The Unnamed - By Joshua Ferris Page 0,40

it quickly. She needed a second one and poured it out and drank that one at the table waiting for him to come downstairs. He shuffled into the room.

“I can’t keep doing this to you,” he said.

He looked contrite and sad and ten years older. He was thin and desperate and as needy as a child. She poured herself another glass.

“Sit down next to me,” she said.

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Bagdasarian came in and removed two toes. Tim screamed despite the anesthetic that dulled what surrounded the dead nerves and he thrashed futilely against his restraints. After fierce refusal he had capitulated again to being so narrowly confined, and now it felt like waking inside a coffin six feet under.He cursed the doctor angrily and his curses were mixed with personal insults aimed at the doctor’s ugliness and his medical impotence and the recklessness with which he offered hope to the sick. Dr. Bagdasarian said nothing but commented to Jane, who stood horrified in the doorway, that Tim was very lucky to suffer only the loss of two more toes, and that the absence of gangrene was nothing short of a miracle. Tim continued to scream, and his screams could be heard beyond the window, picked up by the breeze and spread throughout a neighborhood that otherwise knew only calm and prosperity.

Jane saw the doctor out. Before leaving he gave her two letters. He explained that the first was a letter to Tim from a friend of his, a renowned neuroscientist who had authored many books on medical curiosities. He said she might even have heard of him. The second was from a woman from an institute. The doctor didn’t know what to make of it. He told Jane that she’d have to decide for herself.

Dr. Bagdasarian reached out gently and put a hand on her shoulder. “Try your best that he doesn’t forget what it means to be human,” he said.

“I’m trying,” she said.

He opened the door. They shook hands and she thanked him. “You’ve been so helpful,” she said.

Dr. Bagdasarian smiled. “I’ve been no help at all.”

She walked through the house to the kitchen. She read the letters at the table. The first, from the neuroscientist, was a letter of introduction. She recognized him, as Dr. Bagdasarian had suggested she might, having read his articles in popular magazines. He explained that part of his goal in life was to give voice to strange cases. In his letter he wrote compassionately and without condescension, and she thought how heartened the letter and its tone would have made Tim even a short time ago. The second letter was from the executive director of something called the Endocrine Disruption Prevention Alliance, a loose affiliation of science groups based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The writer introduced herself and explained that Tim’s condition had come to her attention.

… and I am one-hundred percent certain that the cause is endocrine disruption, a phenomenon that results from the intake of chemicals extremely hostile to the human endocrine system. These chemicals, released in huge quantities into the environment, can fundamentally change how an individual functions, how he or she thinks, even—as in your case—moves. Here is the frightening truth: clinical trials have proven that a chemical agent no bigger than two benzene rings, or one-trillionth of a part of the human body (to put that in perspective, that is one second over the course of three thousand centuries) can take total control over our bodies. I am writing to you today to educate you, but more importantly to persuade you that your condition is caused by—

She stopped reading.

There was a time when receiving a letter like this one, no matter how odd its message, would have restored their faith in a flawed system. He had been forced to seek out the opinion of specialists, who sent him on to other specialists, who made him stand at the mercy of ever-more-refined specialists, who referred him to the specialists they most admired. Now a specialist was coming to him. The executive director of a medical alliance was telling him once and for all what ailed him. “Endocrine disruption.” It would not have mattered that he had never heard of it before. It would not have mattered if the science was debated, if the evidence was still outstanding, if the experts had been debunked. He would have been instantly on the phone. He would have flown anywhere, stayed any length of time. And she would have been there beside him.

Now she walked the