Dr. Evrett's Doctor's Office is in a building that looks like a house. It is unmistakable--there's the homey den; the small, carpeted foyer; the dark, neglected kitchen; the two-and-a-half baths. It would be a nice place to live. But the building is zoned commercial. The top floor is Dr. Evrett's Doctor's Office and on the bottom floor are the offices of Big Ed's Junk Shop, which owns a lot across the street strewn with steel and other metals, mostly in the form of car frames, discarded wire and pipes, misc. beams, etc. It can be seen from the window of Dr. Evrett's Doctor's Office.
"Dr. Evrett?"
"That's Dr. Evrett. No e."
"Sorry. Dr. Evrett."
"Please," said Dr. Evrett. "Call me Tedward."
"OK."
"Tell me, what's the problem?"
"Oh, I'm just all achy again. It's my knees, I'm having trouble walking."
"Mmm hmm? So why couldn't your old doctor, Dr.--"
"Everett?"
Dr. Evrett frowned.
"He sent me to you, Tedward. Or, rather, his widow did."
Dr. Evrett reclined in his leather chair, smiling, looking up or past the ceiling. "Ah, yes." He turned back to the file in front of him. His eyebrows shot up. When he spoke, he spoke quickly. "Says here you had a steel pin of some kind in your hip?"
"Yes, that was years ago. I kept losing my balance. It crushed my hopes of ever becoming an Olympic gymnast."
"Did they even have the Olympics when you were a girl, you old hag?" The patient frowned. "Returning to the subject of the steel pin in your hip, is it real steel?"
"I believe so."
"It's no some alloy, is it?"
"Not to my knowledge. 'Real steel,' Dr. Everett told me."
"Because if it turns out to be some fucking nickel alloy--"
"No, Tedward, it isn't. Real stainless steel."
Dr. Evrett jumped out of his chair. "Stainless!" He sat back down. He wiped some saliva from the corner of his mouth and began stroking his chin. His gaze drifted out to the junk shop across the street.
"What we're going to do," Dr. Evrett said later, with his patient laid on her side on top of a sticky rubber examining table, "is cut into your hip and remove that steel pine that's been causing you so much hip pain."
The patient began to speak, but Dr. Evrett quieted her by putting his finger to his lips and "ssh"ing her sensuously. He began rubbing his hands up and down her body, moving her paper gown out of the way so it was his hands on her body. After two passes, he settled on her hip and began massaging it. He felt the pin. He imagined her could take it between his finger and his thumb and simply lift it out of her pelvic bone. It would be so easy...
"Doctor, what you're doing is pinching me," the patient said.
"What I'm doing," Dr. Evrett explained, "is pinching you, to see if the pin is creating any pressure in your knee. Does your knee hurt now?"
"No, my hip feels pinched."
"We'd better remove that pin, then," said Dr. Evrett. He leaned in now, lips against the old woman's cool, purplish skin. "Hear that, pin?" he whispered. "I'm going to have you. Oh yes I will." And then he welcomed the point of the old woman's pelvic bone into his mouth as he might have the tongue of a schoolgirl years ago. "Just one kiss," he told the pin in the woman's hip. "No more until after the operation."
"Oh, but Tedward, it's not my hip that hurts, it's my knees!"
"Same difference," mumbled Dr. Evrett, by now preparing his equipment.
"But you don't need to remove my steel pin. I need it to balance when I walk."
"Yes I do."
"But doctor. I'm not quite sure why you think it's the pin causing my knee pain.
Dr. Evrett sighed and ripped an anatomy poster off the wall, tearing it at the top-left corner, which wanted to stay stuck. "Here," he said, pulling a Sharpie out of his coat and turning the poster over to the blank side. He drew this:
"Convinced?" he asked, not really asking.
"I'm still not sure I want to go through with this operation," the old woman said. She was still lying on the examination table. Dr. Evrett straddled her and punched her in the back of the head with his right fist. She let out a little surprised "ooh!" and moved to shield her head with her hands, but Dr. Evrett had her arms pinned down. Just as quickly as he had jumped on her and hit her the first time, he hit her a second time with his left first, directly in the nose. This knocked her unconscious. Her face hung down off the examination table. Dark red blood leaked out of one or both of her nostrils, dripping insistently on the off-white tile.
Dr. Evrett heard a siren. He rushed to the window in a panic--how could it be? It was just a fire truck. Still, "I have to hurry," he said.
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