Better in the Dark (20 page)

“Good. We’ll use it if”—his face darkened—“if we can’t get him into Inner City. Or even County General. God!”

Natalie stretched out her hand tentatively. “Harry?”

“Ah, it’s not you. But they make me so damn mad. This is their mess, and when we try to clean it up, this is all we get. Dave’s beaten up, we’re told there isn’t room for him, they can’t help us at all...” His face was desolate.

“Was there anything more?”

His tone was very dry. “Nothing worth mentioning. No, I take that back. Braemoore refused to contact the I.I.A., who, it appears, are running this show. He won’t, and we can’t.”

“The I.I.A.?” Natalie asked, bewildered. “What does Internal Intelligence have to do with this?”

“According to Braemoore, it’s their baby. Their bright idea.” He rubbed his forehead. “It makes me sick, Natalie.”

She nodded. “I know.”

Radick had stood, and he walked toward them now, looking old. “He’s under light hypnosis now. I don’t know how long he will stay under. You’d better get him X-rayed while you can. I warn you now, Harry, that he’s in worse emotional shape than physical.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we may not be able to save him. At all.”

Harry turned on his heels and stared toward the door.

“What is it, Harry?” Natalie was alarmed.

“Eric Patman is going to help us. The hell with his ulcers. We have to have him. We have to have an immunologist, for Dave as well as the others.” The door closed behind him, loud as a shout.

“He must do something,” Radick said to Natalie. “And perhaps he is right.”

“Did you mean what you said about Dave?” Natalie asked, as if she had not heard him.

“Yes.”

“I see.” She went back to the stretcher and looked down. Dave’s face was composed, his eyes distant, and only a slight tightness in his brow showed pain. His skull fracture was not swelling now, but his head was very badly misshapen. His breath made a grating sound.

Natalie thought about the drugs they would need, and the surgical equipment if they were to help Dave. She knew they didn’t have it, and admitted to herself that they were unlikely to get it. And Dave would be the one who would suffer. It was his skull, his arm, his body that was ruined. It was his pain. For the first time in many years she wished she believed enough in anything to pray.

Stan Kooznetz poked his head out of the makeshift lab. “Where are you going?”

Harry stopped pulling on his jacket. “Inner City. If I can’t get through to Westbank. We need drugs, and a bed and surgery for Dave Lillijanthal. They’ve got to help us.”

Stan considered him. “I’ll go with you.” Before Harry could object, he went on. “I worked at Inner City once. I know my way around. I know who we can talk to. Maybe we can find out who they fired, and bring them in with us.” He saw the suppressed fury in Harry’s face. “And maybe you could use some help. Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.”

“Haven’t you got patients waiting?” Harry asked.

Stan stopped. “I have what looks like a couple of smallpoxes and an honest-to-god malignant tumor of the bladder. Nothing that Kirsten can’t take care of. Don’t leave without me.”

Harry glared, but he waited for the three minutes it took Stan to be rid of his lab coat and arrange for Lisa to cover for him. “All right,” he said when he came out the door at last.&lldquo;Let’s go.”

Harry nodded, and they left through the side door.

“I heard that Dave is in very bad shape,” Stan said as Harry started the smaller of their two vans. “Amanda mentioned it privately. It’s upsetting her more than she shows.”

Harry said nothing, concentrating on maneuvering in the tight space.

“Amanda said that this could be fatal.” Stan said it conversationally, but his long face was somber.

“Amanda is right.” Harry swung the wheel as they went down the driveway, and eased the van out into traffic, which he noticed was much lighter than it should have been at this time of day.

“Beaten?” Stan asked.

“Beaten. Kicked. Contusions, abrasions, fractures: you name it. They did a thorough job. And he has to have help. We can’t handle this ourselves. We haven’t got the equipment. We haven’t got the supplies. And we certainly haven’t got the facilities for the repair job he needs.”

“As bad as that?”

Harry honked at a driver ahead of them blundering from lane to lane, then said, “You might want to look in on him later. We’re putting him in the pantry for the time being. Natalie’s idea. She’s thinking clearly. I only wish I were.”

Stan agreed that their work was much harder than any of them thought it would be. “It used to be like this all the time, Harry. I don’t know how they managed.”

“They didn’t.” Harry changed lanes and noticed that three cars had pulled off the road and were waiting on the shoulder, their drivers still in them. He guessed they were sick. “We could use a City Patrol radio in this thing.”

“We could use a lot of things.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, and was silent the rest of the way to Westbank.

The lobby of the hospital was full and, to Harry’s surprise, messy. He strode through it quickly, puzzled at the barely controlled chaos around him. At the elevators, he turned to Stan. “Where are you going?”

“To talk to Justin. If he’ll talk to me. Where are you going?”

“Liz Mattel. All the way up on seventeen. We’ve got to have Pharmaceuticals, and right now. I know there’s no way to get releases from the administration, so it’ll have to be her. If I’m not there, I’ll be at the diagnostic center on ten with Wyland or on seven.”

“I’ll try Liz first,” Stan said.

The elevator doors opened and they entered. Harry pushed 16 for Stan and 17 for himself.

“Good luck,” Harry said to Stan as the door opened on the sixteenth floor.

“And to you,” Stan said as the doors closed between them.

Harry left the elevator at the top floor and walked down the littered hallway. As he passed the administration dining room he noticed that new and very limited hours were posted outside. He glanced in and saw that instead of the linen tableclothes and good service, the tables were set with the same plastic service that was used in the staff cafeteria on the first floor. Apparently the current emergency had even cut into the luxuries of the administration.

Three doors down, Harry turned and pushed through two sets of double doors into the pharmacy, and looked around him in dismay. “Christ!” he said.

In a moment a parapharmacist came from behind the disordered shelves, his face smudged with exhaustion. He looked up at Harry. “Yes?”

“Is Dr. Martel here?” Harry was almost afraid to ask.

“Yeah. She’s taking a nap. D’you want her, or can I do it?”

Harry considered. “I’d better talk to Liz, thanks anyway.”

The parapharmacist shrugged and went back between the shelves. In a few minutes Liz Martel walked toward him. She was still disheveled from sleep, and her usually crisp lab coat was crumpled. She hesitated when she saw him. “Harry?”

“It’s me. What’s happening around here, Liz?”

She turned tragic, Irish-blue eyes on him. “Everything. We can’t keep up, and almost a third of the staff is out. It’s been miserable.” She shook her head. “What about you?”

“We’re over at the Van Dreyter house.”

Liz thought for a moment. “I heard something about that. I wondered if it was true or not.”

“It’s true, Liz.” He studied her face. “Are you feeling all right?”

Her laugh was shaky. “I’m tired, Harry. Just tired. I got scared a couple of days back and ran a series on myself. Nothing.” She leaned against her counter. “We’ve been so rushed.”

“So I see.”

“Oh, Harry, it’s awful.” She brushed her hand across her eyes. “I’m doing everything I can, but...” She gave a fatalistic shrug.

Harry made a sympathetic noise, then said, “Liz, I need your help.”

Her look was filled with disbelief.

“Really. I need your help. You can help us.”

“Us?”

“At the Van Dreyter house. We’re taking in patients over there, Liz. We’re offering treatment on a small scale. We’re taking those people who can’t or won’t go to the hospitals. We’ve got beds, we’ve got skills and some of our tools. But we need medicines, Liz. We need drugs.”

Liz Martel thought for a moment. “You’re asking me to give you what you want without administrative authorization?”

“I’m asking you to help us.”

“It comes to the same thing.”

“Yes.”

She shoved her hands into her pockets and looked away. “If I got caught...”

“Oh, come off it,” Harry said, growing impatient. “You know as well as I do that there isn’t going to be a chance of that. This pet epidemic of the I.I.A. is out of hand. In a week or two, there’s no way they’re going to be able to tell who did what to whom. But look, in the meantime, maybe we can save a few. Maybe. If you help me...”

The phone on the wall shrilled, and Liz went to answer it. She held out the receiver. “It’s for you, Harry.”

Frowning, Harry took the phone. “Yes?”

“It’s Stan, Harry,” said the tinny voice. “I’ve found out that Wexford and Justin have gone over to Inner City. So I’m going over there in one of the ambulances. They’re transferring all the smallpox cases there. I’m leaving in a couple of minutes.”

Harry felt a twinge of apprehension. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“It’s more important you get the drugs and get home. I’ll call you if I need to be picked up. Good luck.”

“To you, too,” Harry said, afraid to add goodbye as he hung up.

Liz was studying him. “Wexford won’t give you any help, you know,” she said. “Neither will Justin. They’re in on this. They don’t care what happens.”

For a moment Harry wanted to make a cutting retort, but he held it back. He had to have Liz’s help, not her anger. “We’ve gotta try, Liz. If we give up, we’re dead.”

“We’re dead anyway,” she said in another tone. “Tell me what you need.”

“Antibiotics. Painkillers, all you can spare. Any vaccines that are still good. Trancs. Relaxants. We simply don’t have anything.”

“I can’t, Harry. We’re running short here.”

“But Liz, look. I’ll take anything. You’ve still got some penicillin and morphine, don’t you? I don’t have to have the new stuff. I’ll use anything I can get. We have to have them, Liz. Don’t make me take them from you. I will if I have to.” Harry was startled to hear himself say this, and more startled to realize he meant it.

“But I told you, we’re running low ourselves.”

“Listen to me, Liz. We have smallpox cases and tetanus. Two diphtherias. Three cancers. A couple of polios. We need drugs for them. And then there’s Dave,” he said, and saw Liz turn white. “Liz?”

“Dave Lillijanthal?” she said softly.

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong with him?” There was so much anguish in the words that Harry found it difficult to answer her. “He’s been beaten, Liz. Very badly beaten, I’m afraid.”

“Dave?”

“I’m sorry.” He remembered the occasional gossip about Dave, and had not paid much attention to it. Handsome men attracted such talk, just as they attracted women. Now he realized he was wrong to discount it.

“How badly?” But before she could hear his answer, she said. “Oh, Christ. Take anything you need, Harry. If it’s for Dave, take it. Just don’t take standard drugs. There’s morphine and pentathol, if he has to have them. The cooler in the back has the penicillin.” She put her hand over her mouth, then broke into racking sobs.

Harry touched her shoulder. “Liz?”

“Take your drugs and get out of here,” she said in deadly quiet.

“Liz...”

“Get out get out get out get out!”

“Come with me.”

“I can’t. I can’t.” She turned away from him.

Harry stood beside her for a moment, feeling ineffectual. Then he walked back between the many rows of shelving and began looking for the large insulated boxes the drugs came packed in. He did not let himself hear Liz crying.

“We can keep them down in the wine cellar,” Harry explained as he unloaded the boxes from the van. “It’s cool enough down their for everything but the refrigerated stuff.”

Kirsten Grant and Dominic Hertzog picked up boxes and carried them across to the kitchen entrance. Harry called after them, “Send some more help out here, will you?”

“Yeah,” Dominic answered.

Harry went on stacking the boxes beside the van. In a moment Jim Varnay was out. “What a haul.”

“It’s going to have to last us as long as we stay here,” Harry said. “It’s not all that much.”

Jim nodded. “I see what you mean. What was it like down there?”

“A mess. Is Stan back yet?”

“I thought he was with you.” Jim hoisted one of the boxes to his shoulder with a grunt.

“No. He went to Inner City to see Wexford or Justin.”

“Hell. There aren’t any buses running downtown. He might have to walk to the beltway before he can get transportation.”

Harry felt a flicker of worry, then dismissed it. “He said he’d call if he needed a lift.” He waved to Natalie, who had come from the house, and held out a box to her. “In the wine cellar.”

She took it. “Good. Did you get everything we need?”

“No, but I got what I could. Anything new turn up this afternoon?”

“A couple of cases of measles, not serious, and one hell of a tonsillitis.” She hoisted the box, and followed Dominic and Kirsten into the house.

Jim Varnay picked up another box and started off. “I’ll be back for more.”

When Natalie came back, she said, “By the way, we’ve picked up four new nurses, thank goodness.”

“Nurses?”

“From County General. They were kicked out for insubordination or some such idiocy. They’d heard about us and came over to help. Three women and a man. One of them’s only done obstetrics, but she’s willing to learn.”

“We may need OBs before this is over.”

“We’ve put them in the grooms’ quarters with the others. Wallingham is the oldest. She was in charge of the intensive care floor at County General. I put her on duty right away.”

“Good.”

The last of the boxes were carried off, and Natalie walked back to the house with Harry. “Harry,” she said as they neared the kitchen door, “I’m worried about Amanda. She’s running out of energy.”