Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

“They all get bacteremia sooner or later, anyway.…”

“And he was walking around— walking around, mind you, with a blood pH of seven-point-six and a potassium of one….”

“Well, what the hell do you expect of a Hopkins man?”

“So he said, ‘I gave up smoking, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give up drinking.’”

“Sure, you can correct the blood gases, but it doesn’t help the vasculature….”

“She was always a nice girl. Very well dressed. They must have spent a fortune on her clothes….”

“…course he’s pissed. Anybody’d be pissed….”

“…oliguric my ass. He was an uric for five days, and he still survived….”

“…in a seventy-four-year-old man, we just excised it locally and sent him home. It’s slow growing, anyhow….”

“…liver reached down to his knees, practically. But no hepatic failure….”

“She said she’d sign herself out if we didn’t operate, so naturally, we…”

“…but the students are always bitching; it’s a nonspecific response….”

“Well, apparently this girl had bitten it off of him….”

“Really? Harry, with that little nurse in Seven? The blonde?”

“…don’t believe it. He publishes more journal articles than most people can read in a lifetime….”

“…metastases to the heart…”

“Anyway, it goes like this: there’s this desert prison, see, with an old prisoner, resigned to his life, and a young one just arrived. The young one talks constantly of escape, and, after a few months, he makes a break. He’s gone a week, and then he’s brought back by the guards. He’s half dead, crazy with hunger and thirst. He describes how awful it was to the old prisoner. The endless stretches of sand, no oasis, no signs of life anywhere. The old prisoner listens for a while, then says, ‘Yep. I know. I tried to escape myself, twenty years ago.’ The young prisoner says, ‘You did? Why didn’t you tell me, all these months I was planning my escape? Why didn’t you let me know it was impossible?’ And the old prisoner shrugs, and says, ‘So who publishes negative results?’ ”

AT EIGHT, I was beginning to get tired. I saw Fritz Werner come in, waving to everyone and talking gaily. I started over toward him, but Charlie Frank caught me on the way.

Charlie stood half hunched over, with a twisted, painful expression on his face as if he’d just been stabbed in the stomach. His eyes were wide and sad. Altogether, it was quite a dramatic effect, but Charlie always looked that way. He wore an air of impending crisis and imminent tragedy on his shoulders, and it burdened him, crushing him to the floor. I had never seen him smile.

In a tense, half whisper, he said, “How is he?”

“Who?”

“Art Lee.”

“He’s all right.” I didn’t want to talk about Lee with Charlie Frank.

“Is it true he’s been arrested?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my God.” He gave a little gasp.

“I think it will turn out all right in the end,” I said.

“Do you?”

“Yes,” I said, “I do.”

“Oh, my God.” He bit his lip. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t think so.”

He was still holding on to my arm. I looked across the room at Fritz, hoping Charlie’d notice and let go. He didn’t.

“Say, John…”

“Yes?”

“What’s this I heard about you, ah, getting involved?”

“Let’s say I’m interested.”

“I ought to tell you,” Charlie said, leaning close, “that there’s talk in the hospitals. People are saying that you’re concerned because you’re mixed up in it yourself.”

“Talk is cheap.”

“John, you could make a lot of enemies.”

In my mind, I was thinking over Charlie Frank’s friends. He was a pediatrician, and very successful: he worried over his young patients more than their mothers and that comforted them.

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s just a feeling I get,” he said with a sad look.

“What do you suggest I do?”

“Stay away from it, John. It’s ugly. Really ugly.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“A lot of people feel very strongly—”

“So do I.”

“—that this is something to be left to the courts.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

His grip on my arm hardened. “I’m saying this as a friend, John.”

“O.K., Charlie. I’ll remember.”

“It’s really ugly, John.”

“I’ll remember.”

“These people won’t stop at anything,” he said.

“What people?”

Quite abruptly, he let go of my arm. He gave an embarrassed little shrug. “Well, you have to do what you think is best, in any case.”

And he turned away.

FRITZ WERNER WAS STANDING, as usual, by the bar. He was a tall, painfully thin, almost emaciated man. He kept his hair trimmed short, and this emphasized his large, dark, brooding eyes. He had a birdlike manner, a gawky walk, and a habit of craning his thin neck forward when he was addressed, as if he could not hear well. There was an intensity about him, which might have stemmed from his Austrian ancestry or from his artistic nature. Fritz painted and sketched as a hobby, and his office always had a cluttered, studiolike appearance. But he made his money as a psychiatrist, listening patiently to bored, middle-aged matrons who had decided at a late date that there was something wrong with their minds.

He smiled as we shook hands. “Well, well, if it isn’t poison ivy.”

“I’m beginning to think so myself.” ,

He looked around the room. “How many lectures so far?”

“Just one. Charlie Frank.”

“Yes,” Fritz said, “you can always count on him for bad advice.”

“And what about you?”

He said, “Your wife is looking very charming tonight. Blue is her color.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Very charming. How is your family?”

“Good, thanks. Fritz—”

“And your work?”

“Listen, Fritz. I need help.”

He laughed softly. “You need more than help. You need rescue.”

“Fritz—”

“You’ve been seeing people,” he said. “I imagine you’ve met them all by now. What did you think of Bubbles?”

“Bubbles?”

“Yes.”

I frowned. I had never heard of anyone named Bubbles. “You mean, Bubbles the stripper?”

“No. I mean Bubbles the roommate.”

“Her roommate?”

“Yes.”

“The one at Smith?”

“God, no. The one from last summer, on the Hill. Three of them shared an apartment. Karen, and Bubbles, and a third girl who had some kind of medical connections—nurse, or technician, or something. They made quite a group.”

“What’s the real name of this girl Bubbles? What does she do?”

Someone came up to the bar for another drink. Fritz looked out at the room and said in a professional voice, “This sounds quite serious. I suggest you send him to see me. As it happens, I have a free hour tomorrow at two-thirty.”

“I’ll arrange it,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Nice to see you again, John.”

We shook hands.

JUDITH WAS TALKING TO NORTON HAMMOND, who was leaning against the wall. As I walked up, I thought to myself that Fritz was right: she was looking good. And then I noticed that Hammond was smoking a cigarette. There was nothing wrong with that, of course, except that Hammond didn’t smoke.

He didn’t have a drink in his hand, and he was smoking rather slowly and deeply. “Say,” I said, “you want to watch that.” He laughed. “My social protest for the night.”

Judith said, “I tried to tell him somebody would smell it.”

“Nobody here can smell anything,” Hammond said. It was probably true; the room was thick with blue smoke. “Besides, remember Goodman and Gilman.” [45] Goodman and Gilman, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, the definitive text of pharmacology used by doctors. There is a discussion of the effects of marijuana on page 300 which has been widely quoted in recent legal proceedings.