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Edgar Cayce – Joseph Millard

 One night he got a phone call from Dr. House. “Can you get over here right away? Carrie's desperately sick. The doctor’s want to operate immediately but she won't let them touch her until she's had one of your readings. If we don’t humour her, she may delay until it's too late."

"I'll be there on the next train” Edgar promised.

He sat through the long ride, tormented by fears. For a little while, he had begun to believe implicitly in the rightness of his power. Now, when doubts had come back to haunt him, he faced the terrible test on someone close to him. He prayed desperately, but he could not expel the demons of fear.

Carrie herself had no doubts. From her sick bed, she said weakly, "Your diagnoses have never been wrong yet, and they won't be wrong now. Tell me what to do.”

There was no one but Dr. House to conduct the reading. He listened in grim silence while Edgar gave him the instructions.

Then he said, through clenched teeth, “I’m doing this only to humour Carrie. If we understand each other, let’s hurry and get this over with."

When Edgar awoke, Dr. House was talking soberly with the specialist. Carrie gave him a wan smile. “They say I have a tumour. You say I have a stoppage of the bowel. I’m still on your side, Edgar" she added, smiling, "you also said I was pregnant."

Dr. House turned from his low-voiced conference, his jaw set.

"We've decided the treatment you prescribed can’t do any serious harm. We still have time to give it a try. Then, I want it clearly understood that we’ll stop this nonsense and get on with the operation."

Edgar went slowly downstairs, his mind in a turmoil. If only he could find the simple implicit faith that Carrie had.  There was only one consolation. The doctors agreed that his treatment would not make the situation worse. He slumped into a chair and fell into an exhausted sleep.

He awoke with Dr. House pumping his hand fervently. “Don’t ask me to believe what I can’t, but you are right.  We tried your treatment, and Carrie is like a new woman. The trouble was exactly what you said.” Then he sobered. “I mean to say, you were half right. I’d give anything in the world if you could have hit it a hundred per cent this morning.”

“What do you mean?” Edgar asked blankly.

"You said that Carrie was pregnant. That part is impossible. She has been examined by the best doctors. There’s no question at all about their findings. My wife can never have a baby.

Edgar was overjoyed at having correctly diagnosed Carrie’s illness, but the mistake about her pregnancy worried him. “I can’t understand it. As far as I know, a reading has never been wrong before."

 "Don't worry about it," Dr. House said jovially. “There’s no harm done. You were right about the important part. Nobody’s infallible."

 "The psychic diagnoses always were right before” Edgar repeated worriedly.

The small error stuck in his mind and festered there, pouring a subtle doubt into his own self-confidence. If he could make one mistake, he could make others, and the next one might be far more serious.

He worried about it right up to the day that Carrie Salter House gave premature birth to the baby the specialists all knew she could never have.