In the Middle of All This Read Online Free PDF Page A

daylight. Inside he’d be setting pots on the stove, rinsing vegetables, slicing skin from chicken or fish.
    The wrong end of Main Street, everyone called it. The houses less stylish and kept up, the elementary school squatting opposite and beyond it the dulled shopping center, half ruined by a flood two summers past. Don’t worry , the realtor had told them, it was a once in a lifetime type of event .

FALL

    Â 
    So, did you empty yourself out good for me?” Dr. Dowler smiled as he glanced briefly from the monitor.
    Martin nodded, still dazed from all the laxatives. “Real good,” he said.
    â€œI’ll have the nurse start the IV, and when the anesthesia kicks in, we’ll proceed. Okay?”
    â€œOkay.”
    The doctor stepped from the tight blue room.
    â€œJust have to check on a few things,” the nurse said. She examined the equipment, then turned to the gurney, where he lay on his side. She was about his age, maybe younger, with a wide, sunny face and a roll of fat around her waist. “We don’t get many young guys in for this kind of thing,” she said. “Something specifically you worried about, or family history?”
    â€œFamily history,” he said.
    â€œLet’s hope you check out clear.” She came around to face him and gently tugged at the neck of his gown and looked down the front of his chest to the rest of him and then let his gown fall back against him. She smiled. “Everything looks okay,” she said.
    Was she checking him out? A grin slopped over his numb face. She hummed to herself as she watched him and watched the IV and watched the monitor.
    Soon—or was it later—Dowler came in. “How you feeling, Martin?”
    â€œGood,” Martin said.
    â€œThe monitor’s right there, if you want to watch.”
    â€œIn full color,” Martin said.
    â€œYup.”
    Martin tried to stay awake for it, but his head was light, and his eyes heavy, and inside he was empty from the forced evacuation and the starvation diet, and he was drifting, falling. People had told him that it hurt so much you couldn’t possibly sleep through it, but here he was, relaxed, all checked out, checking out. It wasn’t so bad. It was nothing. A snap.
    He woke against a tearing, cutting, churning pressure that felt like someone was trying to expand his anus with an outboard motor.
    â€œAlmost done,” Dowler said.
    That wasn’t too bad. But still Dowler drilled. Martin squirmed and was held against the gurney.
    â€œAlmost done,” Dowler said again.
    Yeah, right, he told himself.
    Gradually, slowly, as if, with a tenuous string, he were removing the Hope diamond from his rectum, Dowler pulled the scope from him.
    â€œJesus,” Martin said.
    â€œAll done.” He patted Martin gently on the shoulder. “I’ll come see you when you’re all set up.”
    Again he was left with the nurse. He dropped his chin tightly against the neck of his gown and tried to sleep.
    Afterward, as he sat sipping ginger ale in the outpatient ward, Dowler told him that he was clear and that even his prostate looked good. He shook his hand. “Same time next year?” he said.
    â€œSame time next year,” Martin said.
    In Hampstead Hospital’s lower lobby, lined by stuffed racks of yellowed pamphlets and application forms, Elizabeth registered under the territorial gaze of an elderly receptionist with thinning bluish hair and too-pink lipstick.
    â€œCan’t say I’ve missed it,” Richard said under his breath.
    â€œIt’s so nice of you to come with me.” He didn’t usually—hospitals upset him—but now she could run six kilometers a day or bicycle eighteen, host dinner parties, meditate for ninety minutes at a time. She had entered the cliché and experienced it from the inside out: she had never felt better in her life.
    The receptionist rang up to the eighth floor, murmured