Mt. Baker - Day 83 (The painted veil - cont.)

Walter, motivated more by a broken heart than anything else, sought to emotionally punish both Kitty and himself; his own self-disdain based simply upon his love for his unfaithful wife. He accepts a position to travel to the remote Chinese village, Mei-tan-fu. An epidemic of cholera was ravaging the town and claiming lives of nearly half the population including Walter's physician predecessor. Given his skills both as a healer and a bacteriologist, our painfully detached and suffering doctor is called upon to aid villagers in controlling the spread of the deadly disease. He threatens Kitty with divorce unless she accompanies him. He procedes to emotionally isolate himself and Kitty, treating her with cold disdain. Our young beauty, much to her misery, is forced to accept the situation rather than suffer the humiliation of divorce within the frivolous society in which she had willingly become immersed. Their days pass. She remains tortured and alone in their remote bungalow outside the village, her interactions only brief with casual acquaintances. Walter immerses himself both in the care of villagers and establishing the source of the cholera outbreak rarely speaking to Kitty. He becomes loved by the villagers who view him in awe as a hero.

Within this dreary existence, however, Kitty begins to change. She begins to see, in an almost dreamlike manner, her desolate world with here-to-fore never experienced brutality and beauty. It is with an awakening to a reality viewed in different, more profound imagery that she begins to shed the painted vail that had previously colored her existence.



Now, at about this time, I landed in Chicago to make my next connection to LaGuardia. Fortunately, my physician companion with his engrossing tale were not to be left behind. Now also at this moment, however, I must get on with my daily CME schedule. I will complete the recounting of his story tomorrow. This is fortunate because writing these blogs for me is as strenous an act as the climbing I need to complete this morning. To me, also I would add, the genious in my physician's recollection resides in how our good doctor's words may influence the new journeys we all may come to accept.