Blameless in Abaddon Read Online Free

scale. Standing in his living room, surrounded by wedding guests, Martin was seized by an overwhelming urge to urinate. He barely got through the ceremony. Rushing into the bathroom, he began emptying his bladder without bothering to lift the toilet seat. A razoring pain hit him, as if a strand of barbed wire were traveling through his urethra. He screamed. His knees buckled. He fell to the floor, eyes fixed on a stain compounded of fungus, rust, and desiccated toothpaste.
    Slowly, the agony slackened. He exhaled, thanking God for the relief. His bladder was still complaining, but he dared not pee. Stumbling out of the bathroom, he limped up to Demetrius and Gina, smiled bravely, and wished them all the happiness in the world.
    Later that afternoon everyone reconvened at the local Wendy’s—the first time this particular restaurant or, Martin suspected, any restaurant in the entire Wendy’s chain had hosted a wedding reception. For Demetrius and Gina, the place was redolent of sentiment. They’d met three months earlier at the salad bar.
    Had his bladder not been torturing him, Martin might have enjoyed the party. Splendid in his yard-sale tuxedo, Demetrius swaggered to and fro amid the Formica tables, assuring his guests the food would cost them nothing. “Eat up, everybody!” he said expansively. “Gina and I are payin’ for everything. Have another Frosty for chrissakes, Sid. More fries, Trixie?” Never before in his life, Martin guessed, had Demetrius been anyone’s benefactor, nor was he ever likely to play that part again.
    The urge became intolerable. Martin retreated to the men’s room and, steeling himself, peed a pint of what felt like sulfuric acid. A foul-smelling yellowish discharge followed.
    Pale and shaken, he hobbled back into the dining room, bade the newlyweds farewell, and fled the festivities in a panic.
    Twenty-four hours later his primary-care physician, an ethereal young man named Harrison Daltrey, subjected Martin’s rectum to a digital examination and offered a diagnosis: acute prostatitis. Dr. Daltrey wrote him a prescription for an antibiotic called NegGram, then explained that Martin would require periodic prostatic massages to expel the urethral secretions. The magistrate felt better even before swallowing the first pill.
    And then he felt worse. The NegGram diminished the burning only slightly, and the yellowish discharges continued unabated, staining his underclothes so thoroughly that he took to washing these garments separately, when Corinne wasn’t around. Daltrey switched him from NegGram to Furadantin. No improvement.
    Then came the fateful prostatic massage of May 4, 1999.
    â€œSomething new today,” said Daltrey, withdrawing his gloved index finger. “I’m picking up a small hardening along the lateral border of the left lobe. I want to make sure a specialist can feel it too. Matt Hummel’s the best urologist around. You’ll be in good hands.”
    Dr. Hummel’s good hands also detected a hardening in Martin’s prostate.
    â€œUntil we have a look, I can’t tell you whether it’s fibrous or neoplastic,” said the urologist, a dour, moon-faced man who’d never shed his boyhood freckles. “If I had to make a wager, I’d bet my last nickel it’s benign.”
    â€œYou’re sure? Your last nickel?”
    â€œYou’re only fifty-one,” Hummel explained, reaching for the phone. “Let’s put you in the hospital this afternoon, okay? We’ll do a lab workup, and tomorrow I’ll biopsy the area.”
    When the anesthesia wore off, the first thing Martin realized was that a Foley catheter projected from his urethra, angling downward like a retrofitted science-fiction penis. Antiseptic fragrances suffused the recovery room. The aggressive chill of central air-conditioning blew across his skin. The nurse on duty, a rotund woman who might have just stepped out of