Better in the Dark (8 page)

During the next ninety minutes Harry watched the boy’s condition deteriorate. Breathing became shallow, his pulse light and erratic. As his circulation worsened, the tiny nails took on a bluish cast, the sunken face turned gray. Harry watched the monitor display, his face impassive, as the readout went inexorably on, a Greek chorus foretelling a necessary end.

At 11:37 Philip Howland was dead. He had died alone.

Harry sat in the darkest corner of the surgeon’s lounge, wondering why he had become a doctor. It felt ...
good
to save lives. And when he had specialized in pediatric surgery, lengthening his schooling by eight years, it had all seemed worthwhile. When had he lost his faith? He rubbed his forehand with clammy palms.

“Emile Harrison Smith?” asked a troubled voice.

Harry looked up, startled. It was rare to hear his full name, especially in the surgeon’s lounge. For a moment he was confused.

The woman in front of him was angular and slight, her too-square shoulders made, even more unattractive by her hospital whites. Her light-red hair might have been pretty, but it was caught at the back of her neck in a bun, emphasizing her jaw. Skimpy brows grew straight over pale-green eyes. She had been crying.

“Dr. Smith,” she repeated in a surprisingly appealing voice, “I am Natalie Lebbreau.”

Harry’s face stiffened as he recognized her. “I see.”

“I came as soon as I could.” She looked away from him. Her hands were jammed deep into her pockets. “Not soon enough, though. You see, no one told me where he was until around noon. I didn’t know...”

“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing if he believed her.

At first she said nothing, just stared toward the window where bright spring flowers nodded in the wind. She made a shudder like a sigh, then turned toward him. “Well, thank you. For what you did for Philip, I mean. I had hoped we’d be through with the two we have up on eleven, but ... they were stronger than Philip. They lasted longer.”

Harry studied her, wishing she would let go of her tense control, let herself mourn. Then he asked, “What two on eleven?”

“Sick children like Philip. They have diphtheria, too.”

“Diphtheria?” He frowned. It was true that the disease looked like diphtheria, that the symptoms were classic, but the computer had said “unknown virus,” and it could not mistake something so garden-variety common as diphtheria. Then he understood. She couldn’t handle the shock of losing her child yet. And she had been working with sick children herself. With growing compassion he began to sense the guilt she would be feeling now, the conflict she must have undergone while she worked with other children, learning that her son was dead.

“They’re all coming back again,” she said wearily as she watched Harry. “All the old diseases. They will be back and we will have to fight them all over again. It’s hard, so hard.”

Fight them all over again? “How do you mean that, Dr. Lebbreau?” He knew he sounded like an ass, but that didn’t matter. He did not want to think that this woman was giving way to the strain of her work.

“I’ve treated children with polio, with diphtheria, and there’s even been an admit with smallpox. I saw him.”

“Smallpox?”

Yes, yes, nodded the flowers in the window. Oh, yes, Natalie covered her eyes with trembling hands. “Oh, hell,” she whispered.

Harry reached out to comfort her, but as he touched her shoulder she pulled away. She was in worse shape than he had thought, but not as bad as he had feared she might be. “I’m truly sorry. You look so unhappy. I figured you might want to let it out.”

Her expression was one of complete disbelief. Then her eyes brightened and her face sank into sadness. “Oh. I see. You mean about Philip.” She shook her head. “No, I can’t, not now. If I started mourning for him now, I’d never stop.” She looked around nervously, as if frightened. “There are all those others to mourn for.”

So she was back to the others. Harry thought momentarily of notifying the Chief Resident on her floor, but then; perhaps because he did not trust the hospital administration, decided against it. “Let me call your husband,” he suggested gently, thinking she would want to be with him now.

“No!” She was even more startled than he at this vehemence. “I mean,” she went on in some confusion, “it isn’t necessary. No. I am sure he knows by now. He had to know. He knew Philip was sick, and he knew why. He knows about ... the diseases. He knows.”

Harry tried to remember Dr. Howland: he was the one in charge of the labs, a tall young man with that tawny handsomeness that does not age well. He could be very charming—at least, that was what the nurses said. But Harry remembered now that he had always thought Mark Howland’s eyes were colder than Peter Justin’s.

I’m doing this badly, I’m all wrong, Natalie thought, wishing she did not think of Harry Smith as the enemy, particularly now, when she wanted, needed an ally, someone who would understand, who would see the horror that had begun and fight to stop it. But she had no words for the open-faced blond man who looked at her now with critical reservation.

“Is there...” He paused as he chose his words. “Is there anyone I should notify? School? Relatives?”

She shook her head again. “No. No, thank you. I’ll do that. Just file the death report for the county.” She glanced anxiously at the door again. “I really have to get back. I’m supposed to be on rounds right now. They’ll wonder... I’ll get checked on if I’m gone too long.”

“Then, maybe I’ll see you later.” To his own ears the words were stilted, but Natalie Lebbreau gave him the semblance of a smile. “Oh, yes. Thank you, Dr. Smith.”

Just as she went out the door she said impulsively, “It was diphtheria. We’ll be seeing a lot of it soon.”

Harry walked slowly back to his on-duty station, his hazel eyes clouded in thought. Obviously Natalie Lebbreau was in shock; emotionally she wasn’t ready to handle her son’s death. Her husband was certainly no help to her. For that reason she was inventing things, making up plagues to take her mind off her own loss, to make her son’s death bearable.

“She can’t be right,” he said aloud.

For if she was, they were headed for disaster.

The seventeenth child did not appear for two days and Harry was beginning to hope that they had treated the last of the mysteriously sick children. He had almost decided that they had seen a random virus that was as short-lived as it was virulent.

The late-night city patrol changed that. They brought in two children, a boy and a girl found sleeping under a freeway interchange. They had been abandoned the day before and were cold, hungry, frightened ... and sick.

“What’s your name?” Harry asked the girl. She was the older of the two, about nine. She was sitting on her unit bed, scrawny arms dangling from the capacious hospital gown. Her dark eyes were defiant and her young face was set into an expressionless mask. She had locked herself away from him.

“Stephanie,” she said, as if it were a swear word. “Where have you taken Brian? I want to see him.”

“He’s in another unit, just like yours.”

The bright eyes showed scorn. “Why? Why’d you put him there?”

Harry suddenly felt the desolation Stephanie must know. She had been left along a roadside with her brother, her parents gone to another city, another state. This was what it meant to be abandoned. And now they were in the hands of strangers who had separated brother and sister. He reached over and thumbed a concealed toggle. “There, Stephanie. Now, do you see this knob?” He pointed to the large red knob that controlled the phone screen.

“Yeah?” she said with grave suspicion.

“Good. When I’m through checking you over, all you have to do is turn the knob to this position...” He moved aside so that she could see more clearly. “... and then you tell the lady on the screen who you want to talk to. You and Brian can have a long, long talk.”

“Why can’t I see him?”

“But you can. That’s what the screen is for.”

The girl gave a derisive snort. “I mean in person, mister. I don’t trust these things. You could be faking it.”

That bothered Harry. “I’m afraid you can’t see him in person for a while. I’m sorry, Stephanie, but we have to do it that way. It’s the rule.” He wished fervently that just this once it wasn’t the rule.

Stephanie lapsed back into sullen silence. It continued through the examination in spite of Harry’s attempts to get her talking again. The only sound she made was one of pain when Harry tried to touch the keloid welts on her back.

“I’m sorry you’re hurt,” Harry told her before he left the unit.

“There’s a message from the labs, Dr. Smith,” said the pert nurse’s assistant as Harry headed for the elevator.

“A message?” Harry wondered why his request for a symptom check on his patients was delayed, for that was all the message could mean.

“From Dr. Howland himself.” Calculating eyes watched his face as he read.

From the desk of Dr. Mark Howland
, said the memo.
Request for symptom check on transferred juvenile patients denied. Insufficient reason provided to this laboratory to make such a check. All further requests will be denied unless Dr. Smith can demonstrate the critical need for such comparative checks. Our lab has better things to do than test sore throats and runny noses. This statement reflects official hospital policy
.

“Damn!” Harry crumpled the memo into a ball and hurled it across the alcove into a wastebasket. “What an arrogant son of a bitch.” Even if the death of his son had upset him, Harry was sure that it should have made Mark Howland more receptive to such requests, not less.

“Is there any reply?” the assistant asked, enjoying Harry’s temper.

Harry realized that the assistant must have read the memo. He turned to her. “No answer. I know when I’m being told to shove it.”

“Well!” Jim Braemoore beamed happily at Harry. “We haven’t seen you down here in quite a while.” He gestured expansively at the cafeteria. Braemoore was chief on the thirteenth floor, where most of the patients were terminal cancer. He usually ate in the administration dining room on the seventeenth floor, not here in the first basement. “Hasn’t been the same down here since Chisholm died, of course. A fine chef, that man. Told me once that he had his personal spice racks back there in the kitchen. He grew herbs by the parking lot, too. Quite illegal, but the food was much better.”

Harry made an absent reply. He found he didn’t trust Braemoore’s effusive outpourings. It was too bad about Chisholm, yes. It was too bad about everybody. He studied his cup of coffee, recalling the time, over five years ago, when the artificial grounds replaced the real thing all over the hospital. Chisholm had made the stuff tolerable, so the outrage was limited. Now, no one seemed to notice that their coffee tasted like ink. He supposed that in a year or so the doctors who were complaining about the bad food served since Chisholm’s death would no longer be aware that their meals were pap. A year from now... He didn’t want to think about a year from now.

“You look glum,” observed Jim Braemoore. “Working too hard, I can tell. Just don’t take the job so much to heart. Ruin you if you do, Harry. Tell you what”—he sat down, easing his bulk into the uncomfortable chair beside Harry—“we’re mechanics. Much easier if you think about it that way. Otherwise, thinking about what doctors do, it’ll drive you nuts.”

“Mechanics?” he repeated numbly. Was that the secret? How had he missed it all these years?

“You and Natalie. Get all involved, go about in a lather, say foolish things, get into trouble with the administration. No good. Wear yourselves out that way. Can’t do it, Harry. Can’t do it at all.”

“Natalie? Lebbreau?”

Jim looked up, startled. “So you were listening, after all. Wouldn’t have thought so. Natalie Lebbreau is the one I meant. Pity about her marriage, but then, I suppose it was inevitable. Too bad about the child, too. Natalie Lebbreau’s a good girl, fine doctor. Intense, very intense. Plain girls often are, don’t you think?” He offered the sugar bowl to Harry. “Energy?”

It didn’t pour like real sugar, but what the hell. It was sweet and it probably did give energy. At least it disguised the taste of the coffee.

“Take me, now,” Jim Braemoore went on, his sausagelike hands spread over his broad chest. “Know my limits. Don’t take the office home with me, don’t bother much about the leftover CAs and other terminals. Better off letting them go. Why save $rsquo;em for more agony, that’s the question. No reason for it at all. Put money on the ones who can get well. Ought to be doing the same thing yourself, Harry.” He took a bite out of a droopy slice of pastry. The icing clung like snow to his mustache. “Can’t be a good doctor the way you’re going. Hear you’ve been handling the kids with bronchial trouble. No use fighting for ’em, Harry. Saw a few cases of it myself last week. Can’t save $rsquo;em. No earthly use trying. Set ’em up, make ’em comfortable and get on with the strong ones. Do some good that way. Otherwise...” He shrugged his massive shoulders.

“Triage?” Harry asked, thinking that he could not be hearing this, that it was all a mistake.

“That’s a thought severe on us, Harry,” Braemoore said, his words muffled by the pastry.

“What are you saying to me, Jim? Are you telling me it isn’t my job to save lives?”

“Didn’t say that—not at all,” Jim Braemoore protested. “Nothing of the sort. Did say that you shouldn’t bother about terminals. Let ’em be. Put your time on the ones that can survive. Don’t call it triage, though. Most people don’t like the sound of it. But those toddlers with that virus, now, they aren’t worth the effort.”

“Are you sure it is a virus?” Even as he asked, Harry knew that, for some reason he could not understand, he no longer believed that they were treating an unknown virus. Jim was being almost too much the jolly old GP. There was something wrong when a doctor of Jim Braemoore’s standing tried to throw a resident like Harry off the track. And that was what he was doing.

“Of course it’s an unknown virus. Couldn’t be anything else. Got to expect it in a city like this.”