hated Ann for agreeing to do so. Most likely he was examining her for signs that might tell him what she was learning about him. This was typical of patients; they studied the doctor who studied them. Up close she saw that he'd had dozens of tiny skin cancers removed, including on the outer edge of his lower lip. The divot in his lip suggested a healed knife wound, even a disregard for danger.
'I told your wife I'd do this,' Ann said, 'but of course, it's your decision.'
'Let's do it. Then she'll let me alone.'
Martz dropped his pants.
'Bend over, put your hands on the table,' she instructed.
'How did she find you?'
'We got to talking.'
'What a topic of conversation.'
'Well, you know women,' she said, lubing her fingers. 'We do talk about everything.'
'I didn't meet everyone,' he growled, being polite, making conversation. 'You came with-?'
She went in with the forefinger and middle finger together in one firm motion. He grunted. They all grunted, except the men who'd had anal sex; they anticipated the sensation and evaluated it. She moved her fingers up the inside of his rectum and felt the lateral and posterior walls for any rectal masses. Then she identified the prostate on the anterior wall and swept her fingers from side to side, noting smoothness, consistency, lumps, asymmetry, and size.
There was a lot of swelling, bad swelling.
'Excuse me,' she responded, 'what? Oh, I came with Tom Reilly. I'm his wife.'
'Aah, I see.' Martz stiffened, actually tightened his asshole. 'Good to know that, Doctor. That is, aah, informative. I want you to know exactly what would make me… better, would reduce my difficulties.'
In general she preferred that patients not self-diagnose. They were inevitably wrong, usually erring on the most dramatic side. She'd once had a woman come in with numb feet and insist she be tested for multiple sclerosis, when in fact the problem was that her shoes were too tight.
'… the change in my life that would be most prophylactic would be if your-'
She paid little attention to what he was saying, instead carefully feathering her fingers against the lumpy surface of the prostate, probing softly, seeing if she caused pain. The basic rule was that you pressed no harder than you would push against an eyeball. She arced her fingers back to the edge of the prostate to see if she could feel the shape of the swelling better, whether it involved one lobe of the prostate or both.
'Dr. Reilly?'
'Yes?' she answered.
'I said, if your husband-'
Martz's hand shot back and grabbed her own, pulling it out of his rectum, making a wet sucking sound. He turned toward her, underpants still at his knees, shirt and tie hanging down, and drew close, uncomfortably close to her. His large, loose-skinned hand lifted her smelly, gloved fingers up between them as his eyes stared into her face. 'If Tom would do me the courtesy of telling me-' She fought Martz and tried to pull away, but his big hand held her fist tight, her authority as a physician gone. '-what the fuck is going on at Good Pharma.' He saw her confused reaction. 'Oh, your bright, ambitious husband knows something, Doctor. But he isn't telling me. Tried to pretend nothing is going on. Tried tonight, to my face, lied directly to my face, Doctor Reilly. Isn't telling me or anyone else, as far as I can see. I have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in his company. Do you understand? That is a lot of money, even for me. Other people's money, Doctor. The stock was going up. But now it is not. There's a piece of information I don't have! Tom has it, Doctor! Tom knows it! And I want him-' Now Martz was crushing her hand in his, leaning into her with the color rising in his face, his lip curled in anger, a primate showing his old teeth, her fingers with his blood-streaked shit on them an inch from her nose. '-to tell me!'
10
The pain woke him. As always at this time of night, just a few minutes before the machine sent a shot of lovely wonderful morphine through the tube in his arm. He loved the drug more than he could say, craved it, yes, of course-no wonder people destroyed themselves for it. I'm addicted. But these minutes were when he was most clear, the pain rising quickly yet bearable, the veil of the morphine pulled away just far enough to let his mind work. Precious seconds to him. Precious time to think, think about the only thing he had left now: his son. All else was lost to him-his body, failing further every day; his spirit, which needed a body to be manifest; his physical belongings, which he could no longer use or even see from where he lay; and his memory, weakened by suffering, medication, and time. And of course he had lost his wife, Mary, years ago, he had lost the fellowship of his brother detectives when he retired, he had lost so much, nearly everything now.
And yet, he knew, this was in the way of things. Everyone lost everything at the end. You became unified with every human being who had ever lived and who ever would live, including his parents, his brother and sister, Mary, of course, and even Ray. Perhaps that was consoling. You know again the people who have died and you feel they know you now. Dying slowly, you think about death, you study its approach. You imagine the world after you are gone, you see the enormity of time, the final privacy of consciousness. He'd sat with Mary in the last weeks of her life, her mouth pulling back day by day into an emaciated mask, her breath fouler each day, too, and he had gazed into her dull eyes and spoken to her and she to him and he knew now that he had no idea then what she was thinking. She had tried to share it but known she could not. They'd held hands for hours and that had been everything. Worlds within worlds. He saw that no one alive knew what he was thinking. Even the nurses, the lovely professional death watchers.
But he was not dead yet. Not quite. He turned his head to see that it was just after two a.m. Ray was upstairs. The night nurse slept in the next room. Sometimes he heard her talk in her sleep, which made him smile. Such an intimate thing, a sweetness.
Now he lifted the sheet to examine the long incision where the doctors had cut him open trying to find out what was wrong with him. Right through the stomach muscles. They had closed him up, knowing there was no hope. The incision had not healed well and kept getting infected. The nurses left the wound unbandaged with the wish that the air would help. How it hurt to lift his head, but he did, just to see the giant cut, which ran from his breastbone to the top of his public hair. The edges of the incision did not meet, had dried and puckered back from each other. Beyond that lay his penis in a nest of gray hair, a white plastic catheter stuck in it to drain any incidental urine that dribbled through his blocked kidneys. He could barely feel the catheter anymore. He had stopped missing his penis, years earlier, in fact. It had become a mere hose. Old men didn't talk about this, not even to each other. Just bore the truth of it, the change of life. You learned something about the world when you lost your sexual desire, you saw things differently, how tormented young men were, how stupid and out of control.
He could feel the liquids gurgle inside him and he could feel them gurgle out. The nurses measured his urine, the watery mud of feces that came from him. Not that it changed anything. They meant well and were trying their best. Just quietly helping him, hour after hour. Few men honestly confronted the superior unselfishness of women. Because to do so unraveled their entire belief systems and that was something they could not endure. He always tried hard to follow the nurses' directions- please, lift your legs… here's the spoon, Mr. Grant.. we need to turn you so we may clean you… He was not afraid of the pain. The little box worked quite well and he had been very clear with Ray that when the time came, Ray was to push him softly into oblivion. It would be hard for his son, he knew his son would resist doing so, especially given his training, but he hoped Ray would do what needed to be done, in the end.
He hoped his son would have the strength to kill him.
And yet, to repeat himself-as he was doing, he knew, repeating his thoughts over and over, slowly wearing them into nothing-and yet his son was here and would go on. But there was trouble for Ray now. The Chinese girl. The men who had taken away his machine. Ray had explained the problem. And he had been able to respond, to nod his head a bit and say yes. Ray was very clever. But the father always knew the son's flaws. Ray could be too impulsive, too instinctive. This might change as he got older. He had a weakness for women, too. Not a womanizer, not exactly. His weakness was that he cared for them easily, without remembering to protect himself.
