Better in the Dark (22 page)

D
OMINIC
H
ERTZOG 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.”

“So the I.I.A. can do it again somewhere else?” she asked quietly.

He looked at her sharply. “So you know about the I.I.A., do you? I wasn’t sure you’d find out.” He pulled the printout from the console and began to read it.

“Just like that, Mark? Just a little surprise that I found out that the federal internal security people are in charge of this atrocious farce? Don’t you realize what’s happening out there, Mark?”

“Of course I know what’s happening.” He offered the printout to her. “You might want to look at this.”

“What is it?” She was determined not to let him sidetrack her.

“It’s the current curve for the incidence of smallpox. We have others, for the other diseases. The disease rate is picking up now, Nat. From now through most of the summer it should climb steeply, then level off for a few weeks before going into a rapid decline. This is the most recent update, and making certain allowances for a slight increase in the death rate, we’re more or less on schedule.”

Natalie had put her hands over her eyes. “Oh, God,” she said thickly, “you don’t realize what you’ve done. Curves! Those curves are dead people, Mark. They’re dying. You might as well be killing them yourself. That’s just your hospital figures, isn’t it, that report? Well, how about the people who aren’t in hospitals and won’t go to hospitals? Or hadn’t you taken that into account? I have. I’ve seen more than a hundred of them at the Van Dreyter house. They’re coming in with smallpox, with diphtheria, with typhus...”

He interrupted her. “Typhus?”

“Yes.”

His brow raised. “We didn’t anticipate having typhus so soon. It’s not this early in our projected figures.”

For one insane moment Natalie was afraid she was going to laugh. Hysteria bubbled in her, pushing to explode. With a terrible effort she mastered herself. “You mean that this disaster isn’t going according to Peter Justin’s choreography? How very inconsiderate.”

“Now, Nat,” he warned, his face growing ugly. He put down the printout.

“You cretinous ass! Look what your great idea has done to us. Your priceless plan has one little flaw in it, and we’re paying the price.”

“Nat,” he said patiently, “you don’t know...”

“Shut up!” She was almost as surprised as he at this outburst. And she felt a deep satisfaction as she went on. “I’ve been listening to you for five years, and all you told me were lies. And now you’re going to listen to me, and I’ll tell you the truth. This great demonstration of population control you’re so proud of has one or two things wrong with it. Don’t interrupt,” she snapped as he opened his mouth.

“Somehwere along the line you forgot that you aren’t dealing with one, or even two, diseases, but many diseases. If you’d just wiped out one third of all smallpox vaccines, or cancer vaccines, or any of the others, that would be all we’d have to contend with: a moderate smallpox or cancer epidemic. An outbreak of polio, maybe. That would have made the job fairly simple. But no, you had to be greedy. You had to have the whole lot of them. So you put every major disease back in business. Which means that, statistically, each of us is probably going to catch
two different fatal diseases
. The hell with the four we statistically won’t catch.”

“Nat, you’re being too emotional...”

“Have you been outside? Have you been outside this lab in the last week? Have you been outside the hospital? Do you have any idea of what’s going on out there? Well?”

Mark hesitated. “I’ve had my hands full here,” he said, then came toward her. “What do you want, Nat? You didn’t come back for this futile gesture, did you?” The confidence was back in his smile, and he made his voice deep and melodic. “You little bitch. You want to blackmail me. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“No,” she said, holding her ground.

He came closer. “You want me to call this off, don’t you?”

“If you can,” she said, and luckily stung his vanity.

“Of course I can. Me, Wexford, Justin and Cockburn, we’re the only ones who can give the orders. No one else.”

Natalie stared at him. “And you won’t issue that order, because you like this life-and-death power. That’s why you don’t give a damn about how many people are dying, or how many diseases are let loose. You like this.
You like this
.” Her words were soft, but anguish burned in them. “Is there the slightest chance you’ll help us? Let us use the labs, maybe, or at least have a little space to check out this new stuff we’ve been seeing more of?”

“What new stuff?”

She forced herself to speak calmly. “I’m surprised you aren’t aware of it. Many of the patients we’ve seen have had a disease that looks like polio, but as far as we can tell, it isn’t polio.”

“Fatal?”

“Not that we know of. Not yet.” She saw the fascination in his eyes, the gloating over the new disease. She closed her eyes and went on. “But there’ve been increasing amounts of it, and some of the cases look fairly severe. We wanted to run some tests, see what it responded to, what it is...”

“No.”

“We’ll work off hours, Mark. We’ll bring in our own help, we’ll supply our own slides...”

“No.”

“I see. Not deadly enough for you, is that it?” How tired she was, now that she knew she had failed. “I only hope you live long enough to know what you’ve done. And not take pride in it.” She turned away from him and walked resolutely to the door.

“Nat!” His voice was its most compelling. “Nat, let me explain to you.” He started after her.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me. I understand.”

“But we know what’s happening, Nat. We know where the outbreaks are the worst, and we’re being careful. We’re not monsters.”

She had reached the door. “Aren’t you?”

“Nat, we have to cut down the population. We must. Or we’re all doomed. We’re trying to find a way to handle the problem while there’s still time.”

Her face had hardened now, and she felt rage in her once more. “You had access to vaccines and you let your son die. You knew what was going on, you helped it, and you let your son die.”

Natalie saw the blow coming and turned away from it, so that Mark’s fist landed on her neck rather than her jaw. She staggered against the door, but took private satisfaction when she did not fall. She felt a surge of dizziness, then her head cleared. “You’re not going to convince me that way.”

“Philip was a mistake. You’re talking as if I murdered him.”

She read arrogance in his stance, and realized that he wanted an excuse to hit her again. “That’s because I think you did.” She was standing steadily once more, and knew she could walk out of the room without stumbling.

“Nat, he was only one child. You can have more.” He moved toward her. “You were doing a good job with him. You’re a good mother. There’s still time for you to change your mind. When this is over, we can afford to have several children. You’re at your best with children.” He put out his hand persuasively, offering her so much.

“Generous!”

His face flushed. “At least consider this before you throw it all away for foolish heroics.”

Quite suddenly she was nauseated. She knew that if she stayed near Mark much longer she would be sick. “Mark,” she said as she pulled the door open, “you’re obscene.” Sensing that her contempt bothered him, she let the door close in his face.

Over two dozen people sat in the Van Dreyter house foyer-turned-waiting-room at noon, their faces carefully guarded so as not to show fear to their neighbors. Lisa Skye was busy with preliminary checks, going from one to another with patience and serenity. She saw Harry and motioned him to step aside with her.

“What is it?”

“Has Ernie brought that list of extra beds available?”