Better in the Dark (23 page)

“No, not yet. Why?” Harry felt dread churn in him.

“We’re going to need them. Today. I tried to call him at his office, but the phone wasn’t working.”

“
His
phone?”

“No,
our
phone.” She steeled her pretty face, and her doll-like beauty changed to awesome resolution. “We have to get some other message service. We need information, Harry.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve got two smallpox for sure. We must get them into beds. And there’s at least three, and possibly more, of that new polio. More and more of that stuff is showing up. I wish we had the time and equipment to study it.”

“I wish we could do something to stop it,” Harry said, and frowned as the knocker sounded. “More of them. That’s all we need.”

Lisa patted his arm. “No rest for the wicked.”

“Good luck,” he said as he went from her to open the door. He swung it open and stared.

“He’s all yours, mister,” said the larger of the two teen-agers who supported something between them that Harry recognized, after one horrified moment, as Stan Kooznetz.

Harry tried to speak, words coming disjointedly. “But... I don’t... Why? ... What did...” He reached toward one of the teen-agers.

“Tristam said to drop him off here. He’s your problem now.”

Harry clung to the name. “Tristam?” he said, then staggered under the weight as the boys let Stan fall into his arms.

In a few moments the two teen-age boys were gone, and Harry found, to his surprise and horror, that Stan was breathing. “Stan?” he whispered. “Stan? Can you hear me?”

The flesh in his arms quivered, and Stan made a dreadful guttural sound as Harry tried to comfort him. “No, Stan, you don’t understand. This is Harry, Stan, Harry Smith. You’re back at the Van Dreyter house...”

Behind him, Harry heard the door open wider, and then a sharp gasp. “What is this, Harry?” Amanda asked faintly. “I saw you come to the door, but what is this?”

“It’s Stan,” he said as calmly as he could. “I’ll need some help getting him into the house. Call someone, will you, Amanda?”

“Nonsense,” she said very matter-of-fact, “I’m quite capable of giving you a hand. Tell me what you want me to do.” She was on the open porch now, and she was making a quick, dispassionate survey of the damage. “It will be best not to touch him more than we have to. What on earth do you think happened to him, Harry?”

Harry did not answer as he steadied Stan’s weight against him. He braced himself to take more of the weight and then eased the door open. “Now, Amanda. We can get him inside. We’ll need help after that.”

“Maria can give us a hand. And Dominic.”

“Fine. Just help me get him through the door, and then make sure there’s a place for him.” He hesitated as an idea struck him. “You remember on the second floor, that old-fashioned waterbed? See if it will still hold water, because Stan can use it. He’ll need to be kept motionless as much as possible. The way those burns are...”

Amanda expertly lifted Stan’s ankles over the threshold, sympathy showing in her lined face while he groaned.

“Yes, he’s been burned, but those marks on his legs aren’t burns, or the wounds on his hands,” she said critically. “What is it, Harry? Did they beat him? I haven’t seen wounds like that before, except once, in Ian Parkenson’s division. What did they do?”

Harry pulled Stan into the entry hall. “You’re right, Amanda. He hasn’t been beaten. He’s been tortured.”

“I don’t care what you think,” Carol Mendosa said as she turned on Harry. The others looked worried as she paced the length of the common room, showing in her tension the tension they all felt. “I say this has gone far enough and that we have to get out of here. Look out there in the lobby if you don’t believe me. We have over forty people waiting, and there isn’t a spare bed in this house. Where the hell are we going to put them? Well?”

“My colleagues will help,” Ernest Dagstern promised.

“That isn’t good enough. How long will it be before they’re beaten, or killed, or die from one of the diseases we’re treating? How long will it be before we all start dying?” She challenged the others with her eyes. “Natalie isn’t back from Westbank, is she?” Carol asked, and saw the faces change. “That makes a difference, doesn’t it, Harry?”

“It always makes a difference,” Harry said, and realized with a start that there was as much anguish in Carol’s face as he felt himself.

Amanda rose. “I have patients to look after. You must excuse me.” She went slowly to the door, then turned back. “You’re an excellent doctor, Carol. You must do what you think is right. I won’t stop you from leaving, if that is what you must do. But I won’t go with you.” She opened the door and went out.

Radick nodded. “I cannot leave either, Harry. If the rest vote to go, I will help as much as I can, but I must stay here. There’s still a little chance that something might prevent some of the worst diseases. And someone must look after Stan and Dave. We cannot move them and we cannot leave them.”

“Look,” Carol said, desperation changing the lines of her body from elegant curves to ridges. “You don’t seem to understand, none of you. We’re licked and we’ve got to admit it. If we stay here we’re going to die. We’re going to get sick or be killed. What happened to Dave wasn’t an accident, just a random beating of a chance victim. They wanted a doctor. They proved that when they got Stan.”

Jim Varnay shook his head. “Sorry, Carol. Maybe you’re right, but I can’t leave. Not yet, anyway. If there’s worse and we get too shorthanded, that’s another matter.”

She turned her angry eyes on him. “You’ve got to be the big hero, don’t you? You have to prove your bravery to your damn masculine pride.” She turned away from them. “Men! You fools!”

“I’m with them, too,” Lisa Skye reminded her gently. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Carol. But I have to fight. Otherwise I’ll lose my self-respect, you see.”

“Self-respect. What good is that when you’re dead? If we don’t get out of here, if we don’t find out who’s in charge and make them stop, then all this will have been in vain. Don’t you see that? If they ever try this again, we’ll have done it all for nothing.”

Dominic Hertzog nodded. “I’m with you, Carol. But the rest can’t see it yet. Give them a couple of more days of dead bodies and attacks on doctors, and they’ll come around to your point of view. Believe me.”

At that, Radick made a gesture. “We aren’t going to solve any of this right now, and there are patients waiting for us. We must get back to them.” He nodded to Harry as he rose. “I will talk to you later, Harry.”

When the others had left, Harry turned to Carol. “You know I’m worried about Natalie. There’s good reason to worry.”

Carol would not meet his eyes. “You could have stopped her going.”

Harry laughed. “Could I? If you think that, you’ve never had an argument with her. If she made up her mind to go to Westbank, neither you nor I could stop her. No matter what you or I said, she’d go.”

“What if...” The words stopped. “We’re losing ground here every day, Harry. We’re in quicksand and it’s sucking us down.”

“Yes.”

“Then, why don’t you do something?”

“I
am
doing something,” he said, and hoped with all his soul that this was true.

There were no lights in Stan’s room off the laundry, because Tristam’s gang had kept bright lights on his eyes for many hours, and now the sight of a lightbulb, even at a distance, made him scream. The old waterbed was still sound and had been filled so that he could lie without moving and be spared pain.

Kirsten Grant checked his dressings and applied new pads where they were necessary. “We need the rain unit in Intensive Care,” she said to Harry. “Changing dressings every hour isn’t enough. He’s got three infected wounds now, and I know that at least two of the other wounds are going to become infected. No matter how many times we change the pads.”

“Do the best you can,” Harry said slowly as he moved closer to Stan. “Has he said anything useful yet?”

“No.”

“It’s bad enough not having Dave and Stan working, but they’re both taking up more time than any of us can spare.” He saw the severity in Kirsten’s face and went on in a different tone, “I’m tired, Kirsten. I’ve been up for almost eighteen hours on less than five hours’ sleep. And I’m frustrated. It’s true we can’t take proper care of Stan and Dave because we don’t have any intensive care units here. We’re in no position to give either of them what they really need. But we do our best, which might not be good enough. Who’s taking care of Dave right now, do you know?”

“Howard. He’s given up part of his lab time.”

Harry frowned. “We can’t afford that.” He stepped away from Stan and motioned to Kirsten to come with him to the door. “Kirsten, if he says anything at all that’s the least bit sensible, will you be sure to write it down. Write it down if there’s the remotest chance it might make sense. I have to know who Tristam is and why he’s doing this. We can’t let anyone else get trapped by him.” Unbidden, the thought of Natalie rose in his mind, and he ruthlessly turned it away. “Do you have a notepad in there?”

“I think so. There’s supposed to be one. Radick said he’d leave one.”

“Well, make sure there is. And tell your relief to make sure to take notes. Sometime, Stan’s got to tell us what happened.” He attempted a smile. “I know it’s hard. But Ernest is bringing us help, and you know he’s reliable. If it weren’t for him we wouldn’t have our lab or the X-rays. If he knows other chiropractors, you know they’re good doctors.”

“Sure. But maybe they won’t want to come when he tells them what’s going on.”

“If they saw Eric Patman die, they’ll want to come,” Harry said grimly.

“Do you think he really did that to himself? Injected himself with botulin?” She rubbed her arms, as if cold. “Botulin. Someone else could have done it, and then said
he
did.”

Harry nodded. “I know. That’s what I thought at first, but now I’m not so sure. Eric was that kind, you know. He had to make the gesture, no matter what. I think that’s what he did. He made the gesture because he didn’t know anything else to do. He thought the public had to be made aware of what’s going on, I know that. He hated the lies. And you know what his ulcers had done to him. He wasn’t getting any better, Kirsten.”

“Oh, I know. But it still seems horrible.”

Rubbing his eyes, he said, “Yeah. What time is it?”

“Going on five. Alexes will have dinner ready soon. There’s an hour yet, if you have rounds to do. Alexes is doing patient trays first.”

“Right.” Harry had rounds to do—too many rounds, he thought. He had to look in on Mr. Catterndon, who was in the last stages of smallpox. Harry could not help him now, but perhaps he could take away some of the fear haunting the old man. And then there was that boy with what Harry was very much afraid was meningitis. He’d stop off at the lab and find out what the test results were before going to see him. Then, there was Miss Wiltshire, who had cancer and was in dreadful pain, and Mrs. Foss, who had pleurisy on top of pneumonia. Dinner seemed too remote, and Harry knew that at that moment he was given the chance to trade all his meals for the next week for one working respirator, he would take the respirator in a minute. He’d even welcome an ancient oxygen tent, if any still existed.

“Natalie didn’t come in yet, did she?” Kirsten asked reluctantly.

“Not yet. And the phone’s dead. I can’t call the hospital to find out if she ever got there, or when she left.”

Kirsten thought about this, then said, “Maybe Carol’s right, Harry.”

The common room was quiet, and even the light from the chandeliers was subdued, competing with the last of the sunset. Harry opened the door and was relieved to see that only Amanda was there, sitting in one of the high-backed chairs by the fireplace, dozing. A book lay open on her lap, lightly caught in her fingers. Harry almost spoke, but remembered the great fatigue Amanda had shown earlier in the day, and decided to let her rest.

A ship’s clock chimed eight-thirty, and Harry sighed. He knew that he would lose Mrs. Foss sometime in the night, and that the boy definitely had meningitis. And there had been no word from Natalie. He picked up a paper from the table and glanced at it perfunctorily. The news was old, but there had been no newssheets for the last couple of days. He saw that someone else had done the crossword puzzle, and felt an irrational annoyance that he had not gotten to do it.

He was halfway through an article on an effort to save the vineyards when there was a sudden noise outside. Glass shattered as a rock hurtled into the room and thudded onto the carpet by Amanda’s feet.

Harry was on his feet and across the room, looking out into the twilight before he realized that Amanda had not moved. One cursory glance told him that the attack would not be repeated, so he turned, with sudden unwillingness, back to Amanda. He knew, long before he actually touched her, that her valiant heart had stopped.

Radick wiped his eyes again. “She knew this would happen, Harry. She knew her limits, and she decided to exceed them.” His voice was thick with tears and grief. “Once we talked about when we were young. She said she graduated from high school just before Robert Kennedy was killed. She said she was sorry no one ever found out what really happened. She did special training in Geneva, in the early eighties. She liked to ski then. She told me how much she missed being able to ski.” He stopped abruptly.

“I know,” Harry said softly.

“Those faceless asses!” Radick slammed his hand down. “They are not worth her life, not any of them. What the I.I.A. is doing is criminal.” Again he stopped, and then, mastering himself, said quite calmly, “I’ll tell the others, Harry. But you know they will lose heart. Amanda is dear to all of us.”

Harry looked across the room to where Amanda’s body lay, covered with a long damask tablecloth. “I know.”

The streets were dark and littered with refuse. Natalie walked slowly, keeping to the shadows. She had discarded her lab coat for an ill-fitting jacket of rough cotton, and her slacks were worn enough to pass anywhere in the city. Few people were out, and those that were moved furtively. Store windows were empty, standing open like toothless gums, and the litter attested to the raids that had emptied the stores many days ago.