The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories by Rod Serling Page A

eyes grew large. “Psychosomatic? You’re trying to tell me that I’m sick only in the mind?”
    “Something like that, Mr. Bedeker,” the doctor answered quietly. “There’s nothing wrong with you, really, except the ailments you manufacture for yourself. Your pains, Mr. Bedeker, are imaginary. Your inability to sleep is a case of nerves—but nothing more. In short, Mr. Bedeker, you’re a very healthy man!”
    Walter Bedeker smiled sadly at his favorite confidant, the wall on the right, and talked to it, occasionally jerking his head toward the doctor.
    “See? This is a doctor. Four years premed. Four years medical school. Two years internship. Two years residency. And what is he? I ask you, what is he?” Then he shouted, “A quack!”
    The doctor had to smile in spite of himself. Ethel came in on tiptoe, and whispered to the doctor, “What’s the prognosis?”
    Bedeker shouted, “Don’t ask him. The man’s an idiot!”
    “Walter, darling,” Ethel said patiently, “Don’t excite yourself.”
    “Don’t whisper,” Bedeker shouted. “You’re looking at half of my troubles right there,” he said to the doctor. “This woman. This awful woman who runs around whispering all day long to make me think I’m sick even if I’m not. And I am,” he added quickly. “I’m lying here at death’s door and who’s ushering me out? A quack and this whispering woman without a mind!”
    “I’ll call tomorrow, Mrs. Bedeker!” the doctor said jovially.
    “There’ll be no need to call,” Bedeker answered. “just come on over with the death certificate and fill it out.”
    “Oh, Walter—” Ethel said piteously.
    “Don’t drench me with those crocodile tears of yours, idiot,” Bedeker screamed at her. “She’d be so happy to get rid of me, doctor, I just can’t tell you.”
    The doctor was no longer smiling as he went out, followed by Ethel. At the front door he looked at her very closely. She must have been a very attractive woman in her day. God, to be married to that man for as long as she’d been married to him!
    “How is he, doctor?” Ethel asked.
    “Mrs. Bedeker,” the doctor said, “your husband is one of the healthiest patients I have. If he were up in front of me for an exam to get into the combat Marines, I’d pass him with flying colors.”
    Ethel shook her head dubiously. “He’s sick most of the time. He won’t let me open a window in the house. He says for every cubic foot of air, there are eight million, nine hundred thousand germs.”
    The doctor threw back his head and laughed. “He’s probably right.”
    Ethel said worriedly, “And he’s just quit his job. The fifth job he’s quit since the first of the year. He says they make him work in a draft.”
    The doctor stopped laughing and looked at this small, comely woman in front of him. “Mrs. Bedeker,” he said softly, “there isn’t a thing in the world I can do for your husband. Or any other doctor for that matter—except, perhaps, a psychiatrist.”
    Ethel’s hand went to her mouth in a shocked gesture. “A psychiatrist,” she said.
    The doctor nodded. “His trouble is in his mind This awful fear of disease. This phobia about death. I suppose I’m oversimplifying it when I say there’s nothing wrong with him because in a sense there really is. This constant worrying about himself is an illness of a sort. Has he always been this frightened?”
    “Ever since I can remember,” said Ethel. “When he was courting me he told me he was in the last stages of T.B. and only had a week to live.” She looked away reminiscently and sadly. “I only married him because I felt so sorry for him—!” She bit her lip. “What I meant, doctor—”
    The doctor patted her on the arm and said, “I understand. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.” He looked closely at her again, reached in his pocket for a pad and scribbled down a prescription. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “You look a little rundown yourself.