– 2 —
Everything swam before Wahl’s eyes. He felt a scalding pain in the leg. “Can you hear me? Good boy!” Tim the Merry Greek spoke in an unusually serious tone. But he beamed right away, not being able to hold it: “Everything was won-der-ful!”
“You stay here for a while,” the doctor absently waved his hand sideways, “but we’ll put you back in there (another wave) soon. We have them coming in one by one, applicants, one by one…” And off he ran, jumping up and singing something of his most favorite stock again.
Soon Wahl was transported back to the chamber indeed. The well-recognizable cube was there too. Wahl would superstitiously turn his eye away from his leg until he really knew it was ok. Two weeks later, he was liberated from that glass contraption, which had embittered the last two months of his life, and discharged from hospital. Although there still would be a lot of screening procedures, examinations and treatment, he was back home!
The leg ached, itched and tingled, but it was. Regeneration was surprisingly rapid, and shortly after that Wahl started using crutches and was able to reach the window; and after a month he was giving his leg full-scale training by walking along the coast with a stick.
There was only one thing that worried him – a strange pain in the heel. He had telephoned his doctor on that and was advised not to walk too much. Wahl obediently reduced the mileage, but the pain persisted. Not that it was severe, but all nasty sensations seemed to concentrate in the heel, and stepping on it would hurt pretty much.
Nevertheless, going to the clinic was the last thing Wahl wanted to do. He rightly feared detection of a serious problem and, consequently, having to get back to that place indefinitely. But one day in the morning he groped a small lump in the area where the pain was concentrated and realized that further postponement of his visit to the Esculapian lair was no longer possible.
– 3 —
Doctor Tim looked unusually gloomy. Known for moving around the clinic in a fashion of a well-pumped ball bouncing from one wall to the other, he suddenly fell into the habit of shrugging sharply and speaking with long breaks, during which he stared at the floor with his dull eyes.
Wahl briefly described the problem and provided a visual demonstration of his swollen heel. He told the medic about the pain, craving for, if not interest, at least a tiny bit of sympathy, but Doctor Tim continued to indifferently rock heel to toe and hardly deigned to even look at the leg. Finally, feeling outraged, Wahl requested at least an X-ray of the tumor, but the doctor brushed it off wearily.