Soul Harvest: The World Takes Sides (24 page)

“Right! How’s he doing anyway?”

“Wonderfully. We’re very proud of him. Now, Doctor—”

Buck interrupted. “I’ll bet you are. Listen,” he said, pulling Ken Ritz’s pill bottles from his pocket, “I wonder if you could advise me. ...”

“I’ll certainly try.”

“Thank you, Doctor Lloyd.” He held up the tranquilizer bottle. “I prescribed this to a patient with a severe head wound, and he inadvertently exceeded the dosage. What’s the best antidote?”

Dr. Lloyd studied the bottle. “It’s not that serious. He’ll be very sleepy for a few hours, but it’ll wear off. Head trauma, you say?”

“Yes, that’s why I’d rather he not sleep.”

“Of course. You’ll most safely counteract this with an injection of Benzedrine.”

“Not being on staff here,” Buck said, “I can’t get anything from the pharmacy.”

Dr. Lloyd scribbled him a prescription. “If you’ll excuse me, Doctor—?”

“Cameron,” Buck said before thinking.

“Of course, Dr. Cameron. Great to see you again.”

“You too, Dr. Lloyd, and thanks.”

Buck accepted the marker from the chagrined Craig and changed the strips on the door from B and A to A and B. “I’ll be back soon, Craig,” he said, slapping the marker into the guard’s palm.

Buck hurried off, pretending to know where he was going but scanning directories and following signs as he went. Dr. Lloyd’s prescription was like gold at the pharmacy, and he was soon on his way back to the lobby for Ken Ritz. On the way he appropriated a wheelchair.

He found Ken leaning forward, elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, snoring.

Grateful for his training taking his turn giving his mother insulin injections, Buck deftly opened the package, raised Ken’s sleeve without toppling him, swabbed the area, and pulled the cap off the hypodermic needle with his teeth.

As he drove the point into Ken’s biceps, the cap popped from his mouth and rattled to the floor. Someone muttered, “Shouldn’t he be wearing gloves?”

Buck found the cap, replaced it, and put everything in his pocket. Facing Ken, he thrust his wrists into the big man’s armpits and pulled him from the chair.

He turned him 45 degrees and lowered him into the wheelchair, having forgotten to set the brake. When Ken hit the chair, it began rolling backwards, and Buck had no leverage to remove his hands. Straddling Ritz’s long legs, his face in Ken’s chest, Buck stumbled across the waiting room as onlookers dived out of the way. As the chair picked up speed, Buck’s only option was to drag his feet. He wound up sprawled across the lanky pilot, who roused briefly and called out, “Charlie Bravo Alpha to base!”

Buck extracted himself, lowered the footrests, and lifted Ritz’s knees to set his feet in place. Then they were off to find a gurney. His hope was that Ritz would respond quickly enough to the Benzedrine to be able to help him take Miss Ashton’s body, with Mother Doe’s wristband, to the morgue. If he could temporarily convince the Global Community delegation that their potential hostage had expired, he could buy time.

As Buck wheeled him toward the elevators, Ken’s arms kept flopping out of the chair and acting as brakes on the wheels. Buck would grab them and tuck them back in, only to find himself veering into traffic. Buck finally secured Ken’s arms by the time they backed onto an elevator, but Ritz chose that moment to let his chin drop to his chest, exposing his scalp wound to everyone aboard.

When Ritz seemed to begin coming out of his fog, Buck was able to get him out of the chair and onto a gurney he had absconded with. The sudden rise, however, had made Ken dizzy. He flopped onto his back, and his head wound brushed the sheet.

“OK!” he hollered like a drunk. “All right!”

He rolled to his side, and Buck covered him to the neck, then wheeled him next to the wall, where he waited for him to fully awaken. Twice, as lots of traffic walked by, Ken spontaneously sat up, looked around, and lay back down.

When he finally came to and was able to sit and then stand without dizziness, he was still disoriented. “Man, that was some good sleep. I could use more of that.”

Buck explained that he wanted to find Ken a smock and have him play an orderly, helping Dr. Cameron. Buck went over it several times until Ken convinced him he was awake and understood. “Wait right here,” Buck said.

Near a surgical unit he saw a doctor hang a smock on a hook before heading the other way. It looked clean, so Buck took it back to Ken. But Ken was gone.

Buck found him at the elevator. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve gotta get my bag,” Ken said. “We left it outside.”

“It’s under a chair in the waiting room. We’ll get it later. Now put this on.”

The sleeves were four inches short. Ken looked like the last renter in a costume shop.

Pushing the gurney, they hurried to 335 as fast as Ken could go. The woman guard said, “Doctor, we just got a call from our superiors that a delegation is on its way from the airport, and—”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Buck said, “but the patient you’re guarding has died.”

“Died?” she said. “Well, it certainly wasn’t our fault. We—”

“No one is saying it’s your fault. Now I need to take the body to the morgue.

You can tell your delegation or whomever where to find her.”

“Then we don’t need to stay here, do we?” “Of course not. Thanks for your service.” As Buck and Ken entered the room, Craig caught sight of Ritz’s head.

“Man, are you an orderly or a patient?” Ken whirled around. “Are you discriminating against the handicapped?”

“No, sir, I’m sorry. It’s just—” “Everybody needs a job!” Ken said. Chloe tried to smile when she saw Ken, whom she had met at Palwaukee after Buck and Tsion’s flight from Egypt. Buck looked pointedly at Ritz. “Meet Annie Ashton,” he said.

“I’m her doctor.”

“Dr. Buck,” Chloe said quietly. “He broke his glasses.” Ritz smiled. “Sounds like we’re on the same medication.”

Buck pulled the sheet over the dead woman’s head, rolled her bed out, and replaced it with the gurney. He wheeled the bed to the door and asked Ken to stay with Chloe, “just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case those GC guys show up.”

“I get to play doctor?”

“In a manner of speaking. If we can convince them the woman they want is in the morgue, we might have time to hide Chloe.”

“You don’t want to strap her to the top of our rental car?”

Buck pushed the bed down the corridor to the elevators. Getting off were four people, three of them men, dressed in dark business suits. Tags on their jackets identified them as Global Community operatives. One said, “What are we looking for again?”

Another said, “335.”

Buck averted his face, not knowing whether his picture had been circulated. As soon as he rolled the bed onto the elevator, a doctor hit the emergency stop button. A half dozen people were in the car with Buck and the body. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” the doctor said. “Just a moment, please.”

He whispered in Buck’s ear, “You’re not a resident here, are you?”

“No.”

“There are strict rules about transporting corpses on other than the service elevators.”

“I didn’t know.”

The doctor turned to the others. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to need to take another elevator.”

“Gladly,” somebody said.

The doctor turned the elevator back on, and everyone else got off. He hit the button for the subbasement. “First time in this hospital?” “Yes.” “Left and all the way to the end.”

At the morgue, Buck thought about leaving the body outside the door and hoping it would be misidentified temporarily as Mother Doe. But he was seen by a man behind the desk who said, “You’re not supposed to bring beds in here. We can’t be responsible for that. You’ll have to take it back with you.”

“I’m on a tight schedule.”

“That’s your problem. We’re not answering for a room bed being down here.”

Two orderlies lifted the body to a gurney, and the man said, “Papers?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Papers! Death certificate. Doctor’s sign-off.”

Buck said, “Wristband says Mother Doe. I was told to bring her down here. That’s all I know.”

“Who’s her doctor?”

“I have no idea.”

“What room?”

“335.”

“We’ll look it up. Now get this bed out of here.”

Buck hurried back to the elevator, praying the ruse had worked and that the GC

contingent was on its way to the morgue to make sure about Mother Doe. He did not cross paths with them, however, on the way back.

He was almost at room 335 when they emerged. He looked the other way and kept walking.

One said, “Where’s Charles, anyway?” The woman said, “We should have waited. He was parking the car. How’s he supposed to find us now?” “He can’t be far. When he gets here, we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

When they were out of sight, Buck pushed the bed back into 335. “It’s just me,”

he said as he passed Chloe’s curtain. He found Chloe even paler and now trembling. Ken sat next to the bed, hands resting lightly atop his head.

“Are you cold, hon?” Buck asked. Chloe shook her head. Her discoloration had spread. The ugly streaks caused by bleeding under the skin nearly reached her temple.

“She’s a little shook, that’s all,” Rite said. “Me too, though I deserve an Oscar.”

“Doctor Airplane,” Chloe said, and Ritz laughed. “That’s what she said. That’s all they could get out of her, except her name.”

“Annie Ashton,” she whispered. “Screwed up those guys’ heads something awful.

They come in complaining, especially the woman, about having no guards assigned like they asked. ‘We didn’t ask,’ Ken said, mimicking her voice. ‘It was a directive.’” Chloe nodded.

Ken continued. “They shuffle past, snagging the end of our drape, talking about how she’s in bed B, all proud of themselves because they can read an adhesive strip on the door. I call out, ‘Two visitors at a time, please, and I’d appreciate you keeping it down. I have a toxic patient here.’ I meant infectious, but it means the same, doesn’t it?

“Course they saw right away there was just an empty gurney over there. One of the guys pokes his head in here and I raise way up on my tiptoes, doctor-like, and say, ‘If you don’t want typhoid fever, you’d better pull your face outtalk here.’”

“Typhoid fever?”

“It sounded good to me. And it did the trick.”

“That scared them off?”

“Well, almost. He shut the curtain and said from behind it, ‘Doctor, may we speak to you in private, please?’ I said, ‘I can’t leave my patient. And I’d have to scrub before I talk to anybody. I’m immune, but I can carry the disease.’”

Buck raised his eyebrows. “They bought this?”

Chloe shook her head, appearing amused.

Ken said, “Hey, I was good. They asked who my patient was. I could have told them Annie Ashton, but I thought it was more realistic if I acted insulted by the question. I said, ‘Her name’s not as important as her prognosis. Anyway, her name’s on the door.’ I heard them tsk-tsking and one said, ‘Is she conscious?’ I said, ‘If you’re not a doctor, it’s none of your business.’ The woman said something about their having a doctor who hadn’t caught up to them yet, and I said, ‘You can ask me whatever you need to know.’

“One of them says, ‘We know what it says on the door, but we were told Mother Doe was in that bed.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to stand here and argue. My patient is not Mother Doe.’

“One of the guys says, ‘You mind if we ask her what her name is?’ I say, ‘As a matter of fact, I do mind. She needs to concentrate on getting better.’ The guy says, ‘Ma’am, if you can hear me, tell me your name.’

“I nod to Chloe so she’ll tell ‘em, but I’m stomping toward the curtain like I’m mad. She hesitates, not sure what I’m up to, but finally she says, acting real weak like, ‘Annie Ashton.’”

Chloe raised her hand. “Not acting,” she said. “Why’d they name me Mother Doe?”

“You don’t know?” Buck said, reaching for her hand.

She shook her head.

“Let me finish my story,” Ritz said. “I think they’re coming back. I whipped that curtain open and stared them down. I don’t guess they expected me to be so big. I said, ‘There! Satisfied? Now you’ve upset her and me too.’ The woman says, ‘Excuse us, Doctor, ah—’ and Chloe says, ‘Doctor Airplane.’ I had to bite my tongue. I said, ‘The medication’s getting to her,’ which ft was. I said, ‘I’m Doctor Lalaine, but we’d better not snake hands, all things considered.’

“The rest of ‘em are all crowded around the door, and the woman peeks through the curtain and says, ‘Do you have any idea what happened to Mother Doe?’ I tell her, ‘One patient from this room was taken to the morgue.’

“She says, ‘Oh, really?’ in a tone that tells me she doesn’t believe that one bit. She says, ‘What caused this young lady’s injuries? Typhoid?’ Real sarcastic. I wasn’t ready for that one, and while I’m trying to think up a smart, doctory answer, she says, Tm going to have our physician examine her.’

“I tell her, ‘I don’t know how they do it where you’re from, but in this hospital only the attending physician or the patient can ask for a second opinion.’ Well, even though she’s a good foot shorter than me, she somehow looks down her nose at me. She says, ‘We are from the Global Community, here under orders from His Excellency himself. So be prepared to give ground.’

“I say, ‘Who the heck is His Excellency?’ She says, ‘Where have you been, under a rock?’ Well, I couldn’t tell her that was just about right and that because I had OD’d on tranqs I wasn’t too sure where I was now, so I said, ‘Servin’

mankind, trying to save lives, ma’am.’ She huffed out, and a couple minutes later, you walked in. You’re up-to-date.”

“And they’re bringing in a doctor,” Buck said. “Terrific. We’d better hide her someplace and see if we can get her lost in the system.”

“Answer me,” Chloe whispered.

“What?”

“Buck, am I pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Is the baby OK?”

“So far.”

“How ‘bout me?”

“You’re pretty banged up, but you’re not in danger.”

“Your typhoid fever is almost gone,” Ritz said.

Chloe frowned. “Dr. Airplane,” she scolded. “Buck, I have to get better fast.