Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (258 page)

There was something or other about a kid, he thought vaguely. He was going to doctor some kid. His eyes rested on a little black bag in the center of the room, and he forgot about the kid. “I could have sworn,” said Dr. Full, “I hocked that two years ago!” He hitched over and reached the bag, and then realized it was some stranger’s kit, arriving here he did not know how. He tentatively touched the lock and it snapped open and lay flat, rows and rows of instruments and medications tucked into loops in its four walls. It seemed vastly larger open than closed. He didn’t see how it could possibly fold up into that compact size again, but decided it was some stunt of the instrument makers. Since his time—that made it worth more at the hock shop, he thought with satisfaction.

Just for old times’ sake, he let his eyes and fingers rove over the instruments before he snapped the bag shut and headed for Uncle’s. More than a few were a little hard to recognize—exactly, that is. You could see the things with blades for cutting, the forceps for holding and pulling, the retractors for holding fast, the needles and gut for suturing, the hypos—a fleeting thought crossed his mind that he could peddle the hypos separately to drug addicts.

Let’s go, he decided, and tried to fold up the case. It didn’t fold until he happened to touch the lock, and then it folded all at once into a little black bag. Sure have forged ahead, he thought, almost able to forget that what he was primarily interested in was its pawn value.

With a definite objective, it was not too hard for him to get to his feet. He decided to go down the front steps, out the front door and down the sidewalk. But first—

He snapped the bag open again on his kitchen table, and pored through the medication tubes. “Anything to sock the autonomic nervous system good and hard,” he mumbled. The tubes were numbered, and there was a plastic card which seemed to list them. The left margin of the card was a run-down of the systems—vascular, muscular, nervous. He followed the last entry across to the right. There were columns for “stimulant,” “depressant,” and so on. Under “nervous system” and “depressant” he found the number 17, and shakily located the little glass tube which bore it. It was full of pretty blue pills and he took one.

It was like being struck by a thunderbolt.

Dr. Full had so long lacked any sense of well-being except the brief glow of alcohol that he had forgotten its very nature. He was panic-stricken for a long moment at the sensation that spread through him slowly, finally tingling in his fingertips. He straightened up, his pains gone and his leg tremor stilled.

That was great, he thought. He’d be able to
run
to the hock shop, pawn the little black bag and get some booze. He started down the stairs. Not even the street, bright with mid-morning sun, into which he emerged made him quail. The little black bag in his left hand had a satisfying, authoritative weight. He was walking erect, he noted, and not in the somewhat furtive crouch that had grown on him in recent years. A little self-respect, he told himself, that’s what I need. Just because a man’s down doesn’t mean—

“Docta, please-a come wit’!” somebody yelled at him, tugging his arm. “Da litt-la girl, she’s-a burn’ up!” It was one of the slum’s innumerable flat-faced, stringy-haired women, in a slovenly wrapper.

“Ah, I happen to be retired from practice—” he began hoarsely, but she would not be put off.

“In by here, Docta!” she urged, tugging him to a doorway. “You come look-a da litt-la girl. I got two dolla, you come look!” That put a different complexion on the matter. He allowed himself to be towed through the doorway into a mussy, cabbage-smelling flat. He knew the woman now, or rather knew who she must be—a new arrival who had moved in the other night. These people moved at night, in motorcades of battered cars supplied by friends and relations, with furniture lashed to the tops, swearing and drinking until the small hours. It explained why she had stopped him: she did not yet know he was old Dr. Full, a drunken reprobate whom nobody would trust. The little black bag had been his guarantee, outweighing his whiskery face and stained black suit.

He was looking down on a three-year-old girl who had, he rather suspected, just been placed in the mathematical center of a freshly changed double bed. God knew what sour and dirty mattress she usually slept on. He seemed to recognize her as he noted a crusted bandage on her right hand. Two dollars, he thought— An ugly flush had spread up her pipe-stem arm. He poked a finger into the socket of her elbow, and felt little spheres like marbles under the skin and ligaments roll apart. The child began to squall thinly; beside him, the woman gasped and began to weep herself.

“Out,” he gestured briskly at her, and she thudded away, still sobbing.

Two dollars, he thought— Give her some mumbo jumbo, take the money and tell her to go to a clinic. Strep, I guess, from that stinking alley. It’s a wonder any of them grow up. He put down the little black bag and forgetfully fumbled for his key, then remembered and touched the lock. It flew open, and he selected a bandage shears, with a blunt wafer for the lower jaw. He fitted the lower jaw under the bandage, trying not to hurt the kid by its pressure on the infection, and began to cut. It was amazing how easily and swiftly the shining shears snipped through the crusty rag around the wound. He hardly seemed to be driving the shears with fingers at all. It almost seemed as though the shears were driving his fingers instead as they scissored a clean, light line through the bandage.

Certainly have forged ahead since my time, he thought—sharper than a microtome knife. He replaced the shears in their loop on the extraordinarily big board that the little black bag turned into when it unfolded, and leaned over the wound. He whistled at the ugly gash, and the violent infection which had taken immediate root in the sickly child’s thin body. Now what can you do with a thing like that? He pawed over the contents of the little black bag, nervously. If he lanced it and let some of the pus out, the old woman would think he’d done something for her and he’d get the two dollars. But at the clinic they’d want to know who did it and if they got sore enough they might send a cop around. Maybe there was something in the kit—

He ran down the left edge of the card to “lymphatic” and read across to the column under “infection.” It didn’t sound right at all to him; he checked again, but it still said that. In the square to which the line and column led were the symbols: “IV-g-3cc.” He couldn’t find any bottles marked with Roman numerals, and then noticed that that was how the hypodermic needles were designated. He lifted number IV from its loop, noting that it was fitted with a needle already and even seemed to be charged. What a way to carry those things around! So—three cc. of whatever was in hypo number IV ought to do something or other about infections settled in the lymphatic system—which, God knows, this one was. What did the lower-case “g” mean, though? He studied the glass hypo and saw letters engraved on what looked like a rotating disk at the top of the barrel. They ran from “a” to “i,” and there was an index line engraved on the barrel on the opposite side from the calibrations.

Shrugging, old Dr. Full turned the disk until “g” coincided with the index line, and lifted the hypo to eye level. As he pressed in the plunger he did not see the tiny thread of fluid squirt from the tip of the needle. There was a sort of dark mist for a moment about the tip. A closer inspection showed that the needle was not even pierced at the tip. It had the usual slanting cut across the bias of the shaft, but the cut did not expose an oval hole. Baffled, he tried pressing the plunger again. Again something appeared around the tip and vanished. “We’ll settle this,” said the doctor. He slipped the needle into the skin of his forearm. He thought at first that he had missed—that the point had glided over the top of his skin instead of catching and slipping under it. But he saw a tiny blood-spot and realized that somehow he just hadn’t felt the puncture. Whatever was in the barrel, he decided, couldn’t do him any harm if it lived up to its billing—and if it could come out through a needle that had no hole. He gave himself three cc. and twitched the needle out. There was the swelling—painless, but otherwise typical.

Dr. Full decided it was his eyes or something, and gave three cc. of “g” from hypodermic IV to the feverish child. There was no interruption to her wailing as the needle went in and the swelling rose. But a long instant later, she gave a final gasp and was silent.

Well, he told himself, cold with horror, you did it that time. You killed her with that stuff.

Then the child sat up and said: “Where’s my mommy?”

Incredulously, the doctor seized her arm and palpated the elbow. The gland infection was zero, and the temperature seemed normal. The blood-congested tissues surrounding the wound were subsiding as he watched. The child’s pulse was stronger and no faster than a child’s should be. In the sudden silence of the room he could hear the little girl’s mother sobbing in her kitchen, outside. And he also heard a girl’s insinuating voice:

“She gonna be okay, doc?”

He turned and saw a gaunt-faced, dirty-blonde sloven of perhaps eighteen leaning in the doorway and eyeing him with amused contempt. She continued: “I heard about you,
Doc-tor
Full. So don’t go try and put the bite on the old lady. You couldn’t doctor up a sick cat.”

“Indeed?” he rumbled. This young person was going to get a lesson she richly deserved. “Perhaps you would care to look at my patient?”

“Where’s my mommy?” insisted the little girl, and the blonde’s jaw fell. She went to the bed and cautiously asked: “You okay now, Teresa? You all fixed up?”

“Where’s my mommy?” demanded Teresa. Then, accusingly, she gestured with her wounded hand at the doctor. “You
poke
me!” she complained, and giggled pointlessly.

“Well—” said the blonde girl, “I guess I got to hand it to you, doc. These loud-mouth women around here said you didn’t know your . . . I mean, didn’t know how to cure people. They said you ain’t a real doctor.”

“I
have
retired from practice,” he said. “But I happened to be taking this case to a colleague as a favor, your good mother noticed me, and—” a deprecating smile. He touched the lock of the case and it folded up into the little black bag again.

“You stole it,” the girl said flatly.

He sputtered.

“Nobody’d trust you with a thing like that. It must be worth plenty. You stole that case. I was going to stop you when I come in and saw you working over Teresa, but it looked like you wasn’t doing her any harm. But when you give me that line about taking that case to a colleague I know you stole it. You gimme a cut or I go to the cops. A thing like that must be worth twenty—thirty dollars.”

The mother came timidly in, her eyes red. But she let out a whoop of joy when she saw the little girl sitting up and babbling to herself, embraced her madly, fell on her knees for a quick prayer, hopped up to kiss the doctor’s hand, and then dragged him into the kitchen, all the while rattling in her native language while the blonde girl let her eyes go cold with disgust. Dr. Full allowed himself to be towed into the kitchen, but flatly declined a cup of coffee and a plate of anise cakes and St. John’s Bread.

“Try him on some wine, ma,” said the girl sardonically.

“Hyass! Hyass!” breathed the woman delightedly. “You like-a wine, docta?” She had a carafe of purplish liquid before him in an instant, and the blonde girl snickered as the doctor’s hand twitched out at it. He drew his hand back, while there grew in his head the old image of how it would smell and then taste and then warm his stomach and limbs. He made the kind of calculation at which he was practiced; the delighted woman would not notice as he downed two tumblers, and he could overawe her through two tumblers more with his tale of Teresa’s narrow brush with the Destroying Angel, and then—why, then it would not matter. He would be drunk.

But for the first time in years, there was a sort of counter-image: a blend of the rage he felt at the blonde girl to whom he was so transparent, and of pride at the cure he had just effected. Much to his own surprise, he drew back his hand from the carafe and said, luxuriating in the words: “No, thank you. I don’t believe I’d care for any so early in the day.” He covertly watched the blonde girl’s face, and was gratified at her surprise.

Then the mother was shyly handing him two bills and saying: “Is no much-a money, docta—but you come again, see Teresa?”

“I shall be glad to follow the case through,” he said. “But now excuse me—I really must be running along.” He grasped the little black bag firmly and got up; he wanted very much to get away from the wine and the older girl.

“Wait up, doc,” said she. “I’m going your way.” She followed him out and down the street. He ignored her until he felt her hand on the black bag. Then old Dr. Full stopped and tried to reason with her:

“Look, my dear. Perhaps you’re right. I might have stolen it. To be perfectly frank, I don’t remember how I got it. But you’re young and you can earn your own money—”

“Fifty-fifty,” she said, “or I go to the cops. And if I get another word outta you, it’s sixty-forty. And you know who gets the short end, don’t you, doc?”

Defeated, he marched to the pawnshop, her impudent hand still on the handle with his, and her heels beating out a tattoo against his stately tread.

In the pawnshop, they both got a shock.

“It ain’t stendard,” said Uncle, unimpressed by the ingenious lock. “I ain’t nevva seen one like it. Some cheap Jap stuff, maybe? Try down the street. This I nevva could sell.”

Down the street they got an offer of one dollar. The same complaint was made: “I ain’t a collecta, mista—I buy stuff that got resale value. Who could I sell this to, a Chinaman who don’t know medical instruments? Every one of them looks funny. You sure you didn’t make these yourself?” They didn’t take the one-dollar offer.

The girl was baffled and angry; the doctor was baffled too, but triumphant. He had two dollars, and the girl had a half-interest in something nobody wanted. But, he suddenly marveled, the thing had been all right to cure the kid, hadn’t it?

“Well,” he asked her, “do you give up? As you see, the kit is practically valueless.”

She was thinking hard. “Don’t fly off the handle, doc. I don’t get this but something’s going on all right . . . would those guys know good stuff if they saw it?”

“They would. They make a living from it. Wherever this kit came from—”