Dr. Needzak noticed that his waiting room was filling rapidly, during the two seconds that Mrs. Watkins opened the door to leave. He fumed inwardly at his patience in dealing at length with cases like the last two, whom he couldn't possibly be sure of helping.
But his ill-humor was replaced by astonishment. The receptionist introduced a woman even younger than he. She was very pale, but Dr. Needzak guessed that that pallor derived from tension, not some rare organic disturbance.
"Are you sure that you haven't made a mistake, Miss Tillett?" He asked the question quietly, trying to catch her eyes. She kept them resolutely on her hands, which were folding and unfolding in her lap.
"I talked with several good friends before coming to you, doctor," the girl said. Her voice was very low. "You had been a good doctor for their grandparents or great-grandparents. They told me that you could help me, if anybody could."
"But your preliminary examination shows nothing whatsoever wrong with you," the doctor said. "It'll be another century before you would normally develop the slightest symptom on which I'd be allowed to work. And people of your age just don't go to doctors. It's only when you're past the century mark, and know that decade after decade stretches out ahead of you, that you start feeling that a doctor might—"
"Please," she interrupted, almost inaudibly. "I don't think that a physician should allow the consideration of a patient's age to enter into his course of action. For personal reasons, I may need a doctor more than the average person six times my age."
"Will you tell me something about yourself? I'm not curious, except as far as knowledge might affect my recommendations."
"I don't care to discuss personal problems. Now, doctor, your assistant who gave the preliminary examination overlooked the reason for my coming to you. Right here," and she carefully touched a spot on the well-tailored dress. "I think that it might be a tumor."
"What good does it do to come to a doctor for that?" Dr. Needzak said. "Tumors are so rare that there's very little chance that it's more than your imagination. And the best physician can't speed up the growth of a tumor, or change it from benign to malign."
"A physician can diagnose," she answered. "If it's malign, I'll be able to have patience. I won't need to break the law." Unexpectedly, grotesquely, she drew one finger across her throat in a cutting gesture, and looked squarely at him for the first time.