The Fourth Hand

lucky day,” the hand surgeon began.

As he awaited his subsequent flight to Boston, Wallingford watched himself on the twenty-four-hour news; he saw what remained of the story he’d been sent to Mexico City to cover. On Super Bowl Sunday, not everyone in Mexico had been watching the Super Bowl.

The family and friends of renowned sword-swallower Jose Guerrero were gathered at Mary of Magdala Hospital to pray for his recovery; during a performance at a tourist hotel in Acapulco, Guerrero had tripped and fallen onstage, lancing his liver. They’d risked flying him from Acapulco to Mexico City, where he was now in the hands of a specialist—liver stab wounds bleed very slowly. More than a hundred friends and family members had assembled at the tiny private hospital, which was surrounded by hundreds more well-wishers. Wallingford felt as if he’d interviewed them all. But now, about to leave for Boston to meet his new left hand, Patrick was glad that his three-minute report had been edited to a minute and a half. He was impatient to see the rerun of Stubby Farrell’s story; he would pay closer attention this time.

Dr. Zajac had told him that Otto Clausen was left-handed, but what did that mean, exactly? Wallingford was right-handed. Until the lion, he’d always held the microphone in his left hand so that he would be free to shake hands with his right. Now that he had only one hand in which to hold the microphone, Wallingford had largely dispensed with shaking hands.

What would it be like to be right-handed and then get a left-handed man’s left hand? Hadn’t the left- handedness been a function of Clausen’s brain? Surely the predetermination to left-handedness was not in the hand. Patrick kept thinking of a hundred such questions he wanted to ask Dr. Zajac.

On the telephone, all the doctor had said was that the medical authorities in Wisconsin had acted quickly enough to preserve the hand because of the “prompt consideration of Mrs. Clausen.” Dr. Zajac had been mumbling. Normally he didn’t mumble, but the doctor had been up most of the night, administering to the vomiting dog, and then—with Rudy’s overzealous assistance—he had attempted to analyze the peculiar-looking substance (in her vomit) that had made Medea sick. Rudy’s opinion was that the partially digested duct tape looked like the remains of a seagull. If so, Zajac thought to himself, the bird had been long dead and sticky when the dog ate it. But the analytically minded father and son wouldn’t really get to the bottom of what Medea had eaten until the DogWatch man called on Monday morning to inquire how the invisible barrier was working, and to apologize for leaving behind his roll of duct tape.

“You were my last job on Friday,” the DogWatch man said, as if he were a detective. “I must have left my duct tape at your place. I don’t suppose you’ve seen it around.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes—we have,” was all Dr. Zajac could manage to say. The doctor was still recovering from the sight of Irma, fresh from her morning shower. The girl had been naked and toweling dry her hair in the kitchen. She’d come back from the weekend early Monday morning, gone for a run, and then taken a shower. She was naked in the kitchen because she’d assumed she was alone in the house—but don’t forget that she wanted Zajac to see her naked, anyway.

Normally at that time Monday morning, Dr. Zajac had already returned Rudy to his mother’s house—in time for Hildred to take the boy to school. But Zajac and Rudy had both overslept, the result of their being up most of the night with Medea. Only after Dr. Zajac’s ex-wife called and accused him of kidnapping Rudy did Zajac stumble into the kitchen to make some coffee. Hildred went on yelling after he put Rudy on the phone.

Irma didn’t see Dr. Zajac, but he saw her—everything but her head, which was largely hidden from view because she was toweling dry her hair. Great abs! the doctor thought, retreating.

Later he found he couldn’t speak to Irma, except in an uncustomary stammer. He haltingly tried to thank her for her peanut-butter idea, but she couldn’t understand him. (Nor did she meet Rudy.) And as Dr. Zajac drove Rudy to his angry mother’s house, he noticed that there was a special spirit of camaraderie between him and his little boy—they had both been yelled at by Rudy’s mother. Zajac was euphoric when he called Wallingford in Mexico, and much more than Otto Clausen’s suddenly available left hand was exciting him—the doctor had spent a terrific weekend with his son. Nor had his view of Irma, naked, been unexciting, although it was typical of Zajac to notice her abs. Was it only Irma’s abs that had reduced him to stammering? Thus the “prompt consideration of Mrs. Clausen” and similar formalities were all the soon-to-be-celebrated hand surgeon could manage to impart to Patrick Wallingford over the phone. What Dr. Zajac didn’t tell Patrick was that Otto Clausen’s widow had demonstrated unheard-of zeal on behalf of the donor hand. Mrs. Clausen had not only accompanied her husband’s body from Green Bay to Milwaukee, where (in addition to most of his organs) Otto’s left hand was removed; she’d also insisted on accompanying the hand, which was packed in ice, on the flight from Milwaukee to Boston.

Wallingford, of course, had no idea that he was going to meet more than his new hand in Boston; he was also going to meet his new hand’s widow. This development was less upsetting to Dr. Zajac and the other members of the Boston team than a more unusual but no less spur-of-the-moment request of Mrs. Clausen’s. Yes, there were some strings attached to the donor hand, and Dr. Zajac was only now learning of them. He had probably been wise in not telling Patrick about the new demands.

With time, everyone at Schatzman, Gingeleskie, Mengerink & Associates hoped, Wallingford might warm to the widow’s seemingly last-minute ideas. Apparently not one to beat around the bush, she had requested visitation rights with the hand after the transplant surgery.

How could the one-handed reporter refuse?

“She just wants to see it, I suppose,” Dr. Zajac suggested to Wallingford in the doctor’s office in Boston.

“Just see it?” Patrick asked. There was a disconcerting pause. “Not touch it, I hope—not hold hands or anything.”

“Nobody can touch it! Not for a considerable period of time after the surgery,” Dr. Zajac answered protectively.

“But does she mean one visit? Two? For a year ?”

Zajac shrugged. “Indefinitely—those are her terms.”

“Is she crazy?” Patrick asked. “Is she morbid, grief-stricken, deranged?”

“You’ll see,” Dr. Zajac said. “She wants to meet you.”

“Before the surgery?”

“Yes, now. That’s part of her request. She needs to be sure that she wants you to have it.”

“But I thought her husband wanted me to have it!” Wallingford cried. “It was his hand!”

“Look—all I can tell you is, the widow’s in the driver’s seat,” Dr. Zajac said.

“Have you ever had to deal with a medical ethicist?” (Mrs. Clausen had been quick to call a medical ethicist, too.)

“But why does she want to meet me?” Patrick wanted to know. “I mean before I get the hand.”

This part of the request and the visitation rights struck Dr. Zajac as the kind of thing only a medical ethicist could have thought up. Zajac didn’t trust medical ethicists; he believed that they should keep out of the area of experimental surgery. They were always meddling—doing their best to make surgery “more human.”

Medical ethicists complained that hands were not necessary to live, and that the anti-rejection drugs posed many risks and had to be taken for life. They argued that the first recipients should be those who had lost both hands; after all, doublehand amputees had more to gain than recipients who’d lost only one hand. Unaccountably, the medical ethicists loved Mrs. Clausen’s request—not just the creepy visitation rights, but also that she insisted on meeting Patrick Wallingford and deciding if she liked him before permitting the surgery. (You can’t get “more human” than that.)

“She just wants to see if you’re… nice,” Zajac tried to explain. This new affront struck Wallingford as both an insult and a dare; he felt simultaneously offended and challenged. Was he nice? He didn’t know. He hoped he was, but how many of us truly know?

As for Dr. Zajac, the doctor knew he himself wasn’t especially nice. He was cautiously optimistic that Rudy loved him, and of course he knew that he loved his little boy. But the hand specialist had no illusions concerning himself in the niceness department; Dr. Zajac, except to his son, had never been very lovable. With a pang, Zajac recalled his brief glimpse of Irma’s abs. She must do sit-ups and crunches all day!