Amerika (40 page)

“Won’t tell you nothing,” the deputy declared. “Hell, I ain’t asked you nothing yet,” Ward said. “Listen, all I want to know is what was the call about Devin tonight. If you don’t tell us, I reckon we’ll have to blow your head off.”

“Aw shit, Ward,” the deputy protested.

“Spill it fast, pal. We’re bad hombres.”

“Heck, all it was was some actress on the radio, saying he was at that big Omaha hospital, and everybody should help him,” the deputy said.

“Thanks, Cy; go back to sleep,” Ward said. Then he looked at Alethea. “What do you think, sis?”

“Omaha,” she said.

When Alan reached the door that led to the psychiatric unit, he paused to compose himself. If he lacked much of a plan, he was nonetheless well fortified with determination, rage, and an abiding faith in the stupidity of bureaucracies.

He glanced for a moment out the window, at the front gate, bathed in iridescent lights. What he saw confused him. At this hour, in the stillness before dawn, the gate should be deserted, except for a few guards and deliverymen, but Alan saw perhaps a dozen people gathered there, standing, waiting.

He turned from the window, poised for his own solitary action. He strode down the hallway and confronted the young national guardsman on duty outside the heavy door marked
psychiatric—keep out!

The soldier was talking in a monotone on the phone. He looked up in annoyance.

“I’m Dr. Drummond,” he said loudly. “They called me.”

The soldier, a gawky, rawboned youth, whispered into the phone and cupped it in his hand. “They didn’t tell me nothin’ ’bout it, doc.”

“I can’t help that, young man,” Alan declared.

The soldier sighed and punched the hold button on the phone. “I’ll call the nurse on duty,” he announced.

“Helen Quint,” Alan said casually.

“Naw, she’s off. It’s Nurse Tate.”

He dialed a number and got a busy signal. He redialed, but the line was still busy. “Shit, probably talkin’ to her old man.” He thought for a moment, taking a leap of faith. “Just go on down there, doc.”

The soldier pushed the button that unlocked the door. “Thank you,” Alan said, and walked confidently through the doors.

Outside, thirty or forty people were gathered at the front gate. The guards threatened them, but the people remained. And their numbers grew. New arrivals, moving like ghosts through the predawn mists, were fanning out along the fence that surrounded the hospital. There was barbed wire atop the chain-link fence, but it was old and broken, easily surmounted by determined men and women.

The nurses’ station was a blazing island of fluorescent light in the dark corridor. A young nurse was perched on a stool, chewing gum and talking animatedly on the phone. Alan charged up to her.

“Nurse Tate, get off the phone!” he demanded. “I have been told there is a man whose condition is critical here.”

Linda Tate dropped the phone and stood up, shaken by his wrath. She was a shy woman who hated this assignment—the zombie ward—but it paid extra money and she needed it to be married. “Who?” she stammered. “What?”

“I’m Dr. Alan Drummond. They called and told me that the Milford patient was dying. Where is he?”

“Who called . . .”

“Nurse Quint. Dr. Page. An emergency. Didn’t they tell you?” He looked from her to the phone that lay haphazardly on the desk where she dropped it. “Perhaps they couldn’t get through to you.”

She followed his gaze to the phone and looked up at him ashamedly. “Follow me,” she said, and started anxiously down the corridor.

Alan was stunned when he saw Devin. He was in a private room, strapped unconscious to the bed, with IVs in both arms and electrodes fastened to his temples and chest. He was pale and sweaty, and his heartbeat was slow and irregular.

“That will be all, nurse,” he said beginning to examine Devin.

“But—”

He looked at her incredulously. “Nurse Tate, I am a patient man, but I’ve just about reached the end of my rope with what I’ve witnessed tonight. So, if you’ll leave me to do my work . .

He turned back to Devin and heard the door open and close quietly. Alan kept one eye on the soldier at the door and leaned down to Devin, who seemed to be out. “Hang in there.” He rushed to the door where the guard stood. “Get me the nurse!”

After a moment Nurse Tate entered the room with a burly attendant in a dirty T-shirt.

“This man is dying,” Alan announced.

“Oh no sir,” she said. “It’s the. normal procedure—”

“Don’t argue with me, nurse!” he yelled. “We’ve got to get him to ICU.”

“We can’t let him out of the unit, doc,” the attendant said adamantly.

“Have you got a medical station? Respirator—I’m going to need a respirator.”

“Yes,” Linda stammered. “But it’s not an intensive-care setup.”

“It’ll have to do,” Alan proclaimed. “Let’s go. Unhook
him
.”

Linda quickly began to remove the IV lines and the electrodes. The attendant scowled but went off to fetch a gurney.

Alan leaned over the silent Devin and said, “Hang on, hang on!”

Alan knew he had gotten this far because hospital workers, like these, had been taught to regard doctors as gods whose decrees must never be challenged. But there might be tougher characters on guard elsewhere in the hospital, standing between him, his patient, and freedom.

Alan still didn’t know where this drama was leading, but they were moving and that was half the battle.

Outside against the predawn darkness, people were slipping over the fence, onto the grounds, and into the hospital. They mingled there with Alan’s exile band, moving up and down the corridors, embracing, whispering, seeming to have a plan, a destination, that no one else could fathom. The nurses, the attendants and the guards watched nervously but could not imagine what was happening.

They took him on a gurney to the psych unit’s small, cramped treatment room and hooked up the respirator. By now Alan had convinced Nurse Tate that Devin was at death’s door. “We don’t have the equipment here for a medical emergency,” she protested.

“Dammit, this is a hospital,” Alan roared. “We’ll go where the equipment is.” He was caught up in the drama he had created. It had momentum now, a reality all its own. “You push the respirator,” Alan told the surly attendant. “She and I will take the gurney.”

“We’ve got
orders,”
the attendant protested.

“Don’t you understand? This is one of the most important men in America. If he dies . . . would you like to explain his death to the PPP Discipline Committee?”

Alan began to push the gurney, and after a moment the attendant did the same. Soon they reached the door that led out of the psych unit. The young national guardsman was there, still on the phone. “Get that door open!” Alan demanded. The young soldier reacted to the urgency of the scene and unlocked the door without a word.

They moved quickly through the corridors, toward the distant ICU, and people were surrounding them, ghosts appearing from out of the shadows. Alan recognized his fellow Exiles; he didn’t know the others but he remembered the young woman, broadcasting on the radio, and how her words had emboldened him, and then it seemed natural that these good people should be here, and become part of the procession.

They jammed aboard an elevator, more than twenty of them, to travel down a floor. “Unhook the respirator,” Alan told Nurse Tate, who by then was wide-eyed and trembling, terrified by this mysterious journey and the multitude of people surrounding her. “It’s slowing us down; we’ll be all right without it for a while.”

The elevator doors opened as Alan and one of the newcomers steered the gurney. Four of the most able-bodied Exiles now engulfed the unhappy attendant, and somehow in the confusion he did not get off the elevator at their floor but was last seen heading for the basement.

“Down that way,” Alan called, guiding his little army toward the back door.

“This isn’t the way to ICU,” Nurse Tate protested.

“Trust me,” Alan muttered.

“Are you ... is this an escape?” she asked. She was having a hard time keeping up as the newcomers formed a tight circle around the gurney.

“Weren’t they great.” Alan gestured to the Exiles.

“That’s about the best work a bunch of bedridden folks have done in a long time.”

“I don’t want to be part of this,” Nurse Tate protested. “I’m getting married.” She saw another nurse coming toward them, an elderly woman with a kind but puzzled face. “What’s happening?” she cried. “Where are all the guards?”

“Something’s going on outside,” the older nurse said. “A lot of people. It’s all very queer. These aren’t visiting hours at all.”

“I’m going to find a guard!” Nurse Tate cried, and fled wildly down the corridor.

Alan saw Devin’s eyes flutter open. He was fighting to come up from the drugs. “Devin, you with us?” Alan whispered. Devin tried to speak but only mumbled. “You’re doing fine, boy, just fight to stay awake,” Alan told him, hoping he could understand.

They emerged onto the loading dock. An ambulance waited there, with an Exile, Rick, dressed in an orderly’s white uniform at the wheel. Some other vehicles had been commandeered, too, to carry the Exiles and anyone else who wanted to join them. When they saw this waiting convoy as they emerged from the hospital, the Exiles and townspeople sent up a great cheer. Alan and two Exiles quickly got Devin off the gumey and into the ambulance. Rick was about to shut the rear door.

“Hop in, doctor,” Rick said.

Alan smiled. “I can’t go,” he announced.

“You’re crazy,” Rick said. “When they get this unraveled, they’re gonna fry your brain in that place.” “I have to try to do something for the others. Justin Milford’s in there,” Alan said, reaching across Rick and closing the ambulance door. “Get going,” he said,

and clapped the young man on his shoulder. “Thanks. I’ll see you in Milford.”

Rick ran to the driver’s side of the ambulance, put the van in gear, and pulled away. Alan watched it a moment, smiling, then turned back to the hospital, his smile faded, his face darkened.

There were now a couple hundred people on the grounds of the hospital, forming a human chain around the building. The ambulance, siren blaring, approached the line. It stopped.

“Excuse me,” Rick said urgently, leaning his head out the window.

The chain accommodatingly parted, and the ambulance continued on toward the main gate. Along the way, Rick noticed the people, many sitting down with makeshift signs that read
free devin milford.
As
the ambulance approached the gate, the guards automatically opened them. Even the protesters assumed that the ambulance had some official purpose and gave it room to pass, not missing a beat in their chants for Devin’s freedom.

Andrei was awakened by Captain Selovich, an aide he had “inherited” from Samanov.

“Sorry to disturb you, Colonel. An urgent call from Chicago.”

Andrei feared calls in the middle of the night, especially if they came from Moscow. From Chicago, and his aide Mikel, the news would probably be no more than an annoyance.

“Yes, Mikel, what is it?”

“Sir, in Milford, a group of Exiles and townspeople have taken over the sheriffs office. They have armed themselves, and are in control of the town.”

“What has the local SSU done?”

“Commander Gurtman is on the phone now, requesting permission to put down the rebellion with maximum force. As an example to any others who might be so inclined.”

“Tell Gurtman that it is my personal order that he and his men remain at the barracks,” Andrei said firmly.

“But sir . . ”

“Mikel, I will hold you personally responsible if those troops leave the barracks before I give specific orders allowing them to do so.”

“Will the colonel explain?” Mikel stammered.

“No, the colonel cannot explain!” Andrei snapped. Then he calmed a bit. “Mikel, I do not need a massacre in Milford at this particular moment. We have already had one of those, as you will recall. The SSU force is confined to barracks until you hear otherwise from me.

“Yes, sir!” Mikel said smartly.

Andrei hung up the phone, returning to bed, and perhaps to his dreams of Kimberly.

The riot police arrived only minutes after the Resisters roared away with Devin Milford.

Helen Quint, the head nurse of the psychiatric unit, was soon on the scene, as was the hospital administrator, a nervous man named Rose. They had confronted Alan Drummond, but their efforts to get at the truth were frustrated by the stunning news that, on top of everything else, the new governor-general’s wife was on her way for an unannounced tour of the hospital, complete with television coverage.

“They cannot enter my unit,” Helen Quint declared. “Just stonewall it.”

“How am I going to do that?” Rose was incensed. “What if they want to see it?”

“We don’t know they’re even interested in the unit,” Quint said.

“Don’t be naive, Helen. You’ve been around as long as I have. This Milford man arrives and the next thing you know we’re having an impromptu tour.” Rose fidgeted nervously. “This smells like a power play to me and I don’t want to be caught in the middle of it.” “I’ll take the responsibility. I’m sure Deputy Andrews will back me up,” Helen insisted.