F Paul Wilson - Sims 02 (13 page)

 
          
Ignoring him, they pulled
stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs from the cart and fanned out into the
room. The woman came over to where Patrick, Romy, and Stokes stood. She looked
to be about fifty, her long brown hair streaked with gray and tied back. She
nodded to Romy, then without a word she knelt beside Anj and the other sim and
began taking blood pressures.

 
          
“They’re shocky,” Stokes offered.

 
          
The woman looked up. Her face was
expressionless, all business, but her eyes looked infinitely sad.
“You a doc?”

 
          
“Yes, I’m an—”

 
          
“We’ve got saline in the cart. If you
want to help, you can start drips on these two.”

 
          
Stokes nodded and headed for the
cart. The stranger moved on.

 
          
Patrick turned to Romy. “Who are
these people?”

 
          
“Doctors.”

 
          
“From SimGen?”

 
          
She shook her head and bit her upper
lip. Romy’s usually steely composure had slipped. She looked rattled, something
Patrick never would have thought possible. Maybe it was the helplessness.
Patrick felt it too—a need to do something but not knowing what.

 
          
“Your people then,” he said.
“Your organization.
How’d they get here so fast?”

 
          
“They’ve been on standby.”

 
          
“You mean you expected this?”

 
          
“Expected someone
might try to hurt them.”
Her eyes were black cauldrons. “Excuse me. I
need a little air.”

 
          
He watched her breeze past Holmes
Carter, still standing by the door, sputtering like an over-choked engine. Tome
squatted against a far wall, his face buried in his arms.
And
all around Patrick, the strange, silent doctors, gliding from one sick sim to
another.

 
          
Feeling useless, he decided he could
use a breath of night air himself, but first he had something to say…

 
          
He stopped before Carter. “This
your
doing, Holmesy?”

 
          
Carter’s round face reddened, his
third chin wobbled.
“You son of a bitch!
If I was
going to poison anyone it would be you, not these dumb animals. They’re just
pawns in your game.”

 
          
The genuine outrage in Carter’s eyes
made Patrick regret his words. He backed off a bit. “Well…somebody poisoned
them.”

 
          
“If you’re looking to place blame,
Sullivan, find a mirror. This never would have happened if you hadn’t started
poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

 
          
Stung, Patrick turned away. The truth
of Carter’s words hurt and clung to him as he stepped out into the night.

 
          
Some sort of oversized commuter van
was parked on the grass outside. The doctors had driven it straight across the
club’s rear lawn to the barrack door; Patrick could trace the deep furrows
under the pitiless glow of the moon peering down from the crystal sky. Up on
the rise he spotted a number of Beacon Ridge members standing outside the
clubhouse, gawking at the scene. And Romy…where was Romy?

 
          
He walked around the barrack and
spotted her down the slope by the border privet hedge. But she wasn’t alone. A
tall dark figure stood beside her. After a moment, Romy turned and began
walking back up the slope; the tall man faded into the shadows of the hedge.

 
          
“Who was that?” he asked as she
approached.

 
          
“No one.”

 
          
“But—”

 
          
Her face had settled into grim lines.
“You didn’t see a thing. Now let’s go back inside and make ourselves useful.”

 
          
Patrick was about to comment on what
seemed to be a lot of hush-hush, undercover nonsense but bit it back. It wasn’t
nonsense at all. Not when poison was part of someone’s game plan.

 
          
Romy stopped dead in the doorway and
he ran into her back, knocking her forward. He saw immediately why she’d
stopped.

 
          
Chaos in the
barrack.
The formerly silent, seemingly imperturbable doctors were in
frenzied motion, pumping ventilation bags and thumping sim chests.

           
“I’ve got
another one crashing here!” one called out. He was on his knees next to an
unconscious sim. He looked up and saw Romy and Patrick. “You two want to help?”

 
          
Patrick tried to speak but could only
nod.

 
          
“Name it,” Romy said.

 
          
“Each of you
get
an Ambu bag from that cart and bring them over here.”

 
          
Romy was already moving. “What’s an
Am—?”

 
          
“Looks like a small football with a
face mask attached,” the doctor said.

 
          
Romy opened a deep drawer, removed
two of the devices, handed one to Patrick. On their way back, to his right, he
noticed Holmes Carter kneeling, using one of the bags to pump air into a sim’s
lungs.

 
          
Carter…?

 
          
To their left, the woman doc waved
and called out. “Romy! Over here! Quick!”

 
          
Romy peeled off and Patrick kept on
course toward the first doc. He stuttered to a stop when he saw the patient.

 
          
Anj.

 
          
She lay supine on the floor, limp as
a rag doll with half its stuffing gone; the front of her bib overalls had been
pulled down and her T-shirt slit open, exposing her budding, pink-nippled,
lightly furred breasts.

 
          
“Don’t just stand there!” the doctor
said. He was sweaty, flushed, and looked too young to be a doctor. He had his
hands between Anj’s breasts and was pumping on her chest. “Bag her!”

 
          
Patrick’s frozen brain tried to make
sense of the words as they filtered through air thick as cotton.

 
          
“Bag…?” Was she dead?

 
          
“Give me that!” The doctor reached
across Anj and snatched the Ambu bag from Patrick’s numb fingers. He fitted the
mask over Anj’s mouth and nose and squeezed the bag. “There! Do that once for
every five times I pump.”

 
          
Patrick dropped to his knees and
managed to get his hands to work, squeezing the bag every time the doctor
shouted, “Now!” and wishing someone would cover her. Every so often the doctor
would stop pumping and press his stethoscope to Anj’s chest.

 
          
“Shit!” he said after the third time.
“Nothing!
Keep bagging.” He pawed through what looked
like an orange plastic tool box, muttering, “No monitor, no defibrillator, how
am I supposed to…here!”

 
          
He pulled out a small syringe capped
with a three- or four-inch needle. He popped the top, expelled air and a little
fluid, then swabbed Anj’s chest with alcohol.

 
          
Patrick blinked. “You’re not going to
stick that into—”

 
          
That was exactly what he did: right
between a pair of ribs to the left of her breast bone; he drew back on the
plunger until a gush of dark red swirled into the barrel, then emptied the
syringe.

 
          
The doctor resumed pumping, crying,
“
One-two-three-four-five-bag!”

 
          
They kept up the routine for another
minute or so,
then
the doctor listened to Anj’s chest
again.

 
          
“Nothing.”
He pulled a penlight from the plastic box and flashed it into her eyes. “Fixed
and dilated.” He leaned back and wiped his dripping face on his sleeve. “She’s
gone.”

 
          
“No,” Patrick said.

 
          
But Anj’s glazed, staring eyes said
it all. Still he resumed squeezing the bag, frantically, spasmodically.

 
          
“No use,” the doctor said.

 
          
“Try, damn it!” Patrick shouted.
“She’s too young! She’s too…” He ran out of words.

 
          
“Her brain’s been deprived of oxygen
too long. She’s not coming back.”

 
          
Patrick dropped the bag and leaned
over her. An aching pressure built in his chest. He felt his eyes fill, the
tears slip over the lids and drop on Anj’s chest.

 
          
A hand closed gently on his shoulder
and he heard the young doctor say, “I know how you feel.”

 
          
Patrick shrugged off his hand. “No,
you don’t.”

 
          
“I do, believe me. We couldn’t save
her, but we’ve got other sick sims here and maybe we can save some
ofthem .
Let’s get to work.”

 
          
“All right,” Patrick said, unable to
buck the doctor’s logic. “Just give me a second.”

 
          
As the doctor moved off, Patrick
pulled the edges of Anj’s torn T-shirt together. They didn’t quite meet so he
pulled up the bib front of her overalls. Then he pushed her eyelids closed and
stared at her.

 
          
How could he feel such a sense of
loss for something that wasn’t even human? This wasn’t like puddling up at the
end of Old
Yeller .
This was
real .

 
          
He pulled off his suit coat and
draped it over the upper half of her body. He hovered by her side a moment
longer; then, feeling like a terminally arthritic hundred-year-old man, he
pushed himself to his feet and moved on.

 
          
The next half hour became a
staggering blur, moving from one prostrate form to another, losing sim after
sim, and pressing on, until…finally…it was over.

 
          
Spent, Patrick leaned against a wall,
counting. He felt as if he’d been dragged behind a truck over miles of bad
road. He’d cried tonight. When was the last time he’d cried? Romy sagged
against him, sobbing. He counted twice, three times, but the number kept coming
up the same: nineteen still, sheet-covered forms strewn about the floor.

 
          
The woman doctor they’d met earlier
drifted by; he flagged her down.

 
          
“How many did you save?” he said.

 
          
She brushed a damp ringlet away from
her flushed face.
“Six—just barely.
We’ve moved them
into the sleep area. They’ll make it, but it’ll be weeks before they’re back to
normal. Counting the older sim who didn’t eat, that leaves seven survivors.”

 
          
“The bastards!”
Romy gritted through her teeth.
“The lousy fucking bastards!”
She pushed away from him and began pounding the wall with her fist, repeating,
“Bastards!” over and over through her clenched teeth.

 
          
She dented the plasterboard, punched
through, then started on another spot.

 
          
Patrick grabbed her wrist. “Romy! You’re
going to hurt yourself!”

 
          
She turned on him with blazing eyes;
she seemed like another person and for an instant he thought she was going to
take a swing at him. Then she wrenched her arm free and stalked toward the
door.

 
          
Though physically and emotionally
drained, Patrick forced himself to start after her. But when he spotted Tome
crouched in a corner, his head cradled in his arms, he changed course and
squatted next to him.

 
          
“I’m sorry, Tome,” he said, feeling
the words catch in his throat. “I’m so sorry.”

 
          
Tome looked up at him with reddened
eyes; tears streaked his cheeks. “Sim family
gone,
Mist Sulliman.
All gone.”

 
          
“Not all, Tome. Deek
survived,
so did some others.”