand dollars on a private teacher. Learning how to get in and out of his computer just opening and closing took him a good few lessons. Categories a good month.
Eva on the other hand had no taste for it. She loved the papers the files all tucked in. The information in hand. She’d say “These are people’s lives! You can’t just type about them into thin air and if you press the wrong button then poof! They’re lost forever!” And that’s exactly what would happen when she tried to use the computer even though it had all been set up for her and all she had to do was type with the superior skills required of all girls at her high school.
Whether her love for files was real or simply an excuse for being technologically challenged it didn’t matter. Eva had her files. And it was more than that. Each person who came in was as personal to her as her own family.
“Oh Joshy has a cold again ” she’d say hand clasped over her mouth to show Joshy how concerned she was. Then she’d pull out some lollipop — which she also still believed in despite health reports — and she’d hand it to the little boy bending across her desk.
And then she’d say to herself or someone “If colds were all that walked through Dr. Robers’s door I’d have the best job in the world.”
But the thousands of pages in those metal drawers behind her desk attested to many other sufferings with symptoms and names and alphabetical categories.
Unlike other secretaries Eva loved the waiting room noise. She loved to watch kids drag little chairs knock down building blocks scribble on the blackboard.
It was the ones who didn’t make noise that bothered her the slumped ones burning with fever on their mothers’ laps.
Then one day a couple walked in. Middle-aged. Without a child. Their faces were plastered with some kind of smile that deep wounds stuck out from underneath.
They approached Eva’s desk.
“Could we see Dr. Robers?” they asked.
Eva checked her schedule book. She sensed not to ask what the problem was. There wasn’t a single opening on her calendar but when Eva looked up to tell that to the couple standing across her desk her mouth said “In 20 minutes.”
She prayed for the Blausteins to call saying they’d cured Yanky’s chronic earache themselves with a little warm olive oil and garlic.
Or maybe the Rubins would decide to use her eating only white rice suggestion — which she’d inherited from her mother who’d stayed alive in the camps like that — to solve little Malky’s stomach problem.
Eva couldn’t stop looking over at the couple. They were sitting quietly legs crossed. She couldn’t put her finger on it couldn’t quite find the category for their suffering. Eva tried to guess. She conjured up sad stories filling her file cabinets. But this story seemed to have no label no category she could file it in.
What could she say to them what could she pray for them? Did they need a cure? Consolation?
Nothing fit the look on their faces.
She’d have to put it in the box the box that has no labels no category no alphabetical order. The one that holds in This World what we cry about here and will laugh about in the Next World. What we laughed about here and will cry about in the Next.
She called the couple for their turn and placed their file in the box. —