The Road to Amber (6 page)

“Hi, Dave. That one in Number Seven. She’ll be checking out at 3:12 A.M.,” he said, seating himself beside me. “Too bad about the fellow in Number Sixteen.”

“Ah, he was fading fast. We knew it was just a matter of time.”

“You could have saved that one, Dave.”

“We tried everything we knew.”

He nodded. “Guess you’re going to have to learn a few more things, then.”

“If you’re teaching, I’ll take notes,” I said.

“Not yet, but soon,” he responded. He reached out and touched my cup of coffee, which had long ago gone cold. It began to steam again. He rose and faced the window. “About time,” he said, and a moment later there came the blaring of a horn from the highway below, followed by the sound of a collision. ”I’m needed,” he said. “Good night.” And he was gone.

He did not mention it again for a long while, and I almost thought he had forgotten. Then, one day the following spring—a sunny and deliciously balmy occasion—I went walking in the park. Suddenly, it seemed that I cast two shadows. Then one of them spoke to me:

“Lovely day, eh, Dave?”

I looked about. “Morrie, you’re very quiet when you come up on a person.”

“Indeed,” he said.

“You’re dressed awfully solemnly for such a fine, bright morning.”

“Working clothes,” he said.

“‘That’s why you’re carrying a long, sharp tool?”

“Right.”

We walked in silence for a time, passing through a field and into a grove of trees. Abruptly, he dropped to his knees at the foot of a small rise, extended his hands amid grasses, and spread them. Two small flowering plants lay between his extended forefingers and thumbs. No, what had seemed a pair of plants could now be seen as but one. What had misled me was that it bore both blue and yellow flowers. I regarded the leaves. I recalled a botany class I had once taken…

* * *

“Yes, study it,” he said.

“I can’t identify it,” I told him.

“I would be most surprised if you could. It is quite rare, and the only sure way to know it and to find it when you need it is by means of introduction and by worsd of summoning, which I shall teach you.”

“I see.”

“And in your case it will be necessary to place samples under cultivation in your apartment. For you must learn its usages more deeply than any other who knows of it. Roots, leaves, stalks, flowers: each part has a separate virtue, and they can be made to work in a wide variety of combinations.”

“I do not understand. I’ve spent all this time getting a first-rate medical education. Now you want me to become an herbalist?”

He laughed.

“No, of course not. You need your techniques as well as your credentials. I am not asking you to abandon the methods you have learned for helping people, but merely to add another for…special cases.”

“Involving that little flower?”

“Exactly.”

“What is it called?”

“Bleafage. You won’t find it in any herbal or botany text. Come here and let me introduce you and teach you the words. Then you will remove it and take it to your home, to cultivate and become totally familiar with.”

I ate, drank, and even slept with the bleafage. Morrie stopped by periodically and instructed me in its use. I learned to make tinctures, poultices, salves, plasters, pills, wines, oils, liniments, syrups, douches, enemas, electuaries, and fomentations of every part and combination of parts of the thing. I even learned how to smoke it. Finally, I began taking a little of it to work with me every now and then and tried it on a number of serious cases, always with remarkable results.

My next birthday, Morrie took me to a restaurant in town, and afterward an elevator in the parking garage seemed to keep descending, finally releasing us in his office.

“Neat trick, that,” I said.

I followed him along a bright, winding tunnel, his invisible servants moving about us, lighting fresh candles and removmg the remains of those which had expired. At one point, he stopped and removed a stump of a candle from a case, lit it from the guttering flame of one upon a ledge, and replaced the old one with the new one, just as the former went out.

“What did you just do, Morrie?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you replace one before.”

“I don’t do it often,” he answered. “But that woman you fed the bleafage to this afternoon—the one in 465—she just rallied.” He measured the candle stump between thumb and forefinger. “Six years, eight months, three days, seven hours, fourteen minutes, twenty-three seconds,” he observed. “That’s how much life you have bought her.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to study his face and failing, within the darting shadows.

“I’m not angry, if that’s what you’re looking for,” he said. “You must try the bleafage out if you’re to understand its power.”

“Tell me,” I said, “is it a power over life or a power over death that we are discussing?”

“That’s droll,” he said. “Is it one of those Zen things? I rather like it.”

“No, it was a serious question.”

“Well, mine is a power over life,” he said, “and vice versa. We’re sort of ‘yin-yang’ that way.”

“But you’re not restricted to your specialty, not when you have this bleafage business going for you, too.”

“David, I can’t use the herb. I can only teach you about it. I require a human master of bleafage to use it for me.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Not entirely, I’m certain. Go ahead and experiment. It may seem that the people you treat with it all come to you by chance, but this will not always be the case.”

I nodded and studied the flowers.

“You have a question?” he asked.

“Yes. That candle stub you used for purposes of extending Mrs. Emerson, of Room 465, for six years, plus—How did it come to be snuffed out at just that point, rather than having burned itself all the way down? It’s almost as if you’d—snuffed someone prematurely.”

“It is, isn’t it?” he said, grinning broadly. ”As I mentioned death
is
a power over life. Let’s have some coffee and our brandy now, shall we?”

* * *

I was more than a little puzzled by the way Morrie ran his business. But it was his show andd he’d always been kind to me. He’d given me a whole new wardrobe for a birthday present, and when I completed my residedency he gave me a new car. Dorel was still in fine fettle, but I needed a car once I began my practlce. I moved Dorel to the rear of the garage and rode him only on the weekends. But I found myself beside going out there more and more, evenings, sitting on the high stool beside the wordbench, popping the tab on a cold one and talking to my bike the way I had when I was a kid.

“Funny,” I said, “that
he
should give me a wonder drug for saving lives. On the other hand,” I reflected, “it’s obvious that he dld sort of push me into medicine. Could it be that he wants control over the life-
giving
half of the yin-yang.? Not just letting someone live, but assuring quality time by removmg causes of suffering?”

Dorel’s frame creaked as he leaned slightly m my duectlon. His headlight blinked on, blinked off.

“Is that an affirmative?” I asked.

The blinking was repeated.

“Okay, I’ll take that as ‘yes,”’ I said, “and two for ‘no.’”

One blink followed.

“It would make a kind of sense,” I said, “for two reasons: First, back when I was still at the hospital, I gave a sample of bleafage to Dr. Kaufman, a biochemist, and asked him whether he could determine its major constituents. He died in the lab the next day, and a fire destroyed whatever he was working on. Later, I ran into Morrie in the morgue, and he told me that synthesizing bleafage was a.no-no. He did not want it to become as common as asprin or antibiotlcs. That would make it seem he only wanted certain persons to benefit.

“Second,” I continued, “I believe this guess was confirmed by the instructions he gave me when I set up in private practice.”

Morrie told me that I would get calls from all over for consultations. He never said where they’d get my name or number or why they’d want me, but he was right. They did start coming in. He told me to take my bleafage with me whenever I went, and my special diagnostic tools, but that the entire diagnosis and treatment—or lack of it—would be governed solely by a matter of personal perception: I can see Morrie when other people can’t. He said that in those special cases where I’m called in to consult he would enter the room. If he were to stand at the head of the bed, I was to diagnose and treat, and the patient would live. But if he stood at the foot, I was to perform a few routine tests and pronounce it a hopeless case. “It almost seems as if there were an agenda, as if he had a special deal with some of my patients or a plan into which they fit.”

The light blinked once.

”Ah, you think so, too! Do you know what it is?”

It blinked twice, then a third time.

“Yes and no? You have some guesses, but you’re not sure.”

It blinked once.

“Of course, no matter what the reasons, I’m helping a lot of people who wouldn’t be helped othetwise.”

A single blink.

“Morrie once said that you’re working off a debt by being a bicycle.”

A single blink. “I didn’t understand what he meant then, and I still don’t. Is there a way you could tell me?”

Again, a single blink.

“Well, what is it?”

Abruptly, Dorel rolled across the garage, leaned against the wall, and grew still and lightless. I gathered that meant that I had to figure it out for myself. I tried, too, but was interrupted by a phone call. Emergency. Not at the hospital, but one of those special emergency cases.

“This is Dr. Puleo, Dan Puleo. We met at that ER seminar this spring.”

“I remember,” I said.

“Speaking of emergencies…”

“You got one?”

“There’s a limousine on the way to pick you up.”

“To take me where?”

“The governor’s mansion.”

“This involves Caisson himself?”

“Yes.”

“How come he’s not in the hospital?”

“He will be, but you’re near and I think you can beat the ambulance.”

“I think I can beat the limo, too,” I said, “if I take the bike trail through the park.”

I hung up, snatched my med kit, ran back to the garage.

“We’ve got to get to the governor’s mansion fast,” I said to Dorel as I wheeled hlm out and mounted.

What followed was a blur. I remember dismounting and making my way shakily to the door. Somehow I was inside then shaking hands with Puleo and being escorted into a bedroom as the doctor said something about a bad bout of flu recently, kidney stones last year, and no history of heart problems. No vital signs at the moment either.

I stared at the figure on the bed-Lou Caisson, a reform governor who was doing a great job on a number of fronts his predecessor had let slide, as well as maintaining the previous administration’s gains. All that, and having an attractive, talented daughte like Elizabeth, as well. I had not seen her since we’d broken up back in school and headed for different parts of teh country. As I moved forward to begin my examination, I felt a guilty pang. I had let Morrie break us up, with his insistence that I attend a West Coast med school after I’d been accepted at the one with the Eastern university she was to attend.

Speaking of Morrie…

A shadow slid forward and Morrie stood at the foot of the bed. He was shaking his head.

I checked for a carotid pulse. There was none. I ralsed an eyelid…

Suddenly, I was mad. As I heard the sirens in the distance, I was swept by a wave of anger over every decision in my life that Morrie had influenced. In an instant looking back, I saw just how manipulated I had been with all his little bribes and attentions. I opened my med kit and placed it on the bed.

“Are you going to treat him?” Puleo asked.

I leaned forward, slid my arms beneath Caisson, plcked hlm up. I backed away then, walked around the foot of the bed behind Morrie, and laid him back down again, this time with Morrie standing at hls head. I reached across and picked up my kit.

“I can’t take any responsibility—” Puleo began.

I filled the long syringe.

“If I treat him right now, he’ll live,” I said. “If I don’t, he’ll dle. Its as simple as that.”

I unbuttoned Caisson’s pajama top and opened It.

“David, don’t do it!” Morrie said. I did it—3 cc’s of tincture of bleafage, intracardially. I heard the ambulance pull up out front.

When I straightened, Morrie was glaring at me. He turned away then and walked out of the room without even bothenng to use the door. I heard Caisson gasp. When I checked his carotid again the pulse was present. A moment later he opened his eyes. I put my kit away and buttoned his shirt.

“You’ll be all right,” I said to him.

“What course of treatment is indicated now?” Puleo asked.

“Put him in the ICU and watch him for twenty-four hours. If he’s okay after that, you can do whatever you want with him.”

“What about continuing medication?”

“Negative,” I said. “Excuse me. I have to go now.”

When I turned away she was standing there.

“Hi, Betty,” I said.

“David,” she said, “is he going to be all right?”

“Yes.” I paused, then, “How have you been.”

“Oh, pretty well.”

I started toward the door, then stopped.

“Could we talk for a minute, in private?” I asked.

She led me to a little sitting room, where we sat.

“I wanted you to know I’ve been missing you for a long time,” I said, “and I’m sorry about the way I broke up with you. I suppose you’ve got a boyfriend now?”

“I take it that means you’re unencumbered yourself?”

“That’s right.”

”And if I am, too?”

“I’d like to go out with you again. Get to know you again. Is there any possibility? Might you be interested?”

“I could tell you that I’m going to have to think about it. But that wouldn’t be true. I have thought about it, and the answer is yes, I will go out with
you.
”

When I reached out and squeezed her hand, she returned the pressure. We sat and talked for the next two hours and made a date to go out the next night. Riding back through the park in the dark, I switched on Dorel’s headlight and was reminded of our earlier “conversation.”