Goines On: Christine’s gift

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Goines had had a small but slowly growing bump on his face for about a year (he thought). It had little concerned him until recently, when he sliced a bit of it off shaving, and so decided to make an appointment with his doctor – or rather with her assistant, John, since she was unavailable. Goines had a lot of confidence in John anyway (as did Mrs. Goines also, who had accompanied him on a consultation with John).
    First, of course, a nurse came into the examination room to measure Goines’ blood pressure (it was normal – no white-coat syndrome today!) and review his meds. She was pleasant and efficient. They bid adieu.
    He expected John to be the next person to enter the room, but it was a tall young woman in her early twenties instead. She introduced herself as Christine, a “medical assistant.” She asked “How are you?” so genuinely that they talked for over 15 minutes. Something not only about the way Christine asked the question, but also about how she listened and seemed to empathize and asked further questions led Goines to unload. He told her he had been sort of depressed for a couple of weeks. He mentioned a number of things that he was sure weren’t helping his outlook: politics, environmental degradation, extinction of species, decline of his own physical strength, his own personal mortality, ..., and – he was almost surprised to hear himself saying it – a lengthy sojourn in France planned for late the following year – would he be up to it, would his wife be up to it, could they manage the luggage, all of the flights, the train connections, the car rental, could they find their lodgings, could they remember what they were supposed to do on a given day in an unfamiliar place?....
    At last Goines seemed to have told Christine everything he needed to say – without having known he needed to – and she had no further questions, so they shook hands and she left, saying that John would be in soon. When John did arrive, the first thing Goines said after “Hi” was that he thought Christine seemed to have the makings of a psychiatrist. John’s answer was matter-of-fact, as though he had expected the comment: “Well, psychiatry is what she wants to go into.”
    A physician friend to whom Goines later described Christine’s “intervention” told him that “bedside manner” can make a physician truly a “provider” of medical care, not just a “sectarian practitioner.” “Some clergy have ‘bedside manner’,” he added, “and many social workers, the occasional psychiatrist, etc. and a great many physicians…These women and men are the greatest resource we have for the health of the people who become their patients.”
    Goines realized during the night that the trip to France near the end of 2020 seemed to have been at the center of his “depression.” For he realized that his main feeling (unconscious) about that trip had been dread or foreboding, fear of not being up to it. At first, upon the dread’s having become conscious, Goines expected he would have to live with it, figure out how to cope, do the best he could, because Mrs. Goines really, really wanted to go, and he wanted for her to be able to do this. So he would be able to do it too. And he lay there dwelling on that until they got out of bed.
    To Goines’ surprise and delight a few hours later, his fears and dread and foreboding had vanished, or morphed into a kind of enthusiasm, and he actually felt refreshed, invigorated, excited about the trip, confident that he could manage it, and everything would be all right. His step became lively, as it had not been for those two weeks or more. He felt reborn.

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