Do No Harm (21 page)

"Did someone do something wrong to you?"

Clyde breathed hard for a moment, catching his breath. "I don't like the way they look at me. They always look at me like that here."

"Here? As in here at this hospital?"

"Yeah," Clyde said. "Yeah. But not anymore. Now they're afraid. You shoulda seen their faces after they got the stuff on them." His fingers, swollen knuckle-wide down their lengths, quivered as his hands twisted in the restraints. His fingernails were yellow and pitted. "I have plans. I'm smarter than you think. I can do things too. I know they're wrong, but I can do them and not get caught."

"What plans? What are your plans?"

"Maybe you can stop me. I couldn't. I couldn't stop me."

A slightly obese female tech stuck her head in the door. Clyde's head snapped up, the loose flesh of his cheeks and jowls taking a moment to still.

"I'm here from the blood bank to pick up--"

"Please, not right now," David said.

"Look, I came down here all the way from--"

"Not now."

With a scowl, she withdrew.

"See?" Clyde said. "Like that. Did you see how she looked at me?" He drew a ragged breath. "I just marked her. Marked her face, her eyes. She's there now, in my mind. Green dangling earrings. Freckles across her nose. Birthmark on her right cheek." David couldn't even recall the woman's hair color, but Clyde, in the four seconds she'd been in view, had drunk her in.

Clyde raised his head, examining the thick leather cuff that bound his wrist to the railing. "Now I see how you guys are clever, trying to catch me. I can be clever too. I have ways, I have better ways to get at people." Clyde began sobbing quietly. "I don't mean to. I don't like it. It's awful but I have to." He winced suddenly, squinting.

"Are you all right?" David asked. "Does your chest hurt?"

"God. Oh God. Dim the lights. Can you dim the lights?"

David crossed to the light switch and turned off the bank of lights directly over the gurney. The room glowed with light from the X-ray box, which someone had left on.

The only sound in the room was that of Clyde's labored breathing. David watched him in the soft-lit darkness. Clyde's request stemmed from either a headache or a sudden phobia, he wasn't sure which.

"When I go out," Clyde said, "the mask goes on. It protects me."

"Why do you need a mask?"

A single tear rolled down Clyde's red and swollen cheek. "I want their faces to be gone. I want them to be destroyed and ruined and no more."

Clear homicidal ideation, available means and well-formulated plans for continued attacks, lack of compassion, self-view as victim--the red flags were rising one by one. David said, "Do you think--"

The door swung open, flooding the room with light. Dressed in jeans and a Gap button-up, Diane entered. "There you are," she said. "What the hell has been--"

David sprang toward her, trying to block her from Clyde's view. "Not now. Get out! Who told you you could come in here?"

She shuffled backward as he pushed her. "The cops said it was okay, that you were just--"

"Keep this door shut," David growled at the officers. He slammed the door and leaned against it, one palm spread over an anatomical diagram of a lung.

Clyde's voice drifted around him, a miasma rising. "That one's special to you, huh?"

"No," David said. "I just don't want anyone disturbing us."

"Didn't see you jump to when that little pig from the blood bank showed herself to me. Not like you jumped for this one. Don't blame you. She's a pretty nurse."

David crossed the room and stood over Clyde. The glow of the X-ray box turned his skin a sickly blue, darkening the pits in his cheeks and the twinning tufts of hair that protruded ridiculously like an offset garland. He stared at Clyde, and Clyde turned away with a soft, dying whimper.

Empathy is not innate. It is a learned emotion, conditioned through trial and error, defeat and reward, forged in a Skinnerian oven. David sifted through forty-three years of instinct and socialization, searching for the string of a buried argument. The only way a person can know that someone else's pain matters is if someone has taught them that their own does. If no one ever showed that to Clyde, as a baby, as a child, then he had learned that his pain did not matter. And, more acutely, he would have learned that things in pain did not matter.

"Your pain," David said. "The awful pain on your chest. I'm sorry that happened to you."

Clyde watched him, rigid and sweating.

"The way you feel, the pain you feel--the women who you threw alkali on feel that also. That same pain."

Clyde's eyes watered. Tears beaded and stuck to his thick lashes. "My head hurts," he said.

David wondered what thoughts rattled through the corridors of Clyde's mind. "I need to go see some other patients. I'll check on you later."

Clyde turned his face away, staring darkly at the wall. "No you won't," he said.

David left him bound in the semidarkness.

YALE was waiting for David outside Clyde's room, his arms spread. "Well, we're ready to take him off your hands. Press is cordoned, transport vehicle's waiting in the ambulance bay." He thrust a clipboard at David. "Please sign him out."

Diane paced the hall behind Yale, hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans. His face still flushed, Jenkins congregated with a few officers farther down by the lobby doors. Murmuring to one another and shifting on their feet, they directed their stares toward David and the closed door of Clyde's room. Waiting like jackals for a whisper of opportunity.

David felt the crush of an ugly dilemma. What was already a difficult, complex decision was now enflamed by the agitation of the hospital board, the press, an angry city. He felt the myriad pressures in the heat rising to his face, and he fought to find the correct response. Something flared in him, bright and sharp, and he found himself saying to Yale, "I'm afraid the patient is not ready to be released."

The clipboard smacked against Yale's thigh. "No?" He flicked his wrist and the Rolex appeared. "Eight-fifteen. Your shift is over. Who's the next attending on call?"

"The patient is not improving at a rate that indicates he'll be ready to be moved tonight."

Yale opened his mouth, then closed it. He scratched his forehead with two fingers. Diane was watching David, a puzzled expression on her face.

"When is the earliest he'll be ready?" Yale asked.

"Eight tomorrow morning."

"And it's just a coincidence that that's when your next shift begins?"

"Yes. I'll brief the next attending to contact me in the event of any change in Clyde's condition, no matter the hour. If he has a miraculous recovery in the night that enables him to be moved, I'll come in immediately and sign off on him."

One of the clerks stuck her head out of the CWA but withdrew it quickly when David looked at her. Two nurses whispered to each other in the doorway of Twelve.

"You said you thought he'd be ready to be moved by now," Yale said.

"My patients don't always abide my expectations."

Yale dropped the clipboard on the tiled floor, where it made a startlingly loud bang. "If you insist, I suppose we have little choice."

Jenkins and the other officers stood in a flying wedge at the hall's end, looking foolishly formal.

A grin flashed across Yale's imperturbable face and vanished instantaneously. "We'll be here waiting."

Diane paced tight circles while David signed out to Dr. Nelson, a young attending who'd trained under him. She walked swiftly to keep up with David as he headed through the hospital toward the lobby, avoiding the ambulance bay so he wouldn't have to pass Jenkins.

"What are you doing, David?" she said. It clearly was an effort for her not to raise her voice. "We've released patients to custody in worse shape than that."

"If I release him," David said, "he's likely to die."

"Nobody dies of that kind of alkali burn."

David looked at her, his stomach twisted into a knot. "I'm not talking about the burns."

Removing his cell phone from his pocket, he ducked into the empty fluoroscopy room and had the operator put him through to the University Police. Diane sat on a gurney, waiting patiently.

"I need to reach Officer Blake. Urgently . . . Yes, I would appreciate it if you'd page him to this number." David rattled off his cell phone number. "No, I'd rather not say what this is regarding, but please tell him it's extremely important."

He snapped his phone shut and faced Diane. She made a circular gesture with her hand. "I'll just ask when this is over," she said.

He glanced at her clothes. "What are you doing here anyway? It's your day off. I'm not used to seeing you dressed."

"I'll take that the way it was intended."

It had been a long time since he'd smiled, and it felt good.

"With all the shit that went down this morning, how could I not come in?" Diane said. "I wanted to make sure you were still in one piece."

"And am I?"

Judging by her expression, he must have looked like something someone coughed up. He fisted his stethoscope on either side of his neck and tugged on it like a scarf. "That bad?" His phone rang.

"Blake here."

"Officer Blake, this is David Spier, the physician who treated Clyde when he came in."

"Oh. Oh yeah. Can I help you?"

"Where are you?"

"Can I help you with something?"

"Yes, I'd like to have an off-the-record conversation with you."

A pause. "Where would you like to not meet?"

"Are you in the area?"

"Yeah, I'm still on campus."

"Can you meet me right now?"

"Where?"

"My car is parked on the top tier of the PCHS lot. It's a green Mercedes. They're not letting press through to that area."

"I'll meet you there in five minutes."

David hung up and gestured for Diane to follow. They threaded through the lobby and out across the dark quad. Dr. Kingston, a white-haired senior member of the board, paused and regarded David judgmentally, but David simply nodded and kept walking.

Diane kept her eyes on the ground. "You really think they'd kill him?"

"I think Jenkins would, yes."

"What are you gonna do?"

"That's what I'm figuring out. But I just bought myself--and Clyde--twelve hours. And this guy, Blake, there's no love lost between him and Jenkins. I'm hoping he can help."

They reached the top tier of the parking lot, and David saw Blake leaning against the trunk of his Mercedes. He was glad Blake's police car was not in evidence.

David had parked at the far side of the tier, away from most foot traffic and passing cars. He unlocked the doors to his car, and they all got in, Diane sliding in the back.

Blake cupped his hand and ran it over his thick mustache. "What would you like to not discuss?"

"I appreciated your helping today in the ER."

Blake nodded, continuing to regard David a bit impatiently.

David took a deep breath. "I'm concerned that if I release Clyde to the LAPD, he'll be killed."

Blake's eyebrows rose and spread. "Jenkins is a live wire."

"I'm holding him through the night for medical reasons. Is there any way I could release him to your custody? To the university police?"

With a fingernail, Blake worked something out from between his teeth, his mustache bristling. "No. No way. He's in LAPD custody. He has to be released to LAPD."

"And they're taking him to Harbor for further treatment. In a transport vehicle."

"Yeah. A squad car."

"Probably Jenkins's?"

Blake studied David for a moment, his face textured and leathery under the light of the lampposts. "That's not quite how it would work," he said.

"How would it work?"

"If it was gonna work? Someone else's squad car. Jenkins following, off-duty or on. Yale and Dalton eating at a diner somewhere, somewhere with high visibility. A near-escape in a dark alley. A mix-up." Someone walked by and Blake turned away so his face couldn't be seen. "Of course, I don't much buy into conspiracy theory."

David realized he was sweating. He turned on the car and put the air-conditioning on low. Blake reached over and turned the key, then looked to see if anyone had taken note of the car starting up.

"Do I have any options?" David asked. "Could a judge do anything?"

Blake shrugged. "Shit, I'm no lawyer, but I'd doubt it on your time line. A case this big, there'd be a huge inquiry and investigation."

Diane leaned forward. "How about Sheriff's Medical at USC Med? We send critical patients there sometimes. Does that fall under a different jurisdiction?"

"If the patient is critical, as in critical critical, he'd get sent there and signed in to the Sheriff's custody. But he'd still have to be transferred."