Nightmare agency

healthcare pedantics + Barbara Molinard's PANICS

In Barbara Molinard’s short-story “The Severed Hand,” a patient seeks care from a pharmacist about a hand that is somehow wrong: no fingers, no joints, useless but “with a certain beauty.” What should I do about this, the pharmacist wonders for a moment then decides the grotesquery must go. We’ll saw it off, he suggests to the patient, who beams with ap…