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I WOULD SAY THE PERSONNEL (I won’t call them people) who staffed the clinic treated their patients like cattle, but that would be a lie. No one treated cattle that badly. My buddy Ding once described a doctor’s visit as bending over, spreading your cheeks, and being grateful when they jammed the broom handle in and broke it off. I told him he’d gone on a good day.
The intake admin lady at the Wentworth Clinic had a face only a blind dog could love. She guarded the Bridge of Medical Intake from behind a bulletproof glass shield. It was the same woman as last time, and my soul shrank at the idea of going another few rounds with this particular guardian. Cerberus, her nametag read. No, I’m kidding, it really said Cherise, but I believed nametags should reflect function over appellation.
“Name?” barked Cherise when we approached the window. She didn’t look up from her screen. “Last name first, first name last.”
“Schweitzer, Michelle,” my girlfriend said.
“DOB?”
“November third, 2027.”
“Social Security Number?”
She recited her ten-digit number.
“Thumb here.” Cherise pointed to the bio-reader, and Chelle placed her thumb on it. Why did they go through the drill of asking the same questions your thumbprint could answer for you? Another medical mystery I’d never understand. Cherise stabbed us with the same kind of expression she might apply to a splattering of dog vomit on her shoe. “You’re late.”
The rule was, once you answered Cherise’s “questions three,” you were allowed to pass to the prison cell-slash-waiting room where you served your time with the other detainees—sharing germs in a friendly, relaxed environment—until the RN granted you parole. If you displeased the Cherise the Bridge Keeper, you were vaulted into the Chasm of Doom, otherwise called the “next available appointment.”
“The line...” Chelle motioned vaguely toward the people standing behind us.
“You should account for that when planning your visit.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Chelle groveled, as meek and humble as I’d ever heard her. “Please, we’ve been waiting six months for my test results to come back—”
“Method of payment?”
“Uh, Affordable Health Care.”
“Of course,” the Bridge Keeper said. Flat. Toneless. “What was I thinking?” She tapped on her virtual keyboard long enough for me to count to a hundred and forty-seven, if I’d started from the beginning, which I didn’t so I estimated.
“Go through,” Cherise commanded and stamped Chelle’s hand with a number.
Our pent-up breath flushed out at the same time, and we escaped through the interior door when the buzzer sounded. On the other side: the anteroom of hell.
Ninetyish coughing, sniffling, sneezing, hacking, bleeding, miserable people stuffed a room built for a hundred, giving it a piquant charm all its own. Searching the ten rows of hard plastic chairs, we found two seats together. The vid in the corner was running last year’s Sports Illustrated Nude Gymnastics issue.
Sweet.
The tote board at the end of the room read NOW SERVING: 1238 in glowing red numerals.
“Whad dumber did you ged?” I asked through my thick sinuses and angled for a look at the back of Chelle’s hand. She held it up for me to see.
“Oh,” I said in a small voice. “Thirteen-thirteen.”
“Uh huh. Good thing I’m not superstitious, right?”
“Dock wood.”
***
IN THE EXAM ROOM, I used some tissues and blew the blood and snot from my nose until I could speak without sounding like Elmer Fudd. Chelle situated her fanny on the torture table’s paper cover—it crackled when she shifted—while I squatted on the short stool doctors used when they wanted to see you at groin level.
I rolled up and put my face between Chelle’s knees, leered. “Hey, you want I should examine you?”
Strong girl. Somehow she withstood the temptation.
A doctor I’d never seen before breezed into the examination room carrying a tablet and a cup of coffee. He was about five-four, and the sleeves of his lab coat fell to the tips of his fingers. Smooth face, clear skin, small stature. Chelle failed to prep me about the doctor’s size, so I later blamed her for what popped out of my mouth.
“Hi there, little guy. Is your dad coming too?”
He had a thin plastic nametag with Dr. Kleszczynska printed on it. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his hair had last seen a comb when disco was king. (The second time disco was king, not the 1970s.) The smell following him into the room carried a combination of cheap aftershave and pot reek. By the time my brain caught up to my eyes, my mouth had already fired that opening shot, with no way to take it back.
“Oh, ah... sorry, Doc,” I mumbled. “I thought you were someone else.”
Chelle rolled her eyes, but the doctor only looked confused. I found out why when he tried using English for the first time—probably in his life.
“Who paychent?” His bloodshot eyes swiveled from me to Chelle and back.
“Uh... me, Doctor,” my girlfriend said.
I wanted to say, No, you paychent, he doctor, but I managed to hold my tongue.
He studied his tablet and frowned. “You Marcha Wah... Way... Wyant?”
“No, I’m Schweitzer. Michelle Schweitzer.”
The doctor tapped his screen and muttered in a foreign language something that sounded like fucking computer piece of shit crap electronic bullshit no-good fucking system. But I could have been projecting.
“Ah. Schweitzer,” he sort of said. I won’t attempt to reproduce the sound that actually came out as I think he made up some consonants. “Here we, uh, you, are being.”
He leaned against the sink while I swiveled back and forth. Dr. Strangename jacked with his tool. Computer, I mean. Silence encroached. He frowned. Tapped some more and frowned really hard.
My palms were sweating.
“Ah, Mizz Schweitzer.” The doctor cleared his throat and kept his eyes glued to his screen. “I am being sorry to tell you this. Cerebral amebiasis is diagnosis. Not long you have to live. Please see front desk for referral to hospital for treatment. Is best to do soon. So sorry. Good-bye.”
I flew off the stool and slapped the door shut before Dr. Charm could escape. “What? Say that again. She has what?”
His eyes bugged out with fright. “Is... ah... how you say? Tumor brain. Meck very sick.” He shrugged. “Is too bad.”
“Too bad!” My voice climbed the register to Getting Pissed. Chelle sat on the exam table with a blank look, as though struck by a monkey wrench. “What the fuck? What about medication? Tumor? From what?”
He consulted his tablet, holding it up between us like a shield. “Is from parasite. You know Entamoeba histolytica?”
“Yeah, sure, we’re old friends.” The sarcasm was lost on the doctor. “No, I don’t! What are you talking about?”
“Ah, how say... ah, parasite, yes?” He peered at Chelle and asked, “You maybe eat bad food? Work near undead people.”
“Revivants?” Chelle said in a small voice. Her eyes were fixed on a point across the room. “Yeah, down at the factory. They’re everywhere.”
“Ah.”
“Ah, what?” I demanded.
“Oh, is maybe nossink.” The witch doctor busied himself with his tablet and started babbling about fecal this and parasite that. Brain abscesses. Lesions breaking open.
Chelle didn’t seem to hear him, so I asked, “What’s the treatment?”
“Many good drugs now.” He bobbed his head like a chicken. “See desk, go hospital. Maybe cured”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that. Or—”
“Or?”
He shrugged thin shoulders and sketched a rueful smile. “Is tumors on brain. Very dangerous, not catched soon. Maybe we catch earlier? No problem. Now...?”
“What do you mean, catch it earlier?” Spittle flew and sprinkled his forehead in a saliva shower. I had now reached a full-on Screeching Fit, forcing Dr. K to retreat until his back hit the wall. “She came in here six months ago! Your tests took that long to run! Are you telling me she’s dying because you people couldn’t get a test done?”
The doctor’s hand snaked into his lab coat, and he fumbled with something there. Too late, I realized it was an alarm button. The door slammed open from the outside, pinning Dr. K behind it, and two HSA goons in riot helmets invaded the room, carrying stun rods. Their rush threw me back against Chelle, who tried to grab me, but I had too much momentum. I crashed to the floor, upsetting a bedpan and a bottle of tongue depressors from the side table.
“What’s the problem here?” said Goon One. I recognized my friend from outside at the same moment he recognized me. “Oh. You.”
Things got hazy for me after that.
Later, I vaguely recalled jumping up and wang-chunging the living shit out of both cops, the doctor, and the bitch out front. My Frenzied Ferret Fu was strong. I dropped Goon One with the old classic, Drop-Kick to Nuts, followed by Spinning Bedpan and Dragon Tongue Depressor to the Throat. I chucked Goon Two through the wall using a combination of Gassy Tornado and High Karate Chop to the Spleen. I beat Dr. K senseless with his stethoscope.
On Cherise, I used a flamethrower. No sense getting too close to the dragon in her lair. Stand off and nuke ’em from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure.
Later, Chelle shook her head and told me, “It didn’t happen that way at all. Joe, they beat you like cake batter.”