Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - Time of the Fourth Horseman

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Hi. I’m leaving Inner City.”

  “Any luck?” Harry asked without much hope.

  “No. Both Wexford and Justin refused to discuss the matter. And Harry, Peter’s got something.” He paused to make sure Harry understood. “I spent almost an hour with him, and he looks sick.”

  “What does he have? Do you know?”

  “I didn’t have the chance to find out. But it might be important later on.” Stan cleared his throat and went on. “No help from anyone down here. They’re swamped with patients, and they really don’t have enough staff to keep going. It’s worse than Westbank. I don’t see how they’re managing at all.”

  “Wonderful,” Harry said sarcastically. “If this keeps up much longer, they’re going to need our help more than we need theirs.”

  Harry cursed mentally. He had hoped that there would be a way to stop the insanity now, but he no longer believed that. Now he feared what lay ahead, and the fear was ice in his vitals. “Do you need a ride back?”

  “What’s the patient load there right now?”

  “Very heavy. We’re all going to be working late.”

  There was a pause. “Okay. I’ll get back on my own. Buses are running on the beltway, and that should get me there in about ninety minutes to two hours.”

  Harry said, “Are you sure? I can send one of the nurses to get you.”

  “This is their rest period. They need it. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Whatever you say. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  Natalie knocked on the lab door later, and it was Amanda who admitted her. “Hi,” she said. “Do you mind if I run these through very fast? I’ll try not to get in your way.”

  “Be my guest,” Amanda said without looking up from her microscope. “The extra slides are in the second drawer.”

  “That’s handy.” Natalie reached for the slides and set to work.

  “What do you think you’ve got?”

  “Leukemia. I saw one case in medical school. The patient was an older woman, a Christian Scientist who hadn’t got the vaccine. It was very sad. It’s a terrible disease.”

  “Is this patient old or young?” Amanda asked as she made a note on the chart at her side.

  “Young. About seven. Very pretty little girl. I don’t know what to tell her aunt. I hope it isn’t, but if the cancer vaccines aren’t given, and with the atmospheric carcinogen count the way it is...” She did not go on, filled with anger at the irresponsible decisions which had brought them to this dreadful time. “What have you got?”

  “Another diphtheria, a typhus, which means that we’re going to have to be very careful about sanitation from now on. And there’re a couple of minor viral infections of no particular importance. And a couple cases of respiratory impairment, but I don’t know what’s causing it.”

  “There’s a tuberculosis admit on Alexes’ list. We’ve put him in a closed room, and we’re taking all the precautions we can. I hope it isn’t as serious as Alexes seems to think.” Natalie put down her materials. “I used to think that the serious challenges had left medicine. I wish I could get that feeling back again.”

  Amanda sighed. “No. You’ve never taken this for granted. You think you have, but I’ve watched you.” She paused, yawned, and said, “I must be more tired than I thought.”

  “Take a break,” Natalie suggested.

  “I’ve got to finish these things first. Then I’ll sit down. No, about what I was saying: you’re truly conscientious. That’s rare. It’s rare in doctors and everywhere else. I admire you for it.” Amanda stopped. “And we should both get back to work.”

  Natalie gestured her agreement and set up her specimen for a blood count.

  Radick nodded sympathetically. “You say the patient is young?” he asked Natalie, who told him the child’s age. “Seven is very young to die.” Radick was sadly thoughtful. “Do you want me to tell the parents, or shall you?”

  “Guardian. An aunt. She’s quite young herself, not more than twenty-five. I just don’t know what to say to her, Radick. I’ve tried to think for the last half hour. How do you tell either of them that the girl has leukemia, and the disease is quite advanced?”

  “I don’t know. Oh, I can soften the blow, and perhaps help them avert the worst effects of the shock, but there is not way to alter the truth. If the child has this cancer, there is very little we can do other than lessen the worst of her suffering.” He turned away, suddenly very angry. “I hope all those smug, anonymous men who made these decisions have to go through this. I hope they have to see stricken faces and the tortured eyes. I hope they have to watch impotently while their children die...” He broke off and looked chagrined. “I’m sorry, Natalie. I did not mean to burden you with my frustration or my rage.”

  She shrugged.

  “That’s part of the trouble. We can do so little, and then we start to hate ourselves because we can do nothing. I have often thought that physicians’ arrogance—and it is a disease rampant among us—is an attempt to immunize ourselves against self-hate.” He sat down on the bench at the breakfast table, which had become his office. “Very well. Send in the child and her aunt, and I will talk to them and do what I can, though it will be little enough.”

  “Radick,” Natalie ventured.

  “Go away,” he said in gruff compassion. “Go into our common room and give yourself a few minutes to be calm again. We both need it.” He showed her a gentle smile ravaged by grief. “Go away,” he repeated softly.

  “The girl’s name is Melanie Lovat. The aunt’s name is Sheila Wentworth.”

  Radick nodded. “Thank you.”

  The common room was almost deserted, and the litter of three days covered the formal dining table. Papers, coffee mugs, a crumpled lab smock, all lay on the fine-grained wood. By the tile-inlaid fireplace on the far side of the room several chairs were drawn up, and newssheets lay in piles on the low coffee table. Natalie made a half-hearted attempt to neaten the room, then dropped into one of the elegant chairs opposite Amanda.

  “You look tired,” Amanda said after a moment or two.

  “So do you.” She was more concerned than her voice showed. Amanda’s face was clay-colored with fatigue, and her breathing was strained. “Have you kept up with your drugs?” Natalie asked, hating herself for asking.

  “Of course,” Amanda said. “But you know what it’s like: it’s hard to relax with this going on. So I don’t sleep as well as I ought, I know it.”

  Natalie nodded.

  “Have you seen the news today? They’re admitting that the death rate is up sixteen per cent.”

  “Which probably means twice that,” Natalie added.

  “No doubt. Absenteeism is running at almost forty per cent, according to official releases. Undoubtedly some of this can be accounted for by those staying home to take care of sick family members, and some are staying home out of fear. But that’s still too many.” She sighed. “Is Stan back yet?”

  “Not that I know of. He’s planning to take a bus at the Great Beltway. Which means he’ll probably be late. One of the patients, a Mr. Eastly, said he had to wait almost two hours for a bus yesterday.” Fleetingly, Natalie wondered why she felt she had to have an explanation for Stan’s absence. She told herself it was nerves. “Why don’t you take a nap, Amanda? You aren’t on duty for another four hours.”

  Amanda nodded. “Thank you. I believe I will.” She rose unsteadily. “I might look in on Mr. Rice. He’s going fast, and I think he’s frightened.” Amanda walked slowly to the door. “Will you call me when you go off duty? I don’t want to set my alarm. It will waken Carol and Lisa on the other side of the screen.”

  “All right. If you’re not up, I’ll call you.” Natalie watched the door close behind Amanda. Then remembering Radick’s instructions, she tried to rest and compose herself, which very quickly made her nervous. At last she reached for the screen and turned it on. Light, inane entertainment might be the counterirritant she needed.

>   A news broadcast was in progress, and she was about to try another network when she was caught by a name she thought she recognized. She turned the sound higher and waited.

  “... on the steps of Stockton’s Central Administration Building. Dr. Patman, who was dismissed for cause from Westbank Hospital last month, claimed that the current outbreak of disease was a deliberate plot on the part of the government, an experiment in population control. Dr. Patman demanded that the administration answer his charges, and when asked to leave, he threatened to fill his own veins with certain toxins he said he was carrying on his person. The City Patrol was called to subdue Dr. Patman...”

  Natalie watched, transfixed as Eric Patman’s tiny figure struggled with the uniformed men on the screen. Then she saw him lift something, and whatever his words mouthed, the announcer’s smooth voice covered.

  “Dr. Patman had been suffering from depression, and had convinced himself that the current city health problem was engineered by certain nameless agencies of the federal government, according to Dr. Miles Wexford, chief administrator at Westbank Hospital.”

  “You clever bastards,” Natalie said to the screen.

  “On examination, Dr. Patman was found to have died from a self-administered injection of botulin.”

  Natalie was half out of her chair. “What?”

  “A suicide note was found in his apartment, admitting his intention to kill himself in this manner if he could not convince the authorities to stop what he termed ‘this unmitigated atrocity.’ There will be a private hearing in the coroner’s office tomorrow to determine Dr. Patman’s state of mind at the time of his death.” On the screen a bad picture of Eric showed him working with slides in his immunological laboratory, the very picture of a mad scientist.

  “Liar!” Natalie shouted, getting out of her chair completely. The newscaster had gone blandly on to other topics.

  Helpless rage washed over her as she watched the screen. Eric Patman was dead. He had killed himself to stop this horrible farce, and the news had made a slightly off-color joke of his sacrifice. Eric Patman was dead. Natalie found herself shaking, her hands held tightly together, her body tightened intolerably. Eric Patman was dead. Somehow she would have to tell the others.

  Natalie was still awake, staring at the ceiling when Harry came into their room. She watched him without speaking while he pulled off his lab coat, his shirt, then his shoes. When he went to stare out the window, her eyes followed him. At last she asked, “What time is it?”

  “About quarter after four.” He did not turn around. “We lost Mr. Wanstern a little while ago. We couldn’t keep him going any longer.” He was silent for a moment. “I heard about Eric. God! Poor guy.”

  Natalie waited. She knew there was more.

  “Stan’s not back yet, either. Larsen, that new nurse? She called the City Patrol, but they haven’t seen him. I guess that’s something.”

  “He probably stopped to make a house call. If the case is bad, he could still be there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If anything had happened to him, we’d have heard by now. They’d bring him here, the way they brought Dave.”

  Harry said nothing.

  “Harry?” Natalie asked after a time.

  “I’m here.”

  The desolation in his voice touched her. She got out of bed and silently, chastely, went into his arms.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 8

  DOMINIC HERTZOG STUDIED THE old-fashioned X-rays critically. “No, there’s no doubt,” he said with a sad shake of his head. “That’s a malignancy, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.” He indicated an area of the X-ray. “You see this? That’s where the trouble is.” He took the X-ray off its lighted viewer and filed it away. “You could get more detail with a new machine, if we had one, but the report would still be the same.”

  The other doctors agreed uncomfortably. The formal dining room was bright with morning sunlight shining off the chandeliers and lovely walls, in contrast to the bleak fatigue of its occupants.

  “What do you suggest?” Amanda asked.

  “Drugs to stop the pain, if we can spare them. That’s about all we can do now.”

  Harry nodded. “How long do you think he has left?”

  “Stevensen?” Dominic asked, pointing to the file. “He could surprise us and last through the summer, maybe all the way through October, but I doubt he will. I’ll give him six weeks to two months. He’s not fighting back. If he’d had help before now, maybe a’year ago, one of the hospitals might have been able to save him, or at least arrest the cancer. But now, with both the liver and the spleen involved, he’s too far gone, even if we were set up to operate on him, which we’re not.”

  “Do we have room to admit him?” Carol Men-dosa asked with brutal practicality.

  “Mr. Wanstern’s room will be ready this afternoon. We can put him in there.”

  “Mrs. Kaylee died a couple of hours ago. There’ll be space there, too.”

  “I’ll put Larsen and Walsh to work on it,” Lisa Skye said, since she had taken over the job of assigning nurses.

  “Not Walsh you won’t,” Jim Varnay corrected her. “Walsh is sick. She’s running a fever and has the beginning of a serious rash.”

  The others looked at him.

  “It could be measles. It could also be smallpox. I don’t know which, not yet. And I haven’t had time to run her lab work through yet.”

  Carol Mendosa cleared her throat. “I see.” She spoke for all of them when she said, “I was wondering when one of us would get sick. I guess it’s happened. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  It was Alexes Castor who asked the tacitly forbidden question, “Has anyone heard from Stan yet?”

  After a heavy silence Harry said, “No.”

  “I think he might have gone to Eric’s autopsy hearing,” Howard Webbster suggested. “He and Eric were pretty close.”

  “It could be,” Alexes said, obviously clutching at straws.

  “Perhaps he hasn’t been able to phone. I remember that woman yesterday, Shipp? She said that a lot of phones are out of order.” Kirsten Grant waited for the rest to agree with her.

  “Where’s Natalie?” Roger Nicholas asked, “and Radick?”

  “Radick’s with a patient. Natalie’s on some kind of errand. She said she’s going to try to get us some help if she can.” Harry hoped that his irrational hope did not show.

  “We could use it.”

  Ernest Dagstern spoke up suddenly. “I’ve talked to a few of my colleagues, and they’re willing to extend lab space, X-ray equipment, beds, anything if you’ll take on their patients.”

  Maria Pantopolos turned to Ernest. “How many patients are we talking about? There isn’t room here.”

  “Oh,” Ernest said quickly, “we wouldn’t have to keep them here. My colleagues will put them up in their offices. You’d have to examine and give some treatment, but we’ll do the routine care. We’re excellent nurses, you know. We don’t just fix whiplashes.”

  Harry looked at the others. “It might be a good idea. We can reach more people that way.” He saw the others wavering. “At least, let’s give it a try. If it turns out to be more than we can handle, we can back out. But we’re already shorthanded, and if we can take some of the load...”

  Dominic spoke up then. “I agree, Harry. We’ll do a much better job if we can reduce the stress we work under. And I’m sure we can trust the chiropractors to know when to call for help if they need it.”

  Carol Mendosa shrugged elaborately. “I doubt there’d be any harm in it.”

  “Then, when do we start?” Harry leaned forward and pulled a new sheet of paper onto his clipboard.

  In the hospital corridors trash eddied along the walls, building up to paper reefs by doors and obstacles. Natalie admitted her shock, but did not stop to pick up the refuse. She knew her way now, and at least on this floor there were no patients on the hall couches. At least, she corrected herself mentally,
she had not seen any.

  The lab doors loomed ahead, and she squared her shoulders. Now that she knew she must face Mark, her fright was less than it had been that morning. Then she still had a choice, she could still avoid seeing him. But now there was no question. A few steps more and she would be in his lab again. If he was there, she would speak to him. Calmly. Quietly. Reasonably. Her hands became fists at her side.

  “I thought I told you...” said Mark’s angry voice as she opened the door.

  “It’s Natalie, Mark.” She let the door close behind her. Then she walked into the room.

  Natalie was not surprised that the lab was neat, that the floors were clean and no litter collected in the corners. The shelves were in order, the equipment shiny and laid out just so. On the far side of the lab, his smock crisp, white, Board of Inspection proper, Mark glared up at her. After a moment, he said, “What are you doing here?”

  She did not answer him directly. “I see your plan isn’t going well.”

  “Too goddamn many of the staff are sick.” He pushed the console beside him for a readout and swore again. “It’s taking too long.”

  “Is it? It seems very fast to me. But over at the Van Dreyter house we don’t have luxuries like that. We’re relying on very old procedures, and it’s working quite well.” She hated herself for feeling defensive as she spoke. For what they had to contend with, they were doing well. She knew she did not have to justify herself to Mark, and yet she did.

  “Feeling the good little martyr, are you? Don’t expect me to be impressed. You had the chance to really help out and you threw it away. What are you doing here now? Did you change your mind?”

  She thought him a beautiful man, his body of almost Greek perfection, a body like statuary. She realized now that he was truly stone: flawless, unmoved, unmoving. “I need your help, Mark. You have to call this ... experiment ... off. We’re losing too many people; you know that, don’t you?”

  “Call it off? Before it’s finished? We have to know what happens.”