The Doctor and the Dead Girl

We slip into this life unannounced, and we wander until the sands run out of our personal hourglass. We lose everyone we ever come into contact with, and then we just as mysteriously depart. And do we tread the floorboards once again, with different, subtler feet? Some believe we return. Some, that a troubled soul can never leave. At least, not without its duty rendered, its commission expired, its purpose fulfilled. Or, its torment ended.

From space, the planet is nothing but a small, spheroid, microbial blot against the everlasting and infinite Dark. Come closer, and you can see the oceanic surface, the continents, and, closer still, vast mountain ranges ringed by clouds, the volcanoes and tidal waves, the lush forests and jagged, towering peaks, the low valleys and the craterous dips of the churning Earth.

And in the cities, swarms of tiny, insectile lives, without form or distinction until one comes closer, and closer, and closer still. They scurry about or fly about in their pointed metallic contraptions, moving in and out of their strange, hard, block-like, domicile structures, and ride to the pinnacle of their lighted towers of steel and concrete and glass. But they have no distinction until you see them face-to-face, at their level, on their own terrain. Above, from a sufficient distance, they are comparable to ants in a colony. Can any of these creatures be said to have an individuated significance? Are they anything more than insects? Do they have an immortal conscious being, a soul for lack of a better term?

We like to suppose our own uniqueness as a valuable ego that can not be simply snuffed out by the cold wind blown by death. But is it so? Or is life infused with self-delusion, the life after being some intangible ideal we grasp toward as if trying to grasp at the phantom image that haunts our bedside on a lonely night?

But that is perhaps a bit too much for a simple ghost story.

To get to it: Dr. S Weir Mitchell was a late Victorian expert in the field of neurology, one that inspired Freud later with his identification of a disease termed "neurasthenia"; which, by the way, has been totally discredited today. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of the classic ghost story "The Yellow Wallpaper" based the plight of her protagonist on the "Rest Cure" devised by Dr. Mitchell, which included (for women) isolation, bed rest, high-calorie food, and other indignities that smack of confinement or imprisonment. She sent him the story. There is no evidence he ever took it to heart.

Be that as it may, he told a strange story that eventually took on a life of its own, one that has passed over into the realm of legend, being told and retold, changed, and adapted, until the origin of it has been forgotten or lost. But, no. The story dates from the late Nineteenth Century, from the tale told by S. Mitchell Weir.

One evening, after being in a difficult surgery all day, Dr. Mitchell was relaxing in his study when he heard a pounding at the door. Shown in by the servant was a thin, pale young girl, wrapped miserably against the inclement weather in a threadbare shawl. She might have been twelve or thirteen we suspect, but her age is never given.

"Oh, sir! You must come at once! My mother is very ill, and if you don't do something she's liable...she's liable..." And the unfortunate Miss broke off, her eyes welling up with tears streaming down her cold, chapped cheeks.

Dr. Mitchell started to protest, before a voice inside told him, "Yes, go with the girl." And so, he grabbed his bag and his hat (his coat too, we assume), and was out the door. We do not know whether or not he hailed a cab or had his servant hitch up the horses if that was his typical method of conveyance; but, whatever the case, the girl lead him to a stark, foul tenement in the bowels of the city.

Up the creaking, rickety staircase they went, the man following the child in the shadowed gloom. Finally, they came to a door at the end of the musty miserably dark hall, and the girl let the Doctor in.

S. Weir Mitchell took one look at the woman on the bed and realized she was ill with pneumonia. It was a matter of no time before he was able to "send for" (as the source material states, so he must have had a servant along, too) the proper medicines with which to treat the woman. He tried to make her as comfortable as possible, sat beside her, and might have taken her hand, but, in any case, he said to her, "You're very lucky to have such a devoted daughter. If she hadn't come along when she did, you might have laid here and simply perished!" S. Weir Mitchell suddenly recognized this woman as a former servant in his household.

When he said this, however, the woman got a most curious look on her face. She was silent a moment, then said, "Daughter? Sir, surely you must be mistaken. It could not have been my daughter."

The Dr. was sorely perplexed by this statement, and said, "But, but she told me she was!"

And the woman was quiet a moment. Then she said, "Sir, it could not have been my daughter that brought you here. That's simply impossible. You see, MY DAUGHTER IS DEAD."

Silence.

"She died of consumption a month ago. I was expecting to join her soon."

One can wonder if Dr. S. Weir Mitchell invented this story, as some have suggested, or if it really happened to him, and he was just trying to relate and process the occurrence in the best way he knew how--by making it the subject of an entertaining story. Even so, it has passed over into the realm of legendry, where everything has a life all its own.

Speaking of which, if you could float above the teeming multitudes, you would see the individuated men and women about you recede far below, until they became insects, crawling ants over an artificial surface of brick and concrete, their strange block-like domiciles said to contain the energy, the essence of them (or, at least, a few of them) that refuse to move on to the next stage of existence. They still cry out at us as we pass from silent tongues, living their strange, nebulous, and bizarre half-existences, treading the creaking floorboards, trapped in the liminal spaces of their life's tragedies and regrets.

But the time to speak of these things has ended. For now.

We slip into this life unannounced, and we wander until the sands run out of our personal hourglass. We lose everyone we ever come into contact with, and then we just as mysteriously depart...

Note.

This author forgot to add, it seems, the extra little detail to the story, one that makes it so popular, wherein the mother says something along the lines of "My daughter died a month ago, you see. Her shawl is still in that cupboard." After which, Dr. Mitchell goes to the cupboard, and finds the same threadbare shawl, except perfectly dry and warm, as if it had not been worn since her daughter's death.