Thirty years before, Cuthbert had won, through the old BodyMod? lottery, two lower-cost mods—a cheap ventricle wall panel on his heart and a onetime infusion of pluripotent hepatocytal cells for his liver. He’d also managed, in his early eighties, to get his hands on a spool of crylon body-mesh and a used set of EverConnectors, sized 2XL, and this set had come with cartilage drugs, too, as well as free installation.
“The otters,” said Cuthbert. “They have a message—for all of England.”
“It’s your brain,” he said. “Just your brain. But if you can’t stop spiring* and get through the first withdrawal—listen, Cuddy—you know, it’s a kind place, and they’re brilliant and they’re discreet, Cuddy.” He frowned slightly. “They’ll keep you well away from EquiPoise. There’s a simple and deadly health issue here, my good friend.”
“Oh, Jaysus,” said Cuthbert. “I should’ve kept my gob shut. Not Whittington. I’ve said too bloody much!”
It was at this point that Dr. Bajwa reached across his desk, took Cuthbert’s hands in his, and gave them a firm, tender squeeze. He leaned so far forward that one of the armpits of his blue suit jacket made a little ripping sound.
Cuthbert beamed at him, although his dry lips quivered a bit.
“No, you have most certainly not told me too much,” said the doctor. He felt as if he wanted to reach through a dark blue shell of pathology and grab the great, derelict heart before him. “You must trust me. There’s nothing wrong with Whittington Hospital. But you . . . are . . . very . . . unwell, my friend.”
“You are very decent, sir,” Cuthbert pronounced. “But let go ’o me maulers,” he said, pulling his hands back fiercely. Cuthbert couldn’t remember the last time anyone had held his hands. The doctor’s grip was colder than he’d imagined. Cuthbert could smell the figgy notes of his Diptyque cologne.
“I’ve had enough of the Whitt—I’ve packed it in, in moi mind,” Cuthbert said. “I feel, I, I, I really ought to let the poor otters into the cuts. It’s for England.” He gave the doctor a sly look. “And the king could use my help.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that, my friend. I mean, Cuthbert. They are utterly merciless.”
There was a long silence. After a while, the doctor wrote in his notepad.
“But, go on. Come. I’m—I’m listening carefully. And when you say otters—you do mean the sort of minky, playful things?”
“Otters,” Cuthbert repeated. A gleam of aureate light radiated through the window. “I know it might sound completely barmy.” It was indeed that, as far as Dr. Bajwa saw it. One surely never heard the word otter more than once in a career in a north London GP’s office.
“You know my missing brother Dryst? I think he might have sort of become a kind of otter.” Cuthbert nibbled gently at the inside of his cheek; there was a tough little ridge of flesh there that he sometimes liked to worry. “Of sorts.”
Dr. Bajwa said, “I know you feel that loss. And after the challenges you’ve had, I’m sure you feel it all the more. And after so very many decades of . . . griefs.”
“No, no, no,” said Cuthbert, shaking his head. “He’s back, you see? Drystan has returned. And I think ’e’s in the zoo. There’s more to tell. Much more, doc. But I corr.”*
Dr. Bajwa thought for a moment, rubbing his short, graceful beard.
“I want you to stay away from the zoo, Cuthbert. Let’s avoid things that obviously upset you. And these zoo voices—they’re not your friends.” The doctor coughed a few times. He was coming down with something, it seemed. He said, “You’re a very clever man, so surely you grasp that?”
Cuthbert was, but he didn’t, couldn’t, and wouldn’t.
singled out for otterspaeke
SO IT WAS, AT FIRST, THAT DR. BAJWA SIMPLY advised Cuthbert to avoid Regent’s Park. Anything to de-escalate Cuthbert’s obsession seemed a step forward. Keep out of Regent’s Park, and these “zoo voices” will fade, the doctor thought. Here was simple, sensible medicine.
“A zoo can be a rather intense sort of place, if you think about it,” Dr. Bajwa had said to Cuthbert. “It’s no place for you.”
CUTHBERT RARELY MADE APPOINTMENTS; he would just show up, in all his shabby glory, with a heap of vinegary chips in his arms, or a warm purple sphere of Flōt in his coat. The frowning admins would send him back to the consultation room, holding his own file and wearing his usual shamefaced smile.
“The zoo admission’s twenty-five bloody pounds,” he was telling Dr. Bajwa one day. “I saw the sign at the gate.” He clasped his hands together. They were filthy and mottled with white psoriasis and liver spots.
“Hardly anyone goes—that’s why,” Dr. Bajwa said.