For the first time, I could see what my life would be like if I wasn't
hexed. Now I could realize that I knew how to do things right if I was
only let alone.
* * * * *
The intern took the blood smear. He reeled off a long string of
questions about diseases I wasn't allowed to have.
"No," I said, "and I haven't given blood in the last thirty days."
He took my sample of blood and left.
I had to have eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents. They paid you
twenty dollars a pint for blood here.
One government bond held for centuries would pile up a fortune in
interest. The smallest bond you can buy is twenty-five dollars face
value, and it costs eighteen seventy-five.
If I had kept that twenty, I would have had a buck and a quarter
change. But if I hadn't have gotten cleaned up, the hospital might not
have accepted me as a donor at all. They had had some bad experiences
from old bums dying from giving too often.
I only hoped I could force myself to let that bond go uncashed through
the rest of my life.
The intern returned, his small mustache now pointing down. "Mr. Hagle,
I have some bad news for you. Very bad. I hardly know how to tell you,
but--you've got lukemia."
I nodded. "That means you won't take my blood." Maybe it also meant
that I would never be allowed to have eighteen dollars and seventy-five
cents in one lump again as long as I lived.
"No," the intern finally managed. "We can't accept your blood--"
I waved him off. "Isn't there some fund to take care of lukemia
victims? Feed them, house them, send them to Florida to soak up the
sun?"
"Certainly there is such a fund, and you may apply, Mr. Hagle."
"I'd certainly benefit a lot from that fund. Doctor, humor me. Test me
again and see if I still have lukemia."
He did. I didn't.
"I don't understand this," the intern said, looking frightened.
"Transitory lukemia? It must be a lab error."
"Will you buy my blood now?"
"I'm afraid as long as there is some doubt--this must be something
new."
"I suppose it is," I told him. "I have all sorts of interesting
symptoms."
"You do?" The intern was vitally interested. "Feel free to tell me all
about them."
"I see and hear things."
"Really?"
"Do you believe in ESP?"
"I've sometimes wondered."
"Test me as much as you like. You'll find that in any game of chance, I
score consistently far below the level of wins I should get by the law
of averages. I'm psionically subnormal. And that's just the beginning."
"This must be _really_ new," the intern said, eyes shining.
"It is," I assured him. "And listen, Doctor, you don't want to turn
something like me over to your superiors, to leave me to the mercies of
the A.M.A. This _can_ be big, Doctor, _big_."
* * * * *
They offered Hagle's Disease to a lot of comedians, but finally it was
the new guy, Biff Kelsey, that got it and made it his own. He did a
thirty-hour telethon for Hagle's Disease.
Things really started to roll then. Boston coughed up three hundred
thousand alone. The most touching contribution came from Carrville.
I plugged away on the employ-the-physically-handicapped theme and was
made president of the Foundation for the Treatment of Hagle's Disease.
Dr. Wise (the intern) was the director.
So far, I had been living soft at Cedars, but I hadn't got my hands
on one red cent. I wanted to get that government bond to buy off the
Hexers, but at the same time it no longer seemed so urgent. They seemed
to have given up, and were just sitting back waiting for their bribe.
One morning three months later, Doc Wise came worriedly into my room at
the hospital.
"I don't like these reports, William," he said. "They all say there's
nothing wrong with you."
"It comes and it goes," I said casually. "You saw some of the times
when it came."
"Yes, but I'm having trouble convincing the trustees you weren't
malingering. And, contrary to our expectations, no one else in the
country seems to have developed Hagle's Disease."
"Stop worrying, Doc. Read the Foundation's charter. You have to treat
Hagle's Disease, which means you can use that money to treat _any_
disease of mine while we draw our salaries. I must have _something_
wrong with me."
Wise shook his head. "Nothing. Not even dandruff or B.O. You are the
healthiest man I have ever examined. It's _unnatural_."
Six months afterward, I had been walking all night in the park, in the
rain. I hadn't had anything to eat recently and I had fever and I began
sneezing. The money was still in the bank--no, not in _my_ name--I
couldn't touch it; Miss Tompkins' descendants couldn't touch it--just
waiting for me to--