The Touch

Alan

"I can't do it now," Alan said, looking up at Charles Axford, who concealed his annoyance so poorly.

"Well, when can you do it?" Axford said.

Alan consulted his notes. Thank God for the notes. He couldn't remember a damn thing without them. The Hour of Power had come between 4:00 and 5:00 on Monday, and this was Thursday, so that meant it would probably come between 7:00 and 8:00 this evening. He glanced at his watch.

"Should be ready in about an hour."

"Super." He pronounced it seeYOO-pah. "Make yourself at home until then." He rose. "I've got a few things to check on in the meantime."

So Alan found himself alone in Charles Axford's office. He didn't want to be here, hadn't wanted to come to the McCready Foundation at all. But Sylvia had insisted. She had come home from the Foundation with Jeffy and McCready's proposal and had worked on him relentlessly all afternoon, saying that he would never know peace, never be able to practice any sort of reputable medicine again, that he owed it to himself, to his regular patients, to the special ones only he might be able to help, and on and on and on until he had capitulated out of sheer exhaustion.

Very persistent, that woman.

But he loved her. No doubt about that. She made him feel good about himself, good about her, good about the whole damn world. He hated leaving her, even for the few days it would take to go through this clinical investigation here at the Foundation. He had come here as much for her as for himself. That had to be love.

Because he hated being here.

It was a nice-enough place. Rather impressive, actually, with its steel and granite exterior and that huge art-deco lobby. But beyond the lobby, all twenty stories had been refurbished and furnished with state-of-the-art medical equipment.

The decor didn't make him feel the least bit comfortable, however. He hated being probed and studied and looked at and treated like an experimental lab rat. None of that had happened as yet, but it was coming. He could feel it coming. He had signed a waiver of liability and had agreed to sleep here and stay within the confines of the Foundation building for the duration of his testing in order to minimize the variables that might otherwise be introduced.

He sighed. What choice did he have? Either go on as he had been and lose his license and his reputation as a reliable, conscientious physician, condemned to practice miracle medicine on the fringes as some sort of quack or tent-show healer; or let someone like Axford do a hard-nosed, nitty-gritty scientific work-up under controlled conditions, get hard data, replicate the results, and document first the existence and then the whys and wherefores of the Touch.

Alan wanted to know—for Sylvia, for the world, but mostly for himself. Because the Touch was doing something to him. He didn't know exactly what, but he knew he wasn't quite the same person as when he started with this back in the spring. Axford's conclusions might not be good news, but at least he would know, and maybe the knowledge would help him reassert some modicum of control over his life. He sure as hell hadn't had much control over it lately.

The digital LED display on the desk clock said 7:12 when Axford returned.

"Are you quite ready now?" he said with his haughty air.

"Won't know for sure until I try."

"Then let's try, shall we? I've kept my secretary and a few others after hours on your account. I trust you won't disappoint us."

Axford led him down an elevator and into the opposite wing of the building, talking all the while.

"A man you shall know only as Mr, K has agreed to allow you to 'examine' him. He knows nothing about you—has never heard of you, never seen your picture in the paper, knows nothing about you other than the fact that you are another physician who is going to examine him and possibly contribute something to his therapy."

"Pretty much the truth, hmmm?"

Axford nodded. "I don't lie to people who come here for treatment."

"But you're also trying to avoid any hint of placebo effect."

"Bloody right. And we'll have the room miked and you'll be on videotape to make sure you don't try to sell him on a miracle."

Alan couldn't help but smile. "Glad to see you're taking no chances. What's the diagnosis?"

"Adeno-CA of the lung, metastatic to the brain."

Alan winced. "What's been tried so far?"

"That's a rather involved story—and here we are." He put his hand on a doorknob. "I'll introduce you and leave you alone with him. From then on you're on your own. But remember—I'll be watching and listening on the monitor."

Alan bowed. "Yes, Big Brother."

Mr. K was tall, very thin, and his color was awful. But his eyes were bright. He sat shirtless and stoop-shouldered on the examining table, and showed more empty spaces than teeth when he smiled. There was a two- or three-month-old scar, one inch long, at the base of his throat above the sternal notch—mediastinoscopy, no doubt. Alan also noticed knobby lumps above his right clavicle—lymph nodes swollen with metastasized cancer. Mr. K wheezed at times when he spoke, and he coughed intermittently.

"What kind of doctor are you?"

"A therapist of sorts. How do you feel?"

"Not bad for a dead man."

The reply startled Alan. So casual, and so accurate. "Pardon?"

"Didn't they tell you? I got cancer of the lung and it went to my head."

"But there's radiation therapy, chemotherapy—"

"Horseshit! No death rays, no poisons! I'll go out like a man, not some puking wimp."

"Then what are you doing here at the Foundation?"

"Made a deal with them." He pulled out a pack of Camels. "Mind if I smoke?"

"After I examine you, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind." He put them away. "Anyway, I made a deal: Keep me comfortable and out of pain." He lowered his voice. "And grease the chute on the way out when the time comes, if you know what I mean. Do that and I'll let you study me and the effects of all this cancer. So they're gonna keep giving me tests to see what happens to my mental function, my moods, my—what they call it? Oh, yeah—motor skills. All that shit. Never did much with my life these last fifty-two years. Figure I can do something on the way out. Man's gotta be good for something sometime in his life, ain't he?"

Alan stared at Mr. K. He was either one of the bravest men he had ever met or a complete idiot.

"But you know all this already," Mr. K said. "Don't you?"

"I like to find things out on my own. But tell me. If for some reason your tumors just disappeared and you walked out of here a healthy man, what would be the first thing you'd do?"

Mr. K winked at him. "Quit smoking!"

Alan laughed. "Good enough. Let's take a look at you."

He placed a hand on each side of Mr. K's head. There was no waiting. The shocklike ecstasy surged through him. He saw Mr. K's eyes widen, then they rolled upward as he went into a brief grand mal seizure.

Axford rushed into the room.

"What in bloody hell did you do to him?"

"Healed him," Alan said. "Isn't that what you wanted?" It was time to wipe that smug, superior look off Axford's face.

"You son of a bitch!"

"He's all right."

"I'm fine," Mr. K said from the floor. "What happened?"

"You had a seizure," Axford said.

"If you say so." He brushed off Axford's attempt to make him lie still, and got to his feet. "Didn't feel a thing."

"Check him out tomorrow," Alan said, feeling more confident of the Touch than ever before. "He's cured."

"Tomorrow, hell!" Axford said, leading Mr. K to the door. "I'm hauling in the on-call techs right now! We'll see what a chest X ray, EEG, and CT scan have to say tonight!"