Free KATACLYSM: A Space-Time Comedy by Roy S. Rikman Page B

assure that hospitals continue to maintain and improve upon the standard of care.  So rarely does a day go by when a physician at Massachusetts General doesn’t pull his team aside to discuss some crucial insight reached through an examination of the dead.  Dr. Avery, by way of contrast, liked to stress the importance of autopsies with his actual, live patients.  You see, when patients are admitted to hospital, it is common practice to discuss their wishes with regards to emergency resuscitation.  Avery often found this a perfect opportunity to give his new charges a lecture on the importance of the autopsy.  To top it off, having done research with the Office of the Chief Coroner of Boston for many years, he insisted on wearing his coroner pin on his lab coat at all times.  As you might imagine, these things did not instill his patients with great confidence.  In fact, at best, his bedside manner could be described as ‘a bit off’.
    Among Avery’s other passions was a deep love of complementary and alternative medicine.  It was his quest to educate his students about different and unusual methods of diagnosis and healing that brought him and his companions to the Hindu mystic.
    Neither of the two men accompanying Avery was very happy to be joining him on this afternoon.  Both were still recovering from a very difficult night.  Eric Silver stood next to Avery looking paler than normal.  Despite the bizarre events of last night, however, Eric felt quite alert after having a surprisingly good cup of tea and a rest at home.  The same could not be said for the third man, Dr. Avery’s brother Louis who was a math professor at Harvard.  After seeing what appeared to be a green alien flying by his office window in a flying saucer late last night, he had become convinced that he was going mad.  He could not fathom how Albert had convinced him to come along.  Eric was astonished on meeting Louis to find that he was morbidly obese and actually looked worse than his brother.  Grotesqueness seemed to run in the family and neither nature nor nurture appeared to have been very kind to either man.
    “I want to go home,” said Louis who jabbed his brother in the side as they entered the dimly lit audience chamber and stood by the wall.  “I already know what my problem is.  I just eat too much,” he groaned. 
    Louis was right.  Like any thin man trapped in a fat man’s body, he ate three times as much as any thin man.
    “Knock it off Louis.  Don’t be such a crybaby.  You don’t see ‘epistaxis’ over here whining,” he said motioning towards Eric.  “Besides, you’re the one who wanted to get someone to check on your heart anyway,” said Dr. Avery under his breath.
    “Yes,” Louis protested.  “But you’re the chief of medicine in one of the most reputable hospitals in the country.  This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
    “Shhh!”  Dr. Avery put a finger to his lips.  The Hindu mystic had walked in. He was a handsome man who wore a tan Nehru jacket over his thin frame.  Without speaking, he moved to examine the only other person in the chamber, a woman clad only in shorts and a T-shirt standing on a small round carpet in the centre of the room.  The woman was thin but tall and she towered over the slight mystic as he walked in a circle around her.
    “Watch what he does carefully Silver.  He’ll have the diagnosis in forty seconds,” whispered Dr. Avery.
    “So I guess these guys don’t worry too much about confidentiality then,” Eric replied with just a hint of disdain, gesturing to the three of them.
    “Screw confidentiality Silver.  After last night, I should hardly think that you’d be one to judge.  Now just shut up and pay attention.”
    These last words came out louder than Dr. Avery had intended.  The mystic faced them and stared for a moment with a placid but slightly reproachful expression on his face before turning back to his patient.  There was silence