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you’re going to be one of my best patients.” She pushed up on her arms again. “Now let’s see if we can provide a climax to match. Nurse, are you ready?”
    “Yes, doctor.”
    He glanced sideways, and saw the now uniformed Nurse Cory rise from the chair by the table in the corner where she had been sitting, and come towards them. He felt Dr. Delfie contract her vaginal muscles.
    “That’s excellent, Mr. Green. Well done. Now I shall increase the tempo slightly. If you’d put your hands on my hips. Good. Grip me as firmly as you like. I want you to set the rhythm.” The increased tempo began. “Don’t try to force it. Just time the thrusts. Delay as long as you can.” Her hanging head bent farther, as she looked down to where their bodies were joined. “Lovely. Relax… thrust. All you have, Mr. Green. Relax, thrust. Again. A good steady rhythm, that’s the secret. Super. And again. A little faster. From deep as you can. Splendid. Push with your whole body. Keep the rhythm. It’s better for you, it’s better for your baby.”
    “My baby!”
    But the doctor seemed too absorbed in her therapy to answer now. He looked desperately at Nurse Cory, standing beside the bedhead.
    “What does she mean – baby?”
    The nurse raised a finger to the lips. “You jus’ concentrate, Mr. Green. Won’t be long now.”
    “But I’m a man, for God’s sake!”
    The nurse winked. “So enjoy it.”
    “But –”
    Dr. Delfie’s voice cut in.
    “Please stop verbalizing, Mr. Green.” She was beginning to breathe deeply, and had to pause after each sentence. “Now. One last effort. I can feel it coming. Good. Good. Splendid. With the hips. Hard as you can.” Her head remained bowed, apparently intent on the ever more forceful and accelerating movement of their loins. “There we are… there we are… perfect. Perfect. Safe as houses. Keep going, don’t stop. Right to the very last syllable. Nurse!”
    He was vaguely aware of Nurse Cory moving to the end of the bed – out of his sight, since the energetic doctor, still suspended on her arms, blocked his view.
    “One last push. One more. One more. One last one.”
    There was a little gasp from her, as if she were the one who had really given birth; then an abrupt cessation of movement. A silence. He was conscious of Nurse Cory moving back to the corner of the room. The doctor’s head remained bowed, the ends of her scarf hanging down. She was taking urgent breaths, like someone who has dived too deep. Then she slumped down on him. Her skin was damp with perspiration, he could feel her heart pounding. But the collapse was clearly an aftermath of physical effort, not emotion, since she averted her head.
    For half a minute or so he stared at the ceiling, in a state of delayed shock. He had not managed, at the end, to stay as fully objective as he would have wished, but he had not been so far gone as not to remark some strange words, or misconceptions… the terrible thought swept over him that despite her denial he was indeed in a lunatic asylum, a mental institution, and had somehow fallen into the hands of two other patients through some oversight of the proper medical staff. But what on earth would he be doing in such a place? And how could it be left so slackly superintended?
    He looked surreptitiously across the room at the nurse. She sat with her back half turned away from him, bent over something at the table, papers, no doubt the file of his case. She did not suggest madness at all; if anything, so intently did she now stop and read some passage of a report, she revealed an unexpectedly studious side. Nor did the body under whose weight he lay seem anything but unmistakably normal. There was no sobbing, no wild cackles of glee. In some odd way he found the doctor’s silence, her obvious exhaustion, rather touching; and as one might want to comfort a woman miler who has run her heart out, even though she has failed to win (since recall of anything beyond his