Norman Rush - Mortals

The examination was proceeding. Unless he was wrong, his friend Dave was being rougher than he needed to, pushing Ray’s eyelids sharply back into his head while he made him roll his eyes clockwise and then counterclockwise not just once or twice but a few times. It was like no examination he’d ever had. And the outcome of that particular exercise seemed to be that Morel could see no signs of jaundice. He wanted to know why there was any reason to think he might have contracted jaundice.

And then his side was squeezed, hard. That was to do with his liver or spleen, he supposed.

And then Morel put his ear against his chest, which Ray doubted could tell him anything except that his heart was beating at present, otherwise the invention of the stethoscope was a superfluous event. He was being unfair to Morel. The examination was a physical feat being accomplished, with all the difficulty Morel was having in keeping himself from toppling over.

Morel said, “Your ears are extraordinarily clean.”

“She does that with a thing, a bulb …”

“Syringe.”

“Syringe, yes. I’m getting old.”

“Really clean. I never see that.”

“No she does it every couple of weeks. She’s very faithful about it. Debrox is the name of the what is it, acid? She puts acid in the porches of my ears.”

“I’m pleased.”

“Well, good, because she started doing it at your suggestion, you might recall. It’s part of your regimen, I believe.”

Morel said nothing, but motioned for him to take his stinking shirt off. There was a punitive element to the proceeding, in Ray’s opinion.

“We’ve got to clean you up. I have to get to my bag.

“Look at this. You have contact dermatitis all through here on your chest, under your chest hair. And it’s showing on your neck. It must itch.”

“It doesn’t,” Ray said, and that was true. But now that it had been brought to his attention he could feel the itching begin there. He hadn’t noticed any itching because he had been, this was his theory, distracted by the rich selection of wounds and bruises he was otherwise sporting.

Morel said, “I can fix that with hydrogen peroxide if they give me my bag.

“You have slight pectus excavatum . You must know that …”

“I don’t think I know that. Sunken chest, that is?”

“It’s really slight.”

“What does it do to you?”

“Nothing much. Yours is so slight.”

“It’s more like a natural feature than a condition or defect, right? Like a cleft chin.”

“More or less.”

“I had a heart murmur when I was eight. It went away.”

Morel was going interminably over his back and shoulders, looking for bites or any sort of interesting defect he might mention.

“Just a second,” Ray said. He had realized there was a task that had to be done, which was to redistribute the pallets to their separate original positions. He went about it. It was important. Morel seemed puzzled by his anxious eagerness to complete the task.

“What’re you doing?” Morel asked. Then he said, “I can do that.”

Ray said, “They’ll be coming. You want everything to look the way it was before they left. Believe me. I can explain it more if you really need that.”

“No. Hey.”

Ray felt lightheaded and then felt his head beating with new pain, a supreme headache, a classic worse than anything from yesterday. He had to remember not to stoop, not to get his head down low.

“I have to lie down for a minute,” he said.

Morel himself had sunk to a sitting position against the wall. He seemed to be doing breathing exercises.

“I’m not finished examining you,” Morel said.

“Yes you are,” Ray said.

“I am?”

“You are. You covered the waterfront. And if you found something, what, terrible, what can you do? You have nothing. They won’t let you. That’s it.”

“Listen, I am going to get my bag, I promise you. But even without it there are certain things I can do.”

“Like what?”

“Like various things.”

Ray said, “Right now I have a headache that on a scale of one to ten is nine. Iris gives me that aspirin with codeine you can get in the Republic. You have no codeine. That’s what this one is eligible for.”

Morel hauled himself up and limped over, kneeling beside Ray on the pallet.

“Okay,” Morel said, breathing complexly, theatrically, Ray thought, then saying commandingly, “Close your eyes … um … Blow all your breath out … Now.”

I am not an idiot, Ray thought. But he did as he was told.

Ray felt thumb pressure being applied to the midline of his forehead, and then knuckle pressure being applied further up along the same axis but stopping short of his scab area. Morel was being careful. And then the knuckle pressure continued harder, rocking. It hurt. It was cruelly hard. And it was infuriating that he could feel his headache receding.

“Sit up slowly,” Morel said.

Ray did, furious. His head pain was shrinking toward the manageable. And then toward the negligible.

And then it was a vestige.

That was a parlor trick, he thought. It was undoubtedly the trick of using one kind of pain to trump another kind of pain, a parlor trick.

“How is your head?”

“Getting better.”

“Good, then.” Morel withdrew.

Now Morel was over at the waste bucket.

“Can’t we get a lid for this thing?” Morel asked over his shoulder.

“Of course not. It’s part of the program.”

Morel was studying the contents of the waste bucket. Ray assumed he was considering evacuating into it. But still the staring into it was an invasion of privacy, in a way. Not that it was important.

“When was your last bowel movement?” Morel asked. Ray wanted this line of attention over with. The question was a reaction to there being only urine in the bucket. So Morel was reaching a conclusion. But of course the bucket could have been emptied any number of times. Why did he have to answer this particular question, he wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Ray said.

“Give a guess.”

“I don’t know.”

“How long, though? A week?”

Ray had to think. He said, “Since I’ve been here. Almost a week.”

“Not good,” Morel said, continuing to contemplate, irritatingly, the contents of the bucket as though if he stared long enough some wisdom would leap up and strike him.

“Look, I have to go, Ray. I’m sorry,” Morel said.

“What in the fuck are you apologizing for?” But he knew why Davis was apologizing. He was apologizing for being closer to normal, in better shape, in that way. Actually, he was being delicate, Ray decided. Maybe he was apologizing for having had plenty to eat and drink recently.

“Of course. Go ahead. I’m sorry. Of course, go ahead.”

“Um, I see there’s no paper. No paper.”

“That’s right. I don’t know what to tell you. That’s also part of the program. Part of the treatment.”

“Bastards. I’ll get some paper from them.”

“No you won’t. No. But I’ll tell you what you do. This is what I would do. You sacrifice a piece of your shirttail. Tear off as little as you can get away with for the purpose. And when you use it be real careful, scientific. That’s what I would do. If I had to shit. Which I don’t. I mean, about the shirt, you don’t know what else you might be going to need it for. I’m just trying to think ahead. Anyway.”

Ray turned his back to Morel. He went to stand as close to the shed doors as possible. He heard cloth being torn.

Grumbling softly, and, Ray believed, still apologizing, Morel emptied his bowels, suppressing as well as he could any sounds of relief or satisfaction, natural reactions.