The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bedside Manner, by William Morrison

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Title: Bedside Manner

Author: William Morrison

Illustrator: VIDMER

Release Date: June 17, 2010 [EBook #32864]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEDSIDE MANNER ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

BEDSIDE MANNER

By WILLIAM MORRISON

Illustrated by VIDMER

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: Broken, helpless, she had to trust an alien doctor to give
her back her body and mind--a doctor who had never seen a human before!]

She awoke, and didn't even wonder where she was.

First there were feelings--a feeling of existence, a sense of still
being alive when she should be dead, an awareness of pain that made her
body its playground.

After that, there came a thought. It was a simple thought, and her mind
blurted it out before she could stop it: _Oh, God, now I won't even be
plain any more. I'll be ugly._

The thought sent a wave of panic coursing through her, but she was too
tired to experience any emotion for long, and she soon drowsed off.

Later, the second time she awoke, she wondered where she was.

There was no way of telling. Around her all was black and quiet. The
blackness was solid, the quiet absolute. She was aware of pain
again--not sharp pain this time, but dull, spread throughout her body.
Her legs ached; so did her arms. She tried to lift them, and found to
her surprise that they did not respond. She tried to flex her fingers,
and failed.

She was paralyzed. She could not move a muscle of her body.

The silence was so complete that it was frightening. Not a whisper of
sound reached her. She had been on a spaceship, but none of a ship's
noises came to her now. Not the creak of an expanding joint, nor the
occasional slap of metal on metal. Not the sound of Fred's voice, nor
even the s