F. Paul Wilson - The Touch

"After I examine you, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind." He put them away. "Anyway, I made a deal: Keep me comfortable and out of pain." He lowered his voice. "And grease the chute on the way out when the time comes, if you know what I mean. Do that and I'll let you study me and the effects of all this cancer. So they're gonna keep giving me tests to see what happens to my mental function, my moods, my—what they call it? Oh, yeah—motor skills. All that shit. Never did much with my life these last fifty-two years. Figure I can do something on the way out. Man's gotta be good for something sometime in his life, ain't he?"

Alan stared at Mr. K. He was either one of the bravest men he had ever met or a complete idiot.

"But you know all this already," Mr. K said. "Don't you?"

"I like to find things out on my own. But tell me. If for some reason your tumors just disappeared and you walked out of here a healthy man, what would be the first thing you'd do?"

Mr. K winked at him. "Quit smoking!"

Alan laughed. "Good enough. Let's take a look at you."

He placed a hand on each side of Mr. K's head. There was no waiting. The shocklike ecstasy surged through him. He saw Mr. K's eyes widen, then they rolled upward as he went into a brief grand mal seizure.

Axford rushed into the room.

"What in bloody hell did you do to him?"

"Healed him," Alan said. "Isn't that what you wanted?" It was time to wipe that smug, superior look off Axford's face.

"You son of a bitch!"

"He's all right."

"I'm fine," Mr. K said from the floor. "What happened?"

"You had a seizure," Axford said.

"If you say so." He brushed off Axford's attempt to make him lie still, and got to his feet. "Didn't feel a thing."

"Check him out tomorrow," Alan said, feeling more confident of the Touch than ever before. "He's cured."

"Tomorrow, hell!" Axford said, leading Mr. K to the door. "I'm hauling in the on-call techs right now! We'll see what a chest X ray, EEG, and CT scan have to say tonight!"

___36.___

Charles

It's a mistake! It's got to be!

Charles sat before the light boxes, staring at the chest X ray. The PA view on his left was two months old; it showed an irregular white blotch in the right hilar area, a mass of cancerous tissue. The view in the middle had been shot a week ago; the mass was larger, with tendrils reaching out into the uninvolved lung tissue, the hilum swollen with enlarged lymph nodes. The third film, to the right, was still warm from the developer.

It was normal. Completely clean. Even the emphysema and fibrosis were gone.

They're having me on ! Charles told himself. They're pissed at being called in at night so they've stuck in a ringer to give me a scare !

He checked the name and date on the third film: Jake Knopf—known to Bulmer as Mr. K—and today's date were printed in the upper right corner. Then he checked the film again and noticed an irregularity of the left clavicle in the third film—an old fracture that had healed at a sharper than normal angle. A glance at the other two studies almost froze his blood—the same clavicle abnormality was in all three!

"Wait a minute now," he said to himself in a gentle tone.

"Just wait a minute. No use getting your knickers in a twist just yet. There's got to be an explanation."

"Did you say something, Doctor?" a voice said from behind him.

Charles swiveled his chair around. Two men, one blond, one dark haired, both in white lab coats that were tight across their shoulders, stood inside the door.

"Who are you?"

"We're your new assistants."

Assistants, my ass ! These two were goons. He recognized one of them from the senator's personal security team.

"The hell you are. I don't need any assistants and didn't ask for any."

The blond fellow shrugged. "This is where we've been assigned. This is where we'll stay. Personally, I'd rather be out on the town, but the orders came straight from the senator's office."

"We'll see about that." He jabbed at the intercom. Here he was, faced with the most astounding puzzle of his medical career, and he had to put up with interference from McCready. "Marnie—get me the senator. Now." He was glad he had had her stay tonight; it would save him the trouble of tracking McCready down.

"Uh, Dr. Axford?" she said, uncertainly. "He's already on the line. He called about a minute ago and said you'd be calling him very shortly and he'd hold until you did."

Despite his anger, Charles had to laugh. That sly bastard!

"He's on 06, Doctor," Marnie said.

"Right." He picked up the handset.

"I was expecting your call," McCready said without preamble. "Here's why I must insist on Henly and Rossi staying with you: You are aware no doubt of Dr. Bulmer's penchant for publicity; I want to make sure that none of his test results leak out until you are completely finished. I will not have him use the Foundation and some inconclusive data as a springboard to greater heights of notoriety. And I won't have any of the staff tempted into leaking some of these results to the outside.

"Therefore, Henly and Rossi will be on hand to see that all—and I do mean all —records of Dr. Bulmer's stay remain locked in your office files until you and the Foundation are ready to issue a statement."

"You really think all this is necessary?"

"I do. And I ask you to cooperate with me."

Charles thought a moment. It would be a pain in the ass to have these two characters traipsing around after him, but if all the data were to be confined to his office, where he could have access to it at any time, then how could he object?

"All right. As long as they don't get in my way."

"Thank you, Charles. I knew I could count on you. Any results yet?"

"Of course not! I've only just begun!"

"Very well. Keep me informed."

Charles grunted and hung up. He edited Henly and Rossi from his mind and studied the X rays again. There had to be a mistake there. Somewhere along the line somebody had either screwed up or was trying to make a fool out of him.

He'd find out which, and heads would roll.

Charles just missed Mr. Knopf at the EEG lab.

"He's on his way to radiology," the tech told him.

Charles picked up the thick, fan-folded EEG record and spread part of it out on a desk. He felt his mouth go dry as he pulled more and more of it across the desk.

It was normal. None of the typical irregularities signifying an underlying mass, no hint of a recent grand mal seizure.

He had the tech pull out a previous tracing. Yes, all the usual signs of brain tumor had been there. All gone now.

He rushed down to radiology, idly noting Henly and Rossi entering the EEG lab after him and gathering up all the tracings he had been reading.

Knopf was already in the CT scanner. Charles paced the floor in front of the developer. He was sweating, whether from the extra heat thrown off by the machine or from tension, he didn't know. The radiologist wouldn't be in until morning, but that didn't matter. Charles could read the scans himself. As the films rolled out of the developer, each with four radiographic cuts of Knopfs brain, he grabbed them one by one and slapped them up on the view box.

Normal! One after the other: Normal !

He was almost frantic now. This was a nightmare! Things like this just didn't happen in the real world! Everything had an explanation, a cause and an effect! Primary tumors and their metastases simply didn't disappear because some balmy faith healer put his hands on a head!

He saw that the red light over the door was out so he rushed into the scanner room. Jake Knopf was sitting on the edge of the roller table.

"What's up, Doc?" he said. "You look like you need a transfusion."