“Peter Justin made the only decision he could. And it put you in a very bad position, Natalie. Look,” he said, his words more kindly than they had been, “I know how you feel. But we can’t afford to stick our necks out on every case. We have to be careful. There are times when we know we can make a difference, and those are the times when we should take a stand. When the question is obviously crucial. But in cases like that one, when Justin had to decide on the matter of word... You didn’t have a chance. Justin doesn’t have the authority to take the matter to court without more than your testimony against that of the children’s parents.”
“But they had been beaten with electric cords. You said so yourself.” Natalie felt this was not happening, that Ian could not be saying this to her. He had always taken the part of the unprotected child, and now he was telling her she should not have tried to save the three Swanson children.
“Sure. And it was true. They had been beaten with electric cords and lead-weighted thongs. You had no proof that the parents had done it. Even if the kids wouldn’t talk, they knew who had beaten them. And we were right, Natalie. You know we were right.”
“Yes,” she said somberly. “We were right. They were dead within six months of their release.”
“But we can’t prove that the parents did it,” Ian said patiently.
“Who else, then? The milkman?” She spat the words at him, very angry now. “Don’t kid yourself, Ian.”
“I may be,” he said, pulling himself out of his chair. “But if I were you, unless I caught someone in the act, I wouldn’t bring any kind of complaint against anyone for a while. The administration doesn’t like embarrassments like the Swanson case. Take my advice, Natalie, and keep a low profile. Otherwise you’re going to land in big trouble.”
She studied his lined, sensitive face, knowing that his advice was meant to help her, and that she should listen to him. “Come on, Natalie,” he said, “there’s lots of years yet. Get in here a little more solidly, and then you can take on the administration, maybe even make a change in the Battered Child laws. That’s important, and you’d be good at it. But you’re not up to that fight yet. Remember that.”
“I’ll remember,” she said truthfully. “Thanks, Ian. I don’t agree with you, but thanks.”
As she got into the elevator, Natalie noticed the other woman waiting for the car. This made her hesitate. She badly wanted the chance to be alone with her thoughts. The other woman was plainly upset, and would probably start to talk to her as soon as the doors closed. Natalie studied her as she pressed the “hold” button. She was an angular woman without being thin, her graying hair was in disorder, and when she spoke, it was in jerky, breathless phrases. Natalie made up her mind and entered the elevator, and as she had expected, the strange woman began to speak to her as soon as the doors were shut.
“Are you a doctor? You look too young. But it says doctor. Your name badge says doctor.”
“I am,” Natalie said as the elevator moved.
There was a moment of silence, and then the other woman made up her mind. “You tell me, then: what kind of place is this? Can’t any of you keep track of anything here?”
“The hospital is very efficient,” Natalie said, somewhat defensively. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s my boy. Why can’t you tell me where he is? Anybody should be able to tell me. But they don’t. They say he’s transferred. They’re giving him intensive care, but not here. Somewhere else. On another floor. But I’ve been all the places they’ve told me to go, and he isn’t here. They won’t let me see him or talk to him.”
Fear washed over Natalie more strongly than ever. She made an effort to soothe the woman. “When did you bring him to the hospital?”
“Last night, early. He was real sick. He had this rash on him, real bad, big sores, almost like something’d been biting him. He’s never had one like this before. When I brought him in they said it was an allergy. They said they’d keepr him for obversation and run tests on him.” Her voice rose. “Some observation, when they can’t even find him.”
“Mrs. ...”
“Verrcy. Laura Verrcy. My boy is David. His father is Hugh.”
“Mrs. Verrcy, if you’ll give the desk your name and address and a number where you can be reached and your phone-service hours, I’ll try to find out what I can about this. It’s certainly not usual for the hospital to withhold information from parents about their children,” she said, thinking grimly that it was becoming usual. “Do you happen to remember the name of the doctor who examined your son? Or what floor they sent him to? It could help me trace him if you remember.”
The angry, frightened eyes regarded her with unveiled suspicion. “What can you do the others can’t?”
“I can ask a few questions. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. They tried to make out that his being sick was our fault. Maybe they want to blame us for his being sick. Maybe that’s what you’re planning to do.”
“Mrs. Verrcy, please. I know what you’ve gone through with this staff. But, truly, I think I can help you if you’ll let me.” Natalie hoped that this was a simple matter of administrative foul-up and not another child lost.
“The doctor’s name was Braemoore.”
Jim Braemoore. That wasn’t good, Natalie knew. He was one of the most firmly established of the staff doctors and adhered to hospital policy as if it were dogma.
“He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?” Laura Verrcy asked as she saw Natalie’s face. “That isn’t bad, is it? Doctor Braemoore is okay, isn’t he?”
“Jim Braemoore is one of the most respected doctors on the pediatric staff,” she answered, comforting herself with the thought that this was true. “But he’s off duty right now. You don’t have to worry about your son David if Jim Braemoore is taking care of him. Ask anyone on the staff about him, and they’ll say the same thing.” She hated herself for closing ranks this way, supporting a toady like Braemoore so that this confused woman would not ask the wrong question.
The elevator stopped. “Well, I get off here,” said Mrs. Verrcy.
“Look,” Natalie said impulsively, “I’ll check up on your boy. Don’t worry about him. I’ll let you know what I find out. Just be sure to leave your name and address at the desk. Tell them that it’s for Doctor Lebbreau.”
“Dr. Lebbreau,” she repeated. “I will. If you think...” The door closed on the rest of what she was going to say.
Natalie rode up to her floor with troubled thoughts.
“What’s the matter with you?” Gil demanded with none of the easy banter he generally used with Natalie when she was upset. Their rounds had been tense and now he was getting angry.
She motioned him away from the patient they were checking. “I’ve been finding out things, Gil, and they scare me. I know it sounds crazy, but there is something really wrong around here.”
“Not that again.” Even his eyes were scornful.
“I found out about a kid who had smallpox.”
“Aw, Nat, come on. You’re overdoing it. Nobody gets smallpox any more, and you know it.”
“Listen to me, Gil,” she pleaded as her eyes narrowed and she looked cautiously down the hall. “There’s something wrong here. And I’ll go on saying it until someone listens to me. Someone has to listen.”
“You said it yourself, Nat: it’s crazy.” He put his hands on her shoulders, but she shrugged them away. “Maybe it is,” she said softly. “Will you give me a chance to prove it, one way or the other?”
He stared at her. “How?”
“I’ll tell you that when I’m through.” For a moment he felt like getting angry and telling Natalie to get back to her job and forget her ridiculous theories. But he knew her well enough to know that she would not let the thing rest until she had resolved it. “All right. Take your time with it. But don’t blame me if you get caught. Or fired.”
Her expression was enigmatic. “Thanks, Gil.
You’re
a prince.”
It was after midnight when Natalie went back to Mark’s test-tube domain on the seventh floor. The rooms were deserted and even the officious clerk had gone for the night. Her passkey had worked, to her surprise and relief. Still, she moved on tiptoe, seeking the coldroom where all the vaccines were kept. She hoped that this would be quick, that she would find she was mistaken after all and would have to bear with Gil’s teasing. It would be so much easier to face Gil’s ridicule than what would happen to them all if she was right. For a moment she hesitated, wanting to turn back. But she had come too far.
She turned on her flashlight and removed the throat attachment that had directed the beam to pencil fineness, then played the full force of the light over the orderly shelves where the neatly labeled bottles stood in military precision. It took very little time to find what she sought, and she took all she would need with her to the lab station. Setting her flashlight aside, she set up the scanners and began to work.
The tests took her much longer than she had anticipated: almost four hours.
When she was through she put the bottles back, and walking as if in a daze, she left the labs quietly and went to the surgeon’s lounge for some sleep, if she could sleep. Her head ached, and her neck, but that was not what haunted her.
Please, she thought as she stretched out on the couch ... please, don’t dream, don’t dream.
“Natalie,” said Mark’s yoice, and for a moment she thought she was at home and it was time to get up. But the way he said those familiar words and the pain behind her eyes reminded her where she was, and why.
“Natalie, get up.” There was no friendliness in him at all. She opened her eyes and looked up at her husband. Mark’s face was ominously dark. He extended his hands to her. Her flashlight lay in them.
“Oh,” she said. “That was clumsy of me. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Yes.” He waited. “I saw what you’d done. And now, Natalie, you will tell me why.” The fury in his eyes belied his soft tone.
“I had to find out, that’s all. I can’t stand to have patients dying for no reason. And I found out more than I bargained for.” She looked up at him fearlessly. He had no threat in him now. “I know about you, Mark. I know what you’re doing.”
He was not listening. “What were you trying to prove?”
“It was the children,” she said, rubbing at the kink in her neck and wishing that she did not have to argue while she was so tired. “I saw children with diseases they could not—or should not have. I had to find out how they got them. Don’t you see that?”
“Oh, I see, all right.”
She rose stiffly. “No, you don’t. That’s the trouble. All you ever see is that damned lab of yours. The statistics and the dabs of blood and tissue. You don’t have to see diphtheria and smallpox up close on human beings. You deal in pathology.” She ran her hand over her wrinkled lab coat. “One third of your vaccines are totally useless.”
“Of course,” he scoffed. “What do you think my Project is all about?”
For a moment she was aghast. Then she stared at him as if she had never seen him before, never touched him. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t understand the enormity of it.”
He laughed as he knotted his hands into fists. “I don’t know what I’m doing?” he mocked her.
“You couldn’t. Mark, all those people ... all those dead people...”
At that he swung toward her. “ ‘All those people,’ you say. All is the operative word, Natalie. All. There are too damn many of them. And it is getting worse and worse. Each year the quality of life is poorer, the crowding is denser, the education more shoddy, transportation more dangerous, food less nourishing, sanitation less trustworthy. Of course I know what I’m doing. It’s not as if this isn’t being monitored and controlled. We’re a test area, because you and I know that a thing like this can get out of hand if it isn’t watched. And I’m for it, Natalie, because it’s fair. You would be, too, if you thought about it a little.” His hands opened and he spoke more softly. “Gil told us about your hunches. You’re very bright, Natalie, but you’re very blind.”
“You’re wrong,” she whispered, moving away from him. “You are wrong.”
“Listen, you said it yourself. There are too many people. Don’t you realize we can’t take care of the ones we’ve got, let alone the ones who haven’t been born yet?” He reached his hand out to her, his face lined with concern. “Look at the problem sensibly, and you’ll see that something has to be done before we’re all lost. You’ll see this is the only way. Ian understands. Jim understands. Even Gil does. They know the danger we face, and they all agree that this is the most humanitarian way to deal with the problem. No elitism, no judgment beyond the judgment nature makes. Even the killing of the vaccines is done by computer. No one makes a decision about it.”
Suddenly Natalie remembered what Ian Parkenson had said as he worked over the two battered sisters. She knew then that he would support something this desperate, this crazy. “But they’re doctors,” she said to herself, forgetting she spoke aloud.
“Yes,” he agreed, his voice at its most persuasive. “They are doctors, and they’re anxious to make a better life for all of us. You can...”
“Plague is a better life? Because that’s what you’re getting from this Project of yours, a plague.”
Mark’s eyes grew bright, but he controlled his temper. “Think about it, Natalie. If we had fewer people, think of what it would mean in terms of space and food and work and life ... living, Natalie. We aren’t living now.”
“There are other ways.” She felt defiance rising up in her, and with it, doubt. What if he was right? What if this were the only answer?
He snorted. “Birth control, you mean? When people talk about limiting families, they mean someone else’s family, and you know it. You’ve seen it. How many women come in here on their fourth or fifth and tell us that they’re special, their case is different, they should have children because they are brighter or more capable or richer than other people. But they’re wrong. We tried it, oh so patiently, so politely, to tell them that they cannot make exceptions of themselves, and it didn’t work.”
“That’s no excuse for what you’re doing,” she said doggedly, wishing that he would leave her alone so that she could think.
“Excuse, hell. It’s reality, girl. Believe me, if we don’t change fast, good old Mother Nature is going to cook up her own plague and get rid of us as a general pest.” He started to pace up and down the room. Natalie remembered the many times his feral grace had fascinated her, the power of him, his control. It still fascinated her, his lithe movement. But his power she now saw as ruthlessness.
“Can’t you see,” he was saying, “there’s nothing really wrong with what we’re doing. We’re the ones who’ve been wrong all the time. We’re supposed to let the weak ones die. Natalie, the dead vaccine batches are computer controlled. Nobody knows which batches are good and which aren’t. Chance picks the victims, don’t you see? The only reason you find this hard to accept is that we’ve got used to having life so far out of balance that this unnatural immunity seems normal. But it isn’t.” He stopped pacing and leaned toward her. “Think about it.”
“If people knew. Mark...”
“People don’t know,” he said flatly. The menace in him was much stronger. “They don’t know and there’s no reason for them to know.”
“No reason? When it’s their lives?”
“Don’t pull those big eyes on me; save them for Gil. It might work on him. There is no reason for people to know about our Project...”
“Project?”
“Certainly. What did you think the Project has been all this time? We’re a test area, this county. If the program works here, then similar projects will be started in other parts of the country. You don’t think we’d take on a full-scale Project without doing test areas first, do you?”
She stepped toward him, trying not to t
ouch him as she said, “I am not afraid... You’re doing something terribly wrong and you have to be stopped.”
“You’re going to stop us?”
She bridled. “The government will. The courts will.”
“Who the hell do you think authorized this in the first place, the American Medical Practitioners?”
“They wouldn’t.” In the quieter part of her mind, Natalie wondered if anyone could overhear them. This was the surgeon’s lounge. Anyone might come in. Anyone might be listening. And what then?
“Don’t hope for a timely rescue. Ian’s outside.” He pushed her shoulder and she sat down, startled. “You’re a problem, Natalie. You found out about something that was none of your business.”
She tried to rise and was forced to sit again. “What do you mean, none of my business? This is very much my business. Look at my patients’ admit records. Your Project is absolutely my business.”
“Will you get off this emotional binge and listen?” he asked as if he were speaking to a ten-year-old. “You’ve found out about the Project. And you are not going to say a word to anyone. Because if you do, I guarantee that you will be shut up. Officially. You will be fired. And there won’t be a city or a county hospital in the whole state that will hire you, now or ever. You’d be lucky to get a job cleaning bedpans. Do you understand that?” He waited, studying her face.
“Yes. I understand.”
“Now. You are going back to work. You are going to keep on working. You are also going to keep your mouth shut. Remember, we’re going to need doctors badly, Natalie. You can’t afford to give up.”
She said, as if far away, “What about the people who already know? How do you know you’ll be able to trust them when their kids are dying?”
Mark shook his head slowly. “What would they say?” He strode to the end of the room, his hand on the door. “No one knows which batches are which or where they go once they are prepared. There’s no way we could trace them, even if we wanted to.”
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - Time of the Fourth Horseman Page 4
