Books was looking at the laudanum. "The milk of Paradise—at least there's alcohol in it. What's the stuff for?"
"It's the most potent painkiller we have."
"Oh. How much do I take?"
"As much as you need. When you need it. Prescribe for yourself. A spoonful should do you at first."
"Later?"
Hostetler put on his spectacles. "You'll require more and more. It will have less and less effect, I'm afraid."
The two men were silent. A dwindle of sunlight touched the bottle on the table between them, refracting a purple image upward onto the crystalline lampshade, where it nested raucously among the blue, brown, and green birds of paradise. The silence was one of mutual reticence. Books did not care to ask, Hostetler had no desire to respond. So they waited, each for the other. It was the doctor who broke a path, even though oblique, for both of them.
"I haven't much of a bedside manner," he admitted. "Never have had. In a case like yours, I'm damned if I can be cheery. And poetry's no help."
"You're sure it's cancer."
"Unquestionably. I wish I could do more, Books, but I can't. Someday we'll lay the monster low, I'd bet on it, but that's in the future, probably long after I'm gone myself. The present is where we are now."
Books unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. "You said last time I can still be up and about a while yet. For how long?"
"I don't know. But you will. One morning you'll wake and say to yourself, 'I can't go out any more. I couldn't even dress myself. Here I am, in this bed, and here I'll stay.'"
They were silent again.
"God damn it," Books said.
"Yes. God damn it," said Hostetler.
"A hell of a way to go," Books said.
"A hell of a way to go," said Hostetler.
Books laid a hand on the Principles of Surgery, then withdrew it. "You told me it would be a hard death. How hard?"
The physician closed his bag, stepped to the closet, reached inside for the coat, and brought out a wallet. "How much did I say? Five?"
"All right, Doc. How hard?"
"Five, yes. Beware of morbidity." He replaced the wallet and pulled the curtain.
"I want to know, Hostetler. What will happen to me?"
Hostetler tucked away his own wallet, came behind the leather chair, and picking up his bag, placing it in the seat, put both hands on the back. He was a short, stoutish man of sixty or so, with short gray hair and benign blue eyes. "Unless you insist, I'd rather not talk about it."
"I insist."
Hostetler pursed his lips. "You will waste away. The process will be slow at first, then rapid."
"Waste away?"
"Loss of flesh. Known as 'cachexia.'"
"What else?"
"The bones of the face become prominent. The skin takes on a grayish cast. You will be a pretty awful sight. No one will dare tell you, but you will. Pretty awful."
"What else?"
"There will be increasing severity of pain. In the lumbar spine, in the hips and groins."
"What else?"
"Must we go on?"
"Yes."
"Your water will shut off progressively. The bladder will swell because you can't unload it. You will gradually become uremic. Poisoned by your own waste products, due to a failure of the kidneys."
"That all?"
"By this time the agony will be unbearable, and no drug will moderate it. Hopefully, you will become comatose. Until you do, you will scream."
"Jesus Christ."
Charles Hostetler picked up his bag, walked to the door. His look for the first time was severe, almost angry. "I regret you forced me to be specific, Mr. Books. If you need me, telephone. Good day, sir."
He banged the door behind him. He opened it again at once, re-entered, and closed the door apologetically. "I'm sorry I was short with you. There's just one more thing I'll say. If you stop to think about it, we have considerable in common. Both of us have a lot to do with death. I stave it off when I can. You inflict it when you have to. I am not a brave man, but you must be, by virtue of your avocation. Well, you can be braver now than you have ever been, and it won't help you a tinker's damn. This is not advice, not even a suggestion, just something to reflect upon while your mind is still clear." He studied his shoe tops for a moment. "If I were in your circumstances, I know what I would not do."
"What?"
Charles Hostetler listened, as though to take care he were not overheard. "I won't put it in so many words. It runs counter to the ethics of my profession. But I would not die a death such as I have just described."
"No?"
"I would not. Not if I had your courage. I would not. And especially your skill with weapons."
Books stared at him.
"Good-by."
Books stared at him. "Thank you."
That night he could not sleep for pain. He got out of bed, pulled on the lamp, sat down on his pillow, picked up the book Hostetler had brought, and examined the title page. The author of Principles of Surgery was "James W. D. Bruce, Professor of Surgery in the University of Edinburgh; Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary." The volume had been published in Philadelphia by Lea and Blanchard in 1878.
He found the turned-down page corner and opened the book to the section headed "Carcinoma." He read the author's definition: "This is the occult malignant tumour, whose open condition is termed Cancer." He continued to read, slowly, until he came to this passage, and finished it:
The cachectic state of system becomes more and more aggravated; sleep is gone; appetite fails; emaciation is great, and still increasing; the sallow, wan, cadaverous expression of face becomes more marked; the whole frame grows bloodless; a malignant hectic, as it may be termed, is established; and life is gradually exhausted, in much physical misery.
He slapped the book shut. He could read no more of it. But something, the shutting perhaps, caused an access of pain so excruciating that he sat forward, fists on forehead, and rocked himself. When he opened his eyes he saw the bottle on the table. What was it Hostetler had said? A spoonful should do him at first? He reached for it, uncapped, tipped, and swallowed what he judged was a spoonful of the laudanum. It had a bitter taste. He capped the bottle, replaced it, sat back, waited. Relief came within minutes. It was not so much a cessation of pain as an overture, warm and seductive, throughout his pelvic region, of insensitivity—this accompanied at the same time by a slow flood of euphoria. He was laved, as though by pleasure. He rose from the chair easily, without discomfort, for the first time in two months. He grinned like a boy.
He pulled out the light, got back into bed, settled himself, grinned again, and slept.
He dreamed. He did not have a vision. He dreamed of the gunfight in the restaurant in Bisbee, Arizona, the only scrap in which he had ever been wounded. The two men who had thrown down on him, the men he had killed, were faceless now; he had never seen them before that night, when they had earlier exchanged insults with him at a monte table in a saloon. He had not even known their names. But it had not been either of them who hit him, it had been a third party, a complete stranger, a drunk, a spectator as uninvolved as a spider on the ceiling, who lurched up from a table and a meal and drew and felled Books with a bullet in the belly and walked out of the restaurant picking his teeth. Books had long ago learned that the outcome of most gunplay was unpredictable. Too often, when weapons were pulled and working, it was not the principals who had their way. It was some nobody, some butt-in with a secret compulsion to use a gun once in his life on another human being or to die spectacularly, some six-fingered bastard who couldn't when sober hit a cow in the teats with a tin cup, who rushed from the wings and directed the last incalculable act of the drama. Bat Masterson had said you had to have guts, proficiency with firearms, and deliberation. In short, you had to be professional. He hadn't mentioned the eye you had to have in the back of your head for the dumb-ass amateur. But then, Masterson had always been full of shit.