Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

“Still. Be Careful.”

“Think of it,” he said, taking a deep drag. “No bronchogenic carcinoma, no oat-cell carcinoma, no chronic bronchitis and emphysema, no arteriosclerotic heart disease, no cirrhosis, no Wernicke-Korsakoff. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s illegal.”

He smiled and pulled at his moustache. “You’re up for abortion but not maryjane, is that it?”

“I can only take one crusade at a time.”

A thought came to me as I watched him suck in a mouthful of smoke and exhale clear air. “Norton, you live on the Hill, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know anybody named Bubbles?”

He laughed. “Everybody knows Bubbles. Bubbles and Superhead. They’re always together.”

“Superhead?”

“Yeah. That’s her bag at the moment. He’s an electronic musician. A composer. He likes things that sound like ten dogs howling. They’re living together.”

“Didn’t she live with Karen Randall?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”

“What’s her real name? Bubbles.”

He shrugged. “I never heard her called anything else. But the guy: his name is Samuel Archer.”

“Where does he live?”

“Over behind the State House somewhere. In a basement. They have it fixed up like a womb.”

“A womb?”

“You have to see it to believe it,” Norton said, and he gave a relaxed, satisfied sigh.

JUDITH SEEMED TENSE ON THE DRIVE BACK. She sat with her knees together and her hands clasped around them. She was squeezing her hands hard; the knuckles were white.

“Something wrong?”

“No,” she said. “Just tired.”

I said, “Was it the wives?”

She smiled slightly. “You’ve become very famous. Mrs. Wheatstone was so upset that she missed a bid at this afternoon’s game, I understand.”

“What else did you hear?”

“They all asked me why you were doing it, helping Art. They thought it was a marvelous example of a man sticking by his friend. They thought it was heartwarming and humane and wonderful.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And they kept asking why.”

“Well, I hope you told them it’s because I’m a nice guy.”

She smiled in the darkness. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

Her voice was sad, though, and her face in the reflected light of the headlights was drawn. I knew it wasn’t easy for her to be with Betty all the time. But somebody had to do it.

For some reason, I remembered my student days and Purple Nell. Purple Nell was a seventy-eight-year-old former alcoholic who had been dead a year before she became our cadaver. We called her Nell, and a lot of other things, small grim jokes to help us get through our work. I remembered my desire to quit, to stop cutting the cold, damp, stinking flesh, to stop peeling away the layers. I dreamed of the day I would be finished with Nell, when I could forget her, and the smells, and the feel of greasy, long-dead flesh. Everyone said it got easier. I wanted to stop, to be finished and done. But I never quit until all the dissections had been completed, all the nerves and arteries traced out and learned.

After my initial harsh experience with cadavers, I was surprised to find I was interested in pathology.

I like the work and have learned to push from my mind the smells and the sight of each new corpse, each new postmortem. But somehow autopsies are different, in some strange sense more hopeful. At autopsy you are dealing with a man, newly dead, and you know his story. He is not a faceless, anonymous cadaver but a person who had recently waged a very private battle, the only private battle in life, and lost. Your job is to find out how, and why, he lost, in order to help others who will soon do battle—and yourself. It is a far cry from the dissection cadavers, which exist in a kind of sickening, professional death, as if their only purpose in their twilight, embalmed afterlife is to be thoroughly, inspectably dead.

WHEN WE GOT HOME, Judith went in to check on the kids and call Betty. I took the sitter home. She was a short, pert girl named Sally, a cheerleader at Brookline High. Normally, when I drove her home we talked about neutral, safe things: how she liked school, where she wanted to go to college, things like that. But tonight I was feeling inquisitive, and old, and out of touch, like a man returning to his country after an extended time abroad. Everything was different, even the kids, even youth. They weren’t doing what we had done. They had different challenges and different problems. At least, they had different drugs. Perhaps the problems were still the same. At least, that was what you wanted to think.

Finally I decided I had had too much to drink at the party, and had better keep my mouth shut. So I let Sally talk about passing her driver’s test, and nothing more. As she talked, I felt both cowardly and relieved. And then I thought that it was foolish, that there was no reason for me to be curious about my babysitter, no reason to get to know her, and that if I tried it might be interpreted wrongly. It was safer to talk about drivers’ licenses; solid, respectable, reasonable ground.

Then, for some reason, I thought of Alan Zenner. And something Art had said. “If you want to know about this world, turn on your television to an interview program, and turn off the sound.” I did, a few days later. It was bizarre: the faces moving, the tongues going, the expressions and the hands. But no sound. Nothing at all. You had no idea what they were saying.

I FOUND THE ADDRESS in the phone book: Samuel F. Archer, 1334 Langdon Street. I dialed the number. A recorded voice came on.

“I am sorry, sir, the number you have dialed is not in service at this time. If you hold the line, an operator will give you further information.”

I waited. There was a series of rhythmic clicks, like the beat of a telephone heart, and then the operator. “Information. What number are you calling?”

“Seven-four-two-one-four-four-seven.”

“That number has been disconnected.”

“Do you have another listing?”

“No, sir.”

Probably Samuel F. Archer had moved, but perhaps he hadn’t. I drove there directly. The apartment was located on a steep hill on the east slope of Beacon Hill, in a battered apartment building. The hallway smelled of cabbage and baby formula. I went down a flight of creaking wooden stairs to the basement, where a green light flashed, illuminating a door painted flat black.

A sign said, GOD GROWS HIS OWN.

I knocked.

From inside, I could hear screeches, whines, warbles, and something that sounded like groans. The door opened and I faced a young man in his twenties with a full beard and long, damp black hair. He wore dungarees, sandals, and a purple polka-dot shirt. He looked at me blandly, showing neither surprise nor interest. “Yes?”

“I am Dr. Berry. Are you Samuel Archer?”

“No.”

“Is Mr. Archer in?”

“He’s busy right now.”

“I’d like to see him.”

“You a friend of his?”

He was staring at me with open suspicion. I heard more sounds—a grating, a rumble, and a long, drawnout whistle.

“I need his help,” I said.

He seemed to relax slightly. “This is a bad time.”

“It’s urgent.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“You have a car?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“Chevrolet. Nineteen-sixty-five.”

“What’s the license?”

“Two-one-one-five-sixteen.”

He nodded. “O.K.,” he said. “Sorry, but you know how it is these days. You can’t trust anyone. [46] The Federal narcotics agents, or “narcs,” are known in Boston to favor Chevrolets with licenses beginning with 412 or 414. Come in.” He stepped back from the door. “But don’t say anything, all right? I’ll tell him first. He’s composing, and he gets pretty wrapped up. It’s the seventh hour and it should be O.K. But he does flip out easy. Even late.”