Free Night-Bloom by Herbert Lieberman Page A

he enthused brightly. “Been sick on and off for the past year or so. Airline work is my field, you know. Been a purser on most of your major lines. Pan Am, TWA, United, you name it. Been all over the world, too—Europe, the Far East, Russia. Love travel. Have ever since I was a kid. Joined up with the Air Force during Vietnam. Helicopter pilot, you know.”
    Watford waxed nostalgic. He appeared just then, with his wry boyish grin, to be a man fully enjoying his reveries. “Got myself shot down behind enemy lines,” he continued. “Had to make my way back on foot through the jungle. Three days I walked, with a couple of 50mm slugs in my leg.” He held his leg up for his roommate to see. “Still walk with a limp but they gave me a Purple Heart and a DFC.” Watford smiled and glimpsed across at his neighbor. “That’s how I got into airline work. Seemed the natural way to go. They wouldn’t let me fly anymore because of my disability. So they made me a purser instead. I don’t mind, though. I love it. The travel, the people, new experiences. Always something new. You see, with me it’s always been a case of … Beg pardon?”
    Watford had been chattering on so freely that he was unaware that the man had been muttering something to himself.
    “Sorry,” Watford leaned across the narrow space between the beds. “What was it you were saying?”
    The man’s head rolled sideward on his pillow. His eyes blazed open, fixing Watford angrily, then in the next moment closed.
    “Are you all right?” Watford inquired uneasily.
    Just at that moment, voices and a flurry of motion streamed through the doorway. A tall, brisk man in a white flowing coat breezed into the room. A flustered, somewhat breathless nurse tripped along behind at his heel.
    “Good morning, Mr. Watford. I’m Dr. Rashower. Dr. Shavers’s associate. How are you feeling this morning?”
    Watford looked up into a pair of shrewd, assessing eyes. He had not been expecting this so soon and had to get himself into a proper frame of mind for what he was certain was to follow. Momentarily stunned, he had sufficient presence of mind to stall in order to suggest infirmity.
    “I think I’m all right, Doctor.” He spoke haltingly. The chirpy note of several moments before had become a kind of frail bleat.
    The doctor glanced up and down his chart. “Still having pain, are you?”
    “Yes. Across the lower back. Particularly at night. The pain is terrible at night.”
    “I see. Roll over, please. We’ll have a look.” Dutifully, Watford rolled over on his stomach while the doctor untied the back of his smock and with strong, coolish fingers, palpated the area around his kidneys. Next he sounded the area with a stethoscope. Lastly, he slipped on a rubber glove, dipped one finger liberally in Vaseline, inserted it in Watford’s rectum and routed about in there for a while.
    “Okay. You can roll back over now,” the doctor said, removing the glove and disposing of it neatly in a nearby wastebasket. “This is all a bit perplexing. You say that Dr. Shavers has been treating you for recurrent renal colic? But I find no sign of renal colic. There’s nothing in your blood or your radiology to suggest renal colic. We have found some blood in your urine, but not in sufficient quantities to be alarming. The blood may simply be a sign of infection, but you’re running no fever, nor do you have an elevated white blood cell count. I just checked your prostate and found it normal in size, possibly a trifle boggy. Nothing very significant. Frankly, I’m puzzled. Something else puzzles me, too.”
    Something in the man’s voice and expression sent a red flag up for Watford’s keen antennae.
    “I’ve looked high and low through Dr. Shavers’s records for your file and can find no trace of his ever having treated you.”
    “I can assure you he has,” Watford retorted sharply. He could produce a fairly impressive moral indignation when the need was upon him, and