“There.” Miss Carridge pointed at the furnace.
“What? What do you meaning?”
“When I heard the sirens and realized the police were coming, I remembered what you said about getting rid of the evidence, and so I put her in there.”
“But the police coming they weren’t.”
“I guess I made a mistake, Doctor, huh?” Miss Carridge asked in a very low voice.
“If you’re stuffing the scrape customer in the furnace, it’s some boo-boo you’re making all right!”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic, Doctor. Everybody makes mistakes. That’s why they put erasers on pencils.”
“From pencils like this you could be making American foreign policy. You think maybe you’re LBJ or Dino Rusk, or somebody? That’s some little error putting a live lady in the furnace like a weenie roasting. You could get carrying away from such mistakes. Next week napalm, maybe!”
“I said I was sorry.” Miss Carridge’s lower lip was quivering. “There’s no use crying over spilt milk.”
“Not even spilt mother’s milk. You’re getting a point there. And I suppose we are learning from our mistakes. Still, Miss Carridge, don’t you think you should take a look-see in on the roasting? An expert chef I’m not, but I’m guessing she’s done by now.”
“Very well, Doctor.” Miss Carridge was frosty. She crossed over to the furnace and opened the door. The inferno was raging inside.
“How is she doing?” Dr. Kilembrio asked.
“She’s really burned up.”
“Well, pretty angry I’d be myself to come for a scraping and end up a toastie.”
“Toast can be scraped,” Miss Carridge punned.
“Is nice your sense of humor you’re keeping,” Dr. Kilembrio said dryly. “I’m betting you’re a load of fun at a hanging.”
“I’m the life of the earthquake,” she replied coldly. “Now what do you want me to do, Doctor?”
“You should removing what’s left of her and I’m having a look at it.”
“It’s just a big piece of ash,” Miss Carridge commented as she followed instructions.
“So maybe that’s why she got into troubling in the first place.” Dr. Kilembrio bent over Penny’s charred body and examined it. “Ninety percent broiled, and still living she is, but not for long. Some goof, Miss Carridge, you’re making! Well,” he sighed, “what am I expecting from the quality of the help these days?”
“For what you pay, you weren’t expecting Florence Nightingale, were you, Doctor?” Miss Carridge retorted.
“You’re right. When a doctor specializes in scraping, he has to hiring what’s available.”
“If you don’t like my work, fire me! I won’t have any trouble finding another job. There’s a shortage of trained nurses, you know.”
“Sure. You could always going to work at the local crematorium. But bickering we don’t got any more time for. Two situations we got here to think about. A perfectly good body with a holey head, the brains are all leaked out. And an overdone tart is all ashes, but the brain is okay as far as I could see. Both living, but couldn’t stay that way long without I’m operational. Is an interesting situation, no, Miss Carridge? Is once in a living time a doctor finds this. Could even be knocking is opportunity.”
“What do you mean, Doctor?”
“Medical history, it could be there’s a chance of making
“What are you thinking, Doctor?”
“When you’re having a wrecked car with a good engine, and a wrecked engine with a good car, if a mechanic with sense you are, what do you think you’re doing, Miss Carridge?”
“Doctor, why do you have that wild-eyed look?”
“You’re putting together the good car and the good engine, no? Is making sense, no? Is simple logic, no? So, we’re stopping with the analogies already and getting back to our situation and it’s coming up we put the unburned brain in the brainless body.”
“You mean a brain transplant?”
“Why not? With kidneys and corneas and even hearts they’re transplanting like medical Luther Burbanks, so why not a brain?”
“You’re mad!”
“That’s what they said about Dr. Frankenstein.”
“But he really was mad!”
“So a little insanity and in Transylvania they never forgetting him. He’s immortal! Don’t you capish, Miss Carridge? This is adding up to my one chance at medical immortality. The name of Kilembrio is going down in the anals of history as the first sawbones what’s doing a brain transplant. All my living I’m waiting for this moment!”
“You mean the ‘annals’ of history,” Miss Carridge corrected him.
“Anals, annals, what’s the differential? Up yours! Up yours with such follicle splitting at such a moment! All these years I’m shooting shpritz into bunnies in the lab all day ladies should finding out they got a bun in the oven. All these years I’m scraping out a living at night one ear squinting out for the cops. But now! Now is coming my big chance! Now is coming Kilembrio the brain transplanter!”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Doctor?”
“I’m forgetting what?”
“It’s a female brain and a male body.”
“So? Chauvinistic you’re being, Miss Carridge, and is strictly your hangup. Male, female, it makes no never-mind. A brain is a brain and a body is a body and a choice we ain’t getting. Enough talk already! You’re getting the patients ready for the transplant!” he ordered. “And hurrying before one of them is kicking in the bucket and is too late. Kilembrio the brain transplanter!” Dr. Kilembrio flatulated happily. “No more just a pee-pee analyzer! No more just a moonlighting maidenhead fixer-upper! Kilembrio the brain transplanter!” The breaking of wind resounded like a flourish of triumphant trumpets.
The first human brain transplant in the history of medicine got underway!
CHAPTER FOUR
Penis envy, the Freudian psychologists agree, is inevitable in modern women. Few, however, resolve it quite so successfully as in the case of Penny Candie. Without so much as a trip to Scandinavia, the erstwhile female had acquired a full-grown male body in good working condition and complete with impressive equipment.
The realization of this took the form of a slow dawning. Coming out of the anesthetic, the first thing Penny saw (through the eyes of Pennington P. Potter, of course) was the face of Dr. Kilembrio hovering overhead and admiring his handiwork. Penny looked at him and spoke in a small, husky voice, the deepness of which surprised her.
“It’s over,” Penny said. “You’ve done it. I’m not pregnant anymore. Is that right?”
“If you are with childling,” the doctor reassured her, “then two shockers I have for the medical profession instead of only one. But how much history should you be making in one day only? No, I think I am safely saying that being upknocked is not a problem for you status-wise, in your new status, I’m meaning.”
“I feel very strange,” Penny said.
“Well, a little getting used to it’s taking,” the doctor soothed Penny.
“Are you sure everything went all right? I mean, there weren’t any complications, were there?”
“You couldn’t begin to guess at the complications,” Miss Carridge murmured.
“Everything went even better than South Africa,” Dr. Kilembrio said proudly. “Complications, maybe you got, but you’ll working them out.”
“Why does my voice sound so deep?” Penny wondered.
“Well, it isn’t because you caught a cold,” Miss Carridge told her.
“Be quiet!” the doctor hissed at her. “Breaking it slowly and without no wise-cracking, you hear?” he instructed in a whisper. He turned back to Penny. “Your voice is probably husky from the anesthetic,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”