The Third Personality: A Novel (4)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida - For the first time in Tommy Mendelson's young life, he wasn't a dirigible.

But losing all of that weight recently certainly hadn't been his idea - nor, really, had it even been part of his (new) doctor's formal medical game plan, which ultimately included a two-week recuperation period in Broward General Hospital after Tommy's most recent (and certainly most embarrassing) operation.

It was during that boring bed-ridden two weeks that much of Tommy's weight disappeared - and it happened when Tommy wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to what he wasn't … eating.

At Dr. Katz' prodding (the Mendelsons' new family physician was a good Jewish doctor this time, as Sadie, herself a Jew, had insisted), an operation had been tentatively scheduled for Tommy after Katz had taken some x-rays of Tommy's groin and recommended it. All that was needed for the go-ahead was Tommy's permission.


The whole thing had reared up about two months earlier.

Kindly old (new) Dr. Katz: He didn't jockey around one bit when talking with Tommy at the time. His first order of business for his new patient, Katz said, was "to alleviate" a long-ignored (and unpronounceable) condition of Tommy's called cryptorchidism.


"It means that one of your testicles never descended into your scrotum after you were born," Katz explained.

Tommy merely stared back. He wasn't exactly sure what Katz was trying to tell him just yet, but it didn't sound too good.

"Right now," Katz continued, "your left testicle is still undescended inside the abdominal cavity. That's not so awful, but it means you've got only one testicle inside your sac right now.

"So," Dr. Katz eased in, "for health and safety reasons - and with your permission, Thomas - I'd like to operate. I'd like to surgically lower the undescended testicle into your scrotum, where it belongs."

Tommy's face then turned ashen.

"Operate?" he gulped. "Down … there?"