"L. F. Mellish, M.D.--I. C. Bondy, M.D." was painted on the frosted
glass door where she led him afterward. The two medics received Lee with
a show of respect mixed with professional cordiality. Both Bondy, the
dark and oriental looking chap, and Mellish, blond and florid, were in
their middle twenties and both wore tweeds which depressed Lee with the
perfection of their cut. Seeing the professional table at the center of
the office, Lee frowned but started to undress; he wanted this thing
done and over with as soon as possible.
"No, no--that won't be necessary, Dr. Lee," they stopped him laughingly,
"We have already a complete medical report on you. Came in this morning
from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Canberra on our request. You're an
old malaria man, Dr. Lee; your first attack occured in '42 during the
Pacific campaign. Pity you refused to return to the States for a
complete cure right then. As it is it's turned recurrent; left you a bit
anemic, liver's slightly affected. But in all other respects you're
sound of limb and wind; we've gone over the report pretty carefully."
"Then why bother with me at all?" Lee said irritably. He had been in
doctors' hands too often and had become a little impatient of them.
The freckled hand of Mellish patted his arm. "We do things different
over here," he said and Bondy chimed in. "Or rather The Brain does. Just
lie down on that table, Dr. Lee, and relax. We're going to enjoy a
little movie together, that's all."
* * * * *
Lee did as he was bidden, but hesitant and suspiciously. He hated
medical exams, especially those where parts of one's body were hooked up
to a lot of impressive machinery. Of this there obviously was a good
deal. The two medics seemed determined literally to wall him in with
gadgetry. From the ceiling they lowered a huge, heavy-looking disk; not
lights, but more like an electro-magnet beset with protruding needles.
Lee couldn't see the cables but hoped they were strong, for the thing
weighed at least a ton and, overhanging him, looked much more ominous
than the sword of Damocles. They wheeled a silver screen to the foot of
the table and batteries of what appeared to be thermo-therapeutic
equipment to both sides. He wasn't being hooked up to anything, but
there was much activity with testing of circuits, button-pushings and
shiftings of relay-levers. And then all of a sudden lights went out in
the room.
"Say, what is the meaning of all this?" Lee raised his head uneasily
from the hard cushion. All he could see now were arrays of luminous
dials and the faint radiations from electronic tubes filtering through
metal screens inside the apparatus which fenced him in. From behind his
head a suave voice--was it Bondy's or Mellish's answered out of the
dark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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