Page:Weird Tales Volume 35 Issue 04 (1940-07).djvu/8

It seemed that I really was dead. Naturally skinny and none too strong, I must have looked terrible. They said that my lips were really blue.

The doctor came the six miles from town in record time. He took one look at me, put his stethoscope to my chest, felt for my pulse, and said I was dead. He stuck a pin in me, and was sure of it. He hauled open my shirt and ran his fingernail over my abdomen, and there was no reflex. Then he turned up my eyelid, held a mirror to my nose, and changed his mind at once.

"Hello! Something queer about this; he's breathing. And his pupil's not dilated," he exclaimed. "Where's that stuff he took? Where did it come from? What is it?"

Nobody had the answers, of course. Neither did he, but he was a shrewd man. He gave me a very careful examination, and presently slid an injection into me. It was, as he told me later, a fortieth grain of atropine and caffeine sodium benzoate. This brought me around. Had it not been for the eye-pupil and the mirror test, he would have buried me.

My only sensation was of having been asleep, and I had no ill effects. Some days later he told me in plain words what a damned young fool I was, and what was amiss with me.

"Ever been examined for life insurance?"

"Never could afford luxuries, doc," I admitted.

"Hm! A queer case, Bronson; I'd better make it clear to you. First, you have bradycardia and auricular fibrilation; in plain English, a slow heart, beating barely forty to the minute, but it flutters instead of beating. Barrel chest; the heart is back from the ribs and the stethoscope doesn't get it. Naturally not," he added grimly, "because your heart is on the right side."

This was before it had become fashionable to have the heart thus misplaced.

As he explained, the slow heart and fluttering circulation killed any pulse, and accounted for my usual pallor and my bluish lips. Also, the liquid I had taken was enough to kill anyone; a little more might have actually killed me.

"I took a sample of that stuff and had it analyzed. Here's what is in the infernal concoction," and he handed me the report of the analysis. "The protopine, of course, killed the sensory nerves; there was no abdominal reflex. You had me fooled for a minute. Luckily I gave you the right hypodermic to bring you around. Don't be such a fool again. The minute you get home throw that cursed liquid of yours away."

I did nothing of the sort. Why not? Simply because, at the time, I thought I might capitalize the local notoriety this experience was bringing me. I thought of writing a story about it, and I might need the liquid as proof. So I kept it. Here is the analysis he gave me:

Anhalonium (Peyotl) 10%

Protopine 8%

Bhang 15%

Alcohol (Tequila) 67%

Inorganic salts, minute.

Coloring matter, type undetermined.

The local newspaper told about the young farmer who had been dead and was alive, with his heart in the wrong place. Other newspapers copied the story. A Scotch surgeon came out from Edmonton to investigate me. He thumped me, measured me, examined me minutely, and after grudgingly confirming the opinion of the local doctor, went away. (Not long ago I met him again in Los Angeles, but he failed to recognize me.) Obviously, the theory was entirely correct, for since then it has served in all my contacts with the medical fraternity.

This misadventure caused me great ter-