Bedside Manner

Bedside Manner

By

3.5
(2 Reviews)
Bedside Manner by Joseph Samachson

Published:

1954

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Bedside Manner

By

3.5
(2 Reviews)
Broken, helpless, she had to trust an alien doctor to give her back her body and mind—a doctor who had never seen a human before!

Book Excerpt

e's talked to me. He's told me about your being worried."

"Don't you think it matters?"

"Yes, I suppose it does. He told me he could do a good technical job--leave us with regular features and unblemished skins."

"That isn't what I want," she said fiercely. "I don't want the kind of regular features that come out of physiology books. I want my own features. I don't care so much about the voice, but I want my own face back!"

"That's a lot to ask for. Hasn't he done enough for us?"

"No. Nothing counts unless I have that. Do--do you think that I'm being silly?"

"Well--"

"I don't want to be beautiful, because I know you don't want me to be."

He sounded amazed. "Whoever told you that?"

"Do you think that after living with you for two years, I don't know? If you had wanted a beautiful wife, you'd have married one. Instead, you chose me. You wanted to be the good-looking one of the family. You're vain, Fred. Don't try to deny it, because it would be no u

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A husband and wife are killed when an asteroid hits their ship. The aliens who find them restore their brains and begin regrowing them bodies from scratch, without any knowledge of what a human looks like. The wife is obsessed with her looks, and both husband and wife assume things about each other that are not true.

The story is told from the wife's point of view, and she and the alien doctor are the strongest characters.
After an asteroid collision involving a spacer and his wife, she wakes to find she is an armless, legless, blind, deaf chicken-less egg (as the song goes). Aliens have picked them up just in time to save their lives and their medical officer is reconstituting their bodies. She awakes to the soothing reassurance of the alien physician to that effect. But she is totally (and almost ridiculously) obsessed with her looks, fearing her husband will reject her. The caring alien doc has a problem; he has to find a template of her so she looks like she did before the accident. He's a sensitive "guy" and does "his" best. So how does she turn out? Does her hubby still love her?