Stethoscopy

The closer he got to what his wife called, as if the milestone really were as trivial as its cliché, The Big Five-O, the more convinced Prather Palmer grew that he had to make a statement.  Sure, his walls of black-and-gold-framed diplomas were statements.  His sylph of a wife herself, and his three paid-off, out-on-their-own kids, were statements.  His five-bedroom colonial, his trailside condo, his medical building with the Italian marble fountain in the waiting room—every one of them was a statement.  But after Five-O, Big or not, the years start sounding serious, the numbers looking weird and clunky as Roman numerals.  You need pencil and paper to do the math, and when you do, it can’t possibly be right.  That’s when it finally hits: statement time.

To mark—“celebrate” hardly seemed the word for it—his semicentennial, Prather ordered a Harley, and initiated an affair with Michele, his mammography technician.  To Prather’s way of thinking, neither of these statements was that out of line:  he was hardly a reckless man and would wear helmet and leather; and as far as the affair went, it would be his first as well as last, and unlikely to hurt Janice much more than the immunizations he gave her for Haiti.  Their marriage, in fact, had by now sclerosed to the point that he had become as confident as he was weary of its durability.  And hadn’t Janice had at least one of her own affairs anyway?  There was another Fifty phenomenon:  beforehand, suspicions of unfaithfulness stung, no doubt about it; whereas after, as if the L year were a magical looking glass stepping through which one would conveniently find sentiments as well as bearings reversed, they promised a sort of relief.  A sort of license.

Half Prather’s age, if that, Michele had dark Mediterranean eyes, swirls of ebony hair that made him murmur “chevelure” to himself every time he imagined her, and lips that curved up ever so slightly, and when least expected, into an achingly intimate smile.  Whether or not her looks had figured into his decision the year before to hire her, as opposed to any of the ten other applicants for the radiology position, Prather didn’t know or care.  But, though the documentation was a bit sketchy, she seemed to have been well trained in Boston, and provided a glowing if ambiguous letter of recommendation from her department chief at Salem Hospital.  Indeed, within days of her arrival, she had impressed Prather with her technical know-how, as well as with her beguiling way with even the most squirrelly of patients.  She had also impressed him with her capacity for intuition.

“I’ll bet you have interesting children,” she said one day early on, as she handed him a folder of X-ray reports.

“I do, I do,” he replied, earnest as a groom.  “But, how do you know?  That I have children at all.”

“Call it your fatherly look.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Not bad at all.  I like that look in a man.  May I ask their names?”

“Jason, Thankful, and Rebecca.  I know – Thankful was my wife’s idea.  The name, I mean.”

“Rebecca must be Kevin’s friend.”

“Kevin?  Who’s Kevin?”

Michele’s lips began to do their thing , but in another moment she turned and left him to their slowly fading image.   

Although Prather usually made a point of leaving office matters behind, when he returned home that evening he yearned to speak his new employee’s name.  He and Janice were eating supper and watching the news on Becky’s portable TV, which they had moved into the dining room after she had moved out.  Prather muted an ad.

“Got a Cracker Jack new girl to replace Anne.  Michele.  That’s her name.  Michele.”  And he said it yet again, adding a little Maurice Chevalier shiver.

“Isn’t there something about child labor laws now?”

“Forget it.”  He un-muted.

“I just say that for your own good, Prather.”  She had to shout to make herself heard over the sudden din of TV gunfire.  “I’m old enough not to mind ‘girl’ personally, but today’s women do.  You need to know that is all.  Okay?”

Smarting, Prather glared down at his plate, where Michele’s smiling face gradually appeared, haloed among the peas. He imagined her chevelure spilling down over the canvas straps of her lead apron.  He imagined undoing the ties, lifting the weighty garment up and away to reveal her quaking, nubile body.

He imagined he was in love.

Over the following weeks, Prather took every opportunity to stop by the mammography unit.  He adjusted his lunch hour to coincide with Michele’s, and, when they were left alone in the break room, got immediately personal. 

“So tell me, Michele, where you from?”

“Anywhere you want me to be, I guess.”

“Everybody’s from somewhere.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?  Only I don’t know where.  My parents.  Any of that stuff.”

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry.  Must have had some kind of parents?”

“Fosterish.  And your interesting children?  Still at home?”

“No.  Empty nest now.  Becky got an apartment just a few weeks ago.  And the older ones are gone for good.  So to speak.”  He went on to tell about Jason in dental school in Colorado, and Bab’s—Thankful’s—unexpected divorce after less than a year.  And the more he told, the more he wanted to tell; but also the more he realized, from the vagaries of her smiles and the drift of her gaze, that Michele would be slow to reciprocate.  In fact, by the time of her one-year performance review, which Prather, much to his office manager’s dismay, topped off with a four-figure bonus, he still knew little more about her than her name and credentials.  But that didn’t stop him from bringing up Janice.  

“She’s a good woman, really, my wife.  Into movies and things.  Volunteers a lot, too.  In Haiti, can you believe it?  She gets the kudos, the miles; I get the tab.”

“You resent her goodness.”

“Resent it?  Me?  I just don’t need to hear about it all the time.”

Michele’s lips tended smileward.  Emboldened as well as charmed, Prather reached out to touch her hand, lying demurely across her thigh.  “No, you’re absolutely right.  I do resent it.  I resent her goodness with a passion.”

What Prather didn’t tell his technician then, or would ever, was the source of this particular passion: Reverend Elroy McAllister, the minister who organized the Unitarian church’s Haiti mission and in whose company his wife spent her semiannual Haiti tours.  The reverend was somewhat younger than they—early forties, Prather estimated; bore his chiseled, Lincolnesque features with peculiar panache; and spoke in the deep, resonant voice of hypertestosteronism.  The voice of prophets, Janice had called it more than once.  And although Prather considered most of what the reverend said—at least as reported to him by his wife, the church-goer—as little more than spiritual and philosophical treacle, he could imagine how that basso, uttered in the cavernous vault of the old stone meeting house, could resound in receptive ears with the harmonics of profundity.  Four weeks at a time they spent together down there on that island, hammering and plastering at schools and clinics, dishing out prenatal vitamins, organizing women’s handicraft cooperatives, and, Prather was convinced, banging the bejesus out of each other under the tropical stars.

“I just can’t believe,” Prather said to his wife one evening, “that after all this time down there with Elroy you haven’t developed some kind of, well, you know what I mean.”

It was Prather’s fiftieth birthday eve, and they were eating at a new Afghani restaurant in town that Janice wanted to support.  She took a sip from her tiny glass of tea and whispered back, “It’s third world down there, Prather.  Not Carnival Cruise.”

“Are you missing my point, or just ignoring it?”

Janice frowned, then slowly beamed.  “Admiration?  Respect?  That what you mean?”

Prather looked around at the other, mainly empty tables.  He leaned forward.  “Back in high school we always said the deeper a guy’s voice, the bigger….”

“Stop it!”  Her tea splashed onto the table.  “I guess I should be flattered you’re jealous, but I’m afraid it’s more like….”  She pushed her plate away.  “All right. Come with us and see, if you’re that interested.  Do some good for once.”

Prather shook his head.  It wasn’t worth repeating his argument that a few giddy, hyper-vaccinated parishioners lugging expired generics and solar lanterns in their fanny packs were not going to save the Third World.  And it certainly wasn’t worth mentioning that he no longer believed a word she said.

The next day—his birthday —he signed out at four and took a cab to pick up his Road King Classic.  Cautious as a sapper in a minefield, he navigated side streets back to the office. In the middle of the parking lot he dismounted and walked the seven hundred pounds of black steel and chrome the last few feet into the middle of Handicapped. 

It was just after five. The office staff had left, except for a kid sitting on the waiting room floor with his back against the fountain reading a paperback, a push broom across his lap.  As Prather, still dressed for the road in leather jacket, open-tip gloves, chaps, and trooper boots, his half-helmet clamped under his arm like a trophy head, marched past, the kid jumped to his feet

“Sir!” he snapped.  Prather didn’t miss a step; he continued on. 

“Well, hello,” Michele said as he entered the mammography suite. “Are you looking for Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

“No,” he said, latching the lead-lined door behind him. “I’m looking for you.  To tell you I love you.”

With an effortless hop, Michele alit on the edge of the X-ray table. “Like your troopers,” she said, pointing at his boots.

Encouraged even by this irrelevance, Prather proceeded to set his helmet and gloves down on the utility cart by the door.  He unzipped his jacket and squirmed out of it as casually as he could.

“I know I’m older, Michele,” he said, breathlessly, seating himself next to her.  “I know I’m your employer.  I know I’m married.  Kids.  All that.  But what I know most of all is, I cannot get you out of my mind.”

“I’m flattered, I guess.”

“But are you, I don’t know, moved?”  Flattery was Janice’s word. 

Michele leaned back on her hands, shaking glorious locks out of her eyes.  “Saddened, I’d say.  Does that count?”

“Not exactly what I had in mind.”

“The way it’s always been for me, though.  When it comes to love.  My mother loved me, I’m sure, even the day she handed me off.  In Salem—did I tell you I worked there when I was a kid, in the Pioneer Village?  Anyway, boys loved me back then in my long skirts and braids because I was…fantastic—I was this other century, spinning and candles and spells—and I came to believe it.  That I was fantastic.  Which can never be loved.  And now that I’m beyond that, guys ‘love me for my yellow hair.’”

“What yellow hair? You don’t have yellow hair.” 

“Exactly.”  She slipped back down to the floor and walked over to her desk.  “What I do have, though, is a present for you.”  From the top drawer she took a long, narrow package tied with a gold cord.  “I was looking all over for you. Thought I’d missed you on your big day.”

Prather took the package she held out to him.  “How did you know it was my big day?”

“Go ahead.  Open it.”

Inside, wrapped in gold-flecked tissue paper, was a stethoscope.  But it was a stethoscope unlike any Prather had ever seen: long, hose-like black tubing, frayed and tacky, connected bulbous, cracked ear pieces to a heavy bell and diaphragm, gold-colored, though stained and scratched.  Holding the stiff tubes together at their midpoint was a chipped gold medallion embossed with elaborate curlicues.  On the rim was etched in childish cursive Prather Palmer, MD.

“Wow,” Prather kept repeating, to conceal his disappointment.  “Thank you.  But you didn’t need….”  He leaned forward and kissed Michele on the cheek, feeling her recoil as he did so.  Recovering, he positioned the earpieces and tapped lightly on the diaphragm.  The reports were deafening.  He switched to the bell, and when he blew into it winced from the blast.

“Where’d you get it?”

“It was in a crate back in Salem.  We were, I don’t know, cleaning out this house the department was going to use for storage.  Engraved it myself. See?”

“You know I can’t take this, Michele.”

“Really?  You were going to take me.”

She walked across the room, hung her lab coat up on a hook, and looked back from the doorway.  “Lock up, OK?  And, hey!  Happy fiftieth.”

Over the ensuing days, as excited as Prather was to have received a gift from his inamorata, he had no idea what to do with it.  He didn’t dare take it home:  Janice was sure to find it and make an issue out of it.  He didn’t fancy actually using it on patients: one of the ugliest things he’d ever seen, it was the antithesis of the sleek gray Littman, which had been the internist’s standard since residency, and which hung so discreetly around his neck and coiled so naturally into a jacket pocket. And how callous, at this point, to give it back.  So there it languished in its wrappings at the rear of his office closet until the day two weeks later when Michele finally agreed to go out with him for a spin on the Harley.  Just as he had planned, the spin turned into a long, circuitous tour through the summer countryside, ending in lunch at the new Loaf and Ladle two towns west.  And also just as he had planned, the conversation in their booth soon turned from the excitement of their wind-blown ride to the routines at work, from work to Michele, and from her to “them.”

“You know why I came with you today?” she interrupted, patting noncommittal lips with her napkin.

“The hog?”

“No.  You.”

Prather could feel the smile suffusing his own face, and then, as she went on, stiffening into a mask.  “I thought it would give me the chance to, like, apologize properly.  For encouraging you.”

“Hey, encourage me more.”

“The present was payback.  For all your generosity.”

“Oh. Well, I took it as encouragement.  I loved it.  Being encouraged.  And the ’scope too, of course. Great ’scope.”

“You just never use it.”

“What do you mean, never use it?  Use it all the time. Every day.  Well, maybe not every day.”

As he took a sip of iced tea and worked on his mask behind the sweating glass, Prather vowed to himself he would never lie to Michele again.  And to seal that vow, he would put her gift into service that very afternoon.

“Well, I hope you do use it,” Michele said when he had put his glass back down.  “I think it likes listening.”

Wendell Berry was Prather’s first patient on the schedule that afternoon.  A sixty-year-old lobsterman from one of the islands, Wendell had hypertension and, in spite of increasingly potent anti-hypertensive medications, had shown signs of progressive hypertrophy on his EKG.  That told Prather he still didn’t have his patient’s pressure under adequate control, and, sure enough, 160/90 was the reading Kathy had noted in the chart.

“Take off your shirt, Wendell,” Prather said after the usual questions.  He fingered the heavy tubing of the stethoscope hanging now, yoke-like, around his neck.  “Let’s have us a little listen.”

Prather set the earpieces carefully in place and positioned the massive golden bell on Wendell’s chest.  Heartbeats thundered in his ears along with an extra sound he had never heard before in his patient, a classic gallop sound of early heart failure. Was that sound, and the serious condition it betrayed, new, or could this unlikely instrument be that much more sensitive than his Littman?  As his hearing adjusted, the sounds softened, to the point that he began to hear among them a distant, Wendell-like voice:  “Flaming asshole, Palmer, you know that?”

“Beg your pardon?” Prather pulled one earpiece aside, and looked up. 

“What?” Wendell looked quickly around the little room.  “You talkin’ to me?”

Prather bent to his examination again.  “Why the hell you keep me coming every month? Make me wait, buy those fucking horse pills. Am I better? Huh? You tell me.”

His own heart doing most of the beating now, Prather took out both earpieces.  “Of course you’re better.  This hypertension’s a tricky business.”

“What better?  What’re you talking about, Doc?”   

Prather stared at the stubbly, weatherworn face, the mouth skewed in puzzlement or accusation or palsy.  Was Wendell suffering from some drug side effect or early hypertensive cerebrovascular disease; or was he himself, the doctor, hearing things?  “I thought you were complaining about the pills.”

“Me? Nah. You’re the doctor.”

Prather increased the cheaper of Wendell’s meds, arranged a cardiology consultation. Pausing in his dictation, Prather wondered if he should refer him to a neurologist as well, a psychiatrist.  Confusion at sea would not be a good thing.

His next patient was a chronic depressive, followed by two rashes, a walk-in, then a breast recheck.  Lorraine Bixby was his 3:15.  A fifty-four year old widow, Lorraine was a regular.  This time it was attacks of “sloshing” in her chest. Parts could be coming loose inside, she worried.  Vital parts.

“Not a chance, Lorraine,” Prather reassured her.  “Body parts don’t come loose.  Air and gas probably.  Called a succussion ….”

“There it is! Oh God!”

Grabbing her shoulders, Prather thrust her down onto the exam table.  He freed up her blouse and forced the stethoscope under the edge of her bra.  The heartbeat was rapid, but the sounds were crisp, regular.  There were no clicks, rubs, gallops, murmurs…. 

“O, do it again Prather.  Do it again.  So strong and your hand is so warm. God I’ve missed your touch.”

Prather glanced at Lorraine’s pale face, the pencil-line wrinkles of her brow.  Her eyes remained closed, their eye-shadowed lids fluttering like feathers in a breeze.

“How I treasure these moments.  Stay a little.”

As he listened, Prather studied her lips: thin, motionless.  He removed the stethoscope from his ears and helped her to sit back up.

“Just as I thought, Lorraine.  Everything normal.  Few bowel sounds up there in your chest.  I’ll have Kathy set you up for a GI series.”

 Lorraine, eyes downcast, nodded.

“Anything else, uh, on your mind today, Lorraine?  Anything…going on in your life?”

Lorraine looked up.  “Thank you, Dr. Palmer.  No, nothing at all is going on in my life.”

Only two other patients that afternoon had problems requiring Prather’s auscultation, and each time he could hear, through the lub-dup of valve closures and the sough of deep breaths, wandering but identifiable voices: a rant on the collusion of doctors and drug companies; free-wheeling chatter about meth labs.  Confronted with Prather’s new and insightful suspicion of drug use, that patient broke down and gratefully accepted referral to a chemical dependency unit.    

When, at nearly five o’clock, Michele brought in the day’s mammography reports for Prather’s review, he asked her to sit down.

“I want you to know, Michele, how much I really am enjoying your gift.  I may not have made that sufficiently clear earlier when….”

“I knew you would, Dr. Palmer.”

“Prather.  Please.  It’s after hours.  And how did you know I would—enjoy it?”

“I knew from the moment I found it, that someone in my future would enjoy it.  Need it.”

Prather wanted desperately to ask Michele more about the stethoscope, but no matter how he rehearsed the questions in his mind, they came out sounding ridiculous.  Instead, he asked her about dinner.  

“I don’t do dinner with married men.  Just lunch. Once.”

“You smile at them.  You give them gifts.”

“That’s instead of all the rest.  Not in addition.”

“Think of dinner as my gift.  Be a good receiver.  Like me.”

“It’s not my birthday.  And, you know what?  I don’t even know when my birthday is.”

“In that case,” Prather said, standing and drawing himself up to the tallest he could muster, “from now on, every day is your birthday.  Just in case.”

By the time Prather had garaged his Harley that evening, he had made his decision:  he and Janice had nothing left, not even children, while he and Michele had something very… special.  But before he could speak of divorce—he had just walked through the kitchen door and beheld his wife stirring reddish sauce on the stove—Janice turned, shook the spatula at him hard enough to splatter his leather, and announced, “Guess who’s coming to dinner.  Forever.”

“Me?”

“Becky.”

“Still no job, huh?”

“You kidding?  She’s not looking for any job.  You don’t need anybody at the office, do you?  Somebody who sighs a lot and can’t type?”

Becky spent most of dinner staring at her pasta and fiddling with a pimple on her cheek, while Janice and Prather tried to reassure her that lots of young people come back to live with their parents off and on; that work, especially in the travel industry, was hard to find for everyone these days; and that they didn’t feel any less proud of her because she happened to have been, well, fired.   Prather wondered if Janice knew how hypocritical her sympathy sounded.  Then he wondered if she wondered if he knew how he sounded himself.  He did feel sorry for his daughter, but angry as well at his wife for the role model she had, or had not, been.  If only Becky—if only Janice!—were more like Michele.

“I really wish we had some kind of opening at the office, Beck,” he said, pushing his plate away.  “But we’ve got too many warm bodies in there as it is.”

“He’s right about that, Beck,” Janice said.  “They have some very warm bodies in there at the office.”

Prather scowled back.  “That’s it.  Dinner’s over.  I’m getting a movie.  A funny movie.” 

Becky stood.  “You’ve got one. Us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  Janice asked, gathering dishes together in front of her.

“A ha-ha funny movie,” Prather said.  But Becky was already down the hall.

An hour later, just as Alvy was about to make his move on Annie Hall, Becky slouched into the living room with a bag of Fritos.  She curled up in the recliner.  Prather answered a page, then couldn’t get back into the scene.  He was thinking.  Not about his daughter crunching chips across from him.  Not about his wife beginning to nod beside him. Not about fifty.  He was thinking about Michele but, even more, about her gift.  He knew perfectly well that, when a patient talks, even whispers, while one listens to their chest, their speech is quite audible.  But in none of the four cases in which he had heard speech that afternoon had he been aware of its usual phrasing, or of the usual muffling of the words by interposed lung air. Nor had he noticed movement of any of the speakers’ lips.  Unlikely that four patients scheduled coincidentally for the same afternoon would just happen to have the gift of ventriloquy.  Unlikely, too, that he himself, Big Five-O or not, was hallucinating.  That left only one explanation: his new instrument registered thought.           

The next day, Prather set up meetings for Becky with several businessmen-patients, as well as with an employment counselor.  As for his scheduled patients, every one underwent a thorough auscultation, no matter how irrelevant and no matter how far behind it made him.  He was amazed at the variety of opinions and musings, asides and concerns, he heard.  Just as Lorraine did, several of the women expressed forbidden love for him.  One young man did as well. Three patients, with whom he had always, he thought, been on the best of terms, clearly distrusted him as they rehashed off-hand comments he had made to them over the years.  And scattered amongst the expected apprehensions over aches and lumps and bodily functions were snippets of songs and jingles, free-floating memories, sit-com episodes, worries over dandelions, car payments, children’s marriages, the last Jumble word from the morning’s paper.

Right at five, Prather called Michele on the intercom.  Minutes later she appeared in his office in her jogging outfit.

“Sorry to hold you up Michele, but I wonder if you’d do me a favor.”

She smiled as she gathered handfuls of hair into a green bandana.

“Like I said, I’m really enjoying your present.  Remarkable.  But it is different, to say the least, from my old one.  And what I’ve been thinking is, I’d like to compare the two on a normal heart to, you know, well, compare them.”

“My heart is normal?”

“You’re young.  Fit.  That wouldn’t make you uncomfortable, would it?  My listening to your heart?”

“I’m not sure uncomfortable is the word.  Close, though.”

Prather stood up and walked over to Michele, still standing in the doorway.  “Kathy’s left, but that cleaning kid’s still around I think.  If you’re worried.”

“More late than worried.  Use Kevin then, why don’t you?” 

But before he could get out a reason, Michele turned and was tripping down the darkened hall.

Prather paced back and forth, the golden pendulum swinging from his neck as he wheeled at each end of his office.  The thought of Michele lying back on his exam table, of that flimsy top pulled up, of his hand tactfully, professionally, working the bell under the edge of the bra, between those perfect breasts, was thrilling indeed.  Because she was so beautiful.  Because he was so bold.  Because Janice would be so astonished. But most of all, he had to admit to himself, because that simple act was so likely to reveal to him what he was now so desperate to know. 

Janice was on the phone when Prather got home.  He continued on upstairs.  Becky was lying on her bed, wearing the same bell-bottom jeans with the torn knee. She didn’t move when he sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Got everything lined up, Beck.  You won’t know what offer to choose.”

“Easy Rider.  That’s the movie you’re in, Dad.  Captain America.”

“Seriously, Becky.  Some day we’ll all look back….”  But she just rolled away.  Prather reached over to put his hand on her shoulder.  As he struggled to find his next words, the obvious hit him.

Janice was still on the phone when he ran past her.  In spite of the banging of his boots across the tile floor, he could hear the word, “Elroy,” but he didn’t stop or explain where he was going.  He rolled out the Harley, jumped on un-helmeted, and headed down the double line fast and loud. 

The office was locked for the night.  He deactivated the alarm and groped his way to his room.  The stethoscope lay dark and reptilian where he had left it on his desk, but its coils held something white ‑ an envelope.  He tore it open:

     Dr. Palmer,

When you read this, I’ll be far away.  Much as I have enjoyed working here, I feel our relationship has taken some unfortunate turns, and mustn’t be allowed to go on.

                                                            As ever,

                                                                        Michele

Prather sat on the edge of his desk for several minutes, rereading the note. Unfortunate turns. Is that what these last few weeks had been? Relationship. Unfortunate turns. 

Finally, remembering his mission, he stuffed the paper into his pocket, reset the alarm, and hurried back to his bike, stethoscope wadded in his fist. 

“Forgot something,” he said as he reentered the kitchen, though Janice wasn’t asking.  He kept the stethoscope behind his back.  “How’s old Elroy?”

“Helpful, as usual.  Said he’s willing to counsel Becky.”

“That’ll fix her. She still upstairs?”

He found his daughter still lying on her bed, a book propped open on a pillow next to her.

“Mind if I check you, sweetheart?” he said, closing the door behind him. “Want to be sure there’s nothing, you know, physical going on.”

Becky rolled over onto her back.  “Don’t I wish.”

Prather sat down beside her, put the earpieces in place, and pulled up her T-shirt just far enough to listen.  He wished she were wearing a bra.

“Where’d you get that thing?” she asked.

“Gift,” he whispered, without looking up. “Shh.”

The heartbeat was strong and steady, the valve sounds pure.

“What was she thinking anyway giving you that damned thing?”  Prather glanced up.  Becky just lay there, eyes closed now, as if sleeping.  “You go off with her it’ll kill mom. She doesn’t say so.  Wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.  Least you could do is level with us. Why you guys are so fucking—uh-oh watch the nipple, that ring’ll freak you out, man. 

“Call me, Kevin. Why aren’t you calling me? You that scared of the big bad doctor? Don’t worry. I’ll clue’em in when it’s time.  Somebody’s got to say what’s what around here.

“Geez, it’s cold like this. There’s nothing wrong….”

Prather withdrew the earpieces and stood.  “Sounds good, Beck.  Like a clock.”  He removed the stethoscope from around his neck. “Dinner’s almost ready, I think.  We better not keep her waiting.  You know how she gets.”

After the meal, the three of them watched HBO until Becky suddenly announced that all movies were boring.  They made her tired.  Prather followed her up stairs and told her, as she was closing her door, that there was a young man who worked at his office by the name of Kevin something he thought she might like to meet.  She didn’t answer. He went on into his bedroom and fished the stethoscope out of the sock drawer where he had hidden it. 

Janice Muted the movie as he entered the study.  He sat down next to her.  “They throw that in with the motorcycle?”

“Actually, it was a gift.  From the office.  Belated birthday.  Mind if I try it out?”  He set the earpieces, undid one button of Janice’s blouse, and worked the bell into place on her chest.  He forced himself to ignore the heart sounds.

“That’s what they think of you, and you just don’t get it. Damnedest thing I ever saw.  Like Becky’s clothes.  I’d have canned her too.”

“Elroy, Elroy,” Prather whispered, leaning closer and listening even harder.

“Am I supposed to talk?”

“Shh! I’m trying to hear.”

As his ears recovered, the seashell voice returned.  “Homeless. That’s what Elroy’s afraid of.  Drugs.  Never meet Mr. Right.  Going to have to cook at least two dinners a week, have hours to be in by, maybe pay a little rent long as you’re here. 

“Uh-oh, Prather, I might have to cough. And you, my dear, you’re going to have to be involved here, too….”

“Elroy,” Prather whispered again, a singsong now, like a hypnotist.

“What’s this with Elroy? I thought you didn’t like Elroy. Did I turn the stove off?”

The heartbeat grew louder, faster, the words harder to hear as if modulating into another key.  Prather took the stethoscope out of his ears.  “Thank you, Janice,” he said.  “Thank you so much.”  And he kissed her on the forehead.

Later they made love, the first time in weeks.  Lying in bed afterwards, listening vaguely for any more voices in the darkness, Prather thought about Becky lying in her room.  He thought about Kevin with his push broom and paperback.  He thought about the Harley down in the garage.  He thought about Haiti.  He tried to think about Michele and her leaving, but it kept coming out about Janice and his staying. 

Quietly, he got up and tiptoed over to the bureau where the stethoscope lay furled.  He brought it back to the bed, gingerly got back under the covers, and set the earpieces.  He slipped the bell down under the sheet. 

“Hope she doesn’t wake up.  Me lying here listening to my own heart!”  It was him, all right, or almost, like his dictations minus the static. “I’m lying in bed listening to myself.  I’m listening to myself listening to myself listening to myself….A loop is what it is. Some kind of infinite loop. Short circuit.  Burn out the synapses.  Wondering about what I’m wondering about what I’m wondering…. Damn it!”

“Huh? What?”  Janice was up on her elbow.

Prather ripped the earpieces from his ears and thrust the stethoscope toward the bedside table.  Like a living thing it uncurled and writhed onto the floor with a clunk.

“You all right, hon?”

Prather turned on the light and peered over the edge of the bed.  He reached down and felt something sharp.  He picked it up—a gilded shard. 

“It was that stethoscope,” he said.  “Must have knocked it off in my sleep. And look. It broke.  Made out of some kind of clay.”

“Can’t imagine it worked very well,” Janice said. “Who ever heard of a clay stethoscope anyway?”

“No,” Prather said, lying back down. “Whoever did?”  He turned off the light and rolled toward her.  “I really like my old Littman better.”