Tess Gerritsen - Harvest

"Wait," said Parr. "She can't go back to her duties."

"You haven't proved anything," said Abby, rising from her chair. "The General's right. Either you make the charges stick, or you withdraw them."

"We have one charge that's indisputable," said Susan. "Illegal possession of a controlled substance. We don't know how you obtained the morphine, Doctor, but the fact you had it in your locker is serious enough." She looked at Parr. "We don't have a choice. The potential for liability is sky-high. If something goes wrong with any of her patients, and people pounds d out we knew about this morphine business, we're dead." She turned to Wetfig. "So's the reputation of your residency programme, General."

Susan's warning had its intended effect. Liability was something they all worried about. Wettig, like every other doctor, dreaded lawyers and lawsuits. This time, he didn't argue.

"What does this mean?" said Abby. "Am I being fired?"

Parr rose to his feet, a signal that the meeting was over, the decision now made. "Dr. DiMatteo, until further notice, you're on suspension. You're not to go on the wards.You're not to go anywhere near a patient. Do you understand?"

She understood. She understood perfectly.

Yakov had not dreamed of his mother in years, had scarcely thought of her in months, so he was bewildered when, on his thirteenth day at sea, he awakened with a memory of her so vivid he could almost smell her scent still lingering in the air. His last glimpse of her, as the dream faded, was her smile. A wisp of blonde hair tracing her cheek. Green eyes that seemed to be looking through him, beyond him, as though he was the one who was not real, not flesh. Her face was so instantly familiar to him that he knew this must surely be his mother. Over the years he had tried hard to remember her, but her face had never quite come to him. Yakov had no photographs, no mementoes. But somehow, through the years, he must have carried the memory of her face stored like a seed in the dark but fertile soil of his mind. Last night, it had finally blossomed. He remembered her, and she was beautiful.

That afternoon, the sea turned flat as glass and the sky darkened to the same cold grey as the water. Standing on the deck, looking over the railing, Yakov could not tell where the sea ended and the sky began. They were adrift in a giant grey fishbowl. He'd heard the cook say there was bad weather ahead, that by tomorrow no one would be keeping down much more than bread and soup. Today, though, the sea was calm, the air heavy and metallic with the taste of rain. Yakov was finally able to coax Aleksei from his bunk to go exploring.

The first place Yakov took him was Hell. The engine room. They wandered for a while in the clanking darkness until Aleksei complained the smell of fuel was making him sick. Aleksei had the stomach of a baby — always puking. So Yakov took him up to the bridge, where the Captain was too busy to talk to them. So was the Navigator. Yakov could not even demonstrate his special status as a regular and accepted visitor.

Next they headed to the galley, but the cook was in a cranky mood and did not offer them even a slice of bread. He had a meal to prepare for the aft passengers, the people no one ever saw. They

HARVEST

were a demanding pair, he complained, requiring far too much of his time and attention. He grumbled as he set two glasses and a wine bottle on a tray and slid it into the dumbwaiter. He pressed a button and sent it whirring upwards, to their private quarters. Then he turned back to the stove where a pan was sizzling and pots were steaming. He lifted one of the pot lids, releasing the fragrance of butter and onions. He stirred the contents with a wooden spoon.

"Onions have to be cooked slowly," he said. "It makes them sweet as milk. It takes patience to cook well, but no one has patience these days. Everyone wants things done at once. Stick it in the microwave! Might as well eat old leather." He closed the pot lid, then lifted the lid to the frying pan. Browning inside were six tiny birds, each one no bigger than a boy's fist. "Like morsels from heaven," he said.

"Those are the smallest chickens I've ever seen," marvelled Aleksei.

The Cook laughed. "They're quail, idiot."

"Why do we never eat quail?"

"Because you're not in the aft cabin." The cook arranged the steaming birds on a platter and drizzled them with chopped parsley. Then he stepped back, his face red and sweating as he admired his creation. "This they cannot complain about," he said, and slid the platter into the dumbwaiter, which by then had returned empty. "I'm hungry," saidYakov.

"You're always hungry. Go, cut yourself a slice of bread. The loaf is stale, but you can toast it."

The two boys rummaged in drawers for the bread knife. The Cook was right; the loaf was dry and stale. Holding down the loaf with the stump of his left arm Yakov sawed off two slices and carried them across to the toaster.

"Look what you're doing to my floor!" said the cook. "Dropping crumbs all over. Pick them up."

"You pick them up,"Yakov told Aleksei. "You dropped them. I didn't." "I'm making the toast."

"But I didn't drop the crumbs."

"All right then. I'll just throw away your slice."

"Someone pick them up!" roared the cook.

Aleksei instantly dropped to his knees and picked up the crumbs. Yakov slid the first piece of bread into the toaster. A furry ball of grey suddenly popped out of one of the slots and leaped to the floor.

"A mouse!" shrieked Aleksei. "There's a mouse!"

The grey ball was scampering around Aleksei's dancing feet now, chased in one direction by Yakov, then in the other direction by the Cook, who threw a pot lid at it for good measure. The mouse skittered halfway up Aleksei's leg, eliciting such a scream of terror it immediately changed course. It dropped back to the floor and shot off, vanishing under a cabinet.

Something was burning on the stove. Cursing, the Cook ran to turn off the flame. He cursed some more as he scraped blackened onions from the pot, the onions he'd been so tenderly nursing along in butter. "A mouse in my kitchen! And look at this! Ruined. I'll have to start over again. Bloody fucking mouse."

"He was in the toaster," saidYakov. Suddenly he felt a little sick.

He thought about that mouse crawling, scratching around inside. "Probably left it full of his shit," said the cook. "Bloody mouse."

Yakov cautiously peered into the toaster. No more mice, but lots of mysterious brown specks.

He slid the toaster towards the sink, intending to dump out the crumbs.

The Cook gave a shout. "Hey! Are you stupid? What are you doing?"

"I'm cleaning out the toaster."

"There's water in that sink! And look, the thing is still plugged in. If you put that in there, and you touch the water, you're dead. Didn't anyone ever teach you that?"

"Uncle Misha never had a toaster."

"It's not just toasters. It's anything that plugs in, anything with an electric cord. You're as stupid as all the others." He waved his arms, shoving them towards the door. "Go on, get out of here, both of you. You're a nuisance."

"But I'm hungry," saidYakov.

"You wait for supper like everyone else." He threw a fresh slab of butter into a saucepan. Glancing atYakov, he barked: "Go!"

The boys left.

They played on deck for a while, until they grew chilled. They tried the bridge again, but were shooed from there as well. Sheer boredom took them, at last, to the one place in the boat where Yakov knew they would bother no one, and no one would bother them. It was his secret place, and he'd meant to show it to Aleksei only as a reward, and only if Aleksei could manage, for once, not to be a crybaby. He had found it on his third day of exploring, when he had spotted the closed door in the engine-room corridor. He