Andrew Neiderman: Deficiency

He pulled back from the mirror as he would had he looked through a window at his own death.

I'm getting old, he thought. That process to mature me -- it's running amok. I'm like a vehicle that's lost its brakes and is going down a steep hill. I need to slow it up. I need whatever fights aging.

With a new sense of desperation, he dressed and went out into the night. He got into his vehicle and drove. The direction didn't matter. Movement mattered. Concentrate, he told himself. It will come to you. What you have to do will come to you. You don't just need to feed off a healthy woman. You need something more. You need something of youth. You need....

He slowed down.

He had pulled into a mall parking lot and three of them were walking toward the movie theater complex. They were laughing and their voices were so full of vibrancy. Three teenage girls. Young girls with young thyroids, their skin soft and healthy, their bones strong, all the juices within them fresh. Go younger, he told himself.

Simply go younger and you will be all right.

You can still go on forever, even if it means going younger and younger and younger.

He parked his car and he waited. Eventually, they would come out and he would follow them and he would find an opportunity.

Afterward, when he was rejuvenated, he would turn his attention to that bigger problem, that threat he had left behind. Just be patient, he thought. Just be patient and calculating and you won't fail.

After all, now you had to carry on for more than just yourself. You had to do it for him so that he wouldn't be dead and gone, so that he would never die. That was about all the conscience he possessed and all the remorse he could mine in himself. But it was enough. It gave him more purpose, and when he thought about it, he concluded what was any life if it didn't have reason for its existence?

His reason happened to be existence itself.

Like an echo trapped and bouncing back and forth forever, he would go on and on.

What difference did it make who heard him?

He heard himself and that was all that mattered.

"It'll be like a test run for our honeymoon," Terri told Curt when he showed some resistance. "I need the week off and so do you. I don't like the idea of your going back gradually. That prescription was given to you by a doctor without courage. You frightened him. Doctors are afraid of lawyers," she continued and Curt finally threw up his hands in surrender and laughed.

"Okay, okay. It's Hyman's cabin. We'll live like wild mountain people."

"Yes, wild in nature with Hyman's big-screen television set, the electric stove, central heating, and downy pillows on the beds, not to mention the full bar and the pool table."

"I do like to fish," Curt said.

"Hyman has the boat for us to use, but I hate putting worms on the hook." He laughed.

"You can sew up people but you can't put a worm on a hook?"

"I am trained to end pain and suffering, not initiate it," she replied.

"Okay, forget fishing. We'll read, take walks, make love, eat, make love, read, make love."

"I get the idea," she said and kissed him. He touched her bandage.

"I still think we should go after that guy. Will Dennis doesn't scare me."

"He doesn't scare me either, but unfortunately, he makes sense," she said. "Let it go, Curt. Let it go."

Reluctantly, he nodded and backed away.

"All right, let's start packing."

"I'll make a list of what we need," she said, suddenly filled with an excitement that revived her. She truly felt like a young girl again and it was wonderful. Perhaps after a week of R and R, she would be restored and be able to put all that had happened behind her.

The ride up to the cabin was easy. They stopped at a shopping market and bought way more than they needed. She was sure of that. Casting off responsibilities, just letting go of their busy, full everyday lives filled them both with a grand sense of abandon. They could be as silly as they wanted, look as foolish as they wanted.

Hyman's cabin was really more of a lake house. There were two bedrooms, a den, a nice size living room with a fieldstone fireplace, a dining room, a relatively modern kitchen, three bathrooms, a back porch that faced the lake, and about an acre of surrounding trees. He had his own dock and a small boat with a 15-horsepower outboard. There was a shed behind the house as well. The house itself had a cedar facing and a crawlspace. Television reception came from a satellite dish, and the set was in the den. In front of the fireplace Hyman had a large, thick, and fluffy white shag rug. The remaining flooring was all wood and some stone.

"Not too shabby," Curt said after inspecting most of it. "How long has he had this?"

"Ten years or so, I think. It's a nice escape for him because he's close enough if there are any real emergencies, but far enough out of it here to feel isolated and undisturbed. He assures me we'll enjoy the sunsets and the sound of the owls."

"Owls? I guess at a certain age, owls become a romantic bird," Curt said laughing.

They set about putting away the things they had bought, and then they went exploring, following the paths to the lake and through the woods. In the evening, they worked on dinner together.

"I wonder how often we'll do this after we're married," Curt said.

"After you taste my meatloaf, you might hope not often," Terri told him, but his point was made.

How do two very busy people with full professional lives hold on to a marriage?

Their work will make most compromise impossible, she thought, but she also thought hers would obviously be the more demanding job. Curt could turn off his pager. She would forever be hooked into a service that would reach her at any hour, at any time, unless she was away on a vacation.

And what would happen when they had children?

This was a marriage that would demand so much more. Were they up to it?

It was as if he could hear her thoughts as they stood side by side in Hyman's lake house kitchen. Suddenly, Curt took her hand and stopped her. He turned her to him and looked at her with that steely-eyed focus that unraveled people on the witness stand in courtrooms.

"Terri, I'm going to love your meatloaf, and you're going to make it whenever you can, and we're going to find every possible way, every little opportunity, every bonus minute to spend more of our lives together. We won't sacrifice our clients and patients, but we won't always put them at the top of the list. Just don't expect me not to object whenever I can," he added.

"Objection sustained," she said and they kissed.

As simple as the meal was, it turned out to be one of the best they had together. They drank too much wine. They laughed a lot and kissed a lot and held each other impulsively all night, and when they made love, it was slow and graceful and full of promises.

Afterward, lying side by side and seeing the moon over the lake through the bedroom window, Terri talked about Garret Stanley.

"I've seen many arrogant, confident Godlike doctors in medical school and when I interned, Curt. Some looked carved out of an iceberg. They looked right through personalities, identities, families and saw blood clots or tumors, diseased livers, infected gall bladders, and they attacked them with great art and knowledge, with determination I envied at times, but when they were done and they saw that patient for the final time, I often felt they just visited a complete stranger. I vowed that wasn't going to be me."

"It won't be," he said.

"After being with Garret Stanley even a short time and seeing how obsessed he was with his work, regardless of its impact on humanity, and then seeing how much power was behind him, I fell into a deep depression. It was truly being told what I think, what I do, won't matter."