Thomas Sherred - Cue for Quiet

Poor Stein was wailing aloud. "Pete, you can't do this! Don't you know who Doctor Kellner is?"

"One big healthy pain!" I snapped at him. "Does he know who I am? I'm Pete Miller, Mister Miller to him or to anyone but my friends. I want my pants!"

Stein wrung his hands and slowed me down as much as I would let him. "You just can't get up and walk out like that!"

"Oh, no?" I came to a full stop and leered at him. "Who's going to stop me?"

That's the trouble with the doctors and lawyers and technical boys; they're so used to talking over people's heads they can't answer a civil question in less than forty syllables. Keep all the secrets in the trade. Write it in Latin, keep the patient in the dark, pat his head and tell him papa knows best.

When Kellner caught up with us he had help. "Here, here, my man. Where do you think you are going?"

I wished he was my age and forty pounds heavier. "Me? I'm getting out of here. And I'm not your man and I never will be. When you can admit that, and not act like I'm a set of chalkmarks on a blackboard, send me a letter and tell me about it. One side, dogface!"

One big fellow, just the right size, puffed out his cheeks. "Just whom do you think you are addressing?"

Whom. I looked him over. I never did like people who wore van Dyke goatees. I put whom and van Dyke on the floor. It was a good Donnybrook while it lasted. The last thing I remember was the gong in the next room clanging steadily while Stein, good old Stein, right in there beside me was swinging and yelling, "Don't hurt him! Don't hurt him!"

I woke up with another headache. When I sat up with a grunt and looked around I saw Stein and his nose four inches from a mirror, gingerly trying his tongue against his front teeth. I snickered. He didn't like that, and turned around.

"You don't look so hot yourself."

He was right. I couldn't see much out of my left eye. We grinned at each other. "Right in there pitching, weren't you?"

He shrugged. "What did you expect me to do?"

"Run for help," I told him. "Or stand there and watch me get a going over."

"Sure." He looked uncomfortable. "I'm supposed to keep an eye on you."

"So you did." I thought back. "What happened to Whom when I addressed him properly?"

It must have hurt his cheek when he tried to smile. "Still out, at last report. You know, Pete, you have a fairly good left-and a lousy temper."

I knew that. "I just got tired of getting pushed around. Besides, with no pants I was stuck to that chair."

"Probably." His tongue pushed gently against his sore lip. "You think that was the right way to go about making things better?"

Maybe not. But did he have any better ideas?

He wasn't sure, but he didn't think a laboratory was just the right place for a brawl.

"Just why I started it. Now what?"

He didn't know that either. "Kellner is having hysterics, and I just made some phone calls."

If the Old Man showed up I had some nice words ready to use. "Now we might get some action."

Stein gave me a sour look. "Not necessarily the kind you'll like. I'll be back after I try to talk some sense into Kellner."

"Hey!" I yelled after him. "Where's my pants?"

"Back in a few minutes," he tossed over his shoulder; "make yourself comfortable," and he left.

Comfortable with a cot and a mirror and a washbowl. I washed my face and lay on the cot with a washrag soaked in cold water on my throbbing eye. I must have dozed off. When I woke the Old Man was standing over me. I sat up and the rag fell off my eye.

"What's cooking, Bossman?"

I don't think his frown was completely genuine. "You, apparently."

I swung my legs over the edge of the cot and stretched. "Have a seat and a cigarette."

He sat down beside me and reached for his lighter. "Peter, I wish-"

I cut in on him. "Item one, I want my pants."

He gestured impatiently. "You'll get them. Now-"

"I said, I want my pants."

He began to get annoyed. "I told you-"

"And I told you I want my pants. I don't want them later or in a while; I want my pants and I want them now."

He sat back and looked at me. "What's all this?"

I let fly. "For the record, I want my pants. I'm certainly no patient in this morgue, and I'm not going to be treated like one, so whatever you or anyone else has got to say to me is not going to be while I'm as bare as a baby. My mind's made up," and I scrunched together ungracefully on the little space that remained on my end of the cot and pulled the sheet over my head. Kid stuff, and we both knew it.

He didn't say anything, although I could feel his eyes boring through the flimsy sheet, and I lay there until I felt the springs creak as he got up and I could hear his footsteps retreating. When he came back with my clothes over his arm I was sitting up. While I was dressing he tried to talk to me, but I would have none of it.

When I was dressed I said, "Now, you were saying-?"

I drew a long speculative stare. "Peter, what's eating you?"

I told him. "I just got tired of being shoved around. With the physical exam over with you give me one reason why I should sit around in my bare hide. Am I a machine? My name's Miller, not the Patient in Cell Two."

He thought he was being reasonable. "And you think you get results by knocking around people that are trying to help you?"

"With some people, you do. I tried talking, and that didn't work. I got action my way, didn't I?"

He sighed. "Action, yes. Do you know what Kellner said?"

"Not interested. Whatever he's got to say to me is going to have a please in front and a thank you after."

Wearily, "Peter, must you always act like a child?"

"No, I don't," I blazed at him. "But I'm damn well going to. I'm free, white and a citizen, and I'm going to be treated like one, and not a side-show freak!"

"Now, now," he soothed. "Doctor Kellner is a very famous and a very busy man. He might not have realized-"

"Realize your hat! He's so used to living in the clouds he thinks the world is one big moron. Well, I may be one, but no one is going to tell me I am!"

"I see your point," and he stood up. "But you try to be a little more cooperative. I'll see Kellner now," and he started out.

"Cooperative?" I bellowed at his back. "What do you think I've been doing? What do you-"

He must have read the riot act. When they took me in to Kellner and his crew it was "please, Mr. Miller" and "thank you, Mr. Miller." The place didn't seem so cold and bare so long as I had my pants. I didn't see Whom and his van Dyke, but I hoped it was the tile floor and not me that gave him the concussion.

The rest of the tests, you can imagine, were almost anticlimactic. I stopped motors, blew tubes, turned lights off and on, rang bells and cooked the insulation on yards and yards of wire. My head they kept connected with taped terminals and every time I blew a fuse or a motor they would see the dials spin crazily. Then they would stand around clucking and chattering desperately. They took X-rays by the score, hoping to find something wrong with the shape of my head, and for all the results they got, might have been using a Brownie on a cue ball. Then they'd back off to the corner and sulk. One little bearded rascal, in particular, to this day is certain that Kellner was risking his life in getting within ten feet. He never turned his back on me that I recall; he sidled around, afraid I would set his watch to running backwards. You know, one of the funniest and yet one of the most pathetic things in the world is the spectacle of someone who has spent his life in mastering a subject, only to find that he has built a sled without runners. Long before we were finished I thought Kellner, for one, was going to eat his tie, stripes and all. Running around in ever-widening circles they were, like coon dogs after a scent. They didn't get a smell. The medico who ran the electro-cardiograph refused to make sense, after the fifth trials, out of the wiggly marks on his graphs.