.." Chris stared at the doctor's diploma hanging on the bare institutional wall.

"The grenade blew with the old man hanging onto me.

It killed him and tore up both of my legs. I was in-country fifteen weeks and out of the army."

There was a long silence followed by faint sounds, the serious young doctor tapping his ballpoint pen on the desk, clearing his throat.

"As you approached the old man, Sergeant Mankowski, were you aware of being afraid?"

"Was I afraid? Of course I was afraid, I was scared to death."

"All right, but you also felt, I believe, a deep hostility toward the ARVN soldiers."

I have to get out of here, Chris thought.

"So that, in effect, it was your intense anger that enabled you to overcome your fear."

"That must've been it," Chris said, "my hostility."

"But now, in comparable high-risk situations, your fear is no longer dampened, let's say, by acute feelings of anger. It's out in the open and you have to deal with it. A fear which you equate, specifically, with the loss of your hands."

Chris turned in the chair, quick, and caught the sneak looking at him, saw his eyes there for a moment in round glasses.

"I'm not worried about my hands, Phyllis is."

The doctor had his head down again, checking his notes.

"You said, quote, "I started thinking about my hands. I'd be looking at them without even realizing I was doing it."

" "Because of Phyllis."

"You're looking at them right now."

Chris put his hands in his lap, locked his fingers together and stared straight ahead at the asshole doctor's diploma. The thing to do was just answer yes or no, don't argue. Finish and get out.

There was a silence.

"I'm told a fatality occurred yesterday, a bomb exploded. What was the circumstance of the man's death?"

Chris said, "We believe the deceased attempted to outrun a substance that explodes at the rate of fifteen thousand feet per second and didn't make it."