Mantissa Read Free Page B

did not look down. “Please don’t talk, Mr. Green. I want you to concentrate on tactile sensation.”
    His eyes wandered down the opening of the white coat, and then up again, in a third access of astonishment, to her still averted face. He had not taken literally the remark about wearing nothing.
    “I don’t know what you’re trying to do.”
    “I’ve just told you. We must test your reflexes.”
    “You mean…”
    She looked down with a distinct touch of impatience.
    “You must have had to produce specimens during past examinations. This is no different.”
    He pulled his hand away. “But I… you…”
    Her voice was suddenly strict and cold. “Look, Mr. Green, Nurse and I have many other patients to attend to. You do want to be cured, don’t you?”
    “Yes, of course, but –”
    “Then close your eyes. And for goodness’ sake try to be a little more erotic. We haven’t got all day.” She leaned across him, supporting herself on either side of the pillow. “Now both hands. Anywhere you like.”
    But he kept his hands where they were, back on the pillow.
    “I can’t. I don’t know you from Adam.”
    The doctor took a breath.
    “Mr. Green, the person I want you not to know me from is Eve. Or are you trying to tell me you’d rather have this treatment from a male nurse and doctor?”
    “I take exception to that.”
    She stared sternly down. “Do you find my body repellent?” Her voice and eyes were peremptory now, brooking no refusal. He glanced down from the face to the shadowed breasts, then turned his head aside.
    “I can’t see what this has got to do with –”
    “What you call ‘this’ happens to be the most up-to-date and approved method for your condition.”
    “I’ve never heard of it.”
    “A few minutes ago you’d never heard of your wife and children. You are suffering from severe memory-loss.”
    “I’d have remembered this.”
    “Can you remember your politics?” He said nothing. “Your religious beliefs? Your bank balance? Your profession?”
    “You know I can’t.”
    “Then you will kindly trust me to know what I’m doing. We don’t undergo long years of training in my particular specialism in order to have our professional judgment questioned – and above all on such silly grounds. You’re in perfectly good physical health. I examined you thoroughly yesterday. Your genitalia are quite normal. I’m not asking for the impossible.”
    He remained with his head turned away; then swallowed and spoke in a lower voice.
    “Couldn’t I… on my own?”
    “We’re not testing your ability to produce mere
sperm,
Mr. Green.”
    There was something he did not grasp about the contemptuous emphasis she gave “sperm,” as if it were synonymous with scum or froth.
    “It’s so embarrassing.”
    “You’re in a hospital, for heaven’s sake. There’s nothing personal in this. Nurse and I are simply carrying out standard practice. All we ask is a little cooperation. Nurse?”
    “Still negative, doctor.”
    “Now no more nonsense, Mr. Green. I have a perfectly ordinary female body. Shut your eyes and use it.”
    Her voice and look were like nothing so much as those of a nanny, of the old school, admonishing a dilatory infant to perform another natural process.
    “But why?”
    “And will you
please
stop asking these pointless questions.”
    She looked away at the wall behind the bed, forbidding any further discussion. In the end he closed his eyes and gingerly raised his hands to find the hanging breasts. He did not caress them, but merely held them. They were in themselves warm and firm, pleasant handfuls; and he became aware of a faint tarry fragrance, like that of myrtle flowers, no doubt from some antiseptic soap she used. But he was much less conscious of the doctor’s femininity than of an anger inside himself. At least he knew he must very recently have undergone a severe trauma, that his mind must be in a particularly delicate and fragile state – and here