“You know what?” said Dr. Kleinstadt. “Whatever makes you comfortable. You’re comfortable, I’m comfortable, right?” he said, though I think he was growing wary of me, or maybe just weary; he’d back-stepped a little and his smile had lost wattage.
I put on the mask, opened the sleeve, set Blank down near the doctor’s side of the table. Seeing Kleinstadt, it ran in the opposite direction. When it got to the wall, it crouched and covered its face with its hands.
“That, Mr. Magnet,” Kleinstadt said, “does not to me look like a cure who’s suffering from any loss of pluck whatsoever. Ha!”
Blank, in its crouch, Allen-throat-cleared twice.
“Uncover,” I told it. “It’s okay. Uncover.” It turned around, slowly, saw me, through its fingers, looking at Kleinstadt, lowered its hands, and turned to face Kleinstadt, to whom I said, “I trained it to hide from strangers.”
“I can see that,” he said. “And my compliments. That must have been hard—goes against just about every instinct a Curio has. But a pluckless Curio? It’s slumpy, slow. Usually just sits there, hugging itself. No energy to sprint across a table like that. Not even close. Couldn’t and wouldn’t. Your Curio’s fine.”
“Are you sure? I mean, you haven’t even examined it.”
“What’s to examine? I can see it’s not scaly, and on the intake form here, you wrote normal ejections.”
“Right. Normal. But—”
“So no symptoms of psittacosis. It’s fine.”
“But what about the sneezing?” I said.
“They sneeze all the time. You must know that, come on. Maybe…You know, you seem a bit distressed and, sometimes, Mr. Magnet, when we’re not feeling well, ourselves, or we suffer some kind of emotional trauma—sometimes we become unduly afraid for the well-being of those who are close to us. Our loved ones, our pets. We see signs of sickness where there is only but health, and we see signs of sadness where there’s only contentment. A loss of pluck where pluck is abundant. Maybe you’ve been having a hard time lately?”
I said, “I know I look crazy wearing this mask, but I’ve read the manual. I reread the section on illness at least ten times before coming in today. Dry sneezing is normal is what it says.”
“Exactly.”
“Blank’s sneezes are wet. The wet stuff is green.”
“Green? Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Dear,” said Kleinstadt, looking down at his clipboard. “I see,” he said, smile fading. “I see. I’m sorry, Mr. Magnet. I…I overlooked that part of the intake form. ‘Green nasal discharge.’ You wrote it down right here. I don’t know how I did that. I don’t know how I overlooked…Sometimes I’m too—my wife says too cocksure. I mean, it is the last thing you wrote down, true—and talk about burying the lede, ‘green nasal discharge,’ but well. It’s my fault. I should have read through to the end, and I’m sorry about the completely inappropriate positive attitude I’ve been projecting here.”
“Inappropriate?” I said.
“I thought, given what I had read on the intake form—‘ejections normal, possible loss of pluck’—I thought, ‘We’ll see about this loss of pluck.’ See, loss of pluck is a phrase often subject to misinterpretation among pet owners—all pet owners—and I thought you might have misinterpreted it, given the normal ejections and the unscaly skin. ‘We’ll see about this loss of pluck,’ I thought, ‘and, worst-case scenario, it’ll show loss of pluck, meaning psittacosis onset, and I’ll prescribe tetracycline, and all will be well.’ I didn’t see the part about green nasal discharge, which, if it was clear nasal discharge, would be alarming enough; that would mean bleeding from the nose. Possibly caused by a bump to the nose? Hopefully? If not, then…But apart from ejections, Mr. Magnet, nothing discharged from a Curio’s body, much less its nose, should be any color other than clear, you understand. You see, discharge from the nose—that’s always gonna be the same thing: blood. Green discharge, then, is green blood. And that, I am truly sorry to say: that is cancer.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Well, sir, I understand that response, I understand how hard…but I’m afraid…I’m afraid I’m right. I’m certain I’m right. It’s most certainly cancer. I would bet my house on it. Colored blood means cancer.”
I wasn’t yet shaken, not in the slightest. I just didn’t believe him. He was making me angry. I tried not to show it. I tried to sound reasonable. “How can that be?” I said. “How can it be cancer? Wouldn’t Blank be in a lot of pain?”
“It is in pain. All kinds of pain. It has been for a while. By the time its blood’s acquired color, the cure’s been sick for weeks. Maybe months.”
“It hasn’t been singing, though. I haven’t heard it painsing in years,” I said. “It isn’t painsinging, now—how can you tell me it’s in pain? That’s crazy.”
“Ah, painsinging—right. Yes, that’s a misnomer. Cures don’t sing when they’re in pain. Not once they’re a couple months old, that is. They’re like birds. Like most animals, really. When they’re in pain, when they’re ill, they do everything they can to hide it. What people call painsinging, it’s really fearsinging. Cures do it when they’re afraid. This was established through some rather gruesome experiments we studied in school. Your cure’s not afraid, despite being in pain, which tells me that you must have, over these eight years during which you’ve taken care of it—you must have developed quite a strong relationship with it, it must feel very secure, which is something, again, I find very commendable, Mr. Magnet. Most people, they are, at best, negligent with their Curios, and more often quite abusive. I think it’s a shame, the way people treat them. As less than machines. Unworthy of repair. People are awful. They learn a phrase like ‘flesh-and-bone robots,’ and somehow feel free to…I don’t mean to be political. This isn’t the time for that. What I am saying to you is I am not one of these people. I am in the minority, and I know you are too, just by virtue of your coming here today to have me look at Kablankey. I didn’t get into this profession because I like the idea of living things suffering—I hate it, tell the truth. And I am sorry, sir, that you have to go through this now, but Blank is suffering. It is not afraid, but it is in pain, and it is certainly dying, and the humane thing to do here would be to make your peace with it, to say your goodbyes, and then put it down.”
“Put it down?” I said.
“Or overload on it. I won’t judge you for that. I wouldn’t overload by mouth—the cancer, you know—but…”