Harlan Ellison - Paingod and Other Delusions

Bergman’s deep blue-black eyes narrowed. What was this? Was this filthy woman trying to get him to attend at her home? Was this perhaps a trap set up by Calkins and the Hospital Board? “What do you want , woman?” he demanded, edging away.

“Ya gotta come over ta see Charlie. He’s dyin’, Doctor, he’s dyin’! He just lays there twitchin’, and evertime I touch him he jumps and starts throwin’ his arms round and doublin’ over an’ everything!” Her eyes were wide with the fright of memory, and her mouth shaped the words hurriedly, as though she knew she must get them out before the mouth used itself to scream.

The doctor’s angry thoughts, suspicious thoughts, cut off instantly, and another part of his nature took command. Clinical attention centered on the malady the woman was describing.

“… an’ he keeps grinnin’ , Doctor, grinnin’ like he was dead and everything was funny or somethin’! That’s the worst of all … I can’t stand ta see him that way, Doctor. Please … please … ya gotta help me. Help Charlie, Doc, he’s dyin’. We been tagether five years an’ ya gotta … gotta … do … somethin’ …” She broke into convulsive weeping, her faded eyes pleading with him, her knife-edged shoulders heaving jerkily within the jumpette.

My God , thought Bergman, she’s describing tetanus! And a badly advanced case to have produced spasms and risus sardonicus. Good Lord, why doesn’t she get him to the hospital? He’ll be dead in a day if she doesn’t. Aloud, he said, still suspicious, “Why did you wait so long? Why didn’t you take him to the hospital?” He jerked his thumb at the lighted block across the street.

All his earlier anger, plus the innate exasperation of a doctor confronted with seemingly callous disregard for the needs of a sick man, came out in the questions. Exploded. The old woman drew back, eyes terrified, seamed face drawn up in an expression of beatenness. The force of him confused her.

“I — I couldn’t take him there, Doc. I just couldn’t! Charlie wouldn’t let me, anyhow. He said, last thing before he started twitchin’, he said, don’t take me over there to that hospital, Katie, with them metal things in there, promise me ya won’t. So I hadda promise him, Doc, and ya gotta come ta see him — he’s dyin’, Doc, ya gotta help us, he’s dyin’! ”

She was close up to him, clutching at the lapels of his jumper with wrinkled hands; impossibly screaming in a hoarse whisper. The raw emotion of her appeal struck Bergman almost physically. He staggered back from her, her breath of garlic and the slums enfolding him. She pressed up again, clawing at him with great sobs and pleas.

Bergman was becoming panicky. If a robocop should see the old woman talking to him, it might register his name, and that would be his end at Memorial. They’d have him tagged for home-practitioning, even if it wasn’t true. How could he possibly attend this woman’s man? It would be the end of his stunted career. The regulations swam before his eyes, and he knew what they meant. He’d be finished. And what if this was a trap?

But tetanus!

(The terrifying picture of a man in the last stages of lockjaw came to him. The contorted body, wound up on itself as though the limbs were made of rubber; the horrible face, mouth muscles drawn back and down in the characteristic death-grin called risus sardonicus; every inch of the nervous system affected. A slamming door, a touch, a cough, was enough to send the stricken man into ghastly gyrations and convulsions. Till finally the affliction attacked the chest muscles, and he strangled horribly. Dead … wound up like a snake, frothing … dead.)

But to be thrown out of the hospital. He couldn’t take the chance. Almost without realizing it, the words came out: “Get away from me, woman; if the robocops see you, they’ll arrest us both. Get away … and don’t try approaching a doctor like this again! Or I’ll see that you’re run in myself. Now get away. If you need medical aid, go to the phymechs at the hospital. They’re free and better than any human!” The words sounded tinny in his ears.

The old woman fell back, light from the illumepost casting faint, weird shadows across the lined planes of her face. Her lips drew back from her teeth, many of them rotting or missing.

She snorted, “We’d rather die than go to them creations of the devil! We don’t have no truck with them things … we thought you was still doctors to help the poor … but you ain’t!” She turned and started to slip away into the darkness.

Faintly, before the rustle of her footsteps were gone, Stuart Bergman heard the sob that escaped her. It was filled with a wild desperation and the horror of seeing death in the mist, waiting for her and the man she loved.

Then, ever more faintly …

“Damn you forever!”

Abruptly, the tension of the past months, the inner horror at what he had almost done to the blue-eyed girl earlier, the fight and sorrow within him, mounted to a peak. He felt drained, and knew if he was to be deprived of his heritage, he would lose it the right way. He was a doctor, and a man needed attention.

He took a step after her dim shape in the rain.

“Wait, I …”

And knowing he was sealing his own doom, he let her stop, watched the hope that swam up in her eyes, and said, “I — I’m sorry. I’m very tired. But take me to your man. I’ll be able to help him.”

She didn’t say thank you. But he knew it was there if he wanted it. They moved off together, and the watcher followed on silent treads.

The forever stink of Slobtown assaulted Bergman the moment they passed the invisible boundary. There was no “other side of the tracks” that separated Slobtown’s squalor from the lower middle-class huts of the city, but somehow there was no mistaking the transition.

They passed from cleanliness into the Inferno, with one step.

Shadows deepened, sounds muffled, and the flickering neon of outdated saloon signs glared at them from the darkness. Bergman followed stolidly, and the woman led with resignation. She had a feeling the trip would be in vain. Charlie had been close to the edge when she had left, and this doctor’s coming was an unexpected miracle. But still, Charlie had been so close, so close …

They threaded close to buildings, stepping wide around blacker alley mouths and empty lots. From time to time they heard the footpad of muggers and wineheads keeping pace with them, but when the noises became too apparent, the woman hissed into the darkness, “Geddaway from here! I’m Charlie Kickback’s woman, an’ I got a croaker fer Charlie!” Then the sounds would fall behind.

All but the metal follower, whom no one saw.

The raw sounds of filthy music spurted out of the swing doors of a saloon, as they passed, and were followed almost immediately by a body. The man was thrown past the building, and landed in a twisted heap in the dirty gutter. He lay twitching, and for an instant Bergman considered tending to him; but two things stopped him.

The woman dragged him by his sleeve, and the gutter-resident flopped over onto his back, bubbling, and began mouthing an incomprehensible melody with indecipherable words.

They moved past. A block further along, Bergman saw the battered remains of a robocop, lying up against a tenement. He nodded toward it, and in the dusk Charlie Kickback’s woman shrugged. “Every stiff comes in here takes his chances, even them devil’s tinkertoys.”

They kept moving, and Bergman realized he had much more to fear than merely being deprived of his license. He could be attacked and killed down here. He had a wallet with nearly three hundred credits in it, and they’d mugged men down here for much less than that, he was sure.