listener–although he didn’t look the role. At forty-five, he appeared
ten years younger than his age, and he had a boyish manner. Today he
wore tennis shoes, chinos, and a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. In the
summer, he favored colorful Hawaiian shirts. On those rare occasions
when he wore a traditional white smock over slacks, shirt, and tie, he
claimed to be “playing doctor” or “on strict probation from the American
Medical Association’s dress-code committee,” or “suddenly overwhelmed by
the godlike responsibilities of my office.”
Paige thought Guthridge was an exceptional physician, and the girls
regarded him with the special affection usually reserved for a favorite
uncle.
Marty liked him too.
He suspected the doctor’s eccentricities were not calculated entirely to
amuse patients and put them at ease. Like Marty, Guthridge seemed
morally offended by the very fact of death. As a younger man, perhaps
he’d been drawn to medicine because he saw the physician as a knight
battling dragons incarnated as illnesses and diseases.
Young knights believe that noble intentions, skill, and faith will
prevail over evil. Older knights know better–and sometimes use humor
as a weapon to stave off bitterness and despair. Guthridge’s quips and
Mickey Mouse sweatshirts might relax his patients, but they were also
his armor against the hard realities of life and death.
“Panic attack? You, of all people, suffering a panic attack?”
Paul Guthridge asked doubtfully.
Marty said, “Hyperventilating, heart pounding, felt like I was going to
explode sounds like a panic attack to me.”
“Sounds like sex.”
Marty smiled. “Trust me, it wasn’t sex.”
“You could be right,” Guthridge said with a sigh. “It’s been so long,
I’m not sure what sex was like exactly. Believe me, Marty, this is a
bad decade to be a bachelor, so many really nasty diseases out there.
You meet a new girl, date her, give her a chaste kiss when you take her
home–and then wait to see if your lips are going to rot and fall off.
“That’s a swell image.”
“Vivid, huh? Maybe I should’ve been a writer.” He began to examine
Marty’s left eye with an ophthalmoscope. “Have you been having
unusually intense headaches?”
“One headache over the weekend. But nothing unusual.”
“Repeated spells of dizziness?”
“No.”
“Temporary blindness, noticeable narrowing of peripheral vision?”
“Nothing like that.”
Turning his attention to Marty’s right eye, Guthridge said, “As for
being a writer other doctors have done it, you know. Michael Crichton,
Robin Cook, Somerset Maugham–‘ “Seuss.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. Next time I have to give you an injection, I might
use a horse syringe.”
“It always feels like you do anyway. I’ll tell you something, being a
writer isn’t half as romantic as people think.”
“At least you don’t have to handle urine samples,” Guthridge said,
setting aside the ophthalmoscope.
With squiggly ghost images of the instrument light still dancing in his
eyes, Marty said, “When a writer’s first starting out, a lot of editors
and agents and movie producers treat him as if he is a urine sample.”
“Yeah, but now you’re a celebrity,” Guthridge said, plugging his
stethoscope ear tips in place.
“Far from it,” Marty objected.
Guthridge pressed the icy steel of the stethoscope diaphragm against
Marty’s chest. “Okay, breathe deeply . . . hold . . .
breathe out . . . and again.” After listening to Marty’s lungs as well
as his heart, the doctor put the stethoscope aside.
“Hallucinations?”
“No.”
“Strange smells?”
“No.”
“Things taste the way they should? I mean, you haven’t been eating ice
cream and it suddenly tasted bitter or oniony, nothing like that?”
“Nothing like that.”
As he wrapped the pressure cuff of a sphygmomanometer around Marty’s
arm, Guthridge said, “Well, all I know is, to get into People magazine,
you’ve got to be a celebrity of one kind or another–rock singer, actor,
smarmy politician, murderer, or maybe the guy with the world’s largest
collection of ear wax. So if you think you aren’t a celebrity author,
then I want to know who you’ve killed and exactly how much damn ear wax
you own.”
“How’d you know about People?”
“We subscribe for the waiting room.” He pumped air into the cuff until
it was tight, then read the falling mercury on the gauge before he