Damon Knight - Orbit 15

“My name’s Ernie,” said the man.

“I don’t know you, do I?” said Bill, hoping that after all he did know the man.

“No, Bill, you don’t know me. I work here at the hospital. I just got your name when they brought you in. Are you feeling any better now?”

Bill looked the man over. He looked all right.

“You’re not a doctor, are you,” said Bill.

“No, Bill, I’m not a doctor. They just asked me to keep an eye on you while you’re in the hospital, and see that you’re treated okay. How do you feel?”

Bill considered how he felt, and for the first time noticed all the little buttons stuck all over his body.

“What are the buttons for?” he said.

“They help the doctors keep track of how you’re doing. Temperature, breathing, heart—things like that. None of them hurt you or anything, do they?”

“No—no, they’re okay, I guess. And I feel all right, I think. Can I go home now?”

The man—Ernie—looked pleased that Bill was feeling good. He smiled and sat back in his chair. “Where’s home, Bill?”

Bill frowned and thought a moment. “Just the street, I guess.” He studied the man in the screen. The man was lighting a cigar.

Bill said, “Say, Ernie? Could I have a smoke—is it okay to smoke in the hospital? Just one cigarette maybe?”

Ernie smiled and sat forward in his chair. “Sure, Bill. There’s a pack of cigarettes in the drawer of that table next to your bed. Here, I’ll push it over.” The table slid toward the bed.

After he’d lit up, Bill sat studying Ernie in the screen. They both just smoked for a while. Then Bill said, “What’s wrong with me, Ernie? Do they know? What happened?”

“You passed out on the street. Cops brought you in. The doc isn’t sure what’s the matter, so he wants you to stay here a few days and get some tests done. I’m here to keep you company— keep an eye on you. Make sure you’re treated right. That’s my job here.”

“What kind of tests, Ernie? They won’t hurt, will they?”

Ernie sat forward and tapped the ash off his cigar. “No, they won’t hurt, Bill. The buttons are making some of the tests. Some of the other tests they’ll have to take you places for, but they won’t hurt. And I’ll be along with you. That’s my job.”

Bill said, “Can you come to my room here? We could talk. I could tell you stuff they might need to know, or something.”

Ernie took the cigar out of his mouth. He looked sad for a moment, then he smiled again and said, “Bill—see, I watch over some other guys, too, so I can’t actually come to your room. But we can talk this way, see. Just as long as I can be here so I can watch the other guys, too. You understand?”

“Yeah—sure, sure. But we can talk, right? We can talk?”

“Sure, Bill, all you want. Whenever you’re awake I’ll be here to talk, and I’ll look in on you when you’re asleep, every once in a while.”

Ernie stubbed out his cigar. “You look sleepy, Bill. Why not sleep a while? I’ll see you later.”

But Bill had already drifted off, the cigarette falling to the floor.

There was a gentle hiss and the cigarette disappeared into a slot in the wall.

Clinging to the jumpseat of the bounding helicopter ambulance, James Lambert, M.D., watched L. A. International Airport drop away into the darkness until it was just another floating island near the megalopolis.

His stomach turned over. He shouldn’t be riding this ambulance. It was a job for the young interns or a paramedic. He should be sleeping. In three days he’d had ten hours of sleep— most of that on table tops or carts, and all of it taken in snatches between emergencies. Though he was thirty-three he felt about fifty, a tired fifty at that. Three years of interning and these last two as a resident had done it to him.

He winced and looked out the window. They were passing over the fusion-powered generating plants in Laguna. The near-shore ocean farms receded into the darkness toward both Santa Barbara and San Diego—a seemingly endless line.

He lit a cigarette. He smoked too much. He drank too much coffee. His wife was thinking about leaving him. Sometimes, like now, when the days and nights were too long, he would think briefly about his own problems and relax. He would smile over his salary, the working conditions and his prospects for the future. Maybe even think about getting a nice practice someplace in the country where he and Janet could relax more, where his wife could go out during the day without fear of being attacked.

An easy practice. He smiled and looked out the other cabin window.

Looking ahead toward the foothills to pick out the hospital towers, he knew why he flew these runs whenever he could. The fusion plants that supplied the water for the land, that air-conditioned the whole south-coast basin, that supported the ocean farms—those same plants also carpeted the valley with lights. Miles of lights. A river, no, an inland sea of lights. A profligate display of lights—of man’s power, holding the darkness at bay.

The lights drew him. They gilded the reality below. By day he knew that the teeming cities were places where men suffered and died. At night they became lights and he could forget the days. The shadows concealed the hurts, the pain, the death agonies below him. For a time he could rest, buoyed up by the lights beneath him. He could be awed by the technical miracles spread out below, without being depressed that no corresponding miracles had taken place in the men who lived and worked down there.

The cigarette burnt his fingers. He shivered inside his white jacket and glanced at his patient, studied the monitoring unit on the cabin wall.

The twin hospital towers loomed ahead now, three-quarters of a mile high, dominating the foothills. Earthquake-control engineering made the structure possible, and man’s frailty caused it to be built. Cancer was gone, stroke was gone, heart disease was going; but men were still frail and they sickened. This giant of the hospitals in the west was built to minister to that human weakness, that infirmity, that still-present mortality. L. A. General: enormous, ever active, demanding, heartbreaking. The only place Jim Lambert had ever really loved—the only place he felt at home.

They were landing. Leaving self behind, Dr. Jim Lambert turned to his patient and took up his profession.

An hour later Jim was drinking another cup of coffee and finishing yet another cigarette. A backlog of work had built up during his flight.

He picked up the top paper on the stack before him. “Who’s caring for this man Bill the police brought in three days ago? The shock and intestinal-bleeding case.”

The screen opposite his desk lit up and Ernie appeared there.

“Good evening, Dr. Lambert. I’m Ernie. Bill is in my care.” Ernie looked calm and rested and in complete control of his work. Jim caught himself liking the man in the screen.

“Okay, Ernie. How is Bill feeling?”

“Here is his record since he was admitted,” said Ernie, and his image was replaced by the standard format for patient data.

“What does it look like to you, Ernie?” said Jim.

“Old age, probably bleeding ulcers of the large and small intestine, systemic infection.”

“Treatment?”

“Control the infection, remove the damaged portions of the bowel before there’s a stoppage.”

“Prognosis?”

Jim studied Ernie’s face very carefully when he asked the last question. He wanted to see if he could detect anything in the screen image to go with what Ernie would say.

Ernie paused a moment before answering, then said evenly, “Bill is going to die here, Dr. Lambert, sometime this week, no matter what treatment he receives.”