McCready laughed. "I could listen to you talk all day, Charles. I wish I had a British accent."
It never failed to impress Charles how easily Americans were impressed with a British accent. It always sounded "classy" to them. But he knew that back in London his accent would have been recognized immediately as Paddington and his class identified as working.
"Still," the senator said, hanging on to the subject, "there's talk."
"What do you mean by 'talk'?"
"You know how things get around. Comments dropped here and there in laundromats and supermarket checkout lines eventually get around to a stringer or a reporter who works for one of my papers. Then it gets to me."
"Fine. But talk about what?"
"About people with long-term illnesses, chronic conditions, progressive disorders, acute illnesses—all sorts of things— cured after he touches them in a certain way."
"That's "bloody foolishness!"
McCready smiled again. " 'Bloody.' How apropos. I was just going to ask you about a very bloody wound sustained by a certain Mr. Cunningham last month."
"Jesus bloody Christ—!"
"There's that word again."
"—Did you have a spy at that party?"
"Of course not. But it would be rather silly of me to own a string of newspapers and have all those editors and reporters at my command and not avail myself of their talents when the need arose, don't you think?"
Charles nodded silently. He didn't like the idea of anyone snooping into his off-hours, but he didn't see any point in protesting. McCready seemed to read his mind.
"Don't worry, Charles. You weren't the object of investigation. I was just having someone look into the incident between my esteemed colleague, Congressman Switzer, and the MTA chief of this fair city. I've found one can deal more effectively with one's colleagues if one is up to date on their improprieties and indiscretions."
Charles nodded again. Looking for dirt on Switzer, he thought. But he said: "Works that way in research foundations, too."
"Right. Unfortunately, the only impropriety on the congressman's part was not turning the other cheek, but rather giving as good—or perhaps better—than he got from Cunningham in the physical abuse department. And to many of his constituents, that would seem a virtue rather than a fault. So the inquiry was dropped."
He paused for a moment. The extended monologue was obviously tiring him.
"But something interesting was turned up serendipitously. One of the guests who saw the struggle mentioned during her interview that she thought Cunningham had received a terrible gash to the back of the head. She spoke of blood spouting like… 'like a geyser,' I believe she said. Yet after this unknown man—later identified as Dr. Alan Bulmer—put his hand over the wound, it stopped bleeding and closed itself up."
Charles laughed. "She was probably drunker than Cunningham!"
"Possibly. That's what this reporter thought. But not long ago, he heard some idle talk about 'miracle cures' at a Long Island doctor's office. The name Bulmer clicked and he told his editor, who told me." His eyes bored into Charles from under their half-closed lids. "You were there. What did you see?"
Charles thought for a moment. There had been an awful lot of blood. He could see it now, spurting against the mantel and the wall. But when he had seen the wound, it had only been a scratch. Could it—?
"I saw a lot of blood, but that means nothing. Scalp wounds bleed far out of proportion to their length and depth. I've seen heads literally covered with blood from a two-centimeter laceration barely a centimeter deep. Don't waste your time looking for a miracle cure from Alan Bulmer."
"I never waste my time, Charles," the senator said. "Never."
___12.___
The Senator
Ah, Charles, McCready thought after Axford had gone. Doubting Charles.
He leaned far back in his chair and, as he often did, thought about his chief pet doctor. And why not? Their lives were tightly entwined, and would remain so as long as he remained ill.
Despite the fact that Charles was a doctor and an arrogant bastard to boot, McCready privately admitted to a soft spot in his head for his chief of research. Perhaps that was because there was no pretense about Charles. He made no bones about being a devout atheist and confirmed materialist who was constitutionally unable to accept anything that did not yield to the scientific method. If he couldn't observe it, qualify and quantify it, it didn't exist. Refreshingly free of bullshit, his Charles. Humans were nothing more than a conglomeration of cells and biochemical reactions to him. He had once told McCready that his dream was to reduce the human mind to its basic neurochemical reactions.
All fine and well when you had your health. But when you didn't, and when modern medicine failed you… then you looked for something more. You prayed, even when you didn't believe in prayer. You investigated faith healers even when you had no faith. The sneers and the derogatory remarks no longer came so easily. You looked under every rock and followed every trail to its inevitable phony end. And then sniffed out another one to follow.
Hopelessness was a bitch.
He had given up hope on current research into neuromuscular diseases—he couldn't trust it to go in the direction he needed. Thus the Foundation was born, with Charles Axford as its core. He had made Axford chief because he felt he owed him something.
Because the day he met Axford was the most traumatic day of his life. It had altered the course of his life, altered his perception of life, the world, the future. Because Charles Axford had been the first to know what was wrong with him.
All the other doctors before Charles had been wrong. To a man they had blamed his episodic fatigue on "overwork" and "stress." That was the new catchword in medicine: If you can't figure it out, it's stress.
McCready had bought that for a while. He had been working hard—he'd always worked hard—but he'd never felt so tired. He would get up in the morning a ball of fire and by midafternoon he was useless. He had stopped eating steak because it was too much work to chew it. His arm tired while shaving. Overwork and stress. He'd gone along with the diagnosis because time and again his physical examination, reflexes, blood tests, X rays, and cardiograms had come out completely normal. "You're the picture of health!" a respected internist had told him.
His first episode of double vision had sent him in a panic to the nearest neurologist who would give him the earliest appointment. That had been Charles Axford. He later learned that Axford had not squeezed him into that day's schedule out of doctorly concern for a patient in distress, but because his afternoon appointment book had been virtually bare.
McCready had found himself seated before a cool, aloof, thickly accented Britisher in a white coat who chain-smoked cigarettes in his chair on the far side of an old desk as he listened to McCready's symptoms. He asked a few questions, then said:
"You've got myasthenia gravis, a rapidly progressive case, and your life is going to be hell."
McCready still remembered the slow wave of shock that had passed through him by inches, front to back, like a storm front. All he could see was Aristotle Onassis fading away month after month, year after year. He managed to say, "Aren't you even going to examine me?"
"You mean tap your knees and shine lights in your eyes and all that rubbish? Not if I can bloody help it!"
"I insist! I'm paying for an examination and I demand one!"
Axford had sighed. "Very well." He came around and sat on the front edge of the desk. Holding out both his hands to McCready, he said, "Squeeze. Hard." After McCready had gripped them and squeezed, Axford said, "Again!" And then, "Again!"