Lew Crenshaw sat in the doctor's office, suffering the somehow always dilated period of time in the waiting room with nothing to worry about except what could be the worst that the doctor could say. Minutes passed so slowly, having nothing to do, stacking up on his nerves. Finally, the nurse came out and called someone else's name.
      He wanted to get the spot on his arm cured, since it was growing at such an alarming rate. It was grossly discolored and the skin was crusting and cracking, oozing a greenish pus. It frightened him terribly. Lew was one to laugh at or show disgust to disfigured people. He wasn't laughing now. He hadn't had time to reflect on his past behavior yet, but he wasn't laughing. He was shivering.
      Finally, he was called by the nurse. He entered the doctor's office, his anxiety increasing. He was weighed, measured for height, and shown to a private room. There he waited again, more agitated than before. The nurse came in ten minutes later, an eternity to Lew.
      "What is your problem?"
      "I have a place on my arm, an infection, I think."
      "Fever?"
      "No."
      "Are you on any medication?"
      "None."
      "Aches or pains?"
      "It itches. Nothing else."
      "All right. The doctor will be with you shortly. Go ahead and remove your shirt." She walked out the door, shutting it behind her.
      The next wait was also too long for Lew. He looked at the sore with utter fascination and horror. He was lost in the revulsion when the doctor entered. He reflexively hid the sore by folding his arms together.
      "What seems to be the trouble, Mr. Crenshaw?"
      "This, Dr. Marley." Lew held the sore out for inspection, a bit reluctantly.
      "Looks like Lurdot's virus. It's an import from out-system. They try to quarantine most illness from the stars, but a few get by. This is nothing serious."
      "It can be cured?"
      "The cure rate is fairly high. Depends on your resistance to it."
      "But it's growing so fast. This wasn't there a week ago."
      "Most likely it was, but just wasn't showing. This virus is known to be dormant for a long time. It was an easy one to slip through the safety controls governing quarantine."
      "I got this from somebody?"
      "That is the way it is transferred. Skin to skin is sufficient, and the person that you got it from probably didn't even show any signs. I know that it's not pretty and its rate of spreading is alarming, but it's really nothing serious. It's not going to kill you, except maybe socially. But it's really nothing to worry about. I'm going to give you an ointment, and you apply it four times a day directly to affected area. That should do the trick."
      "If it doesn't?"
      "It usually does, but if it doesn't, come back and see me. Most likely, you won't need to return." He signed the slip and left. Lew went to the desk and waited for the prescription and his bill.
     
     

      Lew came in wearing a long sleeve shirt and a glove on his left hand. He sat in the waiting room for the same eternal wait, more agitated than before. He entered the office in the same routine, and had the same two waits as before.
      "So it didn't get better?"
      "No. It's gotten much worse."
      Lew removed the shirt and glove to show that the growth had claimed most of his arm and part of his torso. It was a gruesome sight, screaming to a normal person's sight that it was death to touch it. The doctor sighed. "You are a worrier, aren't you?"
      "Pardon?"
      "You like to worry. You spend your day worrying about everything that you have time to get to in your schedule, is that not correct?"
      "I wouldn't say that."
      "I would. You're arm says so."
      "My arm? It's like this because I worry?"
      "Yes, to be precise. It's really not all that unheralded. In fact, there is one Earth originated virus that is very similar."
      "I've never seen nothing like this on Earth."
      "Not of this magnitude, no."
      "Is it contagious?"
      "No more than what is on your arm."
      "What is it"
      "Warts.
      "Warts?"
      "Warts. They are very similar, be assured. They are both viruses, though warts may be a number of possible viruses. But they are very much alike. True, warts are easy to remove surgically, where as Lurdot's virus is too massive to do other than major scale skin grafting. But both are psychological illnesses. People who get warts are generally under some emotional trauma or stress of major proportion. Problem in love life, a separation, divorce, flunking a big test, being denied access to a circle of people you like, difficulties at work, being tired of your life, things like this tend to bring on warts. The virus lays dormant until there is stressed to trigger them into altering the growth of normal cells.
      "They exist there because you worry. You worry that you will get sick and that it will pull you out of action in that which is giving you trouble, something you want down inside, and you contract the effects. The body triggers it into activity. Fortunately, there is a sure cure for warts that requires no medical procedure."
      "Then what was that cream you gave me?"
      "A skin conditioner to alleviate the worst of the symptoms."
      "I paid sixty dollars for skin lotion?"
      "Part of that is the disguise. The problem is that you didn't fall for it. You bought it and told yourself that it wouldn't help. When most people pay that much for a drug, they believe that it will cure them. But you obviously did not."
      "I don't believe this. You bilked me for sixty bucks?"
      "You'll get fifty five of it back. The nurse will give you a refund notice for you to take to the pharmacy where you got the lotion. It will be worth the money you don't get back. You are wondering why the charade. Very well, have you ever wondered why witches always had warts on their noses in old stories? It has to do with magic. Warts are the ailment for which magic is the cure. Magic and witches and warts. What I pulled on you is an old remedy, used primarily for children that believe in magic. You, Mr. Crenshaw, have obviously gotten past believing in magic.
      "You see, magic requires belief to exist. If you do not believe in magic, you will never experience magic. Mr. Crenshaw, the cure for you is as simple as can be, yet it may be impossible. The common wart and Lurdot's virus have one thing in common. They are both cured by believing that it will go away. Simple, no? No, actually not. Belief does not come easy in our society of necessary proof. You see, I have cured myself of warts in the past. I tried everything, even cutting them off. But they returned and grew ever bigger. Then I was educated about warts. I had a couple dozen of them. There were even a few that put an end to my romantic pursuits, if you catch my drift.
      "But then, I was told the best cure, as I'm telling you now. I wished very hard, but they stayed there. I went back and told my colleague that he was going off the deep end. But he showed me documentation and told me that wishing wasn't enough. I had to accept and believe before the proof came to me. The proof comes afterward, not before, as we rational beings tend to demand before we accept.
      "I'll be fully frank with you, Mr. Crenshaw. In order to get this disorder to clear up, you must first believe that it will go away. You are not to tell it to go away. You are not to pray to a god that he will take it from you. To be free of this disfigurement that you are suffering, you must envision yourself as landlord of your body and that you are serving eviction notice on this virus and that your word is not in the least way to be contested. The last part is where you will have trouble, no insult intended, Mr. Crenshaw. To cure yourself, and only you can do it, you have to believe in the power of your body, without doubt. Have doubts, and the disfigurement will stay with you for the rest of your life."
      "Are you pulling my leg?"
      "No. All you have to do is become a child again and believe in the power of magic of the mind. Sever your connections to your troubles and believe. Do that, and the effects will vanish within the week."
      "But isn't there a medicine. . . ."
      "Hold it right there. You're defeating yourself before you start with doubts about the cure. You have got to stop that or live with this all over your body for the rest of your life. There is no other way. Now I'm sure that your first move will be to get a second opinion. By all means, do so. It's your money. By the way, todays s visit is free of charge, since it is part of your last visit. I'll get the nurse to fill out your refund notice. Chin up, Mr. Crenshaw. Believe."
     
     

      Two weeks later, Lew was admitted to the hospital. The sore had spread to his entire body. He couldn't face being seen in public, so he admitted himself and began subjecting himself to a series of treatments. He held out hope that he could be cured. He just hoped that these doctors knew what they were doing better than Marley.
      He was there for three weeks, and the disorder grew worse instead of better. He itched violently and had to be restrained in harness to keep from rupturing his skin with the violent scratching that he had been doing. Nothing seemed to help. Dr. Marley came in his door and stood by his bed.
      "I must say, Crenshaw, you surely are one stubborn jack ass."
      "Oh, all I need is you now."
      "You still won't believe, will you? Well, how would you accept a personal testimony? I brought along a young lady that was afflicted with Lurdot's virus and suffered like you did. Not as you are now, cause she got smart and believed. She learned how to quit worrying about things and beat it. Maybe she can show you how to do it. She is a very smart lady. Try not to insult her too badly, and for your own sake, listen to her if you won't listen to me."
      He left the room and a young woman came in the room. She looked at his nude and disfigured body and shook her head. "Boy, you have it bad. This is a lot worse than I had it. You must be extremely up tight."
      "Thanks. I needed that."
      "I didn't mean any offense. But I was a wreck when I came down with mine. I was very up tight. One good thing about the disease, it really opened my eyes. I learned a lot about myself. I didn't have a lot of confidence in myself before I got the disorder. I'm much stronger now."
      "Goody for you."
      "You could learn the same things I did, but you have to want to."
      "I don't need to learn such stupid things."
      "So, you are stupid."
      "I am not!"
      "You admitted that your self-introspection is a thing of stupidity, therefore, you must be stupid."
      "Sorry. I'm just on edge about all this."
      "I can remember the feeling. And I'm trying to steer you away from there so that you can cure yourself. It's true. As soon as I started believing that the problem was going to go away, it went away. I had to accept on faith. I did, and it worked. You don't see me covered in cracks and pus, do you? I was at one time."
      "How do I know that you're not an actor?"
      "I had these pictures taken." She pulled photographs from her purse. "I hated that camera so much. I wanted to hide, not record the way I looked when I had the same problem you faced." She held the photos before him. "You can tell it's me if you look close enough to the general features. Ravishing, wasn't I?"
      "You had it pretty bad."
      "You obviously hadn't looked in the mirror recently."
      "I'm sorry. .
      "I understand. Dr. Marley told me that you were stubborn and not to hold back the big guns. I see that he was right. You cling to yourself, Lew. Your reality is all important to you, and you can't be wrong. That is your problem. You can't say, 'I was wrong', can you?"
      "Sure I can."
      "Say it."
      "I was wrong."
      "You don't believe it. You say it, but you don't really mean it. There s a voice inside you telling you that you aren't wrong, that you are never wrong. You are the pinnacle of the intelligent world and you see everything in its proper place and you know why everything happens. Once you accept something, it's right forever more. Say that you have been wrong many times every day of your life, and mean it. Come on, with feeling."
      Lew laid there in silence.
      "Can't admit it to yourself? Too much god in your ego? Are you that afraid of living that you can not expose your vulnerability? Do you need to think that everyone sees you as perfect? You must have one pressure cooker of a job. Must be why you got sick. It's your body telling you to find another career, even if it pays less and has less glamour with the ladies and your peers. They are obviously killing you. I mean, look at yourself."
      She went to the sink and got a hand held mirror and held it before his face. "This is what they are doing to you. You obviously don't meet the standards that you are trying to keep for yourself. You just aren't strong enough to hack it."
      "Shut up! Will ya?"
      "I'm being rough on you because you are accepting blindness and calling it glorious visions. Stupid stubborn man. You're a stupid little worm that can't hold his own and quavers at the thought that he is losing badly. A loser with delusions of grandeur."
      "Shut up!"
      "Look in the mirror and tell me that is not what you see. Look and tell me you see a winner.
      He screamed and became violent, but the restraints held him.
      "Loser! Scum bag of failures! You think you're good? You're worse than the dirt on my feet when I walk in the swamp barefoot. Who would want you? You make me sick!"
      He shook the bed furiously and she started laughing. "Poor little loser. Just can't hack it, can you? What woman would ever want something so disgusting as yourself? You certainly don't turn me on."
      Lew broke into tears. She took a seat and waited for the crying jag to dry up, relieved at the first sign of progress.
      "Are you still here?"
      "Yes, Lew. I'm still here."
      "Are you staying to start on me again?"
      "I don't think that it will be necessary. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Dr. Ardis Grant. I'm a psychiatrist. I wasn't at the time I got ill with Lurdot's. It was the process of the cure that led me to study the human mind. Somewhere along the way, I decided to become a doctor. What we just did was to get you past the first hurdle in getting you cured. You are a stubborn man, and I had to show you just how misplaced your grounds for your stubbornness are. My cruelty was designed to help you see past the mind set that is keeping you from believing. If you like, we can go further. I have a special insight into your case, having suffered it myself. Believe it or not, I'm on your side. I had a similar chewing out, and it got me on the right path.
      "So, if you are willing to accept the fact that you are not perfect, I think that there is high hope for you curing yourself. If you don't care to try, then tell me. I won't be offended. You could always change your mind later when you get tired of going on with all this useless expense. I'm just trying to save you from going into debt over this. I can lead you to the cure, and I'm less expensive than the hospital. I can cure you and these folks can't."
      "So you're a shrink."
      "If you say so, though it won't help you in getting relief. I may be a shrink to you, but I'm also a fellow victim. I was planning on using that experience more than what I was taught in medical school in helping you. You see, I remember well what I went through. The shame, the revulsion, the lost feeling that the world had rejected me because I had become ugly, hideous, unwholesome. I remember the struggle to believe, trying, failing. Lew, you don't try to believe. You do, or you don't. It's that simple. I'm proof that it works. You saw the photos, you see me now. I overcame it because I believed. Do you want my help in learning to believe again?"
      "I'm tired of being like this."
      "For some time, no doubt, even before you saw the proof of Lurdot's. Lew, do you want to feel good about yourself and your life, get rid of this disfigurement and lead a satisfied life?"
      "Yes."
      "That was hard to say, I would wager. It was hard for me. But the first thing that you have to learn is that there is no sin in failure. Failure is how we learn our proper place in the world. We were not all cut out to be part of the dream of corporate finance. The rewards are nice, but the price is largely unseen, being distracted by the rewards possible. If you are ready to see that that world is not necessarily the one for you, then we can probably see a cure for you inside of a month, maybe sooner. But you have to want to go down a new path in life, one that suits you far better than your current ideal. Willing to give it a try?"
      "Did Dr. Marley bring you in on this?"
      "There was no arm twisting. I heard Lurdot's and accepted your case. No details before I agreed to see you. I knew what I was getting into with you without seeing your particulars. I want to help you."
      "When do we start?"
      "We already have. If you are ready to proceed, we can start by discussing your model of reality. We all use bits of experience to build a model of existence to soothe our sense of needs. Some things can not be had or do not happen as expected, and this shakes us up until we can figure out a way to explain it to ourselves. All our life, our model changes slightly, growing with experience. Most of us begin to ignore certain aspects of knowledge that interfere with our models. Most of us are taught through peer pressure as to what our model is to be. But your peers are poor judges on what you feel until you start feeling as they do. That is the reason for the pressure to conform. To be in, you have to click. To click, you have to use someone else's needs as a standard, never your own needs."
      Ardis continued with her lecture as Lew laid back and followed and tried to see where she was headed.

     

      Two and a half weeks later, Lew returned to Dr. Marley's office without an appointment, asking to see the doctor, his skin looking perfectly normal, if a little fresh and pinkish. The doctor came out to see him between appointments.
      "I wanted to thank you for assigning Dr. Grant. I would have never been cured if it hadn't been for her. It seems that your cure worked. I started believing, and it went away. Faded out, all over. It was hard to believe that it worked."
      "Well, I'm glad to see that you recovered so well."
      "Yes, I am grateful. I also had my eyes opened to other things as well. I think that it's time for me to take a good look at what I want to do with my life. Dr. Grant got down to many of the reasons that I'm unhappy with my life. There is a lot that I have been ignoring about my feelings. I can see that there are changes due in the things I chose to pursue. I was headed down a dead end."
      "Well, you sound as if you are more open to things."
      "Yeah. I've seen the light."
      "Just don't go overboard. Remember that life is a balancing act, not a sure path."
      "Yeah, so I've been told."
      "Well, I'm glad to see that you have recovered and dropped some of your stubbornness. I need to get back to my schedule. If you find yourself with a recurrence, you know the cure."
      "Hey, if you ever need me to help somebody get over it, just call."
      "I'll keep it in mind."
      Lew left the office. As he walked out, he ran across a boy with a burned face. Instead of turning away, he spoke to him as he hid his face. "Hey, don't give up hope. Keep a positive attitude, thinking that you re going to come out on top of your problems. If you give in to your problems, they will only get worse. Just remember that you are important. Don't ever forget that."
      The boy looked at him. "How would you know?"
      "I was worse off than you are now, and I was cured. You may not heal as quickly as I did, but you will heal. And if you stay positive and keep hope, you will heal better."
      "Really?"
      "Yes. Keep your chin up and don't let anyone convince you that you are less than they are. Don't forget that you are special, even if you make mistakes or things go wrong. There is something special about each of us."
      Lew smiled at him, then headed out of the office, thinking that helping others would not be a bad way of life. But he wasn't worried.