Foote’s Hole (a serial V)
And before he knew it, his ten minutes ‘up on the table’ were over. He whimpered quietly to himself, sorry for having missed all the excitement, and he wondered how Dr. Heath could have learned anything from such a non-invasive procedure.
“Well Mr. Foote it’s just as I thought when I saw your reaction about the left eye. You have a sharp painful tightness, perhaps a strain or a tear, in the musculature of your back, between the third and fourth ribs surrounding your left lung. This is especially painful for you as you use these muscles in respiration, and it has had trouble healing for much the same reason as a bird’s broken wing, because you’re constantly using them involuntarily. Am I right? Am I right?!”
“That’s incredible! Yes, oh yes, you’re exactly right Dr. Heath! Wow!”
Dr. Heath glanced down at his shoes wishing to indicate humility. “This isn’t much cause for concern. I’m gonna prescribe some mild muscle relaxants and within two or three sessions we should have you all cleared up and ready to pursue a life of independent freedom and thought. After that I’d like to see you once a week to address some structural issues with your spine to complete your recovery and prevent this kind of thing from cropping up in the future. Cool?”
“No, really, I’m fine. Thank you, Dr. Heath, thank you so much.”
As he sat at the doctor’s desk filling out forms, Anson found himself smiling, shaking his head and releasing small, involuntary giggles. So simple. So painless. He made a pact with himself that in the future, whenever he felt any pain or illness, he would immediately ask someone he trusted for advice and information, someone like Jeremy Stantz. Anson giggled again, and as he shook his head to the left he noticed, right there in plain sight on the doctor’s desk for anyone to see, a dark green leaflet with forbidding raised white letters and a symbol, the kind of symbol he knew all too well.
Anson’s body stiffened as Dr. Heath stood at his small refrigerator getting some more ice water. His eyes fixed on the pamphlet’s words as he listened to what seemed the thunderous crackle of ice cubes dropped carelessly into a tall glass.
Anson snapped back to his forms, finished filling out his twenty-two digit credit chit identification code proxy and hurried out of the office, stuttering something about an important appointment and how sorry he is about having to run like this, but that it’s a vitally important appointment with a real estate agent from Cincinnati, where he’ll be moving soon, he forgot to say and goodbye.
Outside the outer door Anson tried (in vain) to inconspicuously press his face up against the window cupping his hands binocularly around his eyes and watched Dr. Heath, laughing a sinister laugh to himself, sighing as his looked over Anson’s forms, shaking his bald beef-roast head.
Walking up the respectable street with tall respectable trees, Anson could hear his heart thumping rapidly in his head. He found a public telephone, black and red and silver and safe. Anson dialed and said, “Yes. Ms. Strunk. Yes. Foote, Anson. With an e, yes. Thank you… . Lianne? Anson Foote. Yes, you have a pen? Dr. Lowry Heath, chiropractor. 354 10th Street, Brooklyn. Yes. Also, his records. Patient: Hanley. Also, Stantz, Jeremy, data analyst, Bureau of Exceptional Statistics, subdivision G. Probably others, except Foote, Anson. Destroy record. No Lianne, thank you.”
Anson hung up the public phone and looked at the top of the black and red booth, noticing a russet hummingbird peering down at him, stilly, and with impossibly small eyes. The hummingbird’s head was cocked to its left side, taxidermicly motionless. Suddenly the bird took off straight up twenty-plus feet in the air and then straight down into the open space between Anson’s neck and the collar of his white shirt, and into the vortex between the third and fourth ribs surrounding his left lung, was crushed by gravity into an elementary hummingbird point particle, and disappeared. Anson doubled over, his face contorting into a rictus of agony. He tried to reach around and touch the spot but only caused himself more pain in the attempt. Absently, his left hand reached into his pants’ left-front pocket and removed Dr. Heath’s prescription. Staring into a crack in the sidewalk, Anson was sure he could see the weeds growing underneath, pushing themselves through the helpless shale; he tore the paper into four equal pieces. Completely unaware of what he was doing, he hobbled over to a metal mesh trashcan at the corner of 5th avenue and 10th street and, exhaling, placed the pieces inside. Anson tried to straighten himself but walked the rest of the way home at a fifty-degree angle, wincing and giggling, his mind someplace else.
END
