THE M.D. A Horror Story

by Thomas M. Disch

  “Congratulations,” he said drily.

  “I knew your first reaction would be dismay. So was mine. The idea takes a while to sink in.”

  He agreed to this with a weak smile, thinking how the same might be said of the hook of a lure that a fish takes in its mouth. Perhaps, as in the fish’s case, he would come round to her frame of mind more quickly if there was a fight, if he did reproach her for carelessness or deceit (for she was supposed to have been on the pill), if there were curses and tears and the balm of a final reconciling embrace.

  “It wasn’t deliberate. I hadn’t told you I’d stopped taking the pill, because it would have seemed like I was complaining about our sex life. And then when all of a sudden we were going at it again, I did start back on the pill, but then it was too late. It must have been that very first morning that did the trick, remember, the morning after William’s birthday?”

  He nodded. “I remember.”

  “I don’t want an abortion. Not this time. I want this child, and there’s no reason we can’t have another child. Money certainly isn’t a problem. Compared to most people we’re rich.”

  “Sondra, I did not utter the word ‘abortion.’ You’re arguing with yourself.”

  “It’s the word you were thinking.”

  “No, I was remembering Judith as an infant. She was a crier. For about six months she seemed to cry nonstop. Then she moderated to a whine, and whined till the age of four.”

  Sondra laughed, for it was exactly what she would have imagined Judith to have been like as a baby.

  “Well, maybe this one will take after William,” she said softly. “William was a darling baby, the kind other women coo over. At eight months he already had two teeth and was climbing the stairs. And the intelligence in his eyes, even at that age, it was like a lamp that never went out. He was only two when I left Henry. Two years, five months, and just starting to form sentences.”

  “You don’t have to remind me of that, Sondra.”

  “I was a stranger to him during the years when children are at their most beautiful. When a mother can make the biggest difference in the kind of person the child will become. Madge Obstschmecker was William’s mother more than me. And he loves her in some deeper way as a result. Maybe not deeper, but different. I don’t blame him for that, he can’t possibly help it. But I want a child who will be mine totally. It’s like that word they use in church, a vessel. There’s a kind of emptiness in me that has to be filled. Men don’t feel that. Do they?”

  Ben shrugged. He did not want to be drawn into a discussion of the joys and wonders of procreation. “I feel empty often enough, that’s not gender-specific. But I can’t entertain the same literal hope of filling that emptiness with an embryo. That is certainly a woman’s prerogative.”

  It made no difference that Ben refused to have an argument. Sondra had foreseen whatever objections he might raise, and she was determined to counter those objections, whether he spoke them aloud or not. “It’s not as though we lead the kind of life where another child would represent a real inconvenience for either of us. I’m at home all the time, and I’ve no wish to have a ‘career.’ We don’t go out much. Judith graduates from high school next year and will be going to college, and so may William if he gets approved for that accelerated studies program.”

  “More emptiness to fill?”

  “No, in fact William will probably be around the house more once he’s in college. But they will both be grown-ups before we know what’s happened. We’ll be less important to them. It’s like… early retirement.”

  “Sondra, you’re arguing with yourself.”

  “Oh, you’re being very tolerant and good-natured, and I appreciate that. But I want you to want the baby, I want you to feel good about it.”

  “When the times comes, when I can see it and feel it and talk to it, I probably will become a doting father. I’m only human.”

  Sondra smiled. The mantle of complacent maternity already had enveloped her securely as a cocoon. All of creation seemed cozy and warm, and at the center of that coziness and warmth was herself, and centered in herself, the sun that generated all this radiance, was the seed of life in her womb.

  “And what’s wrong,” she demanded, sliding forward in the bed, inviting him to her, “with your being human? I never noticed it before, but I think it makes you kind of cute.”

  He surrendered to the sheer biologic power of the event. He had always admired the salmon leaping up waterfall after waterfall, mad to spawn. Why should he be any different?

  “I hope it’s a girl,” he told her, knowing it was what she was waiting to be told, “and that she’s just like you.”

  44

  Icksy the witch was sitting in the middle of the misty clearing William had come to in his dream, a large black woman in a red cotton dress. He didn’t recognize her at once, thinking her to be the mother of Jimmy Deeters, whom he’d seen only a little while earlier on the Evening News, when she had accused the police of killing her son. (“And the woman’s probably right, you know,” Ben had commented, in his John Chancellor tone of voice. “Not that anyone else but his mother is likely to miss the little bastard, by the sound of it. That boy was bad news.” To which William had murmured a cautious Mm-hm, not wanting to become involved in a discussion. He’d felt relieved when the brief account of Jimmy Deeters’s mysterious death was followed by the latest news concerning the hostages in Iran.) Icksy sat there, rocking back and forth woefully and calling out her son’s name in a tone sometimes of lamentation and sometimes shrill with accusation. The name she called out was not “Jimmy” but “Reinhardt,” and that was how he knew that she was Icksy and not Mrs. Deeters. That, and by the color of her dress, which was the same bold red as the bowling pin who long ago had triumphed over Dundor and seen her son Reinhardt assume the crown of the decapitated king and reign over the kingdom of Wyomia. Why then was she grieving?

  As though he had spoken the question aloud, Icksy looked up and fixed her eyes on him, eyes glistening with tears and black with malevolence. “Why do I grieve! You dare ask me that—you, his murderer?”

  “I never!” William protested.

  Her laugh was like the cawing of her raven Karn. “Oh no, you never!” she mocked. “And the train? The train that was wrecked just days after Christmas—you never did that either, I suppose. No, not an innocent child like Billy Michaels. And Dundor impeached and beheaded, you had no hand in that, I’m sure. And his people enslaved and forced to worship false gods, that had nothing to do with you!”

  “They were your enemies,” he protested. “I did it for you, so that your son would be king.”

  “Some day, William Michaels,” she prophesied darkly, “some day your people will honor that king, and make the day of his birth their holiday. And the name of his assassin will be reviled, and a nation shall mourn and not be comforted. Some day your own mother will bear a child, and that child shall have no name. And some day, William Michaels, mark my words, some day you shall be put in the balance, and your crimes shall be judged and your guilt made known. And your judge’s name is—”

  —Enough! It was the voice of Mercury.

  William turned round to find the god standing just behind him. His right hand was raised against Icksy, and it bore the caduceus with its twining serpents, which hissed their own wordless confirmation of the god’s command.

  “I will speak! I will publish the name of the wicked and rejoice in his accuser’s glory.”

  —I say you will be silent. For you are nothing but a piece of painted wood, a bowling pin, a child’s toy.

  The god had only to step forward and it was true. On the boulder where she had sat there was nothing but the red bowling pin that William had used in his childhood games of make-believe. Mercury picked it up and tossed it underhand to William, who caught it and put it in his pocket.

  “I’m glad to see you,” William said eagerly. “There are some things I wanted to ask you.”

  Mercury lo
oked amused.—Do you suppose curiosity is one of the charms of youth? On the contrary, William, it’s what the young don’t know, and can’t imagine, that beguiles their elders. But ask your questions—three is the usual allotment—and then we’ll go down to my surgery for some practical hands-on instruction.

  “I was going to ask why you visit me at certain times but not at others, but if I only get three questions…”

  —What a bargain hunter you are. Very well: That answer won’t count toward the three. I visit you as a gardener might visit the garden he has planted, to observe your growth and foster it. Sometimes I come and find you’re not available. Last week, for instance, I dropped by and found your spirit closed to my approach. “What’s this?” I asked myself. “Has he come to disbelieve in me so soon? Has he been able to dismiss all the memories that I’ve restored? Can he hold the caduceus in his hand, and feel its power, and deny its source?”

  William was abashed. He’d hoped his crisis of faith might have passed unnoticed by the god. He felt obliged to offer an explanation, though the god seemed to understand him, in many ways, better than he understood himself. “I didn’t really ever disbelieve in you. I doubted you.”

  —A subtle distinction.

  “What physical proof did I have? A stick with a dead bird tied to it. I would take the thing out of the box of comics where I’d hidden it, and it seemed as silly and childish to believe it could do all the things I seemed to remember it did as to believe the stories in those comic books. I could remember it vibrating with some kind of invisible energy, but it wasn’t doing that anymore. Of course, there was Ned, and Grandma O. going bald, and the rest, but all those things could have happened naturally.”

  Mercury accorded William a disdainful look.—The gods of Olympus have never dealt in overt miracles. When we visit mortals we assume familiar forms. The arrows with which Apollo slaughtered the children of Niobe took the form, to human apprehension, of a plague. This is tedious. Ask your questions.

  “Okay: Why wasn’t there any power in the caduceus? Why didn’t the curse I’d put on Turnage’s lighter have any effect?”

  —Those are two separate questions. The answer to the first is that you had simply drained the caduceus by putting too large a demand on it. Unqualified good health for five people—do you have any idea what that costs in terms of an equal and opposite reaction? Evidently you don’t. It will take more than the death of a Jimmy Deeters to pay that medical bill. Your account is heavily overdrawn. Meanwhile, just as with the debts you owe elsewhere, interest accrues. There is even the possibility, if the debt isn’t paid within a reasonable amount of time, that you may forfeit your credit privileges altogether. So to speak.

  “You mean—” William began, and then, realizing this would constitute a third question, stopped short, for it was quite clear what Mercury meant. If William did not work some further harm with the caduceus, it would stop functioning for good or ill.

  —Yes? You were about to ask?

  “I understand what you mean.”

  —As to your second question, many things might account for the curse on the lighter not yet having taken effect. Cancer can be like the bulbs that gardeners plant in the fall. They may lie dormant many months before the first leaves spring from the thawed ground. Or it may be that Turnage hasn’t used the lighter since the curse was put on it. It may still be in the pocket of the suit he wore that night and the suit may have been hanging ever since in the back of his closet. Or the flint may have fallen from the lighter and not been replaced.

  William felt cheated. He’d thought of those possibilities himself.

  —Your third question?

  “My mother is pregnant.”

  —I am aware of that.

  “I want the baby to be healthy.”

  —Naturally.

  “Can I do that while it’s still… inside her?”

  —Yes, once the caduceus’s power is fully restored. And within the wee thing’s constitutional limits.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  —Properly, that is another question. But my meaning’s plain enough. I mean the primal event that determines the structure of a human embryo is beyond the power of the caduceus to alter or correct. In that, even the gods must be fatalists. What will be, will be.

  “Are you saying there’s something already gone wrong?”

  —I am only declaring the limits of the caduceus’s power. The chromosomes twine together as fate determines. Were it otherwise, men would have become gods long ago, for anyone possessing such power would see to it that his offspring, and his offspring’s offspring, were all genetic paragons. Even great Jupiter had a gimpy son. Now, come along, the bell is tolling, and there is something you must see in order to believe. Mercury smiled a knowing smile, as though he’d said something clever, but clever in an obscure way only he could appreciate. Then he pushed aside the boulder on which Icksy had been seated to reveal a rough-hewn stairway that descended into the earth.—Down this way, he bade William, and take care, these steps can be slippery.

  As they went down the stairs, the god’s luminescing body cast a pale light on the curving stone walls. William strained to hear the bell that Mercury had spoken of, but the only sound he could make out was a muffled drumbeat that seemed to come from far below. It was the beating, he realized, of his own heart.

  —Ecco! said Mercury, as the staircase opened out into a vaulted chamber. Echoes of the Latin word skittered about the darkness like bats. And there directly before him, on a raised slab of polished white stone, was the object William had been commanded to behold: the corpse of a well-proportioned young man, his toothless mouth gaping wide and bleeding at the gums, the hollow eyesockets stuffed with fleecy balls of cotton batting. A tray of surgical instruments had been placed on a stainless steel trolley beside the stone slab. After a single glance at the naked body on the slab William had to look away.

  —Come, come, Mercury chided. Doctors must be made of sterner stuff. Afraid of your first cadaver? You won’t get far in medical school at that rate. He lifted the corpse’s hand and let it fall back limply to the stone.—You see, quite harmless. Though you should, as a precaution, be wearing gloves. There’s a pair there on the cart.

  Reluctantly, William put on the surgical gloves. They were made of a thick translucent plastic and it took a good deal of wiggling and coaxing to get each finger snugged into place.

  —Why don’t we begin by exploring the abdominal cavity? A right paramedian incision should do the job. Start here. He placed his finger just below the cadaver’s lowest rib.

  William placed the scalpel on the spot indicated but could not bring himself to exert the least pressure against the dead flesh. Mercury rapped the back of his hand, and the flesh parted. There was no blood. The tissue beneath the skin was a pale pinkish-gray.

  —Continue, Mercury said, to about here. He touched the cadaver’s crotch just above its penis, where the pubic hair had been shaved away, all but a faint stubble that had sprouted up in the time since the cadaver had been prepared for dissection.

  William continued the incision, trying to take an intelligent, dispassionate interest in the procedure. Mercury helped by calling attention to various features revealed by the opening of the abdominal cavity.

  —Note the filmy adhesions over the ascending colon, and the dilation of the bowel. There would also seem to be gas within the transverse colon and into the sigmoid colon area.

  As the incision lengthened, the dermal tissues seemed to spread apart of their own volition, like a too tightly packed suitcase that has come unlatched. The viscera began to slip loose from the abdominal cavity and spill out onto the stone slab.

  William replaced the scalpel on the trolley. “I’m sorry, I can’t go on.”

  —Nonsense, you’re doing fine. Only a few more inches, and the incision will be done.

  William made himself look again at the cadaver and saw that its penis had become erect and that a thick, clotted white flui
d was being discharged from the urethra in irregular spurts. The initial shock of horror quickly yielded to an intense, morbid fascination. As the discharge continued, it came to have the color and consistency of small-curd cottage cheese.

  “Jesus,” William whispered, “what is it?”

  Mercury laughed.—That, my boy, is a question you will have to answer yourself.

  45

  “William? William, are you in there?”

  William woke with a start. The room was dark, and the phone was ringing, and his mother was rapping at the door.

  “William, would you please answer your phone. It’s been ringing the longest time.”

  “I got it,” he called out, and picked up the phone.

  “Thank you,” Sondra said. “And will you point out to your friend, whoever he is, that it’s almost one A.M.?”

  “I have a collect call,” an operator announced in a strange accent, “for William Michaels, from Winky Meyer.” She pronounced the name with a precision denoting disapproval. “Will you accept the charges?”

  “Uh.” The receiver of the phone was covered with some kind of glop. William switched the phone to his left hand and wiped his right hand on the bedspread. As he did so, he realized that the glop had not been on the phone, but had been on his hand before he’d picked up the receiver. “Just a second, operator.” He used the corner of his bedsheet to wipe both hands clean and then wiped off the receiver, but it was still sticky when he picked it up again.

  “Are you there, Mr. Michaels?” the operator inquired.

  “Yes, operator. I’ll accept the charges.”

  “Go ahead, Miss Meyer.”

  “William?” It was Judith. Why had he thought it was Ben? Because the operator had said Winky Meyer. He was still half asleep, and he could feel the dream fading and there were things he’d been told in the dream that he had to remember. And it wasn’t just on his hand: his pajamas were a mess, too. It dawned on him that he’d been having a wet dream, the first he’d ever had, and the stuff on the phone and in his pajamas was sperm, the first genuine sperm he’d ever produced though he’d been jerking off pretty systematically for more than a year. But the dream hadn’t been anything like wet dreams were supposed to be, it wasn’t about sex at all.