Dr Jew

light, a darker path but one called for by the holiness from which we emerge, and though we may resist, pull back, uncoil and wiggle madly, when the hour comes we may fight or submit. But what is called for comes. We shower it with what emotions we will. The universe does not care one whit. I instantly came back to myself, and knowing that this awareness was not what was needed at that time, I became doubly self-aware and the tragic momentum was upon me, upon her, infusing us and repelling her body from her soul."
    "What happened?" said Sergio.
    "I'm trying to tell you," I said. "But you and your kind want a cause. Hard science. Look at the measurements first, you say. Bah! Don't you see that it all comes from within. It all starts inside. The outside is mere reflection. I tell you that something slipped within . Inside me, inside her, inside all of us. Yes, I'll take full credit for this error, whatever it was.
    "Did I panic? I? A professional? No, I did not. Not outwardly, in any case. I know that to even consider the possibility of failure might engender a vision that I would become god of, a world brought into being that I wanted no part of. But medicine will have its way and the chemicals their sway, be ourselves how we will. I did not panic, as I have said, did not fluster like a green-in-the-pants amateur. I have been a doctor for many a decade and sport myself as well as any professional – better than most, I'm told – and I found myself in unknown territory where even the alien earth might reach up and pull me under and suffocate my lungs with red soil. I resisted! And not as a fool might, lashing back with a child's kick, but calculatingly with wit, diligence, a spark from the mind that transcended up to the physical plane and I hid it in my trench coat where neither my conscious mind nor my disposable Mexican assistant could view it. It would remain there till the appointed hour as a last resort, a final erective thrust to twist in the creature's gizzard, those loiny innards bifurcating madly, exponentially, hubristically.
    "She was opened, your wife, and organs were calcifying and still the golem ravished on. I could see the snakes crawling microscopically, swine-like within. They clutched her with tartar-like tenacity. Forgive my metaphors and mad adjectives but I try to paint a picture of what I was up against, the daunting task that I thought I had prepared for in every eventuality but now found myself crushed by, under the weight of a thousand tons of Swine-AIDS juice and how could I ever surface in time with patient intact without subjecting us both to the bends? It was now or never to call in my backup, to show the ace up my sleeve, to siphon out the last store of my deep reserves. The moment was dim and if there'd ever been a time to call for help it was then, to use that fell tool within my overcoat as described mysteriously and hinted at so recently. This weapon in my little private war was both unreal and real, as within so without, and it had taken a form I wished to employ. This I did at the eleventh hour, plunging and jacking it into her neural network – I shan't bog you with too many technical details et cetera et cetera – rather linking it to her soul or what she had and yes, things were afoot! Almost instantaneously a change could be seen, realized! My original formula had failed, alas, but with the aid of this new techne, your dear gal suddenly had a fighting chance. It looked iffy for a while there, the blue in her face, the soggy gills and putrid odor of dank, unwholesome bowels – forgive me these details, I'm a medical man and do not discriminate betwixt flowers and filth – yes, I had to sift through cells and skin compartments that looked to crumble like ruins, and keep upbeat all the while. This I did, for soon enough what I spied in my mind's eye did also begin to blossom in this material world. Beautiful? Yes. Wonderful? Of course. Surprising? Not at all. For if you think it so then mayhap you've forgotten that I, Dr. Jew, master of arts medicinal and uniter of coincidentia oppositorum , was on the job. We don't trifle."
    "No, no, no," said Sergio. "You can't just say that and expect us to go on. What happened to Lise and what did you do to fix her?"
    "You seem to think," I said, "that the medical world is like the movie world, that anything worth explain ing can be understood by a four-year-old. Well, I beg to differ. In my territory things fall apart with one drop of