beam had to pass to reach my tumor, and my body began to fall apart from the inside.”
Crye then invited his wife to lie down under the movable eye of the Clinac 18. When she refused, he and Benecke firmly placed her on the pallet beneath it. The facility’s space-age acoustics kept her screams from being heard beyond the treatment room.
“I’m just giving it a special twist here,” Benecke said, turning on the accelerator. “Deepness is what I like. A beam from the Clinac 18 can go down as deep as fifteen centimeters before ‘exploding’ through the tumor-bearing area. That’s what I really like.”
“I fell apart down deep,” Crye said, a dead hand on his wife’s forehead. “If I appeared to give up, Stevie, it was only because
XI
Dr. Elsa was working on Friday in Wickrath’s tumbledown clinic. Although Dr. Sam plied both pills and solace in the Barclay branch of the Kensington practice, Stevie, who had spent the tag end of the night trying to rediscover the gateway to unconsciousness, did not believe she could confide in him. Therefore, after seeing Teddy and Marella off to school, she drove to Wickrath and signed the patient register like any other flu victim or hypochondriac day laborer. Her head ached, but her heart, which barely seemed to be beating, preoccupied her more. The calm of exhaustion had not yet had a chance to settle upon her.
“Keep showing up this regular,” Dr. Elsa told her ten minutes later, pointing Stevie to an examination table, “I’ll have to start giving you a volume discount. Typewriter break again?”
“Read this, Elsa.”
“‘ TYPEWRITERS ARE OBNIPOTENT. / TYPEWRITERS ARE —’”
“No, not that, Elsa. The single-spaced story under it. Read it to yourself and tell me what you think.”
A minute or two later Dr. Elsa passed the page back to Stevie. “Well, I don’t think Dr. Curry up in Ladysmith’s going to be too thrilled to see I’ve got his job.”
“Besides that, Elsa.”
“Can’t afford to alienate my colleagues, kiddo. I’m not the cancer clinic’s director. You’re not planning to send this little ghost story to the Ledger , are you?”
“Elsa, what do you think of it?”
“Morbid? Obsessive? Paranoid? I don’t know. You keep trying to get me to play head doctor, but most of what I see is furred tongues, bunions, and broken bones. I haven’t got the lingo, Stevie.” She touched the younger woman’s close-cropped hair. “You’re madly in love with a dead man you don’t respect. The psychological term for that escapes me.”
“Necrophilia?”
Dr. Elsa raised an eyebrow. “Not quite, Mrs. Shakespeare. I don’t think that’s a spiritual affliction. What you’ve got probably is. Partly, anyway. And that’s all the Sigmund Freuding I’m going to do.”
The scuffed linoleum in the examination room, the stoppered bottles of Q-tips and alcohol, the entire rustic ambience of the Wickrath clinic, worked on Stevie’s mood. So did Dr. Elsa’s intelligent folksiness, which perceptibly allayed her depression. She scooted backward on the paper-covered examination table and propped herself upright in the corner. How could you be fearful in a place so cozy, so sloppily antiseptic, so old-fashioned? If only she could stay here . . .
“Did you notice the opening?” Stevie asked. “The lead?”
“Very clever.”
“Well, the first two paragraphs are verbatim from the article I mailed to the Ledger Tuesday afternoon.”
“Self-plagiarism’s a forgivable crime, I guess.”
“Do you know what the rest is, though?”
“A paid advertisement for the Clinac 18?”
“I wish.” Stevie handed the page back. “Look again. The rest’s an exact rendering of a nightmare I had last night, but in journalese. It’s the way Joseph—the Biblical one—would have reported a dream if he’d spent a year at The New York Times .” She paused. “I never remember my dreams. The Exceleriter wrote this, Elsa. It picked my brain and organized
Crye then invited his wife to lie down under the movable eye of the Clinac 18. When she refused, he and Benecke firmly placed her on the pallet beneath it. The facility’s space-age acoustics kept her screams from being heard beyond the treatment room.
“I’m just giving it a special twist here,” Benecke said, turning on the accelerator. “Deepness is what I like. A beam from the Clinac 18 can go down as deep as fifteen centimeters before ‘exploding’ through the tumor-bearing area. That’s what I really like.”
“I fell apart down deep,” Crye said, a dead hand on his wife’s forehead. “If I appeared to give up, Stevie, it was only because
XI
Dr. Elsa was working on Friday in Wickrath’s tumbledown clinic. Although Dr. Sam plied both pills and solace in the Barclay branch of the Kensington practice, Stevie, who had spent the tag end of the night trying to rediscover the gateway to unconsciousness, did not believe she could confide in him. Therefore, after seeing Teddy and Marella off to school, she drove to Wickrath and signed the patient register like any other flu victim or hypochondriac day laborer. Her head ached, but her heart, which barely seemed to be beating, preoccupied her more. The calm of exhaustion had not yet had a chance to settle upon her.
“Keep showing up this regular,” Dr. Elsa told her ten minutes later, pointing Stevie to an examination table, “I’ll have to start giving you a volume discount. Typewriter break again?”
“Read this, Elsa.”
“‘ TYPEWRITERS ARE OBNIPOTENT. / TYPEWRITERS ARE —’”
“No, not that, Elsa. The single-spaced story under it. Read it to yourself and tell me what you think.”
A minute or two later Dr. Elsa passed the page back to Stevie. “Well, I don’t think Dr. Curry up in Ladysmith’s going to be too thrilled to see I’ve got his job.”
“Besides that, Elsa.”
“Can’t afford to alienate my colleagues, kiddo. I’m not the cancer clinic’s director. You’re not planning to send this little ghost story to the Ledger , are you?”
“Elsa, what do you think of it?”
“Morbid? Obsessive? Paranoid? I don’t know. You keep trying to get me to play head doctor, but most of what I see is furred tongues, bunions, and broken bones. I haven’t got the lingo, Stevie.” She touched the younger woman’s close-cropped hair. “You’re madly in love with a dead man you don’t respect. The psychological term for that escapes me.”
“Necrophilia?”
Dr. Elsa raised an eyebrow. “Not quite, Mrs. Shakespeare. I don’t think that’s a spiritual affliction. What you’ve got probably is. Partly, anyway. And that’s all the Sigmund Freuding I’m going to do.”
The scuffed linoleum in the examination room, the stoppered bottles of Q-tips and alcohol, the entire rustic ambience of the Wickrath clinic, worked on Stevie’s mood. So did Dr. Elsa’s intelligent folksiness, which perceptibly allayed her depression. She scooted backward on the paper-covered examination table and propped herself upright in the corner. How could you be fearful in a place so cozy, so sloppily antiseptic, so old-fashioned? If only she could stay here . . .
“Did you notice the opening?” Stevie asked. “The lead?”
“Very clever.”
“Well, the first two paragraphs are verbatim from the article I mailed to the Ledger Tuesday afternoon.”
“Self-plagiarism’s a forgivable crime, I guess.”
“Do you know what the rest is, though?”
“A paid advertisement for the Clinac 18?”
“I wish.” Stevie handed the page back. “Look again. The rest’s an exact rendering of a nightmare I had last night, but in journalese. It’s the way Joseph—the Biblical one—would have reported a dream if he’d spent a year at The New York Times .” She paused. “I never remember my dreams. The Exceleriter wrote this, Elsa. It picked my brain and organized
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