Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - Time of the Fourth Horseman Read online

  She said coolly, “I know what administration and our union say about extra hours, too. But we always seem to be doing them, don’t we? You’re almost eight hours overdue for your required rest, and I’m running an hour late myself. So what’s one more case in the load?” She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her smock.

  He watched the tense look around her eyes, the paleness under her freckles, the tightness of her thin, square shoulders. There was something very beguiling about the way she stood now, defensive, unhappy.

  “Gil ... please.”

  “You want to know if we get another kid like this one. I’ll be in the ambulance tomorrow and Friday. If I see anything there, I’ll let you know about it. That’s all I can promise.”

  She thanked him three times before she began her ward checks for the night.

  At midnight she was off, and with a deep sense of relief she called at the labs hoping that Mark might have waited for her. But he had left the hospital sometime earlier. He hadn’t left a message, so she assumed he was at home by now, and very probably asleep.

  She wandered out to the overhead station and waited in the heavy night wind for a train to stop. Her thoughts were still troubled, and she hardly noticed the discomfort of the overcrowded car as she hung onto the commuter belt for her twenty-minute ride to her housing complex.

  At least the light was on over the door. She sighed and let herself in hoping that Mark might still be awake.

  Philip’s junior bed was in the far corner of the tiny front room that was considered a living room by the Housing Authority. In it Philip lay sleeping quietly, one arm pummeled into his pillow. Just seeing him pleased her. With a smile she went to their walk-in kitchen.

  There was some milk left in the coldbox, some tired squash and a bit of meat. She,wasn’t really hungry enough to eat any of it. She gazed abstractedly into the coldbox, wishing they had a real refrigerator, then stared at the ceiling before abandoning the kitchen for the bedroom.

  The walls were a depressing shade of yellow-green, but Natalie did not notice this any more. She squeezed between the dresser and the bed as she pulled off her clothes, hanging them carefully on the two hangers clipped to her side of the dresser. Shivering, she slipped into the closet-sized bathroom, taking a quick, tepid shower before climbing into bed.

  As she lay uncertain in the dark, waiting for the sleep she craved to come, Mark rolled toward her, murmuring. She went into his arms gratefully, savoring the sharp taste of his sweat as they came together.

  By the time she woke he was dressed and ready to leave for the lab. His great tawny head looked out of place above the white collar of his lab coat. He was too leonine to be trapped in civilized clothes.

  “Morning,” she said to him from the bed, marveling again that this beautiful man had chosen her when he might have had almost any woman she knew. She still remembered the shocked look on Angela Darcy’s face when they announced their engagement five years ago. Angela had said some unkind things at the time, but the years had proved her wrong. Mark was still with her; Natalie took strength from that. And if she was not always happy, she knew she could count on her marriage.

  “Night. You should get some more sleep before you go back on duty.”

  She shook her head and changed the subject. “Is Philip up yet?”

  “No. Go back to sleep. He won’t be awake for another hour.”

  She stretched and studied him in the dim light. She loved his grace, the sinewy way he had of walking, taut like a cat. He was the product of another place, another time. Certainly he did not belong here among the cramped boxes bursting with pallid people. He was wild. He was feral.

  “What are you looking at?” he demanded.

  “You. Just you.”

  He dismissed this silliness with a shake of his head as he finished shaving. Then, as he was about to leave, he said, “There was a request for a re-check on a patient from your floor. Do you know anything about it?”

  “Yes. That’s my request. I wanted the boy checked out for possible vaccine failure.” She studied the way the light fell across his shoulders, making a halo of his short, curly hair.

  “What makes you think it’s that?”

  She was about to tell him she knew the boy had polio and wanted this confirmed, but she stopped herself before the words were out. If she were wrong, he would not forgive her for this error. Away from the hospital her fears sounded farfetched and melodramatic, even to herself. “Oh, you know,” she said, yawning to cover her hesitation. “He seemed to have a few more things wrong with him than he should have. A few symptoms out of place. I thought we’d better get a complete workup so we can find out what’s going on with him. There are vaccine failures, you know,” she added. “I wanted to be safe.”

  Mark sighed. “If you think it’s all that necessary ... I’ll have Burnett run the check. Standard series with immunology factors, will that do it?” He looked suddenly grim. “And I’ll bet you that this is a waste of time. And effort and facilities, for that matter.”

  “Thank you, Mark,” she said quietly. “It will put my mind at rest. I appreciate it.”

  “I doubt it,” he muttered. “So long as you don’t make a practice of it.” To take the sting from his words, he reached across the bed and ruffled her red hair with his large hands.

  Ordinarily she would have purred contentedly at this treatment, but something in his manner robbed her of all the pleasure she might have felt from it. She was puzzled for a moment, feeling cheated. Then she smiled up at him. After all, he seemed to expect her smile, and it was suddenly very important to do what he expected of her. She felt the forcing in her face, but he did not seem to notice.

  “I’ll see you later?” he asked over his shoulder as he went to the door.

  “Yes. Yes. Later.” It was not said too hastily. But he looked keenly at her, very little friendliness in his face as he left.

  There was the sound of the door closing and she was alone and awake, with the sudden knowledge of her fear. Again she tried to tell herself that she was unreasonable, that just because she had a hunch about a sick child, there was no point in letting her judgment become distorted. She consigned her fright to perdition and turned her head away from the small clerestory windows for her last hour of sleep.

  But as she drifted into a dream she found she was still thinking of Mark. How had he known about the tests she wanted? He had left the hospital before the request was received in the labs. The night staff had told Gil that Mark was gone. Did someone call him at home? How had he found out? She was trying to sort this out when she fell asleep.

  By the time she left Philip off at the Child Care Center, Natalie had managed to convince herself that her imagination had run away with her. It was with a clear conscience that she reported to work that afternoon.

  “Top of the morning to you. Doctor. How was your night?” Gil teased as she joined him for their first rounds.

  “Fair. Yours?”

  “ Fair.” He stopped to adjust the saline drip on a geriatric patient. “She should really be down on four with the other geries,” he observed as he worked, his whole face pulled forward in concentration. “That does it.” He untangled himself from the various tubes feeding into and out of the old woman. “What were you saying, Nat?”

  “You were saying that you had a fair night.” She took one of the charts down from the wall and made her notations, checking off the medications which had been given and those the patient was yet to receive.

  “That’s right. Well, I couldn’t get that Reimer kid off my mind. I know you spotted something I didn’t. So last night I tried to figure it out. I must have spent three, four hours on it.”

  She hung the chart back on its wall clip. “And?”

  “I couldn’t for the life of me see what you saw.”

  “Gil”—she laughed, and it sounded almost natural—“you don’t have to make me infallible. Remember the maternal instinct. I can find tetanus in a hangnail if I work har
d enough at it.”

  Gil looked at her thoughtfully. “If that’s what you want me to believe, I will. But you don’t believe it, do you?” And with that, he walked on ahead of her to the next ward.

  Somewhat later they were in the pediatric room where Alan Mathew Reimer had spent the night.

  “Where’s the boy?” Natalie inquired of the orderly after she and Gil had reviewed the bed charts.

  “What boy?”

  “Transferred,” Gil said in a neutral tone as he read over the records. “It says here that he was transferred about three this morning. Here’s the authorization.” He handed the transfer to Natalie, wondering what had happened.

  “Where did they take him?” she asked of the orderly.

  But it was Gil who answered. “According to this. Inner City Pediatric.” He scowled as he studied the sheet.

  “What is it, Gil?”

  “I’ve got a friend at Inner City on admit. He didn’t mention anything about a transfer from here. He usually mentions the ones we send over. He calls them our rejects.”

  “Oh?” Natalie could feel uncertainty around her. Her senses were on the alert.

  “Most of the time he kids me about them,” he said slowly. “And Pediatric there... We’ve got everything they’ve got, and more. He was better off here.”

  “Maybe someone else did the admit,” Natalie suggested to reassure herself.

  “Maybe,” Gil said carefully, realizing that Natalie might be right. He had not heard from Ed at Inner City.

  “Or he hasn’t seen the transfer yet.” She could feel her fear closing around her like jaws.

  “Or there might be some trouble with the parents,” Gil said, satisfied with the idea. There was always trouble with the parents of an abandoned child.

  It was two nights later that another child was brought in, picked up by the Patrol. This time it was a girl, about ten, thin, frightened and restless. Her delicate face was ashen.

  Natalie did not hear about her until she was on her ten-thirty break. Gil had supplied the coffee, with the complaint that if Chisholm weren’t back soon he’d be forced to go on strike against the cafeteria on the grounds that eating the dreadful food was cruel and unusual punishment. Even this heavy-handed try at humor made Natalie grateful.

  “Say, Natalie,” called Ian Parkenson from the door, “are you still collecting sick kids?”

  “Sure, why not?” she answered. Ian was a good doctor and a kind man who knew more about the working of this hospital than any other three doctors combined. Natalie respected him, although she could never bring herself to like him, and often wondered why she didn’t. He nodded to her across the room. “If you’re interested, she’s on the sixth floor. She was admitted a couple of hours ago. The Patrol picked her up near the main thruway. First report makes this exhaustion and a whacking good case of pleural bronchitis.”

  “The usual pattern for abandoned children, Ian?” Gil asked for form’s sake, though he was not particularly interested.

  Ian shrugged his big shoulders. “It’s hard to say. She’s been in the open for two or three days, by the look of her. Why don’t you stop off on your way up to eleven and see for yourself. Manning has the case. He won’t mind.”

  Natalie thought it over. “I’ll see her,” she said. “Thanks for telling me about her.” The bitter taste in her mouth was not entirely due to the terrible coffee.

  “Well, what do you think, Doctor?” Gil asked as they rode up from seeing the girl on the sixth floor.

  Natalie shook her head slightly. She was staring straight ahead, unseeing. Her face was without expression.

  “Okay, what is it, Nat?”

  She didn’t answer for a while, and when she did look up at Gil her eyes were flinty. “Gil, I want a blood specimen on that girl. Get it, will you? This time I’m going to do the lab series myself.”

  “What?” Gil stared at her. “That’s crazy. The labs are closed. And you know you aren’t authorized to...”

  “I’ll ask Mark to clear it for me,” she said, knowing that she probably wouldn’t.

  Inwardly Gil sighed. He knew, as well as Natalie did, that Mark would not willingly give her a lab clearance. Mark had things just the way he wanted them, if the gossip around the wards was right. Gil knew that Mark would not let his wife into the labs; it would be too inconvenient.

  But Natalie was saying, “I’ll call the labs next break I get. Do you want to come with me, Gil?”

  “If I’m free,” he said, knowing that he wouldn’t be. “But you’re a glutton for punishment, Nat.”

  “Am I?” she asked, eyeing him sharply, her face suddenly intent.

  “Well, just watch yourself,” he said miserably. He heard his name on the paging system. Grateful for this intrusion, he said, “It sounds like an emergency. I’d better go.”

  “See you later,” she said, and turned her attention to her patients.

  A vial had been set aside for her at the nurses’ station when she came off duty. There was no identification tag on it, no code. She slipped it secretively into her lab coat pocket while none of the nurses were looking. Even as she did it, she chided herself. I’m not like this, she thought. This is foolishness. Yet she knew that she was frightened, and that her fear would not go away, riding with her loud heartbeat in the elevator down to labs on the seventh floor.

  As she entered the room adjoining the lab complex the clerk looked up. He was a faded, soft man with nervous hands and a pasty face. He recognized her, saying, “Dr. Lebbreau,” as he tried to estimate the amount of influence she had with her husband. “Is there anything I can do to help you?” He remembered that Dr. Howland had said he was expecting a visitor. He had not said it was his own wife, but the clerk knew better than to keep Dr. Lebbreau waiting.

  “Thanks. I can find my way around,” she said in what she hoped was an easy voice.

  “Dr. Howland is expecting you,” said the clerk, spreading an unpleasant smile over his face. “Do you want me to announce you?”

  Natalie felt her heart sink. She told herself that it was impossible, that it was nerves, that hearts could not possibly do what hers had done. She made an effort to smile. If Mark caught her now, she was lost anyway. “Never mind.”

  “But...” the clerk began, his hands moving nervously as he tried to make up his mind.

  “I promise you I won’t keep him if he’s too busy,” she said, hoping the words were arch enough. She had no intention of seeing Mark at all.

  At last the clerk made up his mind. “Go on in,” he said with an attempted wink. “I won’t ruin your assignation for you.”

  Her sudden relief made her bones feel cold. She thanked the clerk as she went through the door into the labs.

  The fourth station was open, set up for full analysis. Natalie glanced around one last time, then slid inside, pulling the door closed behind her. At this hour there were few people in the labs, and one closed door more or less would not attract attention.

  Quelling her fear she punched on the light, letting the soft blue radiance shine around her. At one time she had found it beautiful, but now she did not notice it as she selected her supplies and set to work.

  Fifty minutes later she had the answer, and her fear had returned manyfold. The girl Manning was assigned to had diphtheria—of that, Natalie was certain. The question was how. She had been immunized, like everyone else. She had no history of vaccine rejection. There was no evidence that the disease had mutated. How had she got it? Where had she got it? Did any more children have it?

  But diphtheria had been wiped out, Natalie reminded herself. All the old diseases were gone, even most forms of cancer. The diagnostic computers had forgotten the diseases, refusing to recognize them...

  “Oh, God,” she whispered desperately as the implication hit her. If the diagnostic computers no longer recognized the diseases, there was no telling how many people were infected and did not know it. “I have to find Mark,” Natalie whispered to herself. “He’ll hav
e to give up the Project,” she said, trying to think how to convince him of what she had found. “This is more important than the Project.”

  She had the door ajar when she heard another door open. She stopped, wondering who it might be, determined to stay where she was until she could leave the lab unseen.

  A woman’s voice, light with laughter, said a few words, teasing, lilting words that Natalie could not hear.

  The deep laugh that answered the first froze Natalie, for the voice was Mark’s.

  She stepped back into the station, pulling the door firmly. In a daze, she thought about what she had heard. She was mistaken, she had to be. It was just Mark’s way, to put frightened women at ease with his casual, intimate words. That’s all there was to it.

  “Why do you think we came here?” he was saying, his rich voice vibrant in the quiet room. “It’s absolutely safe. No one gets in here unless I clear them. I use my private entrance, and no one, not even that dumb clerk out front, knows I’m here. It’s perfect.”

  “What about an emergency?” asked the soft voice provocatively.

  “There’s a lab right off the emergency room. They don’t bother us. Relax. We’re safe as houses. Safer.”

  The woman giggled and Natalie could hear the tap of her shoes as she crossed the room. There was a pause, and when she spoke again, her voice was softer, thicker. “You’re good, Mark. Where do we go? Your office?”

  “No. That’s private.” Natalie heard him thump leather. The examination table, she realized. “Here. Where else?”

  “Oh, there,” the woman said, surprised. “I never thought of that. It’s big enough, I guess.”

  “Yes, it’s big enough,” he said with some asperity. “Look.” There was a movement and the woman cried out delightedly, “Oh, I see. I can turn...”

  “Like meat on a spit. And keep your voice down!”

  “You’ve used this before, I bet. For ‘research’ like this?” She tittered at her own wit. Her shoes tapped again, then there was the sibilance as her clothes slid to the floor. “It’s kind of cold.”