Final Diagnosis sg-10

by James White

  A big butterfly, Hewlitt thought, with an impeccable bedside manner.

  … You are not the first Earth-human DBDG that I have examined and recorded for later study,” it went on. “But the others, as is usual in a hospital, were in a diseased or damaged condition. You are an apparently perfect physical specimen and as such are of particular interest to me for purposes of clinical comparison. I will begin by taking your pulse at the temporal and carotid arteries and at the wrist, since emergencies can arise when a scanner is not available.”

  Its head tilted forward and inclined to one side so that one of its antennae touched the side of his head and throat, so lightly that if his eyes had been closed he might not have felt it.

  “As well,” it continued, “with the equipment I am using, it will not be necessary for you to uncover your body completely, particularly in the area containing the genitalia. From my nonmedical be- havioral studies I know that Earth-humans subscribe to a nudity taboo which makes them sensitive about openly displaying this area. As I have no intention of causing you embarrassment, Patient Hewlitt, whether you are male or female—”

  “Can’t you see it’s a male, stupid?” one of the Kelgians broke in. “Look at the flat, vestigial mammaries. Even through the bed garment you can see, or more accurately you cannot see, the contours on its chest. In females they are fully developed, which gives the female DBDG its characteristically top-heavy appearance- It broke off as Medalont raised one pincer, clicked twice, and said, “Enough. The time for clinical argument is not now, when the patient can overhear and, perhaps, draw its own conclusions regarding your medical ability.”

  The next one to come forward was the Kelgian responsible for the interruption. It stood on its three rearmost sets of tiny, caterpillar-like legs and curled over the bed like a furry question mark. Being a Kelgian, it would not have a bedside manner.

  “My examination will be similar to that of my Dwerlan colleague,” it said, “but I would also like to ask questions. The first one is, What is an apparently healthy patient like yourself doing in hospital? According to the senior physician’s case notes, there is nothing clinically wrong with you, except that you have displayed lifethreatening cardiac symptoms for no apparent reason. What is wrong with you, Patient Hewlitt? Or what do you think may be wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hewlitt, “twice.”

  Like all Kelgians’, this one s manner was impolite, honest, and completely forthright because that was the only way it knew how to behave. If his reaction was the same it would not be offended, because politeness and diplomacy were alien concepts to it. That was one of the things he had learned since coming to this medical madhouse, and he might be able to put that knowledge to use now by asking the right questions. Kelgians did not know how to lie.

  “The condition is intermittent,” Hewlitt went on, “with no detectable cause or advance warning symptoms. But my case notes must have told you that, too. What else did they tell you?”

  “The notes also discussed the possibility that you yourself are the primary cause,” said the other, “and that the condition is due to an intense hysterical reaction triggered by a deep-seated psychosis which manifests itself on the physical level, and that a rigorous psychological investigation has been undertaken to prove or disprove this theory. Turn onto your left side.”

  “So far,” said Hewlitt, looking at Braithwaite, who smiled and looked at the ceiling, “there has been no evidence of a psychosis, deep-rooted or otherwise, because there isn’t any to be found. If there was some past childhood experience or event or crime buried in my subconscious, so terrible and heinous that I have forced myself to forget it, surely there would be gaps in my memory or bad dreams or some indication other than the sudden onset of a cardiac arrest?”

  The Kelgian’s fur was moving in fast, erratic waves from its nose to the section of the body hidden by the bedside. It said, “I am not an ET psychologist, not even a Kelgian psychologist, but I disagree with you. It is generally accepted that a memory deeply buried is likely to have effects in direct proportion to the depth of its burial when it is uncovered. There is something hiding inside your mind that does not want to come out. If the threat of its discovery can cause a cardiac arrest as well as the other symptoms listed during similar episodes in the past, then it must be located, identified, and uncovered very carefully if you are to survive the experience.”

  This time it was the Kelgian who looked at Braithwaite, who nodded in agreement. So once again everyone was thinking that it was all in his mind. Trying to control his anger, which was unnecessary when talking to a Kelgian, Hewlitt said, “And how would you locate and identify this thing?”

  There was a moment’s silence, broken by Medalont, who said, “The patient seems to be examining its doctor now. But I, too, am interested in the answer.”

  The Kelgian’s fur rose into spikes and subsided before it said, “As yet Senior Physician Medalont has been unable to discover a clinical reason for your condition, Patient Hewlitt, and Lieutenant Braithwaite has found no evidence of major psychological disturbance. But if there is something there you must be aware of it, you must feel that something is wrong however tenuous the feeling might be. I suggest that an even closer investigation be made of your feelings, a more thorough one than is possible using the lieutenant’s verbal examination techniques.

  “An examination by a Cinrusskin empath like Prilicla,” it ended, “might be able to detect feelings that you were unaware of having, and probably the reasons for them.”

  “But I feel well, usually,” Hewlitt protested. “And wouldn’t I be the first to know if I didn’t? Anyway, I have met some pretty horrible-looking people since I came here, but I don’t remember if one of them was a Cinrusskin.”

  “If you had seen Prilicla,” said the Kelgian, “you would remember it.”

  Before he could reply, Medalont clicked a pincer for silence and said, “And you must also remember that Cinrusskins are empaths, not telepaths, who can detect and isolate the most subtle feelings, but not the reasons for them. The suggestion of exposing Patient Hewlitt to an emotion-sensitive is a good one, so good that it has already been suggested by Psychology Department and myself. Regrettably, it cannot be adopted until Senior Physician Prilicla returns from Wemar, two weeks hence. In the meantime, Patient Hewlitt has kindly agreed to assist your training by submitting to a multispecies examination by all of you. You have lectures to attend and your time here is limited. Let us proceed.”

  Some of the examinations were less gentle than others, but none so uncomfortable that he felt it necessary to complain, and he had to answer the questions instead of trying to ask them. Finally it was over. Medalont and the trainees thanked him individually and departed, leaving him alone with Braithwaite.

  “You survived that very well, Patient Hewlitt,” said the lieutenant. “I’m impressed.”

  “And what about your special, uncomfortable, and stressful test that you won’t allow to get out of hand?” said Hewlitt, “Will I survive that as well?”

  Braithwaite laughed. “You just did.”

  “I see,” said Hewlitt. “You were seeing how my nonexistent psychosis would react to a mass attack by aliens, right? Well, I still don’t feel comfortable with them around me, but for some reason I seem to be feeling more curious, I mean really curious about them, rather than frightened. Why should that be?”

  “Curious, that’s good,” said the psychologist. Without answering the question, he went on, “You have another problem. The amount of time that a hospital doctor can spend with any patient, especially a non-urgent patient undergoing negative treatment like yourself, is very small. Have you any ideas for keeping yourself amused during the next few weeks?”

  “Are you trying to tell me,” said Hewlitt angrily, “that nothing will be done about me, apart from using my body as a kind of healthy benchmark for trainees, until this Prilicla character arrives to read my emotions? Then, I suppose it, too, will tell me that th
ere is nothing wrong with me, that it is all in my mind, and that I should get a grip on myself, go home and stop wasting everybody’s time. And until then you are going to do nothing at all?”

  Braithwaite laughed again and shook his head.

  “It isn’t funny, dammit,” said Hewlitt. “At least, not to me.

  “It will be,” said the lieutenant, “after you meet your first Cmrusskin. Prilicla doesn’t talk that way to people. And we are trying to do something other than keeping you under close medical surveillance. It isn’t much, I admit, but a suggestion has been made that there could be some truth in your story about eating the poisonous fruit if-and this is a pretty tenuous theory-the juice that is lethal in small quantities has curative properties when taken in bulk. I can’t give you the medical reasons why that should happen, but there is one known precedent. In that particular case there were long-term aftereffects which might explain, although again I don’t know how, the intermittent nature of your symptoms. That is why we are sending to Etla the Sick for samples of the fruit so that Pathology can make an independent investigation of its degree of toxicity.

  “The two-way hyperjump between here and Etla,” he went on, “and a couple of days to find, gather, and pack the fruit, plus the time needed for the analysis, means a wait of two weeks minimum. During that time nothing much will be happening to you, unless Prilicla returns early or Medalont comes up with another form of treatment. That’s why I wanted to know how you plan to pass the time.”

  “I don’t know,” said Hewlitt. “Reading and viewing, I suppose, when you give me the library codes. Was it your idea about the Pessinith fruit?”

  Braithwaite shook his head again. “I wouldn’t want to be associated with a weird idea like that. It was Padre Lioren’s. It is a Tarlan BRLH attached to Psychology Department, who will probably visit you within the next few days. Visually it is a pretty fiercelooking character, but it might be able to help you, and after the way you behaved during the trainees’ examination its appearance shouldn’t cause you any problems.”

  “I suppose not,” said Hewlitt, refusing to feel pleased at the compliment. “But… does what you have been saying mean that you are beginning to believe me?”

  “Sorry, no,” Braithwaite replied. “As I told you earlier, we believe that you believe yourself, which is different from us believing that what you tell us is completely true. The Pessinith fruit incident is evidence, the only piece of hard evidence you have given us, that can be checked. We must try to prove or disprove it and move on from there.”

  “And how exactly do you plan to do that?” said Hewlitt. “By feeding me with Pessinith fruit and seeing if I die?”

  “As a nonmedic I cannot answer that,” Braithwaite replied with another smile. “There would be safeguards, of course, but you are probably right.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Hewlitt knew that it was not a symptom which would register on his medical monitor, but he was beginning to wonder whether there was such a condition as terminal boredom allied to atrophication of the tongue.

  Apart from asking how he was feeling and saying “That’s good,” Medalont said nothing to him. His Hudlar nurse, although friendly enough and helpful when it did speak, was absent for most of the day on lectures and busy at other times. Braithwaite called for a few minutes every day on his way to the dining hall and insisted that, because they were on his own rather than the department’s time, they were social rather than professional visits. He gay Hewlitt a few useful library access codes and talked a lot withou saying anything. Charge Nurse Leethveeschi had time for him onl if his monitor signaled a medical emergency; the lieutenant’s Tar Ian colleague, Padre Lioren, had yet to appear.

  The ambulatory patients who passed his bed on the way to th bathroom-a couple of Melfans, a newly arrived Dwerlan, a Kel gian, and one slow-moving Tralthan-sometimes talked amon themselves but never to him, and the few conversations he coul overhear from farther up the ward were never widened to include Patient Hewlitt. He could not talk to the patients in the beds beside and opposite him because they had been transferred somewhere else.

  He was growing heartily sick and tired of listening to the condescending voice of the library computer for hours on end. It was beginning to make him feel as he had done as a boy when confronted with an unending succession of thinly disguised school lessons. Then as now he had felt bored and restless, but then there had been an open window beckoning and beyond it a landscape filled with interesting things to play with. Here there were no windows that opened and nothing but space outside them if they had. In a desperate attempt to relieve his restlessness he decided to walk up and down the ward.

  He had walked the length of the ward twice and was on his third lap when Leethveeschi waddled out of the nurses’ station to bar his path.

  “Patient Hewlitt,” it said, “please do not walk so fast. You could collide with one of my nurses and injure them, or they you. As well, and I realize that the thought may not have occurred to you, it shows great insensitivity on your part to parade your obvious physical fitness in this fashion before the other patients, some of whom are seriously ill, injured, or bedridden. You may continue with your exercise, slowly.”

  “Sorry, Charge Nurse,” said Hewlitt.

  Moving at the slower pace, Hewlitt felt awkward just staring straight in front of him or down at the floor ahead, so he began to sneak quick looks at the patients he was passing. The majority of them did not look at him, probably because they were sleeping, they were too ill, or they thought him as ugly as he did them. The other patients followed him with their eyes, too many eyes in some cases, and it came as no surprise that the only one who spoke to him was a Kelgian.

  “You look all right to me, for an Earth-human,” it said, rippling the fur that was not concealed by a large rectangle of silvery grey fabric taped to its side. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” said Hewlitt, stopping and turning to face it. “The hospital is trying to find out.”

  “Leethveeschi called out the resuscitation team for you the day you arrived,” it said. “It must be serious. Are you going to die?”

  “I don’t know,” Hewlitt replied, “and I hope not.”

  The Kelgian was lying on its side in a large, square bed on top of the blanket and with its furry body curved into the shape of a flattened S. It drew itself up, flattening the S even more, and said, “Seeing you Earth-humans balancing like that on just two legs makes me uneasy. If you want to talk, sit on the bed. I won’t break. I won’t bite, either; I’m herbivorous.”

  Hewlitt sat sideways on the edge of the bed, taking care that his hip did not touch the other’s furry body or stubby, caterpillar legs. He had always liked talking to people, and provided he closed his eyes or looked away from time to time, he might be able to fool himself into thinking that the creatures in this place fell into that category.

  Now that the Kelgian had mentioned it, he realized that a creature who moved on twenty feet would feel a little strange about someone who used only two. The feeling was mutual.

  He cleared his throat and prepared to make polite conversation, if it was possible to do that with a Kelgian.

  “My name is Hewlitt,” he said. “I noticed you passing my bed a few times, usually with a Tralthan or a Dwerlan and once, I think, with a Duthan. I’ve been keying into the.library to learn and identify the different physiological classifications so that I’ll know what as well as who is doing things to me, but some of them I’m still not sure about.”

  “I am Morredeth,” said the Kelgian. “You are right about the Duthan and the other two. When we passed your bed you did not speak. We decided that you were either very ill or very antisocial.”

  “I did not speak because you were always talking to your companions,” he said, “and interrupting you would not have been polite.”

  “Polite,” that word again!” said the other, its fur rising into spikes. “There is no equivalent meaning in our l
anguage. If you wanted to speak to me you should have done so, and if I had not wanted to listen to you I would have told you to be quiet. Why must non-Kelgians make everything so complicated?”

  He decided to treat it as a rhetorical question and asked, “What is wrong with you, Morredeth? Is it serious?”

  The silence began to lengthen and still the other did not reply. Kelgians were psychologically incapable of telling a lie, Hewlitt reminded himself, but there was nothing to keep them from remaining silent if they did not want to answer. He was about to apologize for asking the question when the other spoke.

  “The original injury was not disabling,” said Morredeth, “but the resulting condition is very serious, and incurable. Unfortunately, it will not kill me. I do not wish to talk about it.”

  Hewlitt hesitated, then said, “Do you wish to talk about something else, or would you prefer me to leave?”

  Morredeth ignored him and went on, “I should try to talk about it, Lioren says, and think about it instead of trying to push it out of my mind. Right now I want to talk about the other patients, the medical staff, and anybody or anything else so that I will not have to think about it. But I can’t talk and think about other things all the time, not when the patients are sleeping, or when the night nurse stops talking to me because it has other things to do, or when I fall asleep myself. I don’t know about your kind, but Kelgians have no voluntary control over the subject of their dreams.”

  “Nor have we,” said Hewlitt, looking at the rectangle of silvery fabric attached to the other’s body and wondering what terrible injury it concealed.

  Morredeth saw where he was looking. It ruffled its fur and said, “I will not talk about it.”

  But you have been not-talking about it, or talking all around it, since I sat down on your bed. A psychologist would be able to make something of that, Hewlitt thought. Aloud, he said, “You mentioned a person called Lioren. I have been told that a Tarlan with that name might be calling on me soon.