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If there's one thing Rhoden knows for sure, it's that Lilya Siliņš will be a brilliant osteologist. With her pallor, her unruly blond hair, and the burning need to know, she’s like a wisp of white hot fire. Her mind is ever at work, and if there were as many skeletal landmarks as there are stars in the sky, she’d still learn them all.
Alexander Steinberg he’s not so certain about.
It’s not that the boy lacks the intelligence or the enthusiasm. But he’s passionate – distractable – impatient. It’s difficult to keep his interest for long.
“The brachial plexus derives from the roots at C5 through T1 and passes posteriorly to the clavicle, with the inferior trunk resting on the first rib,” Lilya rattles off. Rhoden gives her a smile, a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye. You’re doing well, he wills her to understand. I’m pleased with you. Lilya is far too anxious about her studies for someone with her talent – she needs the reassurance.
“Sometimes the inferior trunk of the brachial plexus can be compressed by the surrounding structures,” Rhoden says. “This is due to a congenital variation, the name of which Steinberg will now tell me.”
“I’m not sure,” Steinberg says, sheepishly. Lilya looks around with some uncertainty, waiting for someone else to speak. When no one does, she finally blurts out, “Cervical rib syndrome!”
The sweltering heat of the summer sun permeates the auditorium, its rays tinting everything a shade of apricot. No doubt half of the students are daydreaming about a good teeth-numbing bite of plombières, and the other half are fighting the urge to nod off. Still, the auditorium is quiet and their eyes are attentive – focused on him.
They’re a good bunch, this class. Last year they found out the date of Rhoden’s birthday and brought him a bouquet of fresh cornflowers. He felt rather bad about not having brought any cake.
He still has his accent at this point, a lisp-like softness to his consonants. A few weeks back a kid from the Venlish literature department called him chukhna. Rhoden had had twenty years to train himself to tune that sort of thing out; and so he let it slide. The next day, however, the kid showed up with a black eye the size and colour of a ripe plum. He wouldn’t say who gave it to him and why.
There’s a brokenness in Steinberg, Rhoden thinks. He recognizes these cracks, the way Steinberg smiles when he’s pleased as if that’s the last drop of happiness he’s permitted to have. Something’s the matter at home. Must be why he struggles.
“Steinberg,” he calls after the kid once the lecture is over. “Stay.”
He can see that Steinberg’s expecting a telling-off. Not really his job, that, but some lecturers do it all the same. It’s a habit that comes from teaching high-schoolers, and Rhoden disapproves of it more than he lets on.
“Tea?” he asks. A surprised wrinkle forms between Steinberg’s eyebrows, and Rhoden smiles in response in what he hopes is an encouraging way.
Interacting with his students one-on-one is a different affair from handling a classroom. He feels more than a trifle awkward.
A spoonful of sugar in the tea. He glances briefly at Steinberg, all skin and bone, his zygomatics jutting out. Two spoonfuls.
“Remembering facts is important,” he says, and picks up a small yellowed ulna from the shelf. “But that’s not what makes a good professional. This – ” he carefully slides the fingers of his good hand along the shaft, “– is what matters. You have to care about the person this belonged to. Who they were. Why they died.”
He puts the ulna on the desk in front of the kid and looks him in the eye.
“There are many who treat others like things,” he says. “Cruelty is easy. But it takes an entirely different sort of person to look at dead things and see people in them.”
I know things are difficult, he means to say. I will help. Trust me.
Steinberg looks back at him, and there’s a quiet moment of mutual awareness.
“I understand,” Steinberg says, at last, and gently touches the smooth surface of the ulna’s radial notch. His expression is a mix of emotions, his eyes glistening strangely. “Thank you, Dr Rhoden.”