Night of the Animals(7)
“What makes them innocent?”
“They trust us,” said Cuthbert. “They oughtn’t.”
Dr. Bajwa started on the desk with his finger, making tiny circles. Then he began tapping powerfully—hammering, really.
“This is only your brain—and the Flōt.” Tap, tap, tap. “You need to be careful . . . about what you say. You understand?”
“I try to be careful,” said Cuthbert. “But the animals are speaking to me . . . for a reason. It’s something I’ve waited for my whole life. This was supposed to happen, see?”
The doctor’s knowledge of what could happen to Cuthbert in the clutches of NHS’s mass psychotherapeutic division, EquiPoise, made it hard to give him the space he needed to talk freely. He feared openness. Even very casual talk therapy was considered a luxury reserved for the new aristocracy. EquiPoise’s Psyalleviators, or P-levs, whose official role was to battle the era’s viral cults and political radicals on behalf of the king, had convoluted the simplest rites of doctorly care among the masses.
There were smaller, new nuisances in Dr. Bajwa’s life, too. Unusually, lately, he felt easily winded and kept getting bronchitis; his boyfriends kept dumping him for blue-eyed English boys; his family criticized him for not “aspiring” enough; his friends were all moving to the controversial new colonies in Antarctica. But the way Harry9’s government had come between him and his patients—this, more than any other problem in his life, incensed him. Stunningly, despite all the cruelties Indigents such as Cuthbert suffered under Harry9, Cuthbert himself—and he wasn’t alone among Indigents—held the monarchy in the highest regard, and he could be quite jingoistic.
“There’s not one thing on earth that’s not better in England,” he would sometimes slur at Baj. “We’ve got the best cats—and best football. And good ’ole Harry’s the best of all the bloody bunch.”
Such statements quietly infuriated Baj, yet something about Cuthbert’s blend of good-heartedness, reactionary nationalism, and almost artistic grandiosity also, despite his knowing better, mesmerized him. He wanted to understand it.
The doctor one day had looked up from his antique linen-paper notebook and smiled purposefully at Cuthbert in the consultation room.
“O-T-T-E-R-S,” said Baj aloud, writing each letter with a strong hand in black ink with a big gold-plated fountain pen. The pen was inscribed with Sanskrit script that translated as, “Only action will define us.” Unlike most of his colleagues, few of whom knew how to use a pen, he loathed the trendy SkinWerks digital aerosols that let one write and read on the skin.
“Why otters? Why them?”
Cuthbert looked askance. “They’re . . . very godly creatures, too. Do you want to know why?”
“Yes, I do.” Bajwa tried to speak in a friendly but resolved tone, but a trace of irritability crept in. “I certainly do. Now wait just a moment . . .”
He took his stethoscope from his desk drawer.
“Let me,” he said, unbuttoning the top of Cuthbert’s shirt and deftly, with two fingers, holding the stethoscope’s diaphragm against Cuthbert’s chest. He heard the tattered hwoot-dub hwoot-dub of his murmur. The fact was, the fat old man—six foot four and twenty-two stone—could drop dead at any moment.
“Your cardiomyopathy’s not any worse,” the doctor said. “But you need to take it easy.” He put the stethoscope back in the top drawer of his desk. There were at least two newer cardiac CoreMods? available for Cuthbert’s type of enlargement, but both were strictly NHS Legacy items, or one had to pay millions on the private mod market.
Thirty years before, Cuthbert had won, through the old BodyMod? lottery, two lower-cost mods—a cheap ventricle wall panel on his heart and a onetime infusion of pluripotent hepatocytal cells for his liver. He’d also managed, in his early eighties, to get his hands on a spool of crylon body-mesh and a used set of EverConnectors, sized 2XL, and this set had come with cartilage drugs, too, as well as free installation.
“The otters,” said Cuthbert. “They have a message—for all of England.”
“It’s your brain,” he said. “Just your brain. But if you can’t stop spiring* and get through the first withdrawal—listen, Cuddy—you know, it’s a kind place, and they’re brilliant and they’re discreet, Cuddy.” He frowned slightly. “They’ll keep you well away from EquiPoise. There’s a simple and deadly health issue here, my good friend.”
“Oh, Jaysus,” said Cuthbert. “I should’ve kept my gob shut. Not Whittington. I’ve said too bloody much!”
It was at this point that Dr. Bajwa reached across his desk, took Cuthbert’s hands in his, and gave them a firm, tender squeeze. He leaned so far forward that one of the armpits of his blue suit jacket made a little ripping sound.
Cuthbert beamed at him, although his dry lips quivered a bit.
“No, you have most certainly not told me too much,” said the doctor. He felt as if he wanted to reach through a dark blue shell of pathology and grab the great, derelict heart before him. “You must trust me. There’s nothing wrong with Whittington Hospital. But you . . . are . . . very . . . unwell, my friend.”
“You are very decent, sir,” Cuthbert pronounced. “But let go ’o me maulers,” he said, pulling his hands back fiercely. Cuthbert couldn’t remember the last time anyone had held his hands. The doctor’s grip was colder than he’d imagined. Cuthbert could smell the figgy notes of his Diptyque cologne.