Peter Clement - The Inquisitor

The nurse nodded.

"And she gets her next morphine as soon as she starts to stir from the midazolam wearing off, which will be in about an hour…"

As Earl rattled off his instructions, tears rippled down the haggard circles beneath Mr. Matthews's eyes to where the crescent contours of skin bunched up by the top of his mask. From there wet marks spread through the material until it grew damp enough to stick against the hollow contours of his cheeks. He reached across his wife's sleeping form and held out his hand to Earl again, except this time it trembled slightly. "Thank you," he repeated, but much more softly than before.

Earl clasped it in his as he finished outlining to Yablonsky a regime that had more to do with simple human dignity than medicine. Yet he couldn't be sure she wouldn't screw it up somehow, to put him in his place.

"Yes, Doctor," she repeated over and over.

Her sullenness worried him. "And make sure the next shift gets it right as well. I want no more problems."

She bristled, almost standing at attention. "I'm doing a double and will be here until dawn."

Resentment had probably prevented her from adding a "sir" this time. Earl pegged her former rank as at least a sergeant.

He led Mr. Matthews to the door and delivered him to one of the younger nurses with instructions to give the man a taxi voucher.

Then he and Yablonsky wrapped up the rest of the rounds in an hour, during which Earl made similar adjustments to the medications of another seven patients, who all had little more than days, if not hours, to live. Still, there'd definitely be fireworks over what he'd done here tonight. One of the seven, unfortunately, belonged to Wyatt.

Yablonsky, on the other hand, had become much less hostile by the time they returned to the nursing station. Her initial rigidity now made her seem more brittle than hard, almost fragile. Not that he could excuse the indifference he'd witnessed here, but little wonder she and her colleagues armored themselves with it, seeing people face death, day in and day out.

"Tell me, Mrs. Yablonsky- or may I call you Monica?" He sensed he might have won her over a little and that now might be the best time to get her talking, before Wyatt declared him public enemy number one.

"Of course, Doctor."

"There's something else Dr. Wyatt brought to my attention that perhaps you could help me with."

"If I can."

"He described a cluster of odd occurrences."

Immediately her body stiffened again, as if she was holding her breath in anticipation of bad news. "Clusters?"

"Yes. He said that over the last few months some of your patients were reporting near-death, out-of-body experiences."

"Oh, that!" She immediately exhaled and gave a little laugh. "Yes! It's most strange. And some of them weren't that near death."

"Do you have any ideas as to the cause?"

She shook her head. "I'd guess the effects of morphine or whatever other medication they were on. I actually looked up near-death experiences on the Internet. There's quite a lot there, you know, all about the neurotransmitters that may be behind it and what receptor sites in what part of the brain, if stimulated, will produce the experience-"

"What did Dr. Deloram think about it?" he interrupted, having no use for medicine culled off who knew what Web sites. "Didn't he come to interview some of the patients a few days ago?" Earl tried to make the question sound as innocent as possible.

Surprise deepened the wrinkles on her forehead. "You heard about that visit?" She leaned closer to him, her eyes all at once betraying the delighted eagerness of someone ready and willing to gossip. "Now there we had a really strange event. He arrived yesterday morning, pleasant as can be, took the list of patients' names, and went off to talk with them, at least the ones who are still alive. An hour later he stormed out, face so livid I thought his mask would burn off, and not so much as a word to any of us. Never did find out what made him so angry. The patients he talked to didn't know either." She leaned back and gave a little nod, as if daring him to come up with a logical explanation for such a bizarre display.

Earl asked if she could prepare the list again, intending to speak with those patients himself later. He also would ask Stewart what happened. But as he took the elevator down to the main floor, something other than near-death experiences began to bother him.

Why had Monica Yablonsky reacted so apprehensively when he first mentioned a cluster of odd occurrences, then been clearly relieved when he asked about the near-death experiences?

He walked to the front entrance, where he dumped his protective garb in the prescribed disposal bin, stepped outside, and raced through a warm summer downpour to his car.

Yet he remained preoccupied.

What kind of clusters could she have thought he meant?

Janet heard Earl's car pull into the driveway.

She threw down the Saturday edition of the New York Herald, wanting to swat him with it for coming home so late on a weekend. It especially galled her when politics, not patients, delayed him.

Bloated, bitchy, and mad at the man who had gotten her that way, she thought. She'd better watch it, or she'd soon come across like the wronged woman in a country-and-western song. Still, her two-hours-overdue husband had better have a damn good excuse.

Brendan looked up from where he'd been engrossed in some elaborate game on the kitchen floor involving a toy train and dump trucks. "Daddy's here," he yelled, the noise of his father's arrival finally penetrating his imaginary world. He leapt to his feet and streaked to open the back door.

She levered herself upright. God, she didn't remember being so heavy the first time. No way she'd be able to work right up to the due date lugging this one around. She also admitted to a tinge of relief at having a legitimate excuse to book off on maternity leave earlier than last time. Despite her initial resolve to never abandon her patients because of SARS, she didn't at all like some of the close calls that had been reported in the news lately involving pregnant women exposed to undetected contacts in hospitals.

"Daddy, I listened to my little brother's heart," Brendan yelled from the threshold, eyes wide with the clear blue exuberance that only a six-year-old can have. "Mommy put a radio thing on her tummy and let me hear."

Earl stepped in from the rain and swung him into the air. "She did? Wow!"

"Want to hear what it sounded like?" Without waiting for an answer, Brendan very seriously pursed his lips to make a rapid sucking and blowing sound with his breath- not a bad imitation of fetal blood flow amplified by a Doppler microphone.

Despite her annoyance, Janet had to laugh. Still, Earl should have entered the garage directly and not touched Brendan before discarding all clothing immediately into the washing machine and showering. Shortly after the outbreak they'd installed a cubicle in there just for that purpose. She'd felt paranoid doing it- Earl kept reassuring her that the precautions at work should have been enough- but the fear they might have carried the virus home on their skin or clothing stalked her every time either of them went to hug their son.

Earl glanced her way. He must have read trouble, as he just as quickly put Brendan down and said, "Well, isn't that marvelous? You're sure Mommy doesn't have a little choo-choo engine in there?"

"No, come listen yourself." He reached to pull Earl toward her. "She's been making us spaghetti, for a long time."

Earl stepped back, hands in the air. "Daddy has to go shower," and he disappeared down the basement stairs.

Five minutes later he returned dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his dark, wet hair slicked back. He wisely stooped to first say hello to Muffy, their large standard poodle, who still considered herself the family's firstborn and Brendan one of her pups. Now twelve, the dog had taken to sleeping a lot, mainly in doorways near entrances so that any new arrivals would have to step over her rather than she having to run to them. He gave her a kitzfe behind her ears- Janet had taught him the word shortly after they first met sixteen years ago. It meant stroking. Muffy had become an eager recipient when she joined the family, and Brendan had learned early to get his fair share too. Kitzle had appeared in his vocabulary almost at the same time he learned "No!"