Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

“Sit on the examination table,” he said, the mask puffing out with the wind of his speech.

Jason did as he was told. Dr. Bergstrom went over to the bench, and took something that looked like a hand-scythe, except that it was hinged like scissors and not sharp. Bergstrom told Jason to hold still, and he opened it like pincers on a bug, and set Jason’s head in the middle. The metal tips felt cold against his temples, and Jason worried it would poke into the soft skull there. It did not. He lifted it away, took it back to the bench, and set it against a ruler, and marked a notation. Then he repeated the procedure with the pincers at the back of Jason’s skull, at his jaw-line, his ears and the back of his neck.

“What are you measuring my head for?” asked Jason, but Dr. Bergstrom didn’t answer.

“Smile,” he said. And then added impatiently: “So I can see your teeth.” He examined those, and asked Jason if he ever had a toothache, and when Jason said no, he nodded. He went back to the bench, wrote more things down, then opened one of the glass-covered cabinets. This time he pulled out a thin metal cylinder, and a brown glass bottle.

“Lie on your stomach,” he ordered, not looking back.

“You goin’ to take my temperature?” asked Jason. When Dr. Bergstrom didn’t answer, Jason went on: “When I was small, the doctor in Cracked Wheel took my temperature with a thermometer up my behind, because he feared I’d bite it and poison myself if I put it in my mouth. Well I ain’t going to bite it, so you can just—”

“I am not taking your temperature, Jason,” said Dr. Bergstrom. He was coming across the floor. Jason could see that he was holding the cylinder between two fingers. On one end was a sharp needle. A bead of fluid gleamed like liquid gold on its tip.

“Now hold still,” he said.

Jason did as he was told.

§

Jason blinked and coughed. He was lying down, on a hard bed very different from the examination table. His arms hurt. His vision was blurry; as was his understanding of exactly how he’d got there.

Memory became fragmented up to the moment. He recalled a sharp pain in his behind, and then a cool feeling, like his foot had gone to sleep. He may have said something.

He may have gotten up off the table. Stumbled around a bit. He may have fallen to the floor. He may have even got up again, made it a short way down the hall, and then fallen over again before the world vanished.

Best Jason could say was that, next thing he knew, he was here. Lying on a table or a bed or, judging from its hardness, somewhere in between the two. His clothes were gone, replaced by a thin cotton sheet. The things that hurt his arms and legs were leather straps tied on top of that sheet. They were tying him down.

Jason had to fight to control his breathing as he put it together. He didn’t know much about doctoring—what little he’d seen of it happened at the barber shop in Cracked Wheel. But he knew that sometimes the barber would use the straps to hold a fellow still for awful things like amputating a leg or digging out a stone.

What in hell were they doing tying Jason down like this? What was Dr. Bergstrom doing, sticking him with a poisoned needle without asking him first? Jason pushed against the straps. He didn’t expect it to free him and so was not surprised when it didn’t. It still made him mad.

He blinked, and his eyes got some of their focus back. He looked side to side. He was in a long whitewashed room, with a high ceiling and windows only near the top. There were other beds in here—maybe ten of them. But the rest were empty. At the far end, he could see two figures, caught in the dim moonlight that cut down through the windows, silhouetted in the glow of candlelight. They were huddled around it, talking to one another, turned away from Jason.

“Hey!” he hollered. “Hey!”

They both turned to him.

“Jason!” It was Aunt Germaine. The other one didn’t speak, but Jason figured it for Dr. Bergstrom.

The two of them hurried across the room. Jason, to show his displeasure, struggled theatrically against the restraints. When they arrived, he noted that both were wearing white gowns and masks over their mouths. “What is the matter,” said Jason in a low, angry voice, “I got a smell about me?”

Aunt Germaine stepped immediately to his side. She put two rubber-gloved hands on his own. It might have been the effect of night, but she looked paler, older than she had ever seemed before. Her hands seemed to be trembling. “Oh Nephew,” she said, “I am sorry.”

“Do not apologize, Mrs. Frost,” said Dr. Bergstrom. He stood somewhat further off, at the foot of the bed. “This was my decision. I will explain it to young Jason.”

“Of course.” Aunt Germaine squeezed Jason’s hand.

“Jason, you must understand that I would not take these measures lightly. But your aunt told me the story of what happened to your town, of—”

“Cracked Wheel.”