Attractable phenomena? Attractable phenomena? What the fuck do they think I am, a buglight?
He lifts my head, the pads of his fingers on my cheekbones, and I hum desperately— Nnnnnnnnn—knowing that he can’t possibly hear me over Keith Richards’s screaming guitar but hoping he may feel the sound vibrating in my nasal passages.
He doesn’t. Instead he turns my head from side to side.
“No neck injury apparent, no rigor,” he says, and I hope he will 34
EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL
just let my head go, let my face smack down onto the table— that’ll make my nose bleed, unless I really am dead—but he lowers it gently, considerately, mashing the tip again and once more making suffocation seem a distinct possibility.
“No wounds visible on the back or buttocks,” he says, “although there’s an old scar on the upper right thigh that looks like some sort of wound, shrapnel, perhaps. It’s an ugly one.”
It was ugly, and it was shrapnel. The end of my war. A mortar shell lobbed into a supply area, two men killed, one man—me—lucky. It’s a lot uglier around front, and in a more sensitive spot, but all the equipment works . . . or did, up until today. A quarter of an inch to the left and they could have fixed me up with a hand-pump and a CO cartridge for those intimate moments.
2
He finally plucked the thermometer out—oh dear God, the relief—and on the wall I could see his shadow holding it up.
“94.2,” he said. “Gee, that ain’t too shabby. This guy could almost be alive, Katie . . . Dr. Arlen.”
“Remember where they found him,” she said from across the room. The record they were listening to was between selections, and for a moment I could hear her lecturely tones clearly. “Golf course?
Summer afternoon? If you’d gotten a reading of 98.6, I would not be surprised.”
“Right, right,” he said, sounding chastened. Then: “Is all this going to sound funny on the tape?” Translation: Will I sound stupid on the tape?
“It’ll sound like a teaching situation,” she said, “which is what it is.”
“Okay, good. Great.”
His rubber-tipped fingers spread my buttocks, then let them go and trail down the backs of my thighs. I would tense now, if I were capable of tensing.
Left leg, I send to him. Left leg, Petie-boy, left calf, see it?
He must see it, he must, because I can feel it, throbbing like a bee-sting or maybe a shot given by a clumsy nurse, one who infuses the injection into a muscle instead of hitting the vein.
“Subject is a really good example of what a really bad idea it is to 35
STEPHEN KING
play golf in shorts,” he says, and I find myself wishing he had been born blind. Hell, maybe he was born blind, he’s sure acting it. “I’m seeing all kinds of bug-bites, chigger-bites, scratches . . .”
“Mike said they found him in the rough,” Arlen calls over. She’s making one hell of a clatter; it sounds like she’s doing dishes in a cafe-teria kitchen instead of filing stuff. “At a guess, he had a heart attack while he was looking for his ball.”
“Uh-huh . . .”
“Keep going, Peter, you’re doing fine.”
I find that an extremely debatable proposition.
“Okay.”
More pokes and proddings. Gentle. Too gentle, maybe.
“There are mosquito-bites on the left calf that look infected,” he says, and although his touch remains gentle, this time the pain is an enormous throb that would make me scream if I were capable of making any sound above the low-pitched hum. It occurs to me suddenly that my life may hang upon the length of the Rolling Stones tape they’re listening to . . . always assuming it is a tape and not a CD that plays straight through. If it finishes before they cut into me . . . if I can hum loudly enough for them to hear before one of them turns it over to the other side . . .
“I may want to look at the bug-bites after the gross autopsy,” she says, “although if we’re right about his heart, there’ll be no need. Or
. . . do you want me to look now? They worrying you?”
“Nope, they’re pretty clearly mosquito-bites,” Gimpel the Fool says. “They grow em big over on the west side. He’s got five . . .
seven . . . eight . . . jeez, almost a dozen on his left leg alone.”
“He forgot his Deep Woods Off.”
“Never mind the Off, he forgot his digitalin,” he says, and they have a nice little yock together, autopsy room humor.
This time he flips me by himself, probably happy to use those gym-grown Mr. Strongboy muscles of his, hiding the snake-bites and the mosquito-bites all around them, camouflaging them. I’m staring up into the bank of fluorescents again. Pete steps backward, out of my view. There’s a humming noise. The table begins to slant, and I 36
EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL
know why. When they cut me open, the fluids will run downhill to collection-points at its base. Plenty of samples for the state lab in Augusta, should there be any questions raised by the autopsy.
I focus all my will and effort on closing my eyes while he’s looking down into my face, and cannot produce even a tic. All I wanted was eighteen holes of golf on Saturday afternoon, and instead I turned into Snow White with hair on my chest. And I can’t stop wondering what it’s going to feel like when those poultry shears go sliding into my midsection.
Pete has a clipboard in one hand. He consults it, sets it aside, then speaks into the mike. His voice is a lot less stilted now. He has just made the most hideous misdiagnosis of his life, but he doesn’t know it, and so he’s starting to warm up.
“I am commencing the autopsy at 5:49 P.M.,” he says, “on Saturday, August 20th, 1994.”
He lifts my lips, looks at my teeth like a man thinking about buying a horse, then pulls my jaw down. “Good color,” he says, “and no petechiae on the cheeks.” The current tune is fading out of the speakers and I hear a click as he steps on the footpedal which pauses the recording tape. “Man, this guy really could still be alive!”
I hum frantically, and at the same moment Dr. Arlen drops something that sounds like a bedpan. “Doesn’t he wish, ” she says, laughing. He joins in and this time it’s cancer I wish on them, some kind that is inoperable and lasts a long time.
He goes quickly down my body, feeling up my chest (“No bruis-ing, swelling, or other exterior signs of cardiac arrest,” he says, and what a big fucking surprise that is), then palpates my belly.
I burp.
He looks at me, eyes widening, mouth dropping open a little, and again I try desperately to hum, knowing he won’t hear it over “Start Me Up” but thinking that maybe, along with the burp, he’ll finally be ready to see what’s right in front of him—
“Excuse yourself, Howie,” Dr. Arlen, that bitch, says from behind me, and chuckles. “Better watch out, Pete—those postmortem belches are the worst.”
37
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He theatrically fans the air in front of his face, then goes back to what he’s doing. He barely touches my groin, although he remarks that the scar on the back of my right leg continues around to the front.
Missed the big one, though, I think, maybe because it’s a little higher than you’re looking. No big deal, my little Baywatch buddy, but you also missed the fact that I’M STILL ALIVE, and that IS a big deal!
He goes on chanting into the microphone, sounding more and more at ease (sounding, in fact, a little like Jack Klugman on Quincy, M.E. ), and I know his partner over there behind me, the Pollyanna of the medical community, isn’t thinking she’ll have to roll the tape back over this part of the exam. Other than missing the fact that his first pericardial is still alive, the kid’s doing a great job.
At last he says, “I think I’m ready to go on, doctor.” He sounds tentative, though.
She comes over, looks briefly down at me, then squeezes Pete’s shoulder. “Okay,” she says. “On-na wid-da show!”
Now I’m trying to stick my tongue out. Just that simple kid’s gesture of impudence, but it would be enough . . . and it seems to me I can feel a faint prickling sensation deep within my lips, the feeling you get when you’re finally starting to come out of a heavy dose of Novocain. And I can feel a twitch? No, wishful thinking, just—
Yes! Yes! But a twitch is all, and the second time I try, nothing happens.
As Pete picks up the scissors, the Rolling Stones move on to