The week had not been going well for John Argent.
On Monday, he woke up and found a silvery substance in his stool samples after using the toilet. This was followed by a similar silvery substance in his urethral discharge. At this point John began to panic and went immediately to the clinic to be checked out. He called in sick to work and was subjected to a few tests, and then he was sent home.
On Tuesday, he woke to find his pillow covered in silvery drool. Washing his face, he found silver around the corners of his eyes. He began to weep silver tears at that point. Of course he called in sick once again. Later that day the clinic called him and told him that, although he appeared to have the symptoms of argyria and some strange, previously-unseen form of gonorrhea, they told him that he had to send his blood samples away to a special lab for testing, and that he should come in for more tests. He was also asked if his work involved toxic chemicals. "I'm just a copyeditor for a small publishing firm," John replied. He spent a few more hours at the clinic.
On Wednesday, John called work to say that he could not come in to work due to illness, but the publisher Mr. Sterling interrupted the call and told John that the firm was in danger of missing this month's deadline due to his absence, and that he would lose his job if he did not show up for work that day despite John's pleas to the contrary. John went to work but had to go back home after excreting silver onto a computer keyboard and subsequently causing a power outage that forced the people in layouts to start all over. Mr. Sterling was upset but told John that he needed to take a "leave of absence" until his health became better. The copyeditor knew that was Sterling-speak for "You're fired, John."
On Thursday, after an all-night search through his messy apartment for a small piece of paper with a telephone number on it, John attempted to call Claire without success. Claire had no answering service, either, so he could not leave a message. Since the silvery excretions seemed to have stopped for the moment, he spent the rest of the day feeling completely haggard and exhausted at the Irish Setter Pub with the hopes of finding Claire there and finding the answers he needed. Not only did he not find the woman, but he also noticed his skin beginning to turn the color of gray. At this point he decided to go home to sleep on it.
On Friday, John awoke briefly sometime before dawn and saw Claire standing naked over him. He opened his mouth to speak but was unable to move his mouth, let alone the rest of his body. He felt completely paralyzed and could only listen to what Claire had to say to him shortly before he drifted back to sleep. He awoke later that morning when the telephone rang. It was the clinic. They had done several more tests and told him that he needed to come for another visit at five o'clock that afternoon. John found this strange, since the clinic closed at four-thirty, but he decided to go to the appointment nevertheless. He figured that the doctor was going to tell him that he was dying. That would have made some sort of sense. He had a terminal disease of a kind that had not yet been discovered. Perhaps he would gain a minor note of celebrity in medical journals. His affliction might even be given the name of "Argent's Disease."
It was in this morbid frame of mind that John Argent faced his trip to the clinic later that day. The fact that his skin had rapidly become grayer overnight did not bother him that much any more. He had a terminal disease; these kinds of things happened to people who had terminal diseases, didn't they?
At four o'clock that afternoon John had a shower and wore black clothing for his appointment. He figured that he might as well begin mourning for his untimely death at the age of 38 now; after all, no one else could be bothered doing so. Certainly not his ex-wife, Janice, or the seven-foot-tall black man she was currently shacked up with. John's gray skin went well with black, anyway. For the occasion John also picked up an old fedora and a pair of black leather driving gloves to shade the effects of his disease somewhat. At a quarter to five he drove to the clinic.
At the medical clinic John attempted to open the doors but found them locked. Martha, the secretary, tried to ignore him at first but finally walked up to the glass doors to tell him that they were closed for the day and that he could come back in the morning. John replied, in his most sincere voice, that he was there for a special appointment about his "condition." Martha seemed puzzled but finally let him in and buzzed the doctor's office.
John soon walked down a short hallway to an examination room and waited for the inevitable pronouncement of his doom. He began to think of all the wasted years he had spent in the publishing industry, of all the wasted years in his so-called "marriage." He had become a copyeditor with the hopes that he could become a published writer on the side, but he found that he possessed little talent and even less originality, and he received rejection letter after rejection letter.
His meagre copyeditor's salary was barely enough to pay the bills, and Janice slowly began to lose what little respect for him that she had left. She was making more money than he was as a legal secretary, anyway. After a while they never made love anymore, which was just as well. Two years ago Janice told John in a flat voice that she was leaving him for a tall, athletic black football player who could actually satisfy her in bed. John had nothing to say to that; her reasoning actually made logical sense to him. By that time, anyway, he had lost all feeling for her. He had not been with anyone since Janice, with the notable exception of Claire just that one time three weeks earlier, when he was drunk.
He had also lost all ambition of becoming a writer and focused on his copyediting. It was sometimes hard to find work in the field, but he managed to do so but undercutting other copyeditor's rates and was employed that way. The low pay was not the worst part of it, though: his employers treated him with very little respect. He had been bought cheap and was treated cheaply in kind.
The realization that a terminal disease would now cap off what had been a rather uninspiring and pathetic life seemed strangely fitting to John Argent.
As the door opened John straightened up and wore his best "disinterested, yet concerned" expression on his face in anticipation of his doctor and the dreaded but expected news that he would receive.
The last thing John Argent had expected was to see two masked men dressed completely in black fatigues burst through the door and seize him by his arms, then inject him with something before dragging him out of the room towards the back of the clinic to an unknown destination. But that was precisely what happened.
