by Roger Elwood
Creston started to put his jacket back on.
They had been sitting for nearly twenty minutes on the brown leather chairs, crepitant with age, when at last they exchanged a long glance through the dimness of the waiting room and Creston said, “We can still change our minds, especially since no one seems to have noticed we’re here.”
Avis shrugged slightly and produced a half smile. “Who goes right in to see a doctor? You always have to wait, at least a little. I think it’s a point of honor with them never to let the patient right into the inner sanctum with no chance to reflect a bit first.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But now that I’ve had my chance at reflection, something else occurs to me. If this Bannerman is any good, why haven’t we heard of him before?”
“Tal says it’s because he’s a last resort.”
“What did she mean by that?”
“How should I know? Actually she didn’t enlarge on anything, just told me the few things I’ve told you. And I could hardly ask her a lot of questions when she was obviously so miserable and didn’t want to talk much. Anyway, give him a chance, Cres. We’re here now. What can we lose?”
At that moment the inner door of the waiting room opened on a tall, very young man. He was dressed with extreme neatness in a black cashmere sports jacket and black knit tie with dark slacks. His thick, curling hair, worn long enough to brush his white shirt collar, was a dead black, without highlights, and though his sideburns were fashionably luxuriant, the rest of his face was shaven clean, even giving the impression he might only a moment before have put away his razor.
The stranger smiled. “Mr. and Mrs. Potter?”
“Dr. Bannerman?” Creston inquired doubtfully.
The stranger laughed. “Mr. Potter, excuse me please, but I can read your mind. ‘No nurse, no receptionist,’ you’re thinking. ‘No white coat on the doctor, who is in any case not old enough to have finished a decent internship. Probably no diploma on the wall of his office either.’” Dr. Bannerman laughed even louder.
“Now see here, Doctor—”
But the young man in black, suddenly sober, was holding up a restraining hand. “However, time is short, is it not, Mrs. Potter? And we have work to do.”
Dr. Bannerman led the Potters briskly into his office where, in the improved light, his unusual eyes were for the first time apparent. The iris of one was a very dark brown, the other a watercolor blue. Creston had seen dalmatians with eyes like that, and a boy he’d known at boarding school had gone into fortune-telling on the strength of the same condition, charging the other students for readings and making quite an enviable thing of it. So Creston knew such pigmentation wasn’t all that unusual. Still, considering everything, it was unsettling in Dr. Bannerman.
The office itself was a cut above the waiting room in appearance, however. The window behind the desk, while it offered only an apologetic view of a grimy brick wall across an airshaft, had plainly been recently washed and polished. And the chairs they were offered this time, contour shells of spun glass with chromium legs, seemed new.
Dr. Bannerman, however, did not sit down. “There’s no point in going over your medical and personal history, I think. After all, I’ve heard it a good many times before from others-with the same problems.” He moved now to a smaller door with a panel of obscure glass in the top. “So if you’ll just wait here, Mr. Potter, while Mrs. Potter and I step into my laboratory—?”
“Not so fast, Bannerman,” said Creston suddenly. “Maybe you don’t have any questions for us, but I sure as hell have a few for you.”
Avis murmured, “Cres, please,” but she did not rise from her chair to follow the doctor.
And Bannerman, on the point of entering the laboratory, turned back in mock obedience. A bogus smile of strained patience inscribed a single parenthesis mark at one corner of his long, thin mouth as he took his place in the chair behind the desk.
“First,” Creston said, “since there really is no diploma visible anywhere, would you mind telling us what school of medicine graduated you, and when? It’s not customary for a doctor to keep that information from his patients, is it?”
“Simple medicine,” the man behind the desk said evenly, “is not my metier, Mr. Potter.”
“It’s not? And yet you were this very moment about to give my wife some kind of treatment.”
“But Mr. Potter, surely you’ve heard of miracle drugs?”
“Which miracle drugs?”
“Allow me to put my case this way, so that if possible we may shorten this depressing discussion: I guarantee my work.”
Creston stared at the other man. “You’re crazy,” he said. “No doctor—”
But Bannerman was now going on in reasonable tones, “1 am not unused to this sort of inquisition from patients, Mr. Potter, as you may imagine. However, the inconvenience, not to mention the squandering of precious time, is one of the factors which make it impossible for me to keep my fees down.”
“Now wait a minute. I haven’t objected to your fees. I don’t even know what they are yet.”
“They are high. Very high. But then there is the guarantee.”
Creston Potter leaned across the desk to make his point. “All right, if you’re so good reading my mind, you know already what I think. I believe you’re a phony, a con artist of some kind. Do you realize you haven’t given even one straight answer to anything I’ve asked you?”
Now one of Dr. Bannerman’s jaw muscles fluttered. “What do you want me to say, Mr. Potter? That I’m a monster, not a doctor? That I make my own miracle drugs out of the blood of murdered babies? Remember, you came here on your own. I certainly didn’t persuade you, or even invite you. As a matter of fact, these fertility cases don’t interest me much anyway. They are a minor, though necessary, part of my practice.”
“Cres, please,” Avis said again softly.
An awkward pause set in, marked by the noisy pulsations of a defective electric clock on the desk. Creston avoided his wife’s eyes, but finally he said stiffly, “All right. It’s really up to Mrs. Potter, and she obviously wants you to go ahead. But is there any reason I can’t go into the laboratory with you?”
His momentary pique now dispelled, Dr. Bannerman resumed his chaffing manner. “Three’s a crowd, Mr. Potter.”
“You’re being silly,” Avis put in calmly.
And Creston agreed at last. “Yes,” he said, “perhaps you’re right.”
“But what did he do?”
“I told you. He gave me an injection.”
“Is that all? I mean, for die three hours since we came home you’ve been walking around like a ghost. Yet you insist that physically you feel fine. It doesn’t make sense.”
“All right, Cres, I’ll tell you. I was going to try to spare you in case it all came to nothing anyway, but I suppose you have a right to know. After he gave the injection, he told me what his fee would be.”
“And it’s high?”
“It’s high.”
“But that’s hardly surprising, is it? He warned us it would be, if you’ll remember. It’s not so unusual to find a doctor who thinks-he’s worth his weight in gold, especially one with a shady practice. Besides, we’re not exactly destitute. I was just figuring out the other day that in view of that last lucky investment of mine, we could probably live well for a year or more if I quit working tomorrow.”
“The trouble is, Dr. Bannerman doesn’t want gold.”
“Oh? What does he want then?”
“Nothing, unless the treatment is successful and I get pregnant.”
“Yes, yes, I know. He ‘guarantees’ his work.”
“But if a baby is bom, we have to turn it over to him.”
“What a revolting sense of humor he has. Tactless, tasteless—why brood over his nonsensical remarks? Try to forget it, Avis.”
“He wasn’t being humorous this time. He meant it about the baby.”
“Oh, come on. That visit to Bannerman really did upset you, I
see, more than even I realized. We shouldn’t have gone. I knew we shouldn’t”
“He meant it, and we can’t do a thing about it. There’s no way out. That is, whatever we did would be self-defeating. We can’t even ask to have him investigated or anything. If I don’t get pregnant this time, or if I do and something does happen to the baby, heaven forbid, I’d naturally have to go back to Dr. Bannerman for another treatment.”
“Avis. Dear. Listen. Nobody, but nobody, believes in mad scientists any more. The vogue went out years ago. And doctors Caligari and Frankenstein were only make-believe anyhow, in case you haven’t heard.”
“But Dr. Bannerman is real. You saw him yourself.”
“I wish I hadn’t. I wish neither of us had. All right, since you’re really so convinced, maybe you’d better tell me everything again, step by step, what he said, what you said—”
He was attaching the last luggage tag when he heard the click of the door lock. Avis was back. Her heels tapped briefly over the uncarpeted floor of the bedroom, vacant now except for the suitcases, which he had arranged in a row near the door.
“What did your obstetrician say?”
“Dr. Wilker says there’s no reason I can’t make the plane trip, but he did seem surprised to hear we were moving so far so suddenly. At least to him it seemed sudden.”
He looked up at her anxiously. “You didn’t tell him where?”
“Of course not. I haven’t told anyone where.”
She was fashionably dressed in a green wool traveling outfit with a cape which concealed her rounded figure. Her eyes, however, seemed deeper set than before her pregnancy, her face gaunt. She had not smiled when he looked up, nor had he smiled at her.
“Or why?” he pressed her. “You said nothing to Dr. Wilker about why we’re going, did you?”
“Not to Dr. Wilker. Not to anyone. Who would believe me, even if I did?”
“I know. And I’m sorry about the questions. It’s my eleventh-hour tension making me suspect everyone, even you. Even me too, as a matter of fact. I caught myself about to leave a forwarding address at the bank this morning, caught myself in time, fortunately.”
“As for exactly where we’re going,” she went on, “I couldn’t say even if I were so foolish as to want to tell someone. I know you mentioned the name of the town you’d picked out, but it’s such a strange name I can’t recall it.”
He answered softly, even furtively, as if suddenly conscious of the people in the next apartment, of passersby on the sidewalk, though it was three stories below. “Alejamiento. It’s far back in the mountains. No tourists go there, and the living is going to be uncomfortably primitive, I’m afraid. The only thing that makes it thinkable for us is what I told you last night, about there being a clinic. It’s small, but it also has a few hospital beds in an annex, they say. We’ll simply have to find a house nearby and settle in. And while you were out just now, I even thought of a way to explain our presence to the Alejamientenses, if that’s the word for them. We’ll say I’m a photographer.”
“But then you’ll be obliged to go about taking pictures.”
“What else will I have to do for the next three months? It’ll keep me occupied while we wait. That Japanese reflex camera you gave me last Christmas certainly looks professional enough, especially if I remember to wear the light meter around my neck. But we’ve no more time for talking. The plane leaves in an hour and the cab is due any minute.” He touched her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Avis. We’ve left no trace, no trace at all. Bannerman will just have to write us off as a bad debt. Then later, after the baby’s bom and everything is all right again, that’ll be time enough to decide what to do, whether to come back right away or wait, whether or not we should blow the whistle on this crook or not. When the time comes, we’ll play it by ear.”
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “No matter what happens we couldn’t ever expose him. Even if we ourselves can never go back to him, there are other women who can. Like Tal. Because after all, his treatment works, no matter what else one can say about him.”
“Does it though? Does it beyond a doubt? Or have you ever thought it might have been all a weird coincidence? Maybe you would have conceived anyway this time. Crazy things happen. Who knows?”
But she said, “I know. And so do you. We both know.”
Alejamiento was a village indistinguishable from scores of others in the mountainous back country: a tiny central plaza with drowsers on narrow benches in the scanty shade, church with lofty spire rising in flagrant contradiction over a humble entrance of trampled dust through which forage chickens clucked conversationally. There was even a boneyard on the elevation just back of the town proper, its graves cluttered lovingly with real and artificial flowers.
Drooping jacaranda blossoms screened the windows of the clinic waiting room where Creston sat smoking, painfully alert to all sounds within the white building, yet hearing—or perhaps imagining he was hearing— only the whisper-thin rustle of long garments as the nuns moved on businesslike rounds through the corridors. These whispering sounds, together with the tinted, watery light straining through the grape-colored blooms, gave Creston a feeling of ease, despite the fact that he had heard no news of Avis since handing her, alternately doubling with contractions and smiling happily, over to the admitting sister some forty-five minutes earlier.
Despite the occasion, however, it did seem likely their troubles were behind them. The clinic doctor, whom Avis had seen regularly since their arrival, had assured them the baby was in an excellent position, and that the birth was likely to be facil, muy facil.
At that moment, as if it were somehow connected with Creston’s thoughts, a PA system began paging the very doctor Avis had seen, whose name was Vargas. In that dreamy, out-of-the-way place, which seemed to Creston less like a clinic than some kind of religious retreat where everyone had taken a vow of silence, the bark of the public address apparatus was a shock. It had not occurred to him the clinic would possess such equipment.
“Vargas,” the amplified voice insisted. “Doctór Vargas, el cuarto tres, por favor.” Five minutes passed, then the voice repeated the message. One of the sisters was again passing in the hall, hurrying, bearing something on a tray covered over with a white linen towel, but Creston rushed out and stopped her anyway.
“Why do they keep calling for Dr. Vargas? Isn’t he here?”
“It appears the doctor is not in the building yet,” she said, surprising him with her perfect English.
The news kindled unexpected anger. This Vargas had promised to be present for the delivery. And now where was he, the bastard? The reason for the paging, it occurred to him suddenly if belatedly, was because of Avis. “But how is Mrs. Potter? Is it about time—?”
“Mrs. Potter is fine. I have just come from her and I can tell you everything is going well. And yes, it is about time.”
“Then where in hell is Dr. Vargas?”
The nurse responded with a gentle smile. “Do not worry, Mr. Potter. If Dr. Vargas is unavailable for the delivery, there are other doctors here, in the clinic.”
Yes, of course, Creston told himself firmly as he resumed his seat in the waiting room. It was all so reasonable. Only a fool like him could be upset over such a nothing. It would have helped dispel his apprehension, he supposed, if he had been allowed to wait with Avis, in the room where they’d put her. But unlike American hospitals he had heard about where fathers were sometimes allowed to be present even during delivery, the clinic at Alejamiento was a closed operation. As for Dr. Vargas, so long as Avis couldn’t be delivered by Dr. Wilker, her doctor at home, what difference if it were Vargas in attendance or some other doctor equally unknown?
His own restored attitude of reason had a calming effect. Creston leaned back in the deep chair, an arrangement of wicker softly padded with cretonne cushions, and after a while he even slept a little in the soothing, purplish light. Which was why the figure before him, swathed head to foot in pale green, seemed at f
irst like someone out of a dream instead of merely a doctor, still dressed in a scrub outfit, who had come to tell him something.
“Your wife is doing extremely well, Mr. Potter,” the figure said, also in perfect English, adopting the brisk, professional intonations of doctors everywhere. “She is delivered and will be able to go home in two or three days. However—” Here it comes, thought Creston. Bad news after all. “—we were not able to save the child. I am sorry. Of course, this is a first pregnancy and there is no reason your wife cannot conceive again.”
Oh yes, there is, he was about to say, bitterly disappointed, especially for Avis’s sake. But as he glanced up he discovered no word from him would be necessary. Looking steadily at him over the green gauze mask was a pair of unmatched eyes, one blue, one brown.
Coincidence
William F. Nolan
Is it possible that demons can get you to kill yourself?
Or is it simply madness that drives you to—?
When Harry Dobson’s wife suggested they spend their last night together (before Harry’s trip) in a New York hotel he agreed. It was to be a kind of instant second honeymoon, and Harry savored the drive down from Westport with his wife cuddled close to him. It reminded Harry of the early days, before the house and kids had aged them both. The kids were grown and gone, but the house in Westport, with its high upkeep and higher taxes, dragged at Harry like a weight. He enjoyed the overnight stay in a New York hotel, enjoyed the sexual passion he was still able to inspire in Margaret.
What Harry Dobson didn’t enjoy was having his wife bump him awake with a naked hip at 6 a.m. in the morning.
“What’s wrong?” he wanted to know.
“It’s the man in the next room,” whispered Margaret, pressing close to him in the double bed. “He’s been moaning. He woke me up.”
