Bedside Manners by David Watts

Author:David Watts [Watts, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307419873
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

JOKE MAN

The police called to say they found my patient in a motel room with sleeping pills and a bottle of vodka. He left a note of apology and a $50 bill for the maid who found him.

Next day a letter arrived. I never lied to you before, Doc, it said. But I did this time. Sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me. Inside the letter were two $100 bills. Take your wife out for a nice dinner, he said. Go have a good time.

Charlie the joke man, the button salesman, spent his life collecting jokes for his clients. Long since retired with no place to tell them, he brought them all to me. Stacks and stacks of them. So many I kept the recycling man busy.

Now let’s talk about what I want to, he had said on his next-to-last visit. I need some advice. When the time comes I don’t want to be here . . . if you know what I mean.

I had a good idea, but I wasn’t sure. I was always wary of surprises, knowing Charlie.

A friend of mine will get me a gun, but I don’t know the right place to point it. And he made a few gestures at his head and face. Does it bother you to talk like this?

I knew the situation: Charlie had terminal lung cancer. And, on top of that, advanced emphysema from all those years on the road partying and drinking and smoking. You give the client what he wants, he always said to me. If they want poker, you start up a game. If they want girls, you get girls. Lungs so bad the surgeons wouldn’t touch him.

A gun is a hell of a way to go, I said. Painful. Messy. His expression was like a child’s, learning some new constellation in the sky. I leaned over the desk. And think about the person who has to clean it up.

Hadn’t thought of that, he said, and took a deep breath. I could hear the sound of cars passing outside the window, the scrape of a bulldozer down the street.

I’m dying, Doc. It’s not a major deal. Even the red-woods . . . have to die . . . sometime . . .

He was breathing hard just from the effort of conversation. I sized him up. A couple of weeks, tops.

He paused. And in that pause there was no world outside.

Do you know my history?

I do.

Do you? Do you know the condition I was in twenty years ago—just about dead from all that Crohn’s disease stuff? First time I came here, you guys put me in the hospital and changed all my medicines. I should have been dead twenty years ago. I think I got a pretty good deal.

I could feel the unspoken tension of my patients in the outer office, waiting. But I felt no pressure to hurry. This would take as long as it wanted.

Yeah, pretty good, he said. A pretty good deal. And I realized he thought of all those years as a bonus.

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