Blameless in Abaddon Read Online Free Page A

an opera about Visigoths, seemed edgy and distant, as if she feared he might engage her in conversation. Where the hell was Hummel?
    â€œWe’re keeping you another night,” said the nurse, sidling toward the door.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œDoctor’s orders.”
    â€œI hate this catheter.”
    â€œI can imagine.”
    And suddenly she was gone, leaving him alone with his fear. As the clock on the recovery room wall crept toward three P.M. , Hummel finally appeared.
    â€œHow’re we doin’?” he asked.
    â€œYou didn’t tell me there’d be a catheter.”
    â€œWe’ll take it out before you go to sleep.”
    â€œIt’s driving me crazy. Did you win your bet?”
    â€œWhat bet?”
    â€œYour last nickel.”
    â€œLab report was vague. I told ’em to look at the tissue again.”
    â€œGood-vague or bad-vague?”
    â€œVague-vague. Let me worry about it, okay?” Hummel started out of the room. “If you’re a cooperative patient, we’ll let you watch the Phillies tonight.”
    Martin sat up, intent on chasing Hummel down the hall and asking what “vague-vague” meant, but the catheter made him reconsider. He lay back, closed his eyes, and brooded.
    Twenty minutes later the Visigoth nurse and her ham-fisted male assistant removed the catheter, a procedure that would have caused him only slightly more pain if the device had been a lag screw. They transferred him to a regular room, one boasting not only a color TV and a civilized temperature but also a private phone. Grabbing the receiver, he punched up the number of All Creatures Great and Small.
    â€œThey’re not letting me out till tomorrow,” he told Corinne. “What about the biopsy?”
    â€œThey won’t tell me anything.”
    â€œWithin a week, this’ll all seem like a bad dream.” Her tone was warm, kindly, reassuring. No wonder armadillos fell in love with her. “You’ll be standing on home plate, marrying a couple of baseball fans, and you won’t even be thinking about your prostate.”
    At nine o’clock the next morning Corinne appeared at his bedside bearing the happy news that Hummel had signed him out. His back throbbed. His bladder spasmed. His urethra burned fiercely, as if it had been colonized by fire ants. He wondered whether his augered penis would ever be able to perform its various duties again.
    Slowly he eased himself out of bed, collected his watch and wallet from the nightstand, and put on his street clothes. As he and Corinne shuffled past the nurses’ station, the pasty-faced woman behind the desk spoke up.
    â€œDr. Hummel said to get in touch before you leave. Here’s the number. There’s a pay phone by the Coke machine.”
    Hummel’s receptionist was expecting Martin’s call. “The doctor wants to see you down here at six o’clock. Would that be convenient?”
    â€œOkay,” he said, palms growing damp.
    â€œCan your wife come along?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œPlease bring her.”
    The receptionist hung up.
    â€œHe wants to see us at six,” said Martin, staring at his shoes. “Both of us. That’s ominous, don’t you think?”
    â€œNot necessarily.” Corinne clasped his forearm. “When I was seventeen, a surgeon cut a benign cyst out of my breast. He wanted my mother there afterward to hear exactly what he’d done and why. Here’s the plan: once we’re finished with Hummel, we’re going to Chi-Chi’s for dinner.”
    And so it happened that, on May 12, 1999, at 6:23 P.M. , Martin and Corinne stood together in his urologist’s badly lit office, hearing a verdict more punishing than anything the JP had ever handed down in his courtroom. Hummel summarized the results of the biopsy, then showed them the report from the pathology lab. The final line read, “Diagnosis: adenocarcinoma of