[Cont. from prev. post]
“Didn’t we go downhill skiing here recently?” I ask my herd of cows, as we try to avoid tumbling off the sledge while it’s navigating a particularly turbulent stretch of this rocky environment.
“She and I did,” the two cows who joined me on that earlier skiing expedition answer cheerfully, simultaneously and telepathically.
Now our sledge arrives at the first destination on my housecall list. I climb off and go slam the door-knocker.
A mechanical butler answers in a flat voice: “Nobody’s home.”
I explain that I’m the country doctor and that I know with a surety that a woman is currently in labor, because she requested that I hasten to deliver the child. “Therefore,” I beg the butler, “please let me in the house so I can do my job and move on — I have many more patients on my list.” Then I hold up my patient list and shake it.
“OK: enter,” sez the butler-bot, flatly. (I sneakily flip his power switch to “Off” as we pass behind him in the hallway.)
“Oh! So many cows! I didn’t expect THAT!” sez the pregnant housewife.
“These are my friends,” I explain with a bow; “I hope you will allow them to observe the proceedings — they are studying medicine, in hopes of…”
“No more words,” sez the woman; “I’m in pain, and I’d rather get this over with. The cows can stay. I love cows.”
“Okie dokie,” I smile.
Then I proceed to deliver the baby: it slips out like a stick of butter from a dairy dispenser, so fast that I don’t even check its gender; and we move on to the next patient.
II
Bob is a little boy who belongs to Tom and Jen. This second housecall transpires as follows. I arrive with my cows on the sledge a couple hours too late. Tom and Jen are waiting outside their front door to shoo me away:
“He’s gone already,” they cry; “you might as well continue to the next patient on your list — spare someone else the trauma of experiencing the death of a loved one.”
“Wait,” I shout with severe authority. “I’m the doctor here. I’ll be the one who determines when a case is hopeless. Let me see the culprit. Or the patient, rather.”
So they reluctantly allow me to enter their house, and Bob’s parents Tom and Jen tiptoe down the hallway while continuously motioning for me to follow after them and making the “Shh!” sign with their fingers to their lips, until we reach Bob’s bedroom. There we see Bob, lying on his bed with his face entirely green.
“Why is his face glowing neon and flickering like that?” I ask, beginning to quiver with anxiety.
“Because he is sick,” reply the parents in unison. “At least he WAS sick; for he is dead forever, now.”
“He is NOT dead,” I say; “take that back.” Then, when the couple refuses to retract their diagnosis, I grab a small mirror from the mother’s purse and say: “Jen, come here, follow me; I hope you don’t mind that I pickpocketed your mirror for this purpose — now look: When I hold the glass before the green lips of your glowing son, its surface fogs up. This means that your baby boy Bob’s breath is scandalously moist. My guess is that he’s hydrated — that’s a huge problem. What we men of science ideally would like to see from a vanity mirror is nothing at all: no fog, no reflection. For that would indicate that one possesses eternal life: Do you see how I myself remain imageless in the mirror, and no matter how hard I breathe on its surface, no moisture accumulates? Huh. Huh.” (I breathe very huskily twice at the mirror, to prove this point,) “look at that — it’s clear as a bell. The secret is that my breath has more vodka than water inside its atomic number. This should be easy to keep in mind, in times of trouble — just remember the legend: Water for mermaids; Air for angels; Spirits for humans.”
Suddenly Bob wakes up and looks normal again, tho slightly on the pale side, after his skin’s radioactive hue drained away because I siphoned his blood into a canister labeled “Absinthe” which I now toss into my attaché case.
“Good boy, Bob,” I say. “No more green fog.”
Then Bob’s parents spend the rest of the next week and the following months trying to find their now-healthy child some form of gainful employment. For Bob was born into a family of wage laborers, who must sell their time for pay.
“On account of the cost of this medical procedure, which shall leave us in poverty, it would have been better if our son had remained deceased,” whisper the parents to me while we settle up my bill at the door.
I accept all the banknotes of their life’s savings which they retrieve from beneath their mattress, and I reply: “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Then Bob’s parents Tom and Jen say: “No, it’s not your fault; you’re just doing your job.”
“True, true,” I say. Then I leave.
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