THE DISCUS THROWER

Richard Selzer

5      “What time is it?” he asks.

“Three o’clock.”

“Morning or afternoon?”

“Afternoon.”

He is silent. There is nothing else he wants to know.

“How are you?” I say.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“It’s the doctor. How do you feel?”

He does not answer right away.

“Feel?” he says.

“I hope you feel better,” I say.

I press the button at the side of the bed.

“Down you go,” I say.

“Yes, down,” he says.

6       He falls back upon the bed awkwardly. His stumps, unweighted by legs and feet, rise in the air, presenting themselves. I unwrap the bandages from the stumps, and begin to cut away the black scabs and the dead, glazed fat with scissors and forceps. A shard of white bone comes loose. I pick it away. I wash the wounds with disinfectant and redress the stumps. All this while, he does not speak. What is he thinking behind those lids that do not blink? Is he remembering a time when he was whole? Does he dream of feet? Or when his body was not a rotting log?

7       He lies solid and inert. In spite of everything, he remains impressive, as though he were a sailor standing athwart a slanting deck.

“Anything more I can do for you?” I ask.

For a long moment he is silent.

“Yes,” he says at last and without the least irony. “You can bring me a pair of shoes.”

In the corridor, the head nurse is waiting for me.

“We have to do something about him,” she says. “Every morning he orders scrambled eggs for breakfast, and, instead of eating them, he picks up the plate and throws it against the wall.”

“Throws his plate?”

“Nasty. That’s what he is. No wonder his family doesn’t come to visit. They probably can’t stand him any more than we can.”

She is waiting for me to do something.

“Well?”

“We’ll see,” I say.