The medical receptionist at the other end of the phone did not want to schedule an appointment for me. She insisted that I needed to see a specialist.

“But it was the specialist who referred me to Dr. X,” I pointed out.

“Yes, sweetie, I know that. But you need to see the specialist.”

This was frustrating. “With all due respect, you are not a doctor,” I said.

“After working in a medical office for 30 years, I know what I’m talking about,” she huffed.

It was jarring to hear a receptionist analyze, diagnose, and make treatment recommendations, after the specialist I had just seen explained that he was unwilling to treat anyone whose condition was outside the parameters of his limited area of expertise. This should have been enough to scare me off, but I was desperate to get help. 

My eye had been damaged in the course of routine eye surgery. Now I needed another surgery to correct the problem, and I didn’t want to return to the same doctor who had done the harm. Another ophthalmologist’s receptionist had already refused to give me an appointment. She told me outright that the doctor would not treat any patient who had been operated on by anyone but himself.

The first time I tried to get an appointment with Dr. X, his receptionist declared that I needed to see a retinal specialist. This didn’t make sense to me. My vision loss had nothing to do with the retina. But eventually she convinced me that the retinal specialist could give me a diagnosis, so I went to him.

Well, the specialist did give me a diagnosis, and he sent me back to the ophthalmologist. It took some persistence, but I was eventually able to schedule an appointment. The doctor had a good reputation, and I was relieved when the day finally arrived for me to see him.

After a tech administered a bunch of tests, I sat in the exam room waiting for the doctor. He walked in with a young woman, who he informed me was his scribe. “I want to be able to do the exam, without having to stop to enter my findings in a computer. The scribe will write down everything I tell her,” he explained.

The doctor had a round face topped by a full head of thick black hair. It could be that he was wearing a brown suit, but I really don’t remember. The thing that stood out was his necktie. It had thick, boldly colored stripes, reminiscent of a Gay Pride flag. When I dropped my eyes to the floor to avoid looking at it, I noticed that he had somehow found socks to match, and he apparently believed it was a good idea to wear them.

As he projected bright lights into my eyes, he muttered to the scribe, who was sitting somewhere behind me. Most of the words he spoke sounded like code, so I had no sense of what he was describing. When he finished, he pulled back his chair and stated, “I won’t be your doctor. I don’t steal patients from other ophthalmologists.”

Incredulous, I just stared at him for a second. Finally, I said, “It’s not a matter of stealing me. I’m not going back to the doctor who did the surgery.” 

“I won’t treat you. It would be unethical,” he doubled down.

I shook my head. “Then you will have to tell me how you define ethics. Because how is it ethical to send me back to a doctor who lost my confidence?”

We went back and forth a little, as he kept regurgitating that nothing I said would change his mind. I was already certain that I had no desire to do that. He inspired a revulsion in me that I can hardly describe. Nevertheless, he had not yet given me a diagnosis, and he was already standing up to leave.

“What am I supposed to do!?” I asked.

“I only saw you because the specialist asked me to,” he spat. “Go back to him!”

“But he can’t help me! And my vision is deteriorating!”

“Then go to your optometrist and get stronger glasses!” he snapped, as he turned on his heel and stormed out of the exam room. 

Oddly, although I was upset and shaking, the minute I got outside, I breathed a sigh of relief. The man had revealed a capacity for evil that was difficult to fathom or to face. I got into my car, lowered the window, and enjoyed the fresh air, as I tried to relax and shake off what felt like a vile residue.

Individual battles against our own evil inclinations are part of the human condition. Yet for most of us, or at least most of the people I know, good instincts and judgment dominate. Although in these times words like good and evil get tossed around a lot, the truth is that evil remains difficult for most good people to recognize. By the time we realize what we are confronting, it is often too late to avoid harm.

I’ll never forget my first conscious interaction with an evil person. She was someone’s wife, someone’s mother, someone’s friend, someone’s grandmother, so I was stunned when she gave me a peak behind the veil. She had no shame about disclosing her vicious bigotry, as she told me about a conversation she had with a store clerk in Johannesburg, her hometown. “I asked her to sell me something for a reduced price, but the kaffir refused! She acted like she thought I was a Jew!” 

Even worse, this woman laughed as she confided that just that morning, she had finished her usual breakfast of beer, then she picked up her new-born granddaughter and carried her outside. The sidewalk through the front yard to the street was uneven, and she tripped on the raised edge of the crack, causing her to fall. She denied it was her fault and was indignant that the child’s mother, “that stupid Mexican,” would no longer allow her to be alone with the infant, much less to hold her. 

Fortunately, I never saw the woman again after that encounter, but she wasn’t finished with me. Like a kid pulling the wings off a fly, she took it upon herself to wreck a longstanding relationship I had with someone I cared for deeply. Ah well. That was 100 years ago. Lesson learned. Ever since, I have been more awake to the existence of evil and how it operates.

Right now, I’m reading Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, by Alexandre Dumas père, which is the third installment in the Three Musketeers saga. 

Not only was Dumas a master at creating larger-than-life heroes, he remains unsurpassed at creating horrifyingly debased villains. What could it have been like for him to be spending hours and hours writing about those evil characters?

Although my novel, A Moon Garden, has an arch-villain, as does my unpublished manuscript, it was challenging for me to get inside their psyches to make them multi-dimensional. My latest work is a fictionalized account of a real man’s life. When I was in the research phase, I forced myself to read biographies of two men who had it in for my hero. The task was just about impossible for me. I simply could not dwell for long in their realities. After all, the normal instinct is to turn away from evil.

It occurred to me that, as an ophthalmologist, Dr. X would know that a person’s eye will be drawn directly to a brightly colored tie. He could not have devised a greater distraction to mask the coal-black darkness of his heart.