The Radio Magician and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

someone in to get you a wheelchair.” He placed his hand on Clarence’s shoulder. “You don’t look good.”
    A nurse appeared at the trolley door and helped Clarence into the wheelchair.
    “I’ll take him to emergency,” said the nurse. “We can evaluate him there.”
    “No,” said Clarence. The trolley driver wrung his hands. Passengers crowded at the windows. A little girl holding a book waved at him through the glass. Clarence waved back weakly. “I need to go to the polio ward. I need to get to the iron lung.”
    The nurse started pushing him up the sidewalk toward the ramp. “You have polio? Are you experiencing breathing difficulty?” She sounded businesslike.
    Clarence relaxed his head against the back of the wheelchair. He rested his hand on the quarter eagle in his pants pocket, its shape a solid comfort. “I’m not sick. I’m visiting. I want to see it.”
    “You look sick.” The nurse walked beside him as they rose up the ramp and into the hospital’s entrance way.
    “Honest, I’m okay. I think I probably tried to do too much today. My legs hurt a little,” he lied, “but I really want to see the polio ward.”
    He rolled into an elevator.
    “There’s someone in the iron lung already,” she said.
    Lights flicked beside each floor as the elevator went up. Clarence had never been in an elevator before. “I know. Sean Garrison. He was in the paper. How is he doing?”
    “You’re really not sick?” She looked down at him doubtfully. “If you’re not, you’re the sorriest looking healthy boy I’ve ever seen.”
    “I walked to the trolley all by myself.”
    “Hmmm.” The elevator stopped and the doors opened. “I hope you don’t mind if I have a doctor check you anyway, and we need to talk to your parents.”
    Forty beds separated by light green curtains filled the polio ward. At some, family members sat by the wan children. Antiseptic smells filled the air.
    She wheeled him into a broad hallway, and then into a room where a large steel canister dominated the middle. A compressor whirred under the device, stopped, shifted, then whirred again with a lighter tone. Clarence knew the machine was switching back and forth between exhaling and inhaling. A dark-haired boy lay face up, only his head outside of the iron lung, looking at him blankly through a mirror positioned above his face. Grief lines marked his face. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. Clarence had never seen anyone so sad. A long window in the metal showed his arms and chest, while another showed his legs. Two rubber-lined holes permitted doctors to reach in to rearrange the patient if necessary, but the only way to actually touch him would be to undo the heavy clasps that locked the head end to the rest of the machine.
    Clarence pushed the top of the wheels to move closer. “Hi, I’m Clarence.”
    In the background, the motor clicked. “I’m sick,” whispered the boy, and Clarence knew that he could only whisper because the power to speak came from the machine compression. He could talk when the iron lung made him exhale. Putting his hand on his own chest, Clarence tried to imagine being inside the canister.
    The motor cycled several times. Clarence looked at Sean’s reflection in the mirror. Sean looked back.
    “Would you like to see a magic trick?” said Clarence.
    The motor whirred.
    Sean’s voice was a falling leaf. “No.”
    “I’ll show you anyway.” The 1910 quarter eagle came out of Clarence’s pocket. In the sterile hospital light, its gold glowed. He did knuckle rolls for Sean. He did false drops and sleight of hand passes, showing the coin and then vanishing it. He stacked the gold coin with the three dimes he had left, hid them under a tissue, then asked Sean where the coin was, top, bottom or middle. Wherever Sean said it was, when Clarence uncovered the coins, there it was.
    Two more nurses came into the room, watching Clarence go through his repertoire. They clapped when the coins