by Jay Begler
Wang was remarkably calm, probably from his latest drink, replied matter-of-factly, “Just a safety precaution.”
“Safety precaution? What safety precaution? Safety against what?”
“Against your wife exploding.”
“Exploding? You assured me that there was no down- side risk!” Goodwin shouted.
Wang now, droopy eyed from his totally consumed bottle of liquid Prozac, did not respond to Goodwin’s charge. “Here,” Wang said quietly, “put on this helmet.”
“I’m sure I don’t need a helmet, Dr. Wang.”
“Suit yourself, but you are paying for it. Actually, you’re paying for all of the helmets and the equipment rental and the technicians and the safety uniforms and the closed-circuit television time, to name a few of the hundred items involved in this procedure.”
Wang turned away and made some adjustments to the closed circuit television monitor on his desk. The image Goodwin saw was that of a doctor dressed in heavy protective gear, generally worn by members of a bomb squad. The doctor signaled a technician positioned at the opposite end of the room. Despite the complexity of the equipment, the actual execution of the procedure appeared remarkably simple. A switch was pushed down. The lights flickered. Goodwin heard an electrical “zzzzz,” one identical to the “zzzzz” in the old Frankenstein movies when Dr. Frankenstein and his staff were trying to bring the monster back to life. For several minutes, there was silence and no movement whatsoever in the Med-TV room. In this quiet hiatus, Goodwin dwelled briefly on Dr. Frankenstein and wondered how his life would be different today, for example if the doctor had to deal with an HMO. (“What do you mean that you’re only going to reimburse me a total of $40? I put together lots of body parts and created life...I don’t give a damn that you have a $40 cap on ‘Miscellaneous Procedures.”)
Technicians from around the room began to read off numbers, to which other technicians appeared to respond “check.” Midstream into this activity, Sheila began to levitate slowly to a height of about five feet above the platform. Cables affixed to her body began to split and hit the floor causing sputtering electrical sparks. Sheila stayed motionless for a good 10 minutes. Just about the time that physicians in the room began to peek out from behind their sandbags, she began to vibrate violently and as she did so expand rapidly like a balloon infused with a great rush of air. One doctor screamed, “She’s going to blow! Take cover!” Reflexively, Goodwin grabbed his helmet and put it on. He glanced at Wang, who was praying, and heard him say, “Please, God, don’t let her go nuclear.”
There was no explosion, however. Sheila’s body gradually lowered to the platform and contracted to her pre-levitation size. The vibrating slowed and then stopped. The doctors and the technicians, sensing that the danger had passed, emerged cautiously from behind their sandbags and approached their stations. One doctor was standing by a meter not far from Sheila and speaking into the television camera as a means of reporting back to Wang: “Ratio now at 1000:1...900:1; 800:1...500:1; steady...20:1…cutoff...good, excellent…it worked. She’s stabilized.”
The last thing Goodwin saw on the monitor was the doctors, still dressed in their protective gear and helmets, the ones over 30 giving themselves high fives, the ones under 30 giving fist bumps.
“Well,” said Wang, “we did it.”
“What? She looks the same, like one giant amoeba.”
“Yes, but her ratios are normal, and no explosion. Most importantly, we no longer have to worry about any adverse reaction to the procedure.”
“Are you absolutely certain?”
“I’ll stake my reputation on it. Why don’t you go home get a good night’s sleep? We will monitor Sheila’s condition and if any changes occur, I will call you. No one knows if she will now revert back to her former self, but we are confident that she will. Trust us, we’re doctors.” While Goodwin was well read, he was not familiar with the book How to Avoid Jinxes, where the author points out that there is a 100 percent correlation between a doctor uttering “Trust us, we’re doctors,” and a medical mishap of some proportion.
Physiological Schizophrenia
The last time Goodwin received a phone call at four in the morning it was from his former golfing buddy, Doctor Alex LaRue, Grace Harbor’s famed blind gynecologist. “Doctor Golden Touch,” as he was known at Harborside, caused a minor scandal when it was discovered that he was neither blind, nor a licensed doctor. The good ex-doctor was summarily dismissed from Harborside, not so much for the fraud perpetrated on his patients, but because he used his blindness to gain certain advantages in golf tournaments. Many of his former patients, however, were devastated, particularly because he had such a wonderful touch. “It was almost as if he could see,” patients used to say. The discovery of his deceit did clear up the mystery of how LaRue putted so well. Some members had found his putting skills so remarkable they began to close their eyes when putting to emulate his style. More infuriating and the tipping point for the members’ unbridled rage at him was that when La Rue posted his handicap for a tournament, he always wrote “blind” instead of an appropriate number. This always assured him of a trophy.
LaRue was in a deep depression and in a state of great panic when he called Goodwin. He feared that he was in fact losing his eyesight. When Goodwin told this to Sheila the following morning, she replied, not intending it as a rather black joke, but as a statement of fact, “Well, if that happens, maybe he can get back into the Club.” LaRue never had the malady he thought, however. He simply went to sleep with his sunglasses on and thought the dim light from his bathroom was a symptom of failing eyesight. In the every clouded vision has a silver lining department, however, since he could no longer play golf, nor play doctor, he wrote a best-selling golf book entitled, Putting With Your Eyes Closed.
This time, the caller was Wang whose voice trembled significantly more than La Rue’s. “Sorry to wake you, but we’ve had a complication. Can you come down immediately?”
“What do you mean complication?’ You promised no contraindications; said that you would stake your reputation on it. To trust you; you’re doctors. What the hell is going on?”
“Well, it’s difficult to explain. But let me tell you the good news, the swelling has all but disappeared and the light surrounding your wife is gone.”
“So, doctor, what’s the downside, or the complication?”
“Well, your wife seems to have developed an extreme case of physiological schizophrenia.”
“What in God’s name is that?”
“It’s much easier for me to explain when you get here.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Wang hung up before Goodwin could extract an answer.
There was just a crack of sunlight in the sky when Goodwin arrived at the Meditainment Center’s parking lot. It was not in its usual pre-dawn dormant state, just the reverse. The lot had the character of a staging area for a small invasion, but the troops in this case were reporters. Enormous flood and Klieg lights illuminated close to 100 news vans. News reporters were setting up initial shots for a story that was to follow. A separate area of the lot was roped off for helicopters, several of which were circling above and waiting to descend. A helicopter with the word NEWS upon its door had just landed several yards away from Goodwin’s car. Within seconds of landing, the door of the helicopter swung open and a bevy of reporters ran full tilt towards the Host-Pital. Goodwin thought he spotted the senior reporter, the Barbara Walters type that had criticized him earlier. Despite her age she was well ahead of the pack, probably because she was wearing Nike’s Sheila brand “Shopper’s model.”
As Goodwin entered the waiting room of the Meditainment Center, he could see Wang pacing and talking on his iPhone. Usually a fastidious dresser and always well groomed, Wang was unkempt and in need of a shave. There was no offer of a handshake or the usual small talk. Without looking at Goodwin, Wang led him to an elevator. The only access to the floor to which they were traveling was via a key place
d in the panel of the elevator. Wang, still avoiding eye contact and looking spent, said quietly and with no modulation in his voice, “We’ve changed your wife’s location to a hospital suite reserved for VIPs, and at no extra charge.”
Goodwin wanted to press him for more information, but Wang seemed preoccupied with the task of wiping rather large beads of sweat from his brow and mumbling some words that sounded like “Hippocratic oath” repeatedly. Those words, Goodwin thought, might have been Wang’s transcendental meditation mantra, though they clearly did not calm him. The elevator opened into a large, luxurious, living room furnished with expensive antiques.
Wang escorted Goodwin into one of the bedrooms off of the living room, a stylishly furnished, but fully functional, patient’s room. Sheila was lying comatose in a single bed near the window and was no longer surrounded by the cocoon of light. A Spa IV was attached to her arm. The swelling had completely disappeared. Her complexion was pinkish. She looked remarkably well, though the broad smile on her face continued to disturb Goodwin. Several doctors were discussing her case, but Goodwin could not hear what they were saying. The doctors who heretofore were giving high-fives and fist bumps appeared to be quite subdued. None of them seemed to rejoice in the success of their experiment. They were in a state of total shock.
“Well, Doctor Wang, I guess your instincts were right. Congratulations. My apologies for doubting you.”
“It’s not that simple,” Wang said quite somberly. “I’m afraid that what you are about to see, Mr. Goodwin, will definitely not please you.” The “Mr. Goodwin” part alerted Goodwin to the fact that something was acutely wrong.
Wang led Goodwin out of the bedroom and across the living room towards another door marked “Hospital Personnel Only.” Goodwin had assumed that he was entering a typical diagnostic room, one housing cat scan and MRI images mounted on background lighting. He expected that Wang would point out an large ominous mass shaped roughly like a partially eaten cheese-ball and explain that the cause of the swelling was a variant of an awful disease, akin to the flesh- eating bacteria only the reverse, one in which bulimic bacteria that would purge into the host adding to her weight. Goodwin’s assumption, however, was totally wrong. The room was occupied by another patient and was identical to the room he just left. A woman was lying in a bed at the far end of the room. There was little doubt as to who it was. It was Sheila or as Goodwin correctly described it, a second Sheila.
A cocktail of shock, fear and anger coursed through Goodwin causing him to lose control. As loudly as he could Goodwin screamed: “What the hell is going on?”
“Physiological schizophrenia.”
Raising his voice two octaves higher, and thus breaking his personal best for loudness, Goodwin yelled, “Stop with that fucking expression. What are you talking about?”
“Remember in high-school biology, the concept of amitosis? Well, in biology amitosis means the division of a cell into two identical parts. That is what apparently happened with your wife. It was as if she was one giant amoeba and divided into two identical clones of the Original Sheila. I know it sounds unbelievable, but your eyes are not deceiving you. There are now Two Sheilas.”
“You said there would be no down side to this procedure.”
“There was not supposed to be any,” Wang whined. “Here look for yourself. The monograph on a related procedure shows no contraindications.”
Goodwin’s eyes glanced down at the monograph and somehow focused on a footnote on the first page that read: “Caution: Because of its unpredictability, this procedure is contraindicated in patients suffering injuries from severe electrical shocks such as those received from lightning strikes.”
“What do you mean there is nothing in the literature on contraindications. The monograph specifically says you’re not supposed to conduct this procedure upon people who have had severe electrical shocks.”
Wang was “shocked” himself and started rambling, “Where? Where?”
“Here, damn it, on page one. Read for yourself.” Goodwin reread the footnote aloud. Finally spotting the language and in an effort to minimize the damage that this incident was going to cause to his reputation, and in a state of total panic bordering on a psychosis, Wang screamed: “Who reads footnotes?”
“I’m going to sue your ass off.”
“Go ahead,” Wang replied, “I’m a corporation.” Wang was giggling when he replied, though it was not an amused giggle. It was one indicative of total hysteria. “Anyway, the first thing we did was call our lawyers and they said there’s no liability. If we killed Sheila, well, that would be one thing. You’d have a wrongful death action. But, we just gave you an extra wife. There’s no such thing as a wrongful life action or should I say ‘wrongful wife’ action.” Wang, unlike Goodwin, was amused by his little play on words and giggled for several more minutes.
“Sorry,” he said, having regained some of his composure. “Why don’t you take some of these? They’re M&Ms with a Xanax core, a new joint venture from Pfizer and Mars Candy Company. It has a great slogan: ‘Melts In Your Mind, Not In Your Hands.’” Wang began giggling again and wringing his hands. He was downing his sweet tranquilizers as if they were real M & M candies.
Though he was never a violent man, Goodwin knocked the dish out of Wang’s hand, grabbed his lapels with both hands, and shook him violently. “Jesus Christ! You tell me everything will be all right and I come back to two wives. For Christ sake, it’s hard enough to be married to one Sheila.” He released his grip on Wang’s lapels and stared out into space. What he did next was something that in retrospect seemed startling, an act triggered no doubt by the full realization that he was now married to two Sheilas. He raised his arms up towards the ceiling and said in a somber tone, “This tempest in my mind doth from my senses take all feeling.”
“Hey, King Lear” said an orderly who was working nearby.
Diverted for an instant and impressed, Goodwin responded, “Why yes. How’d you know? Did you study Shakespeare in school?”
“No, I just studied television. Jeopardy had a whole show on Shakespeare and one question was, ‘Royalty extremely disappointed by conduct of their son.’ I yelled out, ‘Who is Queen Elizabeth?’ But the real answer was: Who is King Lear? Shit, I thought he just made jet planes.”
The break with the orderly helped Goodwin regain his composure. He apologized to Wang, who was weeping, “I’m sorry, Dr. Wang, I can’t comprehend this.”
“No one can. The video of Sheila shows her in her bed as one person. Then, around two a.m., the light intensifies beyond anything we could imagine. It becomes so intense that the filters surrounding Sheila’s cocoon become useless. The force of the light knocks them over. The entire Med-TV room is totally immersed in super-blinding light. Nothing at all is picked up on the closed- circuit cameras. After about 30 minutes, the bright light begins to flicker on and off, like a series of flash bulbs. The flickering stops suddenly and then there is an electrical failure in the Med-TV room. It becomes totally black. Lefty and Righty try to get into the room, but the doors are jammed shut. Several minutes pass. The lights go back on. When the picture on the television monitor comes back into focus, we cannot believe our eyes. We all assumed that there was something wrong with the television set, but, it depicted an accurate picture. Mrs. Goodwin had undergone amitosis. The resultant Sheilas are, we believe, an identical amitotic pair. Even her Cartier watch divided in two.”
“We’ve put patient tags on their wrists. The Sheila in the room on the right is, for now, ‘Sheila Right’ and the one in the left room is ‘Sheila Left.’ We thought it best to separate them because the psychological trauma if they woke up might be fatal. Your wife, the Original Sheila, is the first known cases of Physiological Schizophrenia. That is to say, instead of a split personality, she’s a split person.”
Before Goodwin could respond, though he really didn’t know if he was capable of speaking at that point, Dr. Kildare, who had been enjoying the status of a “Medic
al Consultant” to a television network, strutted into the room smoking a cigar. His demeanor was manic. Addressing Goodwin he said: “Well, my friend, I guess you heard the good news. It seems in the middle of the night your wife said, ‘I am an amoeba’ and divided in two. And, I suppose it’s a good news, bad news scenario. First, the good news: the light is gone and your wives seem in perfectly fine health. Now the bad news: Blue Cross/Blue Shield makes no provision for additional wives. Only one spouse is covered, but the hospital takes major credit cards, and think of the bonus points. Why, you and your wives can vacation at Marriott’s Hawaiian Paradise hotel for nothing, assuming the hotel has a triple bed.”
“I know what I see, but it’s impossible,” Goodwin replied.
Goodwin slumped into a seat and began to mumble to himself, “Why did this have to happen to Sheila? My luck, the only one in the history of the world to have ever split in two has to be my wife. Why couldn’t this happen to someone who would do the world some good?” Goodwin tried to think of someone in this category, and the first one that came to mind was Oprah. “Yeah, why couldn’t it have happened to Oprah? Then, we’d have two of the nicest people in the world.”
For an instant he thought about the concept of two Oprah’s. Oprah would interview Oprah and then, shifting seats, Oprah would interview Oprah. His thoughts shifted to life after the split. “How,” he wondered, “is it going to look at the Harborside dinner dance, me strutting in with two wives? How do we do a tax return? It’s no longer a joint return. Am I a bigamist? How do we book golf times? My club only books foursomes. How do we dance? What do we do, a hora? How do I explain this incomprehensible and unbelievable event to my friends? Sheila is terrific. She’s twice the woman she used to be? And what if they want sex? I’ll feel guilty, like I’m cheating on one of them. And when I tell jokes, what’s going to be their response? We don’t get it?”