"TOUCHED
BY SOMETHING
DIVINE"
by Richard Selzer,M.D.
----------------------
I.Smile, Doctor
I INVITED a young diabetic woman to the operating room to
amputate her leg. She could not see the great black ulcer upon
her foot and ankle that threatened to encroach upon the rest of
her body, for she was blind as well. There upon her foot was a
Mississippi Delta brimming with corruption, sending its raw
tributaries down between her toes. She could not see her wound,
but she could feel it. There is no pain like that of the
bloodless limb turned rotten and festering.
For over a year I had trimmed away the putrid flesh,
cleansed, anointed, and dressed the foot, staving off, delaying.
Three times each week, in her darkness, she sat upon my table,
rocking back and forth, holding her extended leg by the thigh,
gripping it as though it were a rocket that must be steadied lest
it explode and scatter her toes about the room. And I would cut
away a bit here, a bit there, of the swollen blue leather that
was her tissue.
At last we gave up, she and I. We could no longer run ahead
of the gangrene. We had not the legs for it. There must be an
amputation in order that she might live--and I as well. It was
to heal us both that I must take up knife and saw, and cut the
leg off. And when I could feel it drop from her body to the
table, see the blessed space appear between her and that leg, I
too would be well.
Now it is the day for the operation. I stand by while the
anaesthetist administers the drugs, watch as the tense familiar
body relaxes into sleep. I turn then to uncover the leg.
And there, upon her kneecap, she has drawn, blindly, upside
down for me to see, a face; just a circle with two ears, two
eyes, a nose, and a smiling upturned mouth. Under it she has
printed SMILE, DOCTOR. Minutes later, I listen to the sound of
the saw, until a little crack at the end tells me it is done.
II. A Man of Letters
A man of letters lies in the intensive-care unit. A
professor, used to words and students. One day in his classroom
he was speaking of Emily Dickinson when suddenly he grew pale,
and wonder sprang upon his face, as though he had just, for the
first time, seen something, understood something, that had eluded
him all his life. It was the look of the Wound, the struck blow
that makes no noise, but happens in the depths somewhere, unseen.
His students could not have known that at that moment his stomach
had perforated, that even as he spoke, its contents were issuing
forth into his peritoneal cavity like a horde of marauding
goblins.
From the blackboard to the desk he reeled, fell across the
top of it, and, turning his face to one side, he vomited up his
blood, great gouts and gobbets of it, as though having given his
class the last of his spirit, he now offered them his fluid and
cells.
In time, he was carried to the operating room, this man whom
I have known, who had taught me poetry. I took him up, in my
hands, and laid him open, and found from where he bled. I
stitched it up, and bandaged him, and said later, "Now you are
whole."
But it was not so, for he had begun to die. And I could not
keep him from it, not with all my earnestness, so sure was his
course. From surgery he was taken to the intensive-care unit.
His family, his students, were stopped at the electronic door.
They could not pass, for he had entered a new state of being, a
strange antechamber where they may not go...
For three weeks he has dwelt in that House of Intensive
Care, punctured by needles, wearing tubes of many calibers in all
of his orifices; irrigated, dialysed, insufflated, pumped, and
drained...and feeling every prick and pressure the way a lover
feels desire spring acutely to his skin.
In a room a woman moves. She is dressed in white.
Lovingly, she measures his hourly flow of urine. With hands
familiar, she delivers oxygen to his nostrils and counts his
pulse as though she were telling beads. Each bit of his decline
she records with her heart full of grief, shaking her head. At
last, she turns from her machinery to the simple touch of the
flesh. Sighing, she strips back the sheet, and bathes his limbs.
The man of letters did not know this woman before.
Preoccupied with dying, he is scarcely aware of her presence now.
But this nurse is his wife in his new life of dying. They are
close, these two, intimate, depending one upon the other, loving.
It is a marriage, for although they own no shared past, they
possess this awful, intense present, this matrimonial now, that
binds them as strongly as any promise.
A man does not know whose hands will stroke from him the
last bubbles of his life. That alone should make him kinder to
strangers.
III. Encounter With a God
I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face
postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig
of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has
been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had
followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise
you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumour in her cheek, I had
cut the little nerve.
Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite
side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening
lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask
myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch
each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
"Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks.
"Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut."
She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles.
"I like it," he says. "It is kind of cute."
All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my
gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful,
he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I so close I can see how
he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that
their kiss still works.
I remember that the gods appeared in ancient Greece as
mortals, and I hold my breath and let the wonder in.(#)
No. 6:WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE? by Viorst
No. 7:THE SECRET OF HAVING FUN by LeShan
No. 8:PIED PIPER OF SEVENTH AVENUE by Comer
No. 9:OBEY THAT IMPULSE by Marston
No. 10:THE LOVING MESSAGE IN A TOUCH by Lobsenz
And some more...
No. 11:THE WISDOM OF TEARS by Hunt
No. 12:HAVE YOU AN EDUCATED HEART? by Burgess
No. 13:THE STRANGE POWERS OF INTUITION by Lagemann
No. 14:WHY KIDS ARE 20 DEGREES COOLER by Mills
No. 15:THE RIGHT DIET FOR YOU by Stare
And still some more...
No. 16:STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT THE LIVING-TOGETHER ARRANGEMENT by Montague
No. 17:...The ABC's of It by Lakein
No. 18:The Day We Flew the Kites by Fowler
No. 20:How to Live 365 Days a Year by Schindler
Ascend to Second Floor
Recommended.
Ascend to Third Floor
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