The Anatomy Lesson Read Free

than his three ex-wives. Maybe he ’ d learn something and maybe he wouldn ’ t, but at least they would help to distract him, and according to the rheumatologist at NYU, distraction, pursued by the patient with real persistence, could reduce even the worst pain to tolerable levels.
    The psychoanalyst whom he consulted took a contrary position: he wondered aloud if Zuckerman hadn ’ t given up fighting the illness to retain (with a fairly untroubled conscience) his “ harem of Florence Nightingales. ” Zuckerman so resented the crack he nearly walked out. Given up? What could he do that he hadn ’ t—what was left that he was unwilling to try? Since the pains had begun in earnest eighteen months before, he ’ d waited his tum in the offices of three orthopedists, two neurologists, a physiotherapist, a rheumatologist. a radiologist, an osteopath, a vitamin doctor, an acupuncturist, and now the analyst.
    The acupuncturist had stuck twelve needles into him on fifteen different occasions, a hundred and eighty needles in all, not one of which had done a thing. Zuckerman sat shirtless in one of the acupuncturist ’ s eight treatment cubicles, the needles hanging from him, and reading The New York Times —sat obediently for fifteen minutes, then paid his twenty-five dollars and rode back uptown, jangling with pain each time the cab took a pothole. The vitamin doctor gave him a series of five vitamin B-12 shots. The osteopath yanked his rib cage upward, pulled his arms outward, and cracked his neck sharply to either side. The physiotherapist gave him hot packs, ultrasound, and massage. One orthopedist gave him “ trigger-point ” injections and told him to throw out the Olivetti and buy the IBM; the next, having informed Zuckerman that he was an author too, though not of “ bestsellers, ” examined him lying down and standing up and bending over, and, after Zuckerman had dressed, ushered him out of his office, announcing to his receptionist that he had no more time that week to waste on hypochondriacs. The third orthopedist prescribed a hot bath for twenty minutes every morning, after which Zuckerman was to perform a series of stretching exercises. The baths were pleasant enough—Zuckerman listened to Mahler through the open doorway—but the exercises, simple as they were, so exacerbated all his pains that within the week he rushed back to the first orthopedist, who gave him a second series of trigger-point injections that did no good. The radiologist X-rayed his chest, back, neck, cranium, shoulders, and arms. The first neurologist who saw the X-rays said he wished his own spine was in such good shape; the second prescribed hospitalization, two weeks of neck traction to alleviate pressure on a cervical disc—if not the worst experience of Zuckerman ’ s life, easily the most humbling. He didn ’ t even want to think about it, and generally there was nothing that happened to him, no matter how bad, that he didn ’ t want to think about. But he was stunned by his cowardice. Even the sedation, far from helping, made the powerlessness that much more frightening and oppressive. He knew he would go berserk from the moment they fastened the weights to the harness holding his head. On the eighth morning, though there was no one in the room to hear him, he began to shout from where he was pinned to the bed, “ Let me up! Let me go! ” and within fifteen minutes was back in his clothes and down at the cashier ’ s cage settling his bill. Only when he was safely out onto the street, hailing a cab, did he think, “ And. What if something really terrible were happening to you? What then? ” Jenny had come down from the country to help him through what was to have been the two weeks of traction. She made the round of the galleries and museums in the morning, then after lunch came to the hospital and read to him for two hours from The Magic Mountain. It had seemed the appropriate great tome for the occasion, but strapped