Better in the Dark (2 page)

Gil nodded, not bothering to pursue the subject. Instead, he asked Natalie if he should buzz for the floor nurse.

“No reason not to,” she said reluctantly. She hated giving up now, when she was getting close to the truth, when her hunches were so strong.

“And we can go on our break. We’re over an hour late for it, as it is.”

She gave a last look to the display of vital signs, her eyes still troubled. “I wonder if I should call Mark? He could push the lab results through now if they aren’t ready yet.”

Gil wrinkled a smile onto his face. “Come on, Mama. Call the good nurses and let them do their job. They’ll put him in a nice fresh bed and look after him. I promise you. And let’s you and me get some coffee. Come on, Doctor, be sensible.”

Reluctantly she allowed herself to be pulled away. She knew that if she were more adamant, Gil would become suspicious and would try to find out what bothered her about the boy. She could not bring herself to tell him, not until she was sure.

“Coming?”

“I’m coming.” She linked arms with Gil as he pressed the buzzer for the floor nurse. “Coffee and something sweet. One of those sticky goodies Chisholm makes. Or his cheesecake.”

Gil grinned because Natalie expected him to grin. As he did he considered her, noticing that she was still flustered. She was upset by that boy; he could sense it from her stance and her choice of words. Her pale-green eyes had a veiled look, which always meant worry. Yet it might have been her son’s illness, as she said, not this child’s. And it might be Mark. It didn’t have to be the boy on the bed.

As they waited for the nurse to arrive, Natalie turned back to the child. “Do we have a name on him yet?” she asked at last.

“We’ll find out as soon as his information is processed. They’ll get it from the medical records banks.”

“No ID badge?”

“Nary a one. The parents take the badges away when they drop the kids, you know. They seem to think we can’t trace them if the kids don’t have their IDs. Poor kids. Inner City is starting up another halfway house for them. They’ve got over fifty on the waiting lists now. It’s pretty bad.”

Natalie almost spoke, then changed her mind.

“The battered ones are worse at County General, though. At least we don’t have much of that to cope with here.”

“Gil,” said Natalie in another tone, “can we call the parents when we get back from break? I want to talk to them.”

“That’s City Patrol’s job. Let them do it. Judging by the shape he’s in, the parents aren’t going to like that call. Let City Patrol handle it. They’re used to it.”

“Um.”

Gil knew that Natalie was shutting him out. He shrugged and wished he could have found out what troubled her. He had to work with her, she ought to talk to him.

When the nurse arrived they exchanged a few words and politely thanked one another. It was an automatic ritual, the passing on of the medical flame, or the second stage of a relay race. The nurse gave Natalie a fixed, white smile as she took the boy over.

Then Gil hurried Natalie to the elevator and they dropped thirteen floors to the Staff Cafeteria, located near the boiler room in the second basement.

In the clean, unimaginative room there was none of the hospital smell which permeated the rest of the building. This room was a delicious counterpoint of coffee, meat and pastry with a subtle, pervasive scent of herbs.

Gil insisted on buying and brought coffee to the table in large white mugs.

Even by Natalie’s tolerant standards the coffee was bitter. She sipped slowly, puckering her mouth.

“Yours as bad as mine?”

“I hope not,” she said. “This is horrible. What’s the matter with Chisholm? Is he off his feed?” She wrinkled her nose in distaste and turned her eyes to a faded poster proclaiming the tourist glories of Greece which some administrator had ordered years ago in a vain attempt to make the basement cafeteria look less like what it was.

Gil explained between gulps that Chisholm had applied for a leave of absence the week before.

“Where did he go?” The thought of Chisholm anywhere but the hospital kitchen was ludicrous. “And when is he coming back?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. He just sort of left and hasn’t been back.” He paused, drinking the last of the dreadful coffee. “Odd, you know? This isn’t like Chisholm at all.”

“Well, whatever he’s doing, I hope he finishes it in a hurry and gets back here. Soon.” She punctuated this with a meaningful look at her mug. “Do you think the administration kidnapped him for their penthouse?” As always, the thought of the elegant dining room at the top of the hospital rankled her, because she was not allowed to use it.

“I wouldn’t put it past them.” Gil took this as an opportunity to ask, “Speaking of absences, how was yours? You haven’t told me anything about it.”

Natalie frowned. What did she have to say? She had waited in line after trying to find someone at the Housing Authority who could find a bigger apartment for the three of them. They felt stifled in their converted cellar. It was bad for Philip, it was bad for Mark, it was bad for her, living in those few cramped, low-ceilinged rooms. But there had been nothing available, not even for class-two priority listings. They were still in their cellar and likely to stay there.

“Oh,” she said, “I did the usual things. Lazed about the place. Played mom with Philip. Went window shopping. Spent hours in hot baths. Vacation things. You know the routine: lovely, lovely sloth.”

Gil realized that she was inventing most of it, but he went along with her. “I’m envious. I bet you never once thought of the rest of us, slaving away back here on floor eleven.”

In point of fact she had not thought much about them, but she knew what was expected of her. “Every now and then you crossed my mind. When I was being particularly lazy.” She didn’t mind playing Gil’s game. She was still depressed about the ten days she had wasted, ten days when she could have had some rest or gone out of town. Well, she told herself, it was too late to think about it now. Maybe next year.

“It’s time to get back to the floor. Round two coming up.” Gil rose, pushing his mug into the reclaim chute.

“Round two. It
is
a fight up there, isn’t it?” She had always thought of it as a fight, and took strength when others thought of it that way, too.

“To the death,” he said without smiling.

“Maybe the report will be in on that boy,” Natalie said.

“You could ask Mark to hurry it for you,” Gil suggested as he held the door for her.

They walked to the elevators in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes.

“Here’s the report oh the boy, Dr. Lebbreau.” As they stepped from the elevator the night nurse handed the printout to Natalie.

She took it saying, “Thanks, Parker,” before she turned to Gil. “Well, here it is. Let’s have a look.”

Age
: it read,
eight years, seven months. Height: one point two nine meters. Weight: twenty-one point three kilograms. Hair: red. Eyes: hazel. Distinguishing marks: mole on lower thigh above left knee, inner side, frontal. Strawberry birthmark on right hip. Medical history: standard treatment at birth (Inner City Hospital, 8-29-82) with pediatric follow-up at six-month intervals. Examination for fungus infection 11-16-83
... This was accompanied by a reference sheet detailing each examination. All prescriptions, injections, immunizations, therapies and treatments were in one column, and a record of their results were opposite. It was an ordinary record; it might have belonged to any one of a thousand kids in the area. How had this child managed to get polio?

At the top of the form it read:
Name: Alan Mathew Reimer
.

“What are you looking for, Nat?”

She shook her head, refusing to be pinned down. The chart was too general. “Oh, nothing.” With a record like that, she had to be wrong—the boy could not have polio. He had been vaccinated for it, just like everyone else. Unless he had resisted the vaccination or the virus had mutated drastically. If it were mutation, there would be more than one case. She took a deep breath of the antiseptic air and played for time. Just the thought of a mutated disease scared hell out of her.

“Trouble?” Gil asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to have Mark check it out.” If there were some new development with the virus she could easily have the right tests run on it. Mark would want to know about such a possibility, if the disease were changing. And if it were a simple case of resistance, a blood test would reveal that.

“Check
what
with Mark?” Gil was growing im-patient. His face was set and the sound of his voice had a cutting edge.

“I’m thinking about mutation.” She said it at last. “All right, I know it’s a long shot, but if that’s what we have, we’re in big trouble. We’ll all be under siege again, the way we were before we had vaccines. That’s why I want this boy checked. If he’s resistant, there’s no harm done, but if he isn’t, and he’s infected ... with anything ... we’ll have to get to work on him right away. The city’ll be quarantined...” She turned to Gil. “Have a complete workup on him.”

“But what for? What do you think he’s got?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a mutation...”

“A mutation of what? Come on, Nat.” His voice was as close to anger as it ever was with her. He thought she was a foolish woman, but she didn’t deserve what her husband was doing to her. He held his anger back.

“That’s the truth. I know what I think he’s got, but there’s no way he can have that, so it must be something else. I want to know what that something is.” There. Perhaps now he’d let her alone.

“If you think it’s really that important, I’ll have a series run for everything from septicemia to dandruff. Tally-ho the biological bloodhounds.” He struck a pose, chuckling at himself.

“And Gil, if there are any more like this one, will you let me know about them?”

“You’ve got your hands full already. You know what administration says to extra case loads.”

She said coolly, “I know what administration and our union say about extra hours, too. But we always seem to be doing them, don’t we? You’re almost eight hours overdue for your required rest, and I’m running an hour late myself. So what’s one more case in the load?” She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her smock.

He watched the tense look around her eyes, the paleness under her freckles, the tightness of her thin, square shoulders. There was something very beguiling about the way she stood now, defensive, unhappy.

“Gil ... please.”

“You want to know if we get another kid like this one. I’ll be in the ambulance tomorrow and Friday. If I see anything there, I’ll let you know about it. That’s all I can promise.”

She thanked him three times before she began her ward checks for the night.

At midnight she was off, and with a deep sense of relief she called at the labs hoping that Mark might have waited for her. But he had left the hospital sometime earlier. He hadn’t left a message, so she assumed he was at home by now, and very probably asleep.

She wandered out to the overhead station and waited in the heavy night wind for a train to stop. Her thoughts were still troubled, and she hardly noticed the discomfort of the overcrowded car as she hung onto the commuter belt for her twenty-minute ride to her housing complex.

At least the light was on over the door. She sighed and let herself in hoping that Mark might still be awake.

Philip’s junior bed was in the far corner of the tiny front room that was considered a living room by the Housing Authority. In it Philip lay sleeping quietly, one arm pummeled into his pillow. Just seeing him pleased her. With a smile she went to their walk-in kitchen.

There was some milk left in the coldbox, some tired squash and a bit of meat. She,wasn’t really hungry enough to eat any of it. She gazed abstractedly into the coldbox, wishing they had a real refrigerator, then stared at the ceiling before abandoning the kitchen for the bedroom.

The walls were a depressing shade of yellow-green, but Natalie did not notice this any more. She squeezed between the dresser and the bed as she pulled off her clothes, hanging them carefully on the two hangers clipped to her side of the dresser. Shivering, she slipped into the closet-sized bathroom, taking a quick, tepid shower before climbing into bed.

As she lay uncertain in the dark, waiting for the sleep she craved to come, Mark rolled toward her, murmuring. She went into his arms gratefully, savoring the sharp taste of his sweat as they came together.

By the time she woke he was dressed and ready to leave for the lab. His great tawny head looked out of place above the white collar of his lab coat. He was too leonine to be trapped in civilized clothes.

“Morning,” she said to him from the bed, marveling again that this beautiful man had chosen her when he might have had almost any woman she knew. She still remembered the shocked look on Angela Darcy’s face when they announced their engagement five years ago. Angela had said some unkind things at the time, but the years had proved her wrong. Mark was still with her; Natalie took strength from that. And if she was not always happy, she knew she could count on her marriage.

“Night. You should get some more sleep before you go back on duty.”

She shook her head and changed the subject. “Is Philip up yet?”

“No. Go back to sleep. He won’t be awake for another hour.”

She stretched and studied him in the dim light. She loved his grace, the sinewy way he had of walking, taut like a cat. He was the product of another place, another time. Certainly he did not belong here among the cramped boxes bursting with pallid people. He was wild. He was feral.

“What are you looking at?” he demanded.

“You. Just you.”

He dismissed this silliness with a shake of his head as he finished shaving. Then, as he was about to leave, he said, “There was a request for a re-check on a patient from your floor. Do you know anything about it?”

“Yes. That’s
my
request. I wanted the boy checked out for possible vaccine failure.” She studied the way the light fell across his shoulders, making a halo of his short, curly hair.