Graham Masterton: The Manitou

"That may be caused by movements of the neck. But we can't really tell until we see the X-rays."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, with the noises of the hospital leaking faintly from the building all around them. Dr. Hughes felt cold and weary, and wondered when he was going to get home. He had been up until two a.m. last night, dealing with files and statistics, and it looked as though he was going to be just as late tonight. He sniffed, and stared at his scuffy brown shoe on the carpet.

After five or six minutes, the office door opened and the radiologist came in with a large brown envelope. She was a tall negress with short-cut hair and no sense of humor at all.

"What do you make of them, Selena?" asked Dr. McEvoy, taking the envelope across the room to his light-box.

"I'm not sure at all, Dr. McEvoy. It's clear enough, but it doesn't make any kind of sense."

Dr. McEvoy took out the black X-ray film and clipped it up. He switched on the light, and they had a view of the back of Miss Tandy's skull, from the side. There was the tumor, all right — a large shadowy lump. But inside it, instead of the normal fibrous growth, there seemed to be a small tangled knot of tissue and bone.

"See here," said Dr. McEvoy, pointing with his ballpoint. "There seem to be roots of some kind, bony roots, holding the inside of the tumor against the neck. Now what the hell do you think that is?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," said Dr. Hughes. "I've never seen anything remotely like this before. It doesn't seem like a tumor at all."

Dr. McEvoy shrugged. "Okay, it's not a tumor. So what is it?"

Dr. Hughes peered closely at the X-ray. The little knot of tissue and bone was too formless and mixed-up to make any sense out of it. There was only one thing to do, and that was to operate. Cut it out, and examine it in the open. And at the rate it was growing, that operation had better be done quickly.

Dr. Hughes picked up the telephone on Dr. McEvoy's desk. "Mary? Listen I'm still down here with Dr. McEvoy. Would you see how soon Dr. Snaith has a space available for surgery? I have something here that needs urgent attention. That's right. Yes, a tumor. But it's very malignant, and there might be problems if we don't operate fast. That's it. Thanks."

"Malignant?" said Dr. McEvoy. "How do we know it's malignant?"

Dr. Hughes shook his head. "We don't know, but until we find out whether it's dangerous or harmless, I'm going to treat it as dangerous."

"I just wish I knew what the hell it was," said Dr. McEvoy gloomily. "I've been right through the medical dictionary, and there just isn't anything like it."

Dr. Hughes grinned tiredly. "Maybe it's a new disease. Maybe they'll name it after you. McEvoy's Malady. Fame at last. You always wanted to be famous, didn't you?"

"Right now I'd settle for a cup of coffee and a hot beef sandwich. The Nobel Prize I can have any time."

The phone bleeped. Dr. Hughes picked it up. "Mary? Oh, right. Okay, that's fine. Yes, that'll do fine. Tell Dr. Snaith thank you."

"He's free?" asked Dr. McEvoy. "Tomorrow morning, ten a.m. I better go and tell Miss Tandy."

Dr. Hughes pushed through the double doors into the waiting room, and Miss Tandy was still sitting there, halfway through another cigarette, and staring, without seeing, at the open magazine on her lap.

"Miss Tandy?"

She looked up quickly. "Oh, yes," she said. Dr. Hughes drew up a chair and sat down next to her with his hands clasped in front of him. He tried to look serious and steady and reliable, to calm her obvious fright, but he was so tired that he didn't succeed in looking anything but morbid.

"Listen, Miss Tandy, I think we'll have to operate. It doesn't look as though this swelling is anything to worry about, but at the rate it's been growing, I'd like to see it removed as soon as possible, and I guess you would too."

She raised her hand toward the back of her neck, then dropped it and nodded. "I understand. Of course."

"If you can be here by eight o'clock tomorrow morning, I'll have Dr. Snaith remove it for you around ten. Dr. Snaith is a very fine surgeon, and he has years of experience with tumors like yours." Miss Tandy attempted to smile. "That's very kind of you. Thank you."

Dr. Hughes shrugged. "Don't thank me. I'm only doing my job. But, listen I don't think you have anything to worry about. I won't pretend that your condition is not unusual, because it is. But part of our profession is dealing with unusual conditions. You've come to the right place."

Miss Tandy stubbed out her cigarette and gathered her things together.

"Will I need anything special?" she asked. "A couple of nightdresses, I suppose, and a wrap?"

Dr. Hughes nodded. "Bring some slippers, too. You're not going to be exactly bedridden."

"Okay," she said, and Dr. Hughes showed her out. He watched her walk quickly down the corridor to the elevator, and he thought how slim and young and elf-like she looked. He wasn't one of those specialists who thought of his patients in terms of their condition and nothing else — not like Dr. Pawson, the lung specialist, who could remember individual ailments long after he'd forgotten the faces that went with them. Life is more than an endless parade of lumps and bumps, thought Dr. Hughes. At least I hope it is.

He was still standing in the corridor when Dr. McEvoy poked his moonlike face round the door.

"Dr. Hughes?"

"Yes?"

"Come inside a moment, take a look at this." He followed Dr. McEvoy tiredly into his office.

While he had been talking to Miss Tandy, Dr. McEvoy had been looking through his medical reference books, and there were diagrams and X-rays strewn around all over his desk.

"You found something?" asked Dr. Hughes. "I don't know. It seems to be as ridiculous as anything else in this case."

Dr. McEvoy handed him a heavy textbook, opened at a page covered with charts and diagrams. Dr. Hughes frowned, and examined them carefully, and then he went over to the light-box and peered at the pictures of Miss Tandy's skull again.

"That's crazy," he said.

Dr. McEvoy stood there with his hands on his hips and nodded. "You're quite right. It is crazy. But you have to admit, it looks pretty much like it."

Dr. Hughes shut the book. "But even if you're right — in two days?"

"Well, if this is possible, anything is possible."

"If this is possible, the Red Sox will win the next series."

The two pale doctors stood in their office on the fifteenth floor of the hospital and looked at the X-rays and just didn't know what to say next. "Perhaps it's a hoax?" said Dr. McEvoy. Dr. Hughes shook his head. "No way. How could it be? And what for?"

"I don't know. People dream up hoaxes for all kinds of reasons."

"Can you think of a reason for this?" Dr. McEvoy grimaced. "Can you believe it's real?"

"I don't know," replied Dr. Hughes. "Maybe it is.

Maybe it's the one case in a million that's really real."

They opened the book again, and studied the X-ray again, and the more they compared the diagrams with Miss Tandy's tumor, the more resemblance they discovered.

According to Clinical Gynaecology, the knot of tissue and bone that Miss Tandy was harboring in the back of her neck was a human fetus, of a size that suggested it was about eight weeks old.

If you think it's an easy life being a mystic, you ought to try telling fifteen fortunes a day, at $25 a time, and then see whether you're quite so keen on it.

At the same moment that Karen Tandy was consulting Dr. Hughes and Dr. McEvoy at the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital, I was giving old Mrs. Winconis a quick tour of her immediate prospects with the help of the Tarot cards.