MEDICAL MAYHEM

The Doctor Will See You Now

By

Jimmy Joe Meeker

First Published in The Wilson County Advocate, Vol. 3, No. 26, ©June 29, 1993 by Donald W. Gillette

Do-it-yourself medicine is big business these days. I read in a recent survey by one of the major newspapers that one out of every three Americans will experiment this year with a variety of home cures and quack remedies ranging from everything to self-induced vomiting kits to brain wave stimulators and blood purifiers to cure the AIDS virus.

Others will test themselves every day, in towns and ghettos all over the republic, for potentially fatal levels of sugar in the urine, or use strange and expensive gadgets to screen each other for cancer in the fingers and toes.

We are all victims of this syndrome, in one way or another, but in some ways, it is a far, far better thing…

For example, a couple of weeks ago, I went to Nashville for the Summer Lights Festival (prior to that place being overrun by people from Indiana coming in for Fan Fair) and performed tests on a random selection of festival-goers.

The results were staggering…

Huge brains, small necks, weak muscles, and fat wallets are the dominant physical characteristics of Nashville's elite. Just the opposite is true for Nashville's swine people.

Anyway, I was sitting at a table and had just finished eating a plate of ribs and throwing the bones on the concrete slab beneath me when I was menaced by a pack of wild dogs that had gathered to finish off my scraps.

I kicked one in the throat and seized another by his forelegs and bashed it into a nearby Toyota pickup with three women in the front seat. One of them rolled the window down and cursed me as the truck roared suddenly into action and screeched off in low gear, ripping a parking meter out by the roots…

I walked down the street a ways until I found the heart rate machine.

The directions were clear enough: "Deposit 25 cents and insert your middle finger. As a rule, the lower your heart rate, the better your physical condition."

It had the look of state-of-the-art medical technology, a complex digital readout with ominous red numbers on a scale from 60 to 100. Anything under 60 was "athletic"; 60 to 70 was "well-conditioned"; 70-85 was "average", and over 100 said, "Inactive--consult your physician."

I tested Angelique first, and she came in at 91, which shocked even casual onlookers. She wept openly, attracting the focus of a large, crew-cut uniformed cop who said his name was Doug and asked me for some "personal or professional ID."

I had none. Another girlfriend had run off the night before with all my credentials, press cards, and credit cards.

"Never mind that, Doug," I said. "Give me your hand. I need some human numbers for the baseline."

Meanwhile, I had laid my own middle finger in the slot and came up with a reading of 65, which visibly impressed the crowd. They moaned and jabbered distractedly as Doug moved into position, looking as spiffy and bristly and confident as a middle-aged fighting bull. I slapped another quarter into the slot and watched the test pattern seek out the number.

It was 105, and a hush fell over the crowd. Doug slumped in his uniform and muttered that he had to go and check out the rest of the crowd for dope fiends, perverts, and drunkards.

"Don't worry," I called after him. "These numbers mean nothing. It could happen to anybody."

He eyed me sullenly and moved away, saying he would be back soon for another, more accurate reading. The crowd was thinning out; Angelique had locked herself in the ladies room and now I had nothing to work with except for a few vagrant children.

I grabbed a small blond girl who said she was 11 years old and led her up to the machine. "I'm a doctor," I told her. "I need your help on this experiment."

She moved obediently into position and put her finger into the slot. The test pattern whirled and sputtered, then settled on 104. The child uttered a wavering cry and ran off before I could get her name. "Never mind this," I shouted after her. "Children always run high on these things!"

Her little sister spat on my moccasins and backed away from me like an animal cornered in a cage.

I grabbed another one, a little fat boy named Joe, Jr. who turned out to be the son of Joe, Sr., the guy who had cooked my ribs and who arranged, just in time, to keep Doug from calling out the SWAT team to have me locked up as a child molester.

Joe, jr. registered a 126, a number so high that the machine offered no explanation for it. I gave him a quarter to go off and play the Rambo III machine on the other side of the street.

Doug was still hovering around with a worried look on his face. I was beginning to feel like the night stalker, some maniacal huge beast who was running loose in the neon swamp of lower Broadway. Doug was still asking about my credentials, so I gave him one of Craig Owensby's business cards from Channel 5.

"Not yet," I said. "I want to take another reading on myself." By this time I had loaded up on hot coffee and frozen my right finger in a Styrofoam cup of ice that Joe Sr. had brought from the rib shack.

Doug stood off, still confused by my relentless professional behavior, as I dropped my last quarter into the well-worn slot. The test pattern locked into a freeze, unlike anything else we had seen up to this point. The numbers rolled and skittered frenetically on the screen; people stood back and said nothing--and finally the test pattern settled on a number that nobody wanted to read.

It was double zero. I had no pulse. It was official--as final as some number carved in white granite on a tombstone at the memorial gardens. I was dead. Or undead as the case may be.

The children stared blankly.

I finished my coffee and scurried off into the night…back to the outskirts of Wilson County, back to the weird and sleazy roads where questions like these are not asked.

No one here gets out alive.

XXX