Orbit 5 - [Anthology] Read online

  All supplicants might not be equally deserving. In Gruber’s control room, the night Tanker died, he had heard the name Krillus. Faintly he recalled a scandal, but could not pin it down. One of the regular reporters, Hank Coggins, filled him in.

  “That boy Krillus is a completely no-good son of a bitch. Not just raping three teenage girls and killing two people with his car. Let’s face it, some kids are pretty wild. A young boy, full of piss and vinegar, he can do a lot of rough things, but eventually, if he grows up a decent sort of man, people forgive him. But this Krillus boy, Tony they call him, he’s just a mean bastard. Always has been. Gutted cats. Beat up small kids. His daddy’s money bought him out of everything. But he got sick and ended up with lousy kidneys. They got infected, and a week or so before Tanker died they either had to take his kidneys out or he was going to die. And they took them out.”

  Sturbridge nodded. “I’ve seen the artificial kidney machine they used to keep him alive until Tanker showed up.”

  “That right? Well, Krillus only had this one boy. His wife’s dead years now. He’s just a contemptible old fart himself, no self-respecting doctor would put his kidney in anything but a dirty pickle jar, and anyhow he’s too old and they had to wait.” Hank paused to light a cigarette. “Early that morning when Tanker died, they put one of his kidneys in Tony Krillus and it just worked fine. He takes medicine and some kind of treatment, but three weeks after they put it in, he was running around like you and me and has been ever since.”

  Sturbridge tried to interview Rowalski, who was doing well, but the hospital would permit no visitors. He drove out one day to see Rowalski’s wife. The heat wave had broken; there had been rain and the trees and fields were green. Rowalski’s lawn was a litter of bottles, papers, old tires, discarded plastic toys, and a broken cart struggling valiantly to hide the rampant weeds. The iron gate hung awry from a broken hinge. Beyond the cracked and pitted concrete, the porch door stood ajar.

  To the left a bench, some tools, and a few disemboweled and dust-covered television sets marked the limits of what had once been Rowalski’s shop. A battered baby carriage, a cot, a small basket filled with apples, another filled with tomatoes now intruded on these. On the cot a huge yellow tiger cat Hashed green eyes filled with suspicion at Sturbridge, but collapsed into purrs when petted.

  He heard the house door open, and turned. The cat repaid this neglect by sinking two large claws into his hand. He made his peace and introduced himself. There were no chairs, so he sat with the cat. Mrs. Rowalski brought out the baby which she put in the carriage, a small child which she sat on the porch, a coffee percolator and the necessary things, a bottle for the baby, cigarettes, and finally a camp stool for herself. She was only about twenty-five, he thought, but he could see how the grinding years had etched her face. They sat there enjoying their smoke, the nice afternoon, the quiet children, and waited for the coffee.

  Her hair was brushed back and tied with a piece of candy-box ribbon. She was clean but unadorned. He asked her about her childhood.

  Her pregnant mother had fled Germany while the rest of the family were on the way to the gas chambers, and died in Brooklyn of tuberculosis when the little girl was four. From orphanage to foster home to foster home had been the child’s dreary round until she became a student nurse at University Hospital.

  Her cheerless childhood had left her dull in social situations. She could not joke or flirt easily. Unlike the other student nurses, she had not flexed her emotions by falling in love with at least two medical students, interns, residents, laboratory technicians, elevator operators, or personable male patients.

  When Sidney Rowalski was admitted for repair of a defective heart valve, her needs and his met. Their marriage was a monument testifying that he and she had made it. If the valve job had held up, they would have done as well as most.

  She checked the baby, then brought out a glass of milk and a cookie for the little girl.

  “How do you feel about things now?” he asked her.

  She looked at him seriously. He could see the fatigue lines around her eyes and lips. “I can’t be sure,” she said. “If I could just believe we could be happy.”

  “And can’t you believe this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  On the way home he stopped at the chain drug store. Bill would be coming home from military school this weekend; he bought a box of peanut brittle. Then he went to the corner where the old man sold flowers, and bought a big bunch of yellow roses. Maisie would feel faintly jealous and suspect him of patting some secretary at the Tankerville Herald. He couldn’t help that.

  Publication of “The Hopeful Supplicants” changed Sturbridge’s life. Lawrence Jennings stopped him in the hall to pound him on the back and say, “Man, you can really write.” The lawyer, Hartman, stopped him on the street, took him to lunch, and talked and talked about how much he and his wife had enjoyed the articles. Things were looking up, Sturbridge thought; at least it didn’t look as if he had to worry about his job. Then UPI asked to syndicate his articles. At last, Sturbridge admitted, he could taste money, he could smell money, and, God willing, he would damn soon have some.

  He was working hard on his fourth article, which he called “By These Hands.” He hoped to convey something of what he had glimpsed through the window in Gruber’s control room the night Tanker died. And the things Gruber and his brother had told him since. At the Hartmans’ for dinner, the Sturbridges met a nurse from University Hospital, Gladys Peterson, an old friend of Mrs. Hartman’s. “Mr. Sturbridge needs your help, Gladys,” Mrs. Hartman said. “He needs to know just what went on.”

  Gladys took a big swallow of her bourbon and started in. She was a big blond blustery sort of girl, good-natured and willing. She had an eye for what counted. She took Sturbridge through the developing drama of the operating floor as the patients came up. She followed them as they were moved to different rooms and told him what the rooms contained. With the arrival of the body of John Phillpott Tanker, the overall show faded out, because she was in the room where the heart transplant from Tanker to Rowalski was being done.

  “A thing like that is real exciting, Mr. Sturbridge. I mean even when you’ve worked around hospitals for years like I have, still there’s something about putting another heart in a person that makes the shivers run up my spine. I’m just not tough enough, I guess.” She paused for a swallow of her bourbon, a quick fluff fluff to her hair, a glance around to see that she was holding her audience.

  “They had Rowalski up in the operating room for, oh, a good hour or more before Mr. Tanker finally died. They were checking up all the time back and forth with Recovery, because they had to get Rowalski connected to the heart-lung machine in plenty of time, but yet not too early because it don’t do them any good to be on one of those heart-lung machines a minute longer than they need to.” She finished her bourbon and Mrs. Hartman brought her another. Gladys took a good swallow. “I tell you, Mrs. Hartman, I just couldn’t be a scrub nurse today. I just couldn’t stay with it. When I was a scrub nurse, just one doctor did the operating and the other doctors helped him by keeping things back out of the way so he could see what he was doing. And if they started in trying to do any of the operating, they got a good sharp rap on the fingers from the doctor that was doing it. But it’s not like that now. What with hooking up the heart-lung machine and maybe doing a tracheotomy, that’s putting a tube in their neck to hook up to the anesthesia machine, and then opening them up so you can get at the liver or kidney or heart or whatever you are going to transplant, why you may have three or four people cutting and sewing at the same time. There is so much to do and it goes fast, fast, fast, and the girls that are scrubbed just have to be quick and pay real strict attention, because when those young squirts stick out their hand for something they want it right now. A nurse may have been out necking with that same doctor the night before, but she better be right on her toes in that operating room. She won’t be out necking
with that doctor and she won’t be in there giving him the wrong instruments, either, if she can’t stay with it.

  “You know, Mr. Sturbridge, the really spooky part for me was when they had taken Rowalski’s heart out but they hadn’t put Mr. Tanker’s heart in yet. That’s when you really looked at that heart-lung machine over there with the blood running down through the big cellophane bag and the oxygen bubbling up through it. You can hear the pumps going chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk, and see the blood flow into those plastic hoses that run from the machine down across the floor to Mr. Rowalski. Then they take Mr. Tanker’s heart out of the perfuser and they have it up there trimming it so it will fit exactly and you know I wanted to holler at those pumps—don’t stop—don’t stop—don’t stop—because you could just see that that pump was all there was.”

  * * * *

  “By These Hands” was reprinted across the country, and Sturbridge had the rare and delightful pleasure of seeing and hearing himself quoted. When Readers’ Digest wrote requesting reprint rights, he found that even the fullest cup could hold a little more. Sturbridge’s style had appeal. UPI asked him to write a column, once a week to start, on transplant problems. UPI felt it might go if he wanted to give it a try.

  His concern for Rowalski’s family was genuine. Lawrence Jennings agreed to give plenty of publicity to any local groups that would help out, and between the veterans’ organizations, the lodges, the churches, and Rotary, they made a howling success of cleaning up and painting the place. The Legion rearranged its car lottery so that Mrs. Rowalski, with everyone forewarned, got one of the cars. Rowalski, doing well, was being considered for a trial visit home.

  Later that week the reporter, Hank Coggins, came up. “That Krillus boy ain’t changed none. Killed another kid this morning with his damned car.”

  “What happened?”

  “He hit a kid named Andrews. Family lives down by the brick kilns. Killed him instantly.”

  The next day Hank was back. “There’s more to that story if you want it.”

  “Dump your bag,” Sturbridge said.

  “It’s a mixed-up deal. Tony Krillus had a row with his old man and moved in with a friend in the old Packer Apartments down by the railroad station. Usually if a family has money, there isn’t too much trouble about killing a kid down in that neighborhood. But this time old man Krillus wasn’t having any. Seems Tony had his own car and he’s over twenty-one and the old man either canceled the insurance or it run out, so there isn’t anything to pay the Andrews family with. So the family got a lawyer, that new fellow, Yates, and he’s had Tony Krillus arrested until he posts bond. Yates swears somebody is going to pay.”

  Sturbridge wrote a column on the hazards of keeping criminals or insane people alive by transplants. The liver transplant died, and he did a little more work on his fifth big article, which he called “On Borrowed Time.” Then one day he saw Hartman boil up the stairs as if outrunning a subpoena server and duck into Lawrence Jennings’ office. A few minutes later Sturbridge’s phone rang and Jeninngs asked him to come over.

  Jennings’ face was flushed, his lips tightly pursed. “Walter,” he said, “you’re the nearest thing to an expert we’ve got around here on this transplant business. Have you ever heard anyone argue against declaring a man dead because his kidney or heart was still alive in someone else?”

  Sturbridge stared at him. “Well, no. The early transplants were kidneys taken from identical twins, and the question didn’t come up. When they started doing hearts and lungs and more and more kidneys, they had to use organs from people who were legally dead, but they had to work fast. Of course all kinds of releases are signed, and I’ve never heard of any legal tangle about it.”

  “I told you so,” Hartman cried, jumping up and waving his hands at Jennings. “John Phillpott Tanker was legally dead. Five doctors at University Hospital said so. No whiz-kid lawyer can change that.”

  “Is that so?” said Jennings. “Well, how about the fellows who were hung by the neck until some doctor said they were dead, but the relatives took them down and revived them; how about the ones that came to in an undertaker’s shop after some trusty sawbones said all was over; do they have to stay legally dead? Hell, no. You know that and I know that.”

  “The whole body was revived,” Hartman cried. “The same person was still there. The doctor’s mistake was obvious.”

  “Does it have to be the whole body?” Jennings demanded.

  “How about filling me in?” Sturbridge said. “I can hear the shooting but what are you shooting at?”

  “It’s the damnedest thing,” Jennings said. “You know about Tony Krillus. Well, Yates is determined to get money. Old man Krillus won’t part with any. Holly here— he pointed at Hartman—is in Probate Court starting on John’s estate. Yates has brought in this New York fellow, and Holly can’t even get the death certificate admitted. They argue that it is an inaccurate and unsatisfactory statement inasmuch as Tanker just isn’t totally dead.”

  Hartman snorted. “I never expected in all my days to sit in a courtroom and hear it argued that a man wasn’t totally dead when he’s been out in Spring Valley for months with a big marble stone on top of him. I feel like I’m watching one of those way-out television shows.”

  “Damn it all, Holly,” Jennings said, “transplanting hearts and kidneys was way-out television just a damned short while ago. I don’t want any calm superior legal air about this. This is my ass. I expect to inherit a damn big chunk of John’s estate as you both well know. Anything, and I mean anything, God damn it, that threatens to get in my way is a matter of deep personal concern.”

  There was a pause.

  “What does Yates hope to gain with all this hoopla about the death certificate?” Sturbridge asked.

  “Now you’re getting to the nub of it,” Jennings said. “My spies tell me that Yates has dreamed up the idea of filing suit against the Tanker estate. He is going to claim that without Tanker’s kidney Tony Krillus would be dead. So what Yates is going to say is that if Tony Krillus killed the Andrews boy, he did it only because Tanker’s kidney kept him alive to do it. So he is going to sue the hell out of Tanker. So what I am asking Holly is, does the whole body have to be revived? I’m worried as hell about this. A man can lose an arm or a leg or even both arms and both legs and his eyes and the Lord knows what else and still be John B. Citizen. But can a kidney or a heart lose everything else and keep on living and be John B. Anybody? Or just what the hell is the situation?”

  Sturbridge couldn’t take his eyes off Hartman. God, he thought, he’s really got the wind up. He watched a muscle jump in Hartman’s cheek beneath the handkerchief he was rubbing over his face.

  Hartman cleared his throat and got a grip on himself. “I think you are getting excited without good reason, Lawrence. Judge Cotton has to let them present whatever arguments they want, but you’ll see he’ll throw the whole business out fast enough. The estate will be settled just about as you expect.”

  “I’m not sure Judge Cotton gives a damn,” Jennings said. “He’s due to retire soon. What do you think, Walter?”

  “He’s going to be sitting on a case that’s hotter than the Scopes monkey trial,” Sturbridge said. “If the old boy has to write new law or change old law, he’s going to do his damnedest to make sure the Supreme Court finally says he’s right.”

  “Damn it all,” Jennings said, “my wife will skin me alive. And you too, Holly. We figured we were all set. Now everything makes me feel worse and worse. Holly, how little of a person is still that person? Hell, with accidents and operations nowadays you lawyers must have some irreducible bit in mind.”

  “No,” Hartman said. “As long as there’s anything there it’s a person. They can be deaf, dumb, blind, and completely paralyzed and still be a legal person. But with this transplant business, I just don’t know. I want to call up a few people and do a little reading. I’ll find something.” He stood up, watching Jennings.

  “O.K., Holly, do
the best you can.” Jennings waved him away and watched him out of the office. “He’s damn near as scared as I am, and I’m not kidding you one single bit, Walter, when I tell you I’m scared as hell. Last few months you’ve had a little taste of money, the way those articles of yours have been selling. I see your new car and things like that and I’m glad for you. But just ask yourself, Walter, how you’d feel if you had been looking at five million dollars as being so nearly your own that you could feel it in the way people spoke to you, the way your wife treated you, the way you treated yourself, and then you just begin to smell faintly, like a far-off forest fire, the chance that you may lose it.”

  He lifted his big body out of the chair and went into his office and returned with two cold bottles of beer. He looked at Sturbridge. “Got any ideas, Walter?”

  “None that are much help,” Sturbridge said. “I’m no lawyer but my first guess would be that transplants will be thrown out and the estate will be whacked up in the usual fashion.”

  “I’d like that,” Jennings said. “But how’re they going to throw it out? You might like to disown your father or your brother but you can’t do it. The relationship is a fact. Tony Krillus is part John Tanker. Tanker was worth ten million bucks. It’s new. It’s different. But I don’t see how you can say they’ll throw it out.”