-
Unit 8
The Discus Thrower
Richard
Selzer
1
I
spy on my patients. Ought not a doctor to observe
his patients by any means
and from any
stance that he might take for the more fully
assemble evidence? So I
stand in the
doorways of hospital rooms and gaze. Oh, it is not
all that furtive an act.
Those in bed
need only look up to discover me. But they never
do.
2
From the
doorway of Room 542 the man in the bed seems
deeply tanned. Blue
eyes and close-
cropped white hair give him the appearance of
vigor and good health.
But I know that
his skin is not brown from the sun. It is rusted,
rather, in the last
stage
of
containing
the
vile
repose
within.
And
the
blue
eyes
are
frosted,
looking
inward like the windows of a snowbound
cottage. This man is blind. This man is also
legless ― the right leg missing from
midthigh down, the left from just below the knee.
It
gives
him
the
look
of
a
bonsai,
roots
and
branches
pruned
into
the
dwarfed
facsimile of a great
tree.
3
Propped
on
pillows,
he
cups
his
right
thigh
in
both
hands.
Now
and
then
he
shakes his head as though
acknowledging the intensity of his suffering. In
all of this
he makes no sound. Is he
mute as well as blind?
4
The
room
in
which
he
dwells
is
empty
of
all
possessions
―
no
get
-well
cards,
small, private caches
of food, day-old flowers, slippers, all the usual
kickshaws of the
sick room. There is
only the bed, a chair, a nightstand, and a tray on
wheels that can
be swung across his lap
for meals.
5
“What time is it?” he asks.
“Three o’clock.”
“Morning or afternoon?”
“Afternoon.”
He
is silent. There is nothing else he wants to know.
“How are you?” I say.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“It’s the doctor. How do you
feel?”
He does not answer
right away.
“Feel?” he says.
“I hope you feel better,” I
say.
I press the button at
the side of the bed.
“Down
you go,” I say.
“Yes, down,”
he says.
6
He falls back upon the bed
awkwardly. His stumps, unweighted by legs and
feet,
rise in the air, presenting
themselves. I unwrap the bandages from the stumps,
and
begin to cut away the black scabs
and the dead, glazed fat with scissors and
forceps.
A
shard
of
white
bone
comes
loose.
I
pick
it
away.
I
wash
the
wounds
with
disinfectant
and
redress
the
stumps.
All
this
while,
he
does
not
speak.
What
is
he
thinking
behind those lids that do not blink? Is he
remembering a time when he was
whole?
Does he dream of feet? Or when his body was not a
rotting log?
7
He lies solid and inert. In spite of
everything, he remains impressive, as though
he were a sailor standing athwart a
slanting deck.
“Anything more I can do
for you?” I ask.
For a long
moment he is silent.
“Yes,”
he
says
at
last
and
without
the
least
irony.
“You
can
bring me
a
pair
of
shoes.”
In the
corridor, the head nurse is waiting for me.
“We
have
to
do
something
about
him,”
she
says.
“Every
morning
he
orders
scrambled eggs for breakfast, and,
instead of eating them, he picks up the plate and
throws it against the wall.”
“Throws his plate?”
“Nasty.
That’s
what
he
is.
No
wonder
his
family
doesn’t
come
to
visit.
They
probably can’t stand
him any more than we can.”
She is waiting for me to do something.
“Well?”
“We’ll
see,” I say.
8
The
next
morning
I
am
waiting
in
the
corridor
when
the
kitchen
delivers
his
breakfast. I watch the
aide place the tray on the stand and swing it
across his lap. She
presses the button
to raise the head of the bed. Then she leaves.
9
In
time the man reaches to find the rim of the tray,
then on to find the dome of
the covered
dish. He lifts off the cover and places it on the
stand. He fingers across
the plate
until he probes the eggs. He lifts the plate in
both hands, sets it on the palm
of his
right hand, centers it, balances it. He hefts it
up and down slightly, getting the
feel
on it. Abruptly, he draws back his right arm as
far as he can.
10
There is the crack of the
plate breaking against the wall at the foot of his
bed and
the small wet sound of the
scrambled eggs dropping to the floor.