Duma Key(119)

When I returned to the exam room, the nurse was gone. She had left a folder with my name on it. Beside the folder was a red pen. My stump gave a twinge. Without thinking about what I was doing, I took the pen and put it in my pants pocket. There was a blue Bic clipped to my shirt pocket. I took it out and put it where the red pen had been lying.

And what are you going to say when she comes back? I asked myself. That the Pen Fairy came in and decided to make a swap?

Before I could answer that question or consider why I had stolen the red pen to begin with Gene Hadlock came in and offered his hand. His left hand... which in my case was the right one. I found I liked him quite a lot better when he was divorced from Principe, the goateed neurologist. He was about sixty, a little on the pudgy side, with a white mustache of the toothbrush variety and a pleasant examining-table manner. He had me strip down to my shorts and examined my right leg and side at some length. He prodded me in several places, enquiring about the level of pain. He asked me what I was taking for painkillers and seemed surprised when I told him I was getting by on aspirin.

"I'm going to examine your stump," he said. "That all right?"

"Yes. Just take it easy."

"I'll do my best."

I sat with my left hand resting on my bare left thigh, looking at the eye-chart as he grasped my shoulder with one hand and cupped my stump in the other. The seventh line on the chart looked like AGODSED. A god said what? I wondered.

From somewhere, very distant, I felt faint pressure. "Hurt?"

"No."

"Okay. No, don't look down, just keep looking straight ahead. Do you feel my hand?"

"Uh- huh. Way off. Pressure." But no twinge. Why would there be? The arm that was no longer there had wanted the pen, and the pen was in my pocket, so now the arm was asleep again.

"And how about this, Edgar? May I call you Edgar?"

"Anything but late to dinner. The same. Pressure. Faint."

"Now you can look."

I looked. One hand was still on my shoulder, but the other was at his side. Nowhere near the stump. "Oops."

"Not at all, phantom sensations in the stump of a limb are normal. I'm just surprised at the rate of healing. And the lack of pain. I squeezed pretty darn hard to begin with. This is all good." He cupped the stump again and pushed upward. "Does that give pain?"

It did a dull, low sparkle, vaguely hot. "A little," I said.

"If it didn't I'd be worried." He let go. "Look at the eye-chart again, all right?"

I did as he asked, and decided that all-important seventh line was AGOCSEO. Which made more sense because it made no sense.

"How many fingers am I touching you with, Edgar?"

"Don't know." It didn't feel like he was touching me at all.

"Now?"

"Don't know."

"And now."

"Three." He was almost up to my collarbone. And I had an idea crazy but very strong that I would have been able to feel his fingers everywhere on the stump if I'd been in one of my painting frenzies. In fact, I would have been able to feel his fingers in the air below the stump. And I think he would have been able to feel me... which would no doubt have caused the good doctor to run screaming from the room.

He went on first to my leg, then my head. He listened to my heart, looked into my eyes, and did a bunch of other doctorly things. When he'd exhausted most of the possibilities, he told me to get dressed and meet him at the end of the hall.

This turned out to be a pleasantly littered little office. Hadlock sat behind the desk and leaned back in his chair. There were pictures on one wall. Some, I assumed, were of the doctor's family, but there were also shots of him shaking hands with George Bush the First and Maury Povich (intellectual equals, in my book), and one of him with an amazingly vigorous and pretty Elizabeth Eastlake. They were holding tennis rackets, and I recognized the court. It was the one at El Palacio.

"I imagine you'd like to get back to Duma and get off that hip, wouldn't you?" Hadlock asked. "Must hurt by this time of the day, and I bet it's all three witches from Macbeth when the weather's damp. If you want a prescription for Percocet or Vicodin-"

"No, I'm fine with the aspirin," I said. I'd labored to get off the hard stuff and wasn't going back on it at this point, pain or no pain.

"Your recovery is remarkable," Hadlock said. "I don't think you need me to tell you how lucky you are not to be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life, very likely steering yourself around by blowing into a straw."

"I'm lucky to be alive at all," I said. "Can I can assume you didn't find anything dire?"

"Pending blood and urine, I'd say you're good to go. I'm happy to order X-rays on your rightside injuries and your head, if you've got symptoms that concern you, but-"

"I don't." I had symptoms, and they concerned me, but I didn't think X-rays would pinpoint the cause. Or causes.

He nodded. "The reason I went over your stump so carefully was because you don't wear a prosthesis. I thought you might be experiencing tenderness. Or there might be signs of infection. But all seems well."

"I guess I'm just not ready."

"That's fine. More than fine. Considering the work you're doing, I'd have to say 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' applies here. Your paintings... remarkable. I can't wait to see them on display at the Scoto. I'm bringing my wife. She's very excited."