"You remember that the Great Change, which is what this story has to do with, started in the winter of 1971, with that awful flu epidemic. Oliveira came down with it. I went around to see him to get an assignment, and found him perched on a pile of pillows and wearing the godawfullest pink and green pajamas. His wife was reading to him in Spanish.
"'Leesten, Pat,' he said when I came in, 'I know you're a worthy esstudent, but I weesh you and the whole damn virology class were roasting on the hottest greedle in Hell. Tell me what you want, and then go away and let me die in peace.'
"I got my information, and was just going, when his doctor came in--old Fogarty, who used to lecture on sinuses. He'd given up general practice long before, but he was so scared of losing a good virologist that he was handling Oliveira's case himself.
"'Stick around, sonny,' he said to me when I started to follow Mrs. Oliveira out, 'and learn a little practical medicine. I've always thought it a mistake that we haven't a class to train doctors in bedside manners. Now observe how I do it. I smile at Oliveira here, but I don't act so damned cheerful that he'd find death a welcome relief from my company. That's a mistake some young doctors make. Notice that I walk up briskly, and not as if I were afraid my patient was liable to fall in pieces at the slightest jar...' and so on.
"The fun came when he put the end of his stethoscope on Oliveira's chest.
"'Can't hear a damn thing,' he snorted. 'Or rather, you've got so much hair that all I can hear is the ends of it scraping on the diaphragm. May have to shave it. But say, isn't that rather unusual for a Mexican?'
"'You're jolly well right she ees,' retorted the sufferer. 'Like most natives of my beautiful Mejico, I am of mostly Eendian descent, and Eendians are of Mongoloid race, and so have little body hair. It's all come out in the last week.'
"'That's funny...' Fogarty said. I spoke up: 'Say, Dr. Fogarty, it's more than that. I had my flu a month ago, and the same thing's been happening to me. I've always felt like a sissy because of not having any hair on my torso to speak of, and now I've got a crop that's almost long enough to braid. I didn't think anything special about it...'
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