The Breathing Method
At the invitation of a senior partner, he joins a strange gentlemen's club where the members, in addition to reading, chatting and playing billiards and chess, like to tell stories, some of which range into the bizarre and macabre.One Thursday before Christmas, the elderly physician Dr. Emlyn McCarron tells a story about an episode that took place early in his long and varied career: that of a patient, Sandra Stansfield, who was determined to give birth to her illegitimate child, no matter what, despite financial problems and social disapproval.Her lungs in her decapitated body are still pumping air, as her head, some feet away, is working to sustain the breathing method so that the baby can be born.On a sweet but haunting end note, Sandra whispers "Thank you"—her severed head mouthing the words, which are distortedly heard from the throat jutting from her headless body.Like King's short story "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands", The Breathing Method takes the form of a nested narrative told in a strange 'club' in Manhattan.