Дэймон Найт - Orbit 5

“What they want, Mr. Sturbridge, is to transplant Mr. Tanker’s heart.”

Sturbridge slouched down in the oversized red plastic chair that he had pulled into the patch of light from the elevator door. He stared back at Loomis. The deserted hospital office, empty since Friday, still held the lingering smells of the girls who worked here.

“They got this fellow, Rowalski, they’re just achin’ to put a new heart in. Been in and out of here since high school. Four, five years ago they did a valve job. Worked for a little while,” Loomis said, “then went to pieces. These doctors do them transplants have to wait and wait. Sometimes work for days on someone and see them die before they can find what they need. They got maybe a dozen waiting, so they’re always looking.”

Was he a feature writer, Sturbridge thought, or a stupid cub reporter feeling sorry for himself? So it was a hot night and he had missed the Ed Sullivan Show. This was University Hospital and not the Tankerville Herald. When they said, “What can we do for Tanker?” and got back a big fat “Nothing,” someone had surely asked, “What can we do with Tanker?” A healthy thirty-two-year-old with his head smashed by a truck. And all Sturbridge could think about was that ten million dollars rated a mighty big funeral. But not the characters in here that looked for wrecks like Tanker.

Old Loomis wandered around the dark office looking for a wastebasket he could spit in. “Shakes you up when it’s someone you know,” he said. “They ain’t heartless, these fellers. Otherwise. Anything they could do for Mr. Tanker they would gladly do. But when it’s like this, they get to thinking about the ones needing transplants, and start nagging the office to get permission.”

Years of war and newspaper’ reporting had toughened Sturbridge outwardly, but he remained tenderhearted. Thinking of John Phillpott Tanker being cannibalized for spare parts like a wrecked car made him ill. When they had first seen him, they had known this was it. Right away someone had said, “Who owns Tanker? When he’s dead, that is.” Someone had said, “Get the papers signed so we’ll be all set to go.” As if Tanker were some casual bit of wreckage.

The elevator buzzed and the big “7” lit up. “They’re getting ready up there,” Loomis said. “I’ll drop you off on six.”

The corridors, crowded and endless, overwhelmed him with a dozen different hospital smells as he moved from ward to ward. What rankled in Sturbridge was that Hartman, that old poop of a family lawyer, had glimpsed this and brought along his partners to help with the family, while Sturbridge, the fair-haired boy of the Tankerville Herald, the lad from the big city, sat on his fat ass sketching out a flowery obituary.

Everybody else around here from old Loomis on up knew what was going on. Sturbridge ground his teeth so hard he bit his tongue. What a jerk he appeared! Kidding himself it counted to let the family see Walter Sturbridge on the job, while all the time these country cousins were getting ready to give Tanker the lead in a damn big show to which Sturbridge didn’t even have a ticket.

He had found a comer in the Visitors’ Room and taken off his coat, loosened his shoes and tie, stretched out in a chair and lit a cigarette when Hartman came hopping over. Lawrence Jennings followed, puffing his usual cigar. He was Sturbridge’s boss on the Tankerville Herald. The son of Tanker’s dead sister, he was ten years older than Tanker but was his nephew. He would be worth millions, Sturbridge thought, struggling to see Jennings from this fresh viewpoint.

“It’s this way,” Hartman said. “They hold out no hope for John. He may die any time. They want to use his heart and maybe other things for transplants. You get around. What do you think?”

Praise God, Sturbridge thought, Loomis had already told him. He didn’t have to sit there with his mouth open, like some country bumpkin being taken in by a shell game. “They can’t change their minds afterwards,” he said.

“I’m surprised at you, Walter,” said Jennings. “I thought you were more modem. This second-thought business cuts both ways. If we don’t say yes now, we can’t say it later. We think John would want us to say yes.”

Jennings chewed fiercely on his cigar and looked around the room. Sturbridge’s eyes followed, taking in the clusters of family. Ordinary people, he thought. They hadn’t expected to get anything except Christmas dinner out of John Phillpott Tanker until it was far too late to do them any good. He figured the hospital would have a downhill fight convincing this collection of heirs that they would be talked about as progressive citizens, freed of ancient superstitions, if they signed away all of Tanker that anyone seemed to want.

“Write something on this transplant business if you can, Walter,” Jennings said. “Everyone will be curious, and the family would like to see the right story in our own paper.”

Sturbridge nodded. “Anybody know Rowalski?”

Jennings did not reply. Hartman, whose eyes were shifting about the room, following his partners as they distribut'd releases for the heirs to sign, finally said, “Rowalski is about John’s age. His father was an engineer, worked for Crewcs and Lloyd—you’ll remember them, down at the end of Water Street. The father died quite young. Accident, if I remember right. Anyhow, he left his wife with four small children and not much else. This one, Sidney his name is, has been sickly since high school.”

“Let’s hope this will be a break for him.” Jennings said as he moved away. “Call me tonight if anything bothers either of you.”

When the lawyers left, Sturbridge glanced at his watch —quarter of eleven—he had been in the hospital an hour and a half. Dimly he recalled there were two real good movies on the late shows. By twos and threes, the heirs slipped away. Soon Sturbridge was alone in the Visitors’ Room. They would write themselves a little note to remember the funeral and flowers, he thought, and so much for John Phillpott Tanker.

He stubbed out his cigarette, tied his shoelaces, and went to the men’s room to wash his face. Glasses off, he stared at himself in the mirror, cheered because he was still very much among the living. He tried to remember whether he had left a razor in his car.

He got into Tanker’s room by following two aides wheeling a big machine. Concealed by a swarm of doctors who were tapping needles, muttering at the blinking lights, and peering into the green faces of cathode-ray tubes, the man on the bed had become plain Tanker. Though barely alive, he was a patient, and a rich one. The blood would continue to drip, the needles to flicker, and the oxygen to hiss through the hoses until the very end. There would be no fooling about that. Sturbridge saw a nurse staring at him and left.

To kill time, he went down to the bottom floor and bought a sandwich at a vending machine. It was cool down there; he slipped off his coat and tie and walked around to the small waiting room by the emergency office. Old Loomis was inside, eating sandwiches, with a young fellow wearing a white uniform. Loomis called out, “Come over with us, Mr. Sturbridge. Want you to meet Danny Gruber, he’s one of our technicians- up on seven. Told him about you. Can I get you some coffee?” The old man scuttled away.

“Pretty busy up there, ain’t you?” Sturbridge asked.

“We’re about ready now. We’ll really clean house tonight, if they don’t fool around too long in Recovery.”

“You just have to wait until he dies, don’t you?”

“Until he’s pronounced dead. Can’t say just when the end is.”

“How come?”

“Well, when is a man dead—when he stops breathing, or his heart stops beating, or when there’s irreversible brain damage, or what? In the old days, no problem. You could just let the body lie around until the neighbors came in with the police. That was when you could let a person get really dead dead, Mr. Sturbridge. But the liver, kidneys, heart, and all that don’t wait around. They get dead dead pretty fast, too. You’ve got to be pretty spry. Not so spry there’s any loose talk about murder or manslaughter, but still spry enough so that you have some chance your transplant might take. They have a committee,” Gruber added.