Better in the Dark (10 page)

“Not now. I’m on call at two-thirty.”

She closed her eyes in thought. “Can you leave the hospital for a few minutes? Get away from here so we can talk?”

“Yes,” he said uncertainly. “I suppose I can, sure.”

“Good. I don’t think we should leave together. They’d be sure to notice that.” She stared down at her untouched coffee. “That was kind,” she said.

The park across from the hospital was darkly secluded and unsafe after dark. The City Patrol ignored it, leaving it to the juvenile gangs and other violent persons who waited there for the unwary or desperate. Harry waited at the entrance, sensing eyes on him, and wishing that Natalie would hurry.

When she joined him a few moments later, Natalie surprised Harry by walking into the park, veering off to the path which bordered the neat artificial lake. She moved quickly until they were out of sight of the hospital and the traffic on the arterial. The night was cool for spring, and the flowers covered the grimy city air with a sweetness that was as elusive as it was delicious.

“I’ve been thinking,” Harry began as they came to the lake.

“You mean, now you aren’t sure about the girl, and you think maybe I am a little crackers, is that it? Because I wouldn’t talk to you where Justin or Braemoore or Mark might hear about it. Maybe you’re right.” She hurried toward a bench. “We can talk here, if you still want to.”

“You’re really frightened, aren’t you?”

For a moment Natalie thought she would scream. A stricken look crossed her face before she answered. “Yes, oh, yes. This is going to be bad.” She sat down, ducked her head as she fumbled with a scarf.

“How bad?” Harry asked, reserving judgment.

“What they’d done... God, what they’d done.” She looked at him. “You won’t believe me, but I’ll tell you anyway. I have to tell someone.”

“Go ahead.”

“... I ran some tests down in Mark’s lab before Philip ... got sick. I was testing out my patients. I thought they had the old diseases, not this unknown virus the computers were finding. It was like a textbook, the case I saw. It was classic. I thought it might be vaccine failure, so I tested the vaccines later. It happens, you know. They do fail sometimes.” She stared out at the lake. “The vaccines ... about one third of them are useless. They’ve been destroyed in random batches. One third of all vaccines. For everything—diphtheria, tetanus, cancer, all of them.” She pushed a stray hair off her brow. “The program started about five years ago, from what I’ve learned. We’re a test area. God knows if there are others. If it works here, they’ll try it elsewhere. It’s a clandestine government thing. Mark’s...” She swallowed. “Mark is in charge of it.”

“In charge of this? How
can
he be?” Harry wondered if this were her bitterness speaking. Her husband had betrayed her, and she thought of him as betraying everyone. Harry clung to the hope that this was so.

“He thinks it’s a great idea. Fair—there’s no way to know who gets what, and only one third of the vaccines are nonviable. There’s a two-thirds chance that we’re fully protected.” The sarcasm in her voice gave way to despair. “I can’t do anything. Not anything. Christ!”

They were silent for several minutes. “How many have you treated so far?” Harry asked.

“Children? Thirty-seven. Not so many since they transferred my paramedic to County General. They’re trying to keep me off the cases now.” Gil hadn’t been gone long, but she found herself thinking of him in the distant past, like her marriage.

“I’ve had seventeen cases in three weeks.” It was a confession.

In a faraway voice she said, “I wish I knew how many cases there are now. Really.”

“Justin would know.”

“Justin would lie.”

“What if we tell Parkenson? Or Wexford?”

“They know all about it.”

Again silence. Even the lake was still.

“Ian told me it’s better than battered children, that this is the natural way. It’s not as if we’re really killing anyone. He said we’re being crowded out of existence. And this is
fair
. They all think it’s fair.”

Harry said nothing as he studied his shoes.

Natalie went on after a moment. “I watched Ian take care of some kids about a month ago. One lost a leg and the other was too far gone—both tibias splintered, a shoulder dislocated. Deep shock. The parents might be fined, I hear. If Ian will testify.”

“Then you agree with them?” Harry was incredulous. If she felt this way, why had she told him about the vaccines. What did she want of him.

“I don’t agree with it. I think it’s immoral, unethical...” She stopped, then went on again. “I dread what it’s going to do to us. But sometimes I wonder, Harry ... what are we saving them for?”

P
ETER
J
USTIN WAS TRIMMING
his nails. Anyone who knew him would recognize this as nervousness. He brushed the clippings into the wastechute with a fussy gesture. When he looked up again, a stocky blond man was leaning over his desk.

“I want some information,” Harry said. “I want it now and I want it to be correct.”

“What about?” Justin asked, playing for time and advantage. He. was aware of Harry’s anger, for it filled the room like a smell. “Why are you here, Harry?”

“You know why I’m here,” he exploded.

Justin made a second attempt at urbanity. “If it’s about Dr. Lebbreau ... or the children we’ve transferred...”

“Can it! How many kids have been through this hospital and what did they die of? The real figures, Justin. And no more unknown virus crap.”

Justin sighed and wiped imaginary dust off his desk. “I don’t need the printout. In the last two months, three hundred thirty-two with diphtheria, fifty-six with smallpox, twenty-nine with polio, three with tetanus, eighteen with TB, one hundred sixty-nine with meningitis, twenty-two with leukemia. There are a few others; perhaps a dozen with measles. But you must remember we have almost three thousand beds here, Harry. This amount isn’t significant ...”

“In total or fatalities?” Harry demanded, his brows drawn down over his eyes.

“Fatalities. The figures for adults aren’t that high—I think the total is somewhere around four hundred in all.” He looked pleadingly at Harry. “Something had to be done. You know what conditions are. There was no other way, Harry.”

“Sweet Jesus, that’s over a thousand. This hospital alone, over one thousand people dead.”

“County General is running slightly higher. Inner City is lower on diphtheria. But they’re higher on violent crimes, so it’s about the same.”

“They’re higher on abuse, too,” Harry snapped. He had done his internship there and had seen the way the young, the old and the weak were treated. His first patient had been a five-year-old with the burn from a steam iron on his back. There had been others after that, women assaulted, old men beaten, children abused. He came to hate the cruel invention of the people there.

Peter Justin looked away uneasily. “It isn’t going well. There are too many. It’s too early for so many. The projected curves aren’t this steep. It’s not what we expected. I think the next time they try this, they’d better cut down the percentage to one fourth rather than a third.” He adjusted his handsome face carefully. “But we mustn’t be too concerned.”

“Why?” Harry demanded, horrified. “It’s not according to the projected curves? Panic isn’t allowed for? How shocking!” He gave a sardonic bark that was intended as a laugh. Justin shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “All figured out in advance, is it, Peter? Like the Tolerable Losses tables at the Pentagon? So many hundred thousand per million population?” He rounded on Justin, his clenched hands shaking. “I hope you bloody fools get your asses burned for this.”

Justin favored him with the travesty of a smile. “Of course we anticipated certain variables. The figures are high, yes, but it
is
like a war, don’t you see? Only an irresponsible leader would not allow for certain losses. Battles are won that way, and we are fighting a terrible battle. We must do something or the weight of people will pull us all down.”

“You don’t know what you’ve started, do you? You haven’t been down on the floors in a long time, Peter. You don’t know what it’s like down there. Howland doesn’t know, either. He’s too busy with his microscopes and screwing to know. I just hope you live long enough to see what your damn charts have done!” He slammed out the door.

He was heading for the central admissions desk on the first floor.

The pale-haired woman at the desk balked at his order. “But Doctor, I can’t give out that information without authorization from one of the administrators. Those are regulations. You know what that means.”

“The regulations have just been changed.” He leaned over her partition. “I want the admit records for the last twenty-four hours. Especially pediatrics. Young kids with mutant or unknown virus diseases and those suffering from exposure. And I want this information now.”

“Doctor Smith,” she said reasonably, “you haven’t got the required signatures of authorization...”

“This is the last time I repeat.” His smile was singularly unpleasant. “Then I am coming into your office. I will take your records, every one. Then I will go down to the second basement to the storage computer with a large magnet in my case. May I have those records, please?”

The woman was visibly frightened as she went into her office. When she came back with the printout sheets she shoved them at Harry. “Here. Take them.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll lose my job if Dr. Justin ever finds out,” she accused him.

Harry gave her a fierce wink. “No way, lady. You’re going to be here a long time. Maybe till you die.”

With this assurance he went down the hall.

“Dr. Lebbreau, paging Dr. Lebbreau. Report to floor six, please. Dr. Lebbreau to floor six.”

Natalie turned as she heard the call. Her patient smiled. “A call for you, Nat.” She was into middle age, divorced, and had been in the hospital since the holidays, recovering from three deep knife wounds, the result of an attack by a teen-age gang. She knew that the prognosis was good and that this was largely due to Natalie’s persistent determination to save her. Her paralysis would be partial instead of total, as first feared.

The page was repeated.

“It might be important. You’d better go, Nat,” Mrs. Dwyer said kindly.

“Yes,” she said reluctantly, fearing that Justin had found out she had talked to Harry Smith. “I’d better go. If you don’t mind, I’ll send Carol Mendosa in to finish up. She’s on the floor now and you’ve had her before.”

“No rush, Nat. I’ll be here yet awhile.”

By the time she stepped from the elevator on floor six, Natalie had developed a protective scowl. She tried to build her defenses, in case she had to deal with Justin or Wexford or even Mark. There was too much at stake—she knew she had to remain calm.

“Good. I’m glad you were fast.” It was Harry who stepped up to her. He thought she looked better, stronger, not as frightened as before.

Already some of the worry had faded from her face. This was not the confrontation she had anticipated. When she spoke there was vibrancy in her words. “What is it? What do we have to do? How much time do we have?”