Death Kit (27 page)

But Hester's doctor is trained in the newer technique, in which a laser beam is used. The same target, however. And the same principle: assault and puncture at a distance, without hard metal tools, but with gas and light instead. There's a murder weapon to confound the experts!

The doctor holds the miniature laser in his hands, pointing it like a toy machine gun at Hester's head. The gun gets closer. Her eyelids held widely apart with clamps. He fires. But there's no smell, not even that of burning flesh. Does she feel the tiny light burning through her eye? How can the surgeon be sure the light isn't traveling right past the eye, into the brain? She must be in pain. See how she's turning restlessly on the table. The doctors continue. Diddy would like to do something, but he's too far away. So he goes on photographing, his camera clicking.

(Now) Diddy is back in Hester's room, sitting by her bed, waiting for her to regain consciousness. Her whole face is swathed in bandages. Diddy wonders if this is necessary. How, when she wakes, will she be able to speak? To call his name, to ask for a glass of water? How can she breathe? And if Diddy can't see her face, not only can't he have a dialogue with her; he can't even be sure it's Hester. Already growing on Diddy that it's not she. That long form under the blankets doesn't look like Hester's body. Too tall, and built like a man, broad in the shoulders and narrow in the hips. Diddy suddenly has a horrible premonition that he's at the wrong bedside, keeping vigil over the wrong body. He knows whose body it is, too. But just for the moment, the name of the person eludes him. Someone he knows. Rather: knew. For this person is not breathing at all.

But then the dream changes, and the body beside whom Diddy sits is clearly Hester's. She has awakened and cries, “I can't see.” Tries to claw the bandages off her face. Doctors and nurses come rushing through the door of her little room, crowd around the narrow iron bedstead, bend over her solicitously. Diddy is pushed aside. The medical personnel seem to be conferring. Diddy, squashed against the wall near the lavatory, wants to hear. But he's not allowed. Somehow, though, he knows anyway what the doctors and nurses are saying, without hearing. They've made the wrong diagnosis. Enraged, Diddy shouts: “But I told you so, you idiots! I told you that before.” Paying no attention to Diddy, the doctors and nurses lift Hester's limp body on to a wheeled stretcher and take her out of the room. Diddy races after them, down long identical corridors. Sometimes the stretcher, with its precious burden and its white attendants, gets out of sight. This is when Diddy panics. He'll never be able to find Hester's operating room on his own. There are so many.

Where are they? He's lost them.

Down one more empty corridor, Diddy again catches sight of the ghostly party. Tall wooden doors, like those to Watkins' chapel at the factory, open to admit the medical team with their patient. Diddy wants to follow, but someone who resembles Comensky bars the way. “You can't go in, Harron,” he shouts. “They're working on Top Secret Classified material in that laboratory.”

Diddy pleads, “Damn you to hell, it's only an operating room!” Frantically trying to convince Comensky. The man is adamant. But after a while relents somewhat. Though Diddy still can't enter, he can peek through the keyhole. Kneeling, presses his left eye against the rectangular metal plate.

Like looking through a microscope. On the metal plate there are even some microscope-like devices that Diddy can adjust.

A large knurled wheel which supplies a coarse adjustment: the pinion head. This operates by a rack-and-pinion gear and changes the elevation of the tube.

Two smaller knobs, one on the right and one on the left, which supply the fine adjustment: the micrometer heads. On the right one a micrometer scale is inscribed so that the exact amount of vertical motion may be determined. This fine adjustment has definite upper and lower limits, and reaching either of which refuses to be turned farther. Movement ceases as soon as the objective touches the cover glass over the specimen, thus preventing damage to either object or lens.

Hester is the specimen beneath Diddy's eye. Turning the knobs very slowly, he moves the tube up and down gradually, seeking the most accurate focus.

There it is, clear as glass. The view Diddy wants. Hester lying again on the operating table, like a slide on the stage. But there are no students in this amphitheatre, as there were during the other operation. Has entry been barred to them as well? Apparently, Diddy thinks, these high-and-mighty doctors don't want their students to know when they've made a mistake.

The doctor is doing something with a scalpel to Hester's eyes. Diddy tries to see, because this must be the important part. But how small Hester looks! The rest are tiny figures, too. Diddy's view is slipping out of focus. He turns the pinion head, then the double micrometer head. Moves the knobs slowly at first, then rapidly. But can't seem to clear up the trouble. The image is shrinking, becoming indecipherable. “I think I have a defective instrument here,” he says to no one in particular. But what Diddy is really thinking is that a microscope, any microscope, is inappropriate for this kind of scrutiny. And there isn't anyone to say that to. This is a world that loves the small.

From his kneeling position, Diddy looks up at Comensky, who is slouching to one side of the door, his arms loosely folded like a bored guard in some rarely visited museum. “Can't you tell me anything, you bastard?” Diddy snarls. “At least tell me what the doctors think it is.”

“Corneal opacities, I think,” replies Comensky in a lazy voice. Scratching his scalp.

Diddy scrambles to his feet, knocking over the microscope. “But I told them that! Those doctors had that diagnosis all along.”

“Maybe they forgot,” drawls Comensky.

“They've got no right to forget!” Diddy yells angrily. “It's sheer cruelty. Why do they make her suffer so?”

Comensky shrugs his shoulders. Now he, too, is going out of focus. A man with different hair, features, complexion, build. Looks like that Harvid, Harvid or something, from the television studio. A new resource. Diddy's microscope is broken, but other ways of seeing exist. Less diminutive in outlook. “Can I watch the operation on TV?” Harvid nods, points down the hall.

Diddy runs to the room Harvid had indicated, throws open the door, and finds himself in his own room at the Rushland. He switches on his set. All the channels are off. Blank. (Now) Diddy knows he's been tricked. But when he opens the door to leave, it's the corridor of the hotel he sees. Not the hospital. Really tricked! How will he ever get back to the Warren Institute, which is miles away? For suddenly Diddy knows Hester's in terrible danger. The anaesthetic already administered, her eyeballs slit open with a scalpel, the doctors must operate immediately. But a telegram has just been received in the operating room. Eye Bank regrets that it has no corneal transplants available today.

Wait! There's a possible solution. By a great stroke of luck, Diddy happens to know a suitable corpse. Someone recently dead; someone who was strong and healthy while alive, and is likely to possess a full complement of vigorous organs. If he could obtain Incardona's eyes and bring them in time to the hospital, Hester's sight could be saved. A lovely justice in this scheme; not just necessity. For them the workman's death wouldn't have been a complete waste. Diddy the Criminal not wholly culpable. Equipped with Incardona's eyes, Hester will see again. And through Hester, Incardona will go on living. Diddy will have them both.

Diddy rushes to the elevator on the fourth floor of the Rushland but it isn't in its right place. No time to look! Runs to the door marked “Exit,” and hurtles down a long flight of stairs, taking two and three steps at a time. It's so dark. Diddy reminded of the tunnel. Childhood memories, too: steeling himself to venture alone into the cook's closet, the damp cellar, the dark pantry. But no, he mustn't go back there (now), to the house in Allentown. That's even farther from the hospital.

The bottom of the stairs. Light; a door; Diddy pushes it open. He's on the street level. But not the street scarred with trolley tracks in front of the Rushland. Is Diddy lost? Why doesn't he have a map? Diddy remembers how Paul, everyone, had always praised his sense of direction. He can't have lost that skill, which permits him to figure out fairly easily where he is, wherever he is, including situations where most people get lost. He just has to relax, breathe deeply, not fret or feel sorry for himself. It will come.

It does come. This street looks like Manhattan. Oh, Christ! Broadway and Forty-fourth Street. There's what's left of the Astor; and the dark shabby shell of the Paramount Theatre, closed and then opened and then closed and then opened and (now) closed for the last time. Its white, letterless marquee. An ignoble tombstone. Diddy is stranded among drunks and honking cars and whores and tourists. How will Diddy get back upstate, to the funeral parlor to find Incardona and rip the eyes out of the cadaver? Then to the hospital, to press the bleeding balls of flesh into the surgeon's waiting hands? A trip of many hours away. By the time Diddy arrives, the operation will have been called off. Hester dismissed. Returned, sightless forever, to her white room. But the surgeons mustn't give up. And Diddy urges himself not to lose heart either. If he just keeps moving, then he's getting closer. No motion without the abridgment of distance, some distance.

He'll have to catch a train. Perhaps if he runs to the station, the Privateer will be just about to leave. Diddy runs. His chest hurts. How out of condition he's gotten lately! Diddy, who won a medal in track at college, used to be able to run without tiring. Paul seems to be somewhere in this part of the dream. Maybe telling Diddy to run faster. But that's easy advice for sedentary Paul, who spends eight hours a day at the piano.

On time. The train, but not Diddy. Diddy is late. No time to purchase a ticket. Racing to find a helpful sign, something indicating the right gate or track number. Down a flight of stairs, like flying. The starting signal has been given. An official at the end of the long dirty platform waving a yellow signal light above his head. Diddy kneels down, gets into position, counts One-Two-Three under his breath, then leaps up and sprints down the platform. Past shouting conductors and train officials who want to intercept him, to detain him, to question him. How long it is. Diddy won't stop. They'll have to catch him. The train at the end is so small, so far away. His eyes darting back and forth from the platform to the trembling chain of coaches just starting up, Diddy runs down the endless platform toward the last car.

*   *   *

Sweating Diddy awoke with all his bedclothes fallen on the floor. His wristwatch curled up on the night table beside the bed: four-thirty. He could hardly catch his breath.

Diddy still tired. But apprehensive about falling back to sleep. Maybe the ugly dream would be resumed, like the second act of a play after a brief smoke in the lobby. Wiser, perhaps, to get up, take a shower to wipe the sweat and grime of his ordeal off his body, and do some work. Duva wanted a detailed report on the conference from him. Quite properly, Diddy had planned to write this after the conference had adjourned. Say, this Sunday. But what were the chances that anything of note was going to happen today, the last day? Slight. Diddy can just as well write it (now).

The first draft in longhand. By eight o'clock or so, he'll dare to use his Olivetti. Which is what Diddy did. Finishing only a few moments before it was time to go down for the limousine. Puts stamps on the envelope, leaves it at the reception desk to be mailed to New York.

Diddy finding it particularly hard to sit through Friday's meeting. Not only because it was the last; apparently set aside for redundant summings-up of what had already been decided, and for the usual tributes to leading participants and displays of company chauvinism. Also because Diddy has decided to be utterly silent. Having already written his report of the conference and formulated his recommendations, he had no intention of saying a word (now) that might provoke someone into making a new suggestion. Which might mean writing a postscript to his report. Nothing must happen at the plant. Everyone must be quite lifeless and speak only cardboard words, so that Diddy may escape intact to Hester.

He left the meeting as early as he could, arriving at the hospital at four-thirty. The operation was scheduled to begin at three o'clock, and to last for at least two hours. But as he approached the head nurse's office to inquire if the operation had started on time, he caught sight of the loathsome aunt hurrying down the hall toward him, her arms waving stiffly. Diddy knew instantly that things were already over, and had gone badly.

“Oh, Dalton dear! How glad I am to see you! Our poor darling is already back in her room, resting. She's still under the anaesthetic, and we won't be able to see her until this evening. Dr. Collins says there's nothing to worry about. She's a mighty healthy girl, he says. Only—” the woman faltered.

“I understand,” said Diddy grimly.

“Do you?”

“Of course I do! You're telling me the operation was unsuccessful.”

Mrs. Nayburn simply stared, opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. She was taking a handkerchief from her purse to blot the tears in her eyes.

“I know the doctors always were a little pessimistic. Still, I was so sure they'd find a way. And then, after only an hour, Dr. Collins gave up. Only an hour!”

“What did he say?” said Diddy roughly.

“That there's nothing medical science knows at this time that can help her, and that she never had more than a fifty-fifty chance. Oh, why did we ever bother? Raising our hopes like that! It isn't fair.”

Diddy refused to console the woman, who seemed far sorrier for herself than for Hester. Would save his sympathy for the person who deserved it.