The other two doctors knelt beside him.
“Wider!” the first doctor ordered the man.
“Dudley!” the second doctor objected. “You’re hogging it all to yourself. I can’t even see anything.”
“Well, I saw it first,” the first doctor reminded him. "And besides, Louis is pushing. That’s why you can’t see.”
“I am not pushing, Dudley. And I might remind you that you did invite me in here for consultation.”
“All right. Don’t get your feathers ruffled. We’ll take turns looking.”
But none of the three moved. And when they spoke again it was a chorus of mutual frustration. “Wider!” they chimed.
“Say,” Dudley turned to Louis. “You don’t suppose there’s a throat man up there, do you? Maybe it’s his eye we’re seeing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! A throat man would never dare poach on our department. The throat specialists are all down the other end of the hall.”
“Well then, just where did this disembodied eye come from? And what’s it doing there? It’s eerie! I tell you, it makes me nervous! Staring back like that!”
“Please, sirs, may I have permission to speak?” the man under examination tried again.
“Oh, very well. Permission granted.”
“Thank you, sirs. Now, this is my grandfather’s eye and-—”
“Your grandfather’s eye? Then how did it get up your—?”
“Wait. Let him finish, Dudley.”
“Thank you, sirs. You see, it’s a glass eye.”
“Look, soldier, is this relevant?”
“I’m not a soldier yet, sir. But yes, it is relevant. You see, it popped out of his eye socket into the soup tureen at dinner one night, and before we knew what had happened, my mother had dished it out to me. I’m nuts about her soup, and I was spooning it in so fast that I never even noticed.”
“What kind of soup was it?” one of the doctors demanded.
“Matzohball soup, sir. That’s how it happened. I thought it was one of the matzohballs.”
“It seems an unlikely mistake.”
“You don’t know my mother’s matzohballs, sir. Anyway, that’s how it happened. Before I knew it, I’d swallowed Grandpa’s glass eye. And it’s been there ever since.”
“Doesn’t it bother you? Staring like that?”
“Well, I’ve never been able to see it staring, sir. I’m not double-jointed !”
“I’m aware of that. Don’t be disrespectful, soldier. Now return to your original position. And that’s an order!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve never come up against a situation like this before,” the first doctor said. “How do we handle it?”
“That’s your whole trouble, Dudley,” the third doctor told him. “You lack initiative. The solution is perfectly simple. It’s an eye, isn’t it? Very well then, it’s not in our department no matter where it happens to have lodged itself. It’s a matter for the optometrists. Just make a notation to have the eye specialist check it, and forget about it.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The first doctor bent to examine the others as his colleagues left the room.
A moment later he was kneeling behind Penny. The view through his eyepiece gave him his second shock of the day. He found himself looking through Penny’s legs and straight into her upside-down face. An index finger of each hand was inserted in each corner of her mouth and she was pulling it wide apart. “Just what the hell are you doing?” the doctor demanded.
“You said we should spread our cheeks, sir,” Penny reminded him.
“Not those cheeks, you idiot! These cheeks. Here. These.”
“Oh! Sorry, sir.” Penny did as he indicated.
“You’re all right,” the doctor muttered, starting to stand up. Then something else caught his attention and he stooped over again. “You seem to be missing something there,” he remarked to Penny.
“I was wondering when somebody would notice that. It brings up a point I’ve been trying to raise, and—”
“With very little success, evidently.” The doctor allowed himself his little quip.
“What I mean is, with what I’m missing, I don’t really think I’m fit for army service.”
“You may be right. But that’s not my department. I only check for hemorrhoids. You have none, so I, have no choice but to pass you. Still, if you explain your deficiency to someone in charge, I’m sure they’ll exempt you from military service. Just out of curiosity, though, how did it happen?”
“I was born this way.”
“Might have known it. Those damn obstetricians are always botching things. They make all the money, sure, but they’re so damn inept they can’t tell the difference between an umbilical cord and— Yes?” The doctor turned irritably to the sergeant who had been trying to get his attention. “What is it?”
“They’re piling up outside, sir. I think we’d better move these people out if you’re through with them.”
“Oh, all right. I’m through. What did you say they were doing outside?”
“Piling up, sir.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, sergeant. I haven’t even examined them yet. Pile, indeed! Well, we’ll see.”
Towel in place again, Penny shuffled along with the others into another large room. This one was long and narrow. They were lined up against one wall at the far end. “Hold up the index fingers of your right hands,” a technician standing off to one side ordered them.
When they had complied, the technician flattened himself against the side wall and barked out a command: “Charge!”
Immediately six young soldiers stampeded from the far end of the room, wielding their bayonets in front of them. “Gung ho!” they screamed as they charged. “Kill the yellow Red Chinese bastards. Death to the Viet Cong! The hell with Wayne Morse!” The bayonets lunged for the kill. Six index fingers spurted red blood.
“Retreat!” The technician blew a whistle and the soldier about-faced and returned to the other end of the room at a trot. Only then did the technician step up to each of the bleeding fingers with a cotton swab and squeeze some drops of blood into six test tubes. He passed out Band-aids to the six prospective inductees. “Now to check your blood pressure,” he said cheerfully. Once again he flattened himself against the side wall. “Charge!” he shouted.
Swiftly and silently the six soldiers leaped to the attack. Now commando-style berets had replaced the helmets on their heads, and instead of bayonets they clutched leather-thong garottes in their hands. They pounced on their six hapless victims with ballet-like precision, bore them to the floor with a knee to the chest, and speedily looped the thongs around their arms.
Immediately the technician leaped atop the first prone man, pumped up the bulb of his gauge, and took a blood-pressure reading. He repeated this five more times, and then dismissed his assistants. “Okay. You guys are finished here,” he told the still trembling draftees. “Through that door to Heart & Lungs.” He pointed.
Penny followed along with the others. She found herself in a narrow room lined with open cubicles. In each cubicle there was a white-coated doctor with a stethoscope around his neck. Still clutching her towel primly about her bust, Penny entered one of the cubicles.
“Ever had any heart trouble?” the doctor asked.
“Not the kind you mean.”
“Why do you have your towel over your chest that way?
Are you cold?”
“No.”
“Then lower it. How do you expect me to examine you?” Penny lowered the towel.
“You’re pretty flabby in the chest there, son,” the doctor observed. “You don’t get enough exercise.”
“That isn’t it—-” Penny started to explain.
“Of course that’s it! Don’t argue with me. But don’t worry about it. The army’ll toughen you up. Teach you not to argue with officers, too. Now shut up. How do you expect me to hear your heartbeat? Quiet! That’s an order!” He pressed the cold disc of the stethoscope to her rib cage. “Take a deep breath and hold it,” he instructed.