Gregg Hurwitz - Do No Harm

He wracked his brain to recall an equally warm memory he had of his mother but found none. He remembered only briefer, colder images-how she wouldn't meet his eyes when he'd had chicken pox, as though something about his weakened state shamed her; the way his palms had sweat when he'd called to tell her about his low mark in embryology; how she wouldn't address Elisabeth at the dinner table when she broached medical topics.

Still, he was horrified by her complicity in covering up the study. And she was not alive for him to confront, question, or accuse. He'd always held her medical code of honor to be impeccable. That she'd been cold and withholding in her personal life, and a sharp-edged politician, had always seemed separate from that somehow. He should have known that in a field as absorbing as medicine the lines would eventually blur.

The bedrock had shifted beneath his feet. David had no choice but to desert it and seek more solid ground, to accept the injustices of the past and work at redeeming the present.

The door opened and someone sat in the chair beside him. He gradually came to realize it was Diane. He looked over. Her face was wrapped loosely in gauze. "I am not an animal," she joked in a creaky voice. "I am a woman."

"You shouldn't cover your wounds," he said, his voice tired and flat.

"I know," she said. "But I don't want to scare the patients."

"You are a patient."

"Oh," Diane said. "Oh yeah." She put her feet up on her chair and hugged her knees to her chest. "What are you doing in here? You're a Jew. And an atheist."

"How'd you find me?"

"Jill said she saw you duck inside."

"How are you feeling?"

"I feel pretty. Oh so pretty. It's a pity how pretty I feel." Diane's monotone matched David's pretty well. "They let me out of my cage, at least. Said I should be ready to go home tomorrow." She pointed to the manila folder in David's lap. "More notes from the underground?"

He told her briefly about Connolly's study, then handed her the folder. She read it slowly, then set it down. She didn't say anything for a few minutes as they stared at the tiny stained-glass window ahead. David realized it depicted a tree. A man came in and uttered a few prayers, his lips moving soundlessly. He departed quickly afterward.

Diane patted the bandage gently over her cheek, as if trying to alleviate an itch. "This keeps getting messier."

"It's just that with the attacks, the cops, bullshit hospital politics, the media all over me… " He rubbed his eyes. "It's all been wearing on me enough. And now to learn my mother bears some responsibility for these assaults… "

Diane's eyes sharpened. "From what do you draw that conclusion?"

"The experiments took place under her tenure."

"It sounds like she stopped them when she caught wind. You know damn well that the NPI chief of staff can't oversee every study run over there."

"She covered up the experiments that created him."

"Helped create him, David. Only helped. There were twenty-seven other kids in that study. None of them are throwing alkali."

"If you'd seen those films-"

"They sound awful. I'm just saying you can't shoulder this one too. Your trying to is an act of arrogance. A lot of psych studies were questionable before the Ethics Board tightened up. And besides, who's to say that your mother or even those experiments have any specific culpability? Nature versus nurture. Causation versus correlation. Genes versus environment. You're wading into some pretty murky philosophical waters."

"My mother taught me a lot of things," David finally said. "Probably more than anyone else. She was as tough as they come, tough to the point of being obdurate and unfeeling."

"That toughness also gave her her career in an age when women didn't have careers like hers," Diane said. "People's best traits are often also their worst. That's true for most of us."

"But you have to own up," David said. "You're permitted to stumble as long as you rectify. She never did. That study was wrong. There's no way around it. It was wrong. And she knew it. She covered it up."

"Well, you hardly have time to mope about that now."

He wiped his hands on his scrub top, and they left a sweat stain. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Go check out that address, for one thing. You have double coverage today-you can probably sneak out a bit early."

David nodded. "Happy Horizons. Sounds like a '50s retirement facility."

"Are you keeping the cops at bay?"

"For the time being."

"Clyde has clearly been exacting revenge for being run through those experiments. You need to get a better handle on what, specifically, he's after."

"The million-dollar question is: Then what?"

They studied the stained-glass tree, sorting their respective thoughts.

Diane touched her good cheek with her fingers. "If you were the kind of man who strictly wanted to see him punished, there would be an easy solution."

They looked at the tree a few moments longer.

"But then I probably wouldn't love you," she said.

When David stepped on the decrepit front porch, it sagged as though about to give way. The address on the side wall, composed of rusting numerals, read 17 1, the middle 1 having fallen off. The placard by the doorbell read pearson home for the developmentally disabled. The adjacent lot stood desolate and empty, save for a heap of trash and a burnt-out old car up on blocks that looked somehow haunted in the twilight.

A woman in a ratty sweatshirt opened the door, pinning the screen with her knee. She wore her hair in a high ponytail, a young style for someone who looked to be in her late thirties. Behind her, an overweight man with Down's syndrome sat cross-legged on the floor, folding and refolding a section of newspaper. "Can I help you?"

"Hello, I'm David Spier-I'm a doctor at UCLA. A man named Douglas DaVella used to live here. I was hoping you could put me in touch with someone who knew him."

"Oh sure. Doug was my dad, kind of. He passed on a few years back. He and his wife, Sue, used to run a foster home here. That's where I grew up." She smiled proudly. "I started working here after high school, and we switched the place to a retarded home in '86-more money available for that kind of stuff, you know."

"How do you mean?"

"The government subsidizes it when you take in kids, or people with disabilities. Not a ton of money in it, but it's a living. And you get to, you know, help people."

The man on the floor behind her made an incomprehensible noise.

"Okay, sweetie." She walked over and handed him a new section of newspaper, which he began assiduously folding. She smiled at David self-consciously. "He's a handful sometimes, but it's twenty-five hundred a month."

"That seems like a good arrangement," David said. "Did you live here in 1973?"

"Yup. I was… " Her head tilted back, her tongue poking at her lip. "Nine."

"Do you remember an incident that year involving a study run at the Neuropsychiatric Institute?"

"Yeah. But we weren't supposed to talk about it. Still aren't, I suppose. But you're from the hospital, didn't you say? I guess you know already."

"Pretty much," he lied. "I just wanted to talk to someone to flesh out the details."

"Would you mind if I took a look at your ID?" She smiled ingratiatingly. "I'm sorry; we do get all kinds through here."

"No problem." David pulled his UCLA badge from his pocket, and she examined it before stepping back from the door.

"Why don't you come in? Keep your voice down, though. It's quiet time. Except for those who did the most extra chores last week. Isn't that right, Tommy?" She ruffled Tommy's hair, but he remained fixated on the newspaper.

David sat on a plush maroon chesterfield. The house smelled strongly of cooked vegetables and ammonia. The mantel was decorated with well-dusted porcelain figurines and a collection of Jesus plates. "I'm Rhonda Decker, by the way."