Cattail
Frames: Consecutive Substack Story 1145
In the office of Dr.Darrell Comstock, family physician, is a picture of a roadside cattail, with frost and an icicle hanging from it.
The photo is almost all gray, white, brown, though the sun off the icicle gives it just enough gleam to be cheery.
Some patients notice, and remark, that there’s a spot of red in the bottom of the icicle.
Probably, the receptionist offers, the reflection of the clothing of the photographer.
The receptionist would be wrong.
Dr. Comstock doesn’t remember where the photo came from. He had his niece help decorate the office, and she chose the photo.
The Etsy store that sold the photo is gone now, the signature on the photo illegible.
Dr. Comstock loves his practice. It’s sedate, friendly.
He once worked in an ER.
He just wasn’t built for ER.
Doug Trelland wanted to be a photographer.
He just never got the hang of it, neither the art nor the science.
Doug picked up a metal detector, and found himself a little niche on social media, searching for things, sometimes finding them.
On the side of Rte.85 he found a camera on his way to an old Civil War cemetery.
He didn’t find it with his detector, he found it with his eyes, so he didn’t post the discovery up on Trelland’s Treasure Hunt.
There were three images saved on the camera Doug Trelland found.
The first was the sun glaring over a no trespassing sign with a bullet hole in it. That happened out here all the time, people shooting street signs for giggles or to test new guns.
The second was a cattail with an icicle.
The third looked like the shutter had clicked when someone dropped the camera.
Doug put the cattail photo up on his Etsy store, along with photos he had taken of kittens in baskets and the neighbor kids playing in the sprinkler.
He had signed all the other prints, so he signed this one, taken by an anonymous photographer who had lost or discarded a perfectly good camera.
Doug Trelland might meet Darrell Comstock some day. Not likely, but possible.
Doug Trelland will never meet Colton Beyer, who owned the camera and took the first two pictures.
Dr.Darrell Comstock met Colton Beyer. Dr.Darrell Comstock met Colton Beyer shortly after he took the photo that now hangs on his waiting room wall.
Colton Beyer was the patient that made Dr. Darrell Comstock leave the ER and start a family practice.
The photo of the cattail was the last photo Colton Beyer ever took.
Colton Beyer is the last patient Dr. Darrell Comstock ever pronounced dead.
He has had patients die since then, but none in the quiet little office with the cattail and icicle photo.
The red in that icicle is the reflection of the Peterbilt truck that hit Colton Beyer, just clipped him, just caught enough torso with just enough passenger side metal to send Colton Beyer flying from the shoulder of the road.
The truck missed Colton’s head, otherwise Dr. Darrell Comstock might never have seen Colton Beyer. They would have transported him directly to the morgue.
But Dr. Darrell Comstock did see him, and worked to keep Colton alive. When his efforts were unsuccessful, Dr. Darrell Comstock walked into the family waiting area of the trauma unit and told the Beyer family that their son and nephew was gone, that he had done his best, and that he was sorry, and that he hoped their happy memories would carry them through the grief.
Then Dr. Darrell Comstock tendered his resignation from Brightwill Medical Systems, and soon thereafter Dr. Comstock’s niece would purchase a photo from a guy who never took the photo, but signed his name to it, just like Dr.Comstock had done to the death certificate of a man he only met when it was too late.
Sometimes Dr. Darrell Comstock lets his receptionist go home early, and he tidies and locks the office himself. The last thing he sees is the photo. That tiny spot of red on the icicle doesn’t catch his eye, it pokes his eye, and seems to scream.
Dr. Darrell Comstock shivers.
Every.
Single.
Time.
He’s not certain why this happens.
But he knows that it does happen, and still cannot bear to part with the photo he knows everything, and nothing about.
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When I’m choking on nothing but my breath I know I’m in the presence of or have read something this stunning. Not an extra word. All visual that penetrates my chest, mixing with some memory. Killed it, J.
Chills.