Excerpt from Blood Test by Charles Baxter, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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Let's say you stabbed yourself in the leg by accident. Let's say you're bleeding all over the floor.

You'll need a doctor. In this town, to get to the clinic you go down the main street, turn right at the stoplight, and then just one block up ahead, past the strip mall, you'll see it. Its big glass sliding front doors are wide enough for two wheelchairs going in opposite directions to pass each other, and there's a good-sized parking lot out front for the sickos and their relatives. The spaces are usually filled. We have a lot of near-dead people in these parts. You can see them staggering in, breathing hard, young and old, propped up by their canes or walkers, accompanied by oxygen tanks, a real ghoul parade. Even the one-eyed badass tatted guys are hobbling in. It's probably the postindustrial air we breathe here, or maybe the nitrate-scented water we drink out of the tap. Could be herbicides we spray on everything or the fact that a third of the town has a drinking problem, and another third is on meth and/or Oxy. You fall down here in Kingsboro, Ohio, you're in good company. It's a grand party of the infirm down there on the ground.

A healthy person over the age of twenty-five acquires a certain charisma in this locale.

I went to the clinic because I hadn't been feeling too good lately. It was ironic. From nine to five, I sit in my office — I sell insurance, including some health insurance — making calls and drawing up policies, sometimes going out to inspect the damages. It's okay work, not too demanding, and I have two assistants. Apart from the occasional natural disasters (tornadoes, fires, hailstones) and the claims that keep me busy now and then, I get to go home, make dinner for my two teenagers and their associates, watch something on TV or browse the internet, say my prayers, and that's it for the day.

But lately I'd been having this pain in my side like someone was stabbing me, but carefully and gently probing for an organ or two. For variety it took up residence in my back. Finally I gave myself two hours off for an exam. I don't like doctors and their godlike attitudes but sometimes they're unavoidable when you feel the way I did.

So there I was in the Kingsboro Medical Clinic sitting on the examining table. I was in my boxer shorts and my undershirt, which I'd been ordered to strip down to by a grim-faced nurse wearing a cheap rhinestone pin. She'd also taken my blood pressure, and she did not like me. Eventually the doctor came in. I didn't know her. She was middle-aged, hair going gray, silver frame glasses hanging from one of those chains. She gave me a split-second semi-smile. My usual doc was out for the day at the Kingsboro Country Club, probably motoring around in her banana-yellow golf cart. Doctors don't have to explain anything to you because they're doctors and you aren't. This doctor's name tag said she was Dr. Janet Hasselblad, like the camera. She introduced herself, asked me how I was doing. She was looking at my chart or whatever it was before she glanced up at me.

"So, Mr. Hutson," she said.

"Hobson," I said. "Brock Hobson." She put on her reading glasses and checked my name on her clipboard.

"Sorry," she said. "The print was a little smeared. You have a strange name, if you don't mind my saying. I've never known a Hobson before. Or a Brock, either." She tried unsuccessfully to smile. "So you're unique. No, that's not right. I once knew a dog named Brock. A cairn terrier, if I remember correctly."

"Oh, that's okay," I said, being affable under duress. I told her what was wrong with me, and she examined my left side while I explained myself.

She asked me some more questions before delivering her opinion. "It's probably diverticulitis," she said, conveying a certain lack of interest as she pushed in the flesh above my hip on my left side (yes, it hurt, thanks), "but we'll have to test it. And your back — that's also probably sciatica, and coincidental, but we'll have to X-ray you to make sure about both of them. They may be stress related." She had a very brisk manner, as if I was her umpteenth patient of the day and medically uninteresting. My body's problems were all in a day's work for her. If I had had cancer, I might have been more intriguing, more of a mystery to be solved. Her advice: I should get more exercise, eat more raw vegetables, take Metamucil, relax, and subject myself to an antibiotic she was about to prescribe. I should also be careful not to get sick with the latest virus. But I have had all my shots! Why wouldn't she smile at me? She wrote down the order for the tests, also the prescription, told me that she would be back in a minute, and that I should get my clothes back on.

Excerpted from Blood Test by Charles Baxter. Copyright © 2024 by Charles Baxter. Excerpted by permission of Pantheon Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.