James Gunn - The Immortals

“Look!” he began. “I—” He stopped.

“Don’t you know what to do with me?” she asked gently.

“Well, I—I guess that’s right. I can’t leave you alone out here, and if I take you to your home, Bone might pick you up again. There are rules against taking anybody but a patient into the Center—” He took a deep breath. “The hell with the rules. Listen! You’re a patient. For—an eye operation, replacement of opaque corneas. You’ve been transferred from the Neosho County Hospital—that’s just outside Chanute, Kansas, in case they ask questions—and you don’t know why your records haven’t got here yet. Understood?”

“Won’t that mean trouble for you?” she asked.

“Nothing I can’t get out of. If anyone sees us together—why, I was fooled, too, that’s all. No argument now. It’ll give us an extra day to decide what to do with you.”

“Will I be able to see my father?”

“Of course not,” Flowers said. “Not if he’s in Experimental, anyway. The only ones allowed to enter Experimental are doctors and attendants on duty.”

“I understand. All right, I’ll leave it up to you.”

Again Flowers felt that quick, irrational flood of happiness. He had no reason to feel happy; he didn’t want to feel happy—it would interfere with what he had to do. He shoved the feeling down, deep, as the walls of Medical Center opened and took them in.

They were lucky. There was no one around as Flowers parked the ambulance in the vast underground garage and led Leah cautiously to the subway. They waited in the shadows until an empty car swung into view.

“Move quickly,” he said. “Trust me.”

He led her onto the moving belt, holding her forearm in a sure grip. Even so, she swayed and almost fell. He pulled her up and led her swiftly after the car moving on the belt beside them. Just as they reached the end of the approachway, Flowers helped her into the car and swung himself after her.

He was sweating. The subway wasn’t built for the blind.

Getting off was much less difficult. The sign above the archway said: EENT. They walked into an elevator and let it lift them to the fifth floor. Flowers watched from the concealment of a cross-corridor while Leah walked blindly down the hall, feeling her way to the glass enclosure of the duty office.

“Is anyone here?” she asked out of her darkness. “There was a medic, but he had to leave. I’m from the Neosho County Hospital…”

As Flowers faded down the hall, he saw the nurse come out of the office with a look of concern. He sighed. Leah was safe for the moment.

He walked through the dark halls wondering where everybody was. It was only eight o’clock in the evening.

The floor under his feet was yielding and resilient. He breathed in the hospital smells of anesthetic and alcohol, the old odors, omnipresent, eternal. They were his first memory of his father. It was a good smell. He filled his lungs with it, held it in tightly, as if he could hold on to everything he valued, if only he could keep the odor from escaping.

This was his place, his home. This was his job. This was his life. He had to believe that. Otherwise everything was worthless, seven years of study and labor were wasted, and a lifetime of dreams was turned into nightmare, and everything that was to come, the dedication, the rewards…

Charley Brand looked up from his desk, surprised. “My God, man! Where’ve you been?”

“A long story,” Flowers said wearily. “First, I’ve got to have some food and some rest.”

“They’ll have to wait. There’s a royal request on your desk.”

A message glowed on the plate set into the top of his desk. He read it with a cold, shrinking feeling.

Your presence is requested at the meeting of the Wyandotte County Medical Society this evening and at the meeting of the Political Action Committee to follow.

J. B. Hardy, M.D.

Secretary

Flowers looked around the dormitory with frantic eyes; he had to discuss this with someone. “Where’s Hal?”

“Do you think he’d miss a meeting?” Brand asked sardonically and added a good imitation of Mock’s knowing voice. “ ‘These things look good on your record.’ Better run along. If you hurry you can still make the convoy.”

It was more of a tradition than anything else—this convoy detail with the minesweepers snuffling ahead, the tanks lumbering heavily on either side, and helicopters hovering above. No one was foolish enough to attack anything stronger than a lone ambulance.

They drove north on Seventh Street Trafficway over the Armourdale Industrial District that flamed below them in the night, past the ruins of the old stockyards where no man went by night and few dared to go by day. Flowers looked out, unseeing, his fatigue and his hunger conquered by anxiety.

Why did the PAC want to see him?

Few medics and fewer doctors got summonses to appear before the committee. It was not an invitation to be envied. It was followed, frequently, by the person involved quietly collecting his personal belongings from the hospital and disappearing from the purview of medicine.

When the convoy pulled up in front of the courthouse and parked within the protection of the concrete pillboxes on the lawn and the antiaircraft emplacements on the roof, Flowers was still tormenting himself with possibilities.

As usual, the meeting was a bore. When the anxiety ebbed, Flowers dozed in his chair, jerking himself upright occasionally to hear a few fragments of the minutes of the last meeting, the treasurer’s report, the mumbling of research records…

There was a moving speech by the AMA field representative on the danger to ethical standards in new legislation pending before Congress. Its inevitable result was socialized medicine.

Funny, Flowers mused, how that Hydra was never scotched. Cut off one head and two more grew in its place. Doctors should know enough to cauterize the stump.

By unanimous voice vote, $325,000 was turned over to the Washington lobby for legislative action.

When the chairman of the Political Action Committee stood up, Flowers studied him curiously. He was a tall, fleshy man with bushy, black hair, crouching eyebrows, and a ruddy complexion. Flowers didn’t know him. That wasn’t unusual in a four-county census of 10,000 doctors.

According to the PAC, the political situation was under control at state and county levels. The Antivivisection Party had closed alliances with a number of quasi-religious groups during the last months, but this was expected to amount to no more than the usual annoyances. Everyone had been given a copy of the slate of the state and county candidates. They had all received PAC approval.

The slate was accepted without dissent. A sum of $553,000 was voted for campaign expenses.

There was more.

When the general meeting had been adjourned, Flowers wandered slowly toward the door of the room announced for the meeting of the PAC.

“Flowers?”

It was the chairman of the committee. Flowers followed him numbly into the big room. There were five doctors, the chairman taking his place in the middle. They sat solemn faced behind a long, heavy desk made of real wood darkened by centuries of use.

“You’re in trouble, boy,” the chairman began.

The doctor on the chairman’s right leaned forward, a small memoreader in his hand. “Last night, while on an emergency call into the city, you turned over to the police an alleged shover named Crumm.

“Crumm was dismissed at nine A.M. He had a license. And the penicillin in the ampule tested a full three hundred thousand units.”

“A typical Bone trick! He took out a license and backdated it. And they’re lying about the penicillin. They couldn’t sell it at that price; it was less than wholesale.”