Heathern (22 page)

"Keep this one," he said to the nurse; the youth was
moved along. A woman lay on the next gurney, her ankles
cuffed to the metal bars supporting the mattress; her hands
were tied above her head.

"What about her?" the nurse asked. It was impossible to
guess what the woman could have done, and the captain
didn't say; before I could turn away he shot her in the head.
Those in the room who were able, or whose televisioninduced trance was not too deep, threw themselves to the
floor. I held Lester tightly as we followed Avi to the
admittance desk.

"You saw that," I said. "You saw it." Lester had no reply;
what could he add? The captain and the nurse continued on
their rounds.

"Excuse me," Avi said, shouting through the protective
mesh running from desktop to ceiling. No one looked up.
"How do we get to the experimental floor?"

"Take a number," a nurse shouted back, gesturing to a
machine bolted onto the desktop, one of those devices delis
once used to keep their customers under control.

"Where's the elevator to the experimental floor?"

"There's no experimental floor."

"How do we get to it?"

"Lester," I said, unable to forget the woman's face as she
lay there; I wouldn't have said she appeared surprised.
"Can't something be done to help? This is unbearable-"

"In these situations it isn't right to help one without
helping all," he said. "It'd hardly be possible-"

"Why?"

"It'd be like sending a hundred times the normal current
through a kitchen appliance. There's no getting around it.
I'm sorry, Joanna, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."

"If there were an experimental floor," Avi said to a
different nurse as she emerged from behind a row of dented
filing cabinets, "how would you get to it?"

"Down that hall, fifth elevator on the right," she said,
pointing. Avi smiled, and wrapped his arms around us; we
walked toward the hall. The captain and the nurse were
ahead of us; that woman's face could have been pressed
against mine, so clear was her memory. My brain felt
aflame; the captain's knees buckled, as if he were dizzy,
overcome by what he had done. There was no guilt in his
soul. The nurse grabbed him as he fell.

"Joanna," Lester said, shaking me. "No."

The captain stood without moving for a moment; shook
his head, and continued on. We edged past them, and
counted off the elevators until we found the fifth one. As its
doors slid apart, revealing within walls so white as snow, I
found myself wondering if we'd found the way by which we
could go much further than we could have ever hoped, or
feared. "What's wrong, Joanna?" Avi asked.

"This is such an awful place," I said. "It brings out the
worst in everyone, I suppose-"

"People wouldn't get sick unless they brought it on
themselves-"

"Avi, shut up." We ascended; I looked to Lester, who
stood close by me, patently aware of what I'd felt, and
continued to feel. "There was no reason for what he did--

"The captain?" Avi asked. "In his mind there must have
been. People lose their patience sometimes, that's all."

"Even divine retribution is less than divine," said Lester,
touching my hand. "Don't forget that."

"We have to take precautions," Avi said, removing his
wallet from his pocket, holding it open before him that his
Dryco ID might be immediately visible. "Stay behind me, in
the corners. Make sure you can be seen. Hold your arms in
front of you, palms out."

The elevator stopped, the door opened; Avi yelled
"Dryco!" and thrust his wallet forward as if it might defend.
A large man in a blue uniform balanced what appeared to
be a cannon against his paunch, leveling the weapon at
Avi's midriff. A younger man in a suit stepped up, plucking
the wallet from Avi's hand, smiling as if he'd happened
upon autumn's last perfect apple, still hanging from its tree.

"Easy," he said to the armed man, and, still smiling,
handed Avi's wallet back to him. "Trust good, control
better. Accompanied?"

"Obviously," said Avi, guiding us out into the entrance
hall. I looked more closely at the guard's gun, knowing
nothing of artillery than what I'd seen at play. It resembled
half a dozen shotguns bundled together and tied with two
handgrips. "In a hospital you're using this sort of thing?"

"Fireplus," said the overseer. "Ready to reprise."

"We're here to see Jensen," Avi said. "He's a persistent
vegetable. Arrangements were made. Which is his room
and where is it?"

"328," the man said, taking badges that bore our logo
upon a forest-green field from his pocket, handing them to
us. "Thirty top permissible with PVs. Don't overstimulate."

"Unintended," said Avi, pinning his insignia to his lapel.
The man pressed a button, and a buzzer rang; a steel door disappeared into a slot in the ceiling. The walls of the long
hall beyond were painted sky blue; soft-edged patches of
white dotting the azure represented clouds, so near as I
could tell.

"What did you mean, persistent vegetable?" I asked.

"Referring to his state," Avi said. "They're exact in their
terminology around here. It's good to go along."

"What sort of gun was that?" Lester asked.

"A topbreak," said Avi. "Six 20-gauge magnum barrels
fixed and mounted, revolving and firing hollowpoints in
sequence. A tube in the center squirts hydrochloric acid."

"Since when do you know from guns?" I asked.

"You learn." A flock of doctors flew down the hall, giving
no evidence that they considered us worthy of study. Their
long white coats billowed as clumsy wings behind them. As
we moved through the hall's bends and turns we began
coming upon doors left partially open, or completely ajar;
each room held no more than two patients, fast in their
beds, nursed by machinery. Some were hooked up to
dialysis units; others slept beneath translucent tents.

"What sort of experiments go on on an experimental
floor?" Lester asked.

"Ask the experimenters," said Avi. "This looks like the
place. 328, wasn't it?" This door was shut; he rapped once
against its wood, and then again.

"Is it locked?"

"Would it matter?" Turning the knob we opened the
door. The windowless room was soaked in unshadowed
fluorescence; one unknowing might have thought medical
science knew no higher aim than to preserve the tans of
those convalescing. Jensen lay naked on his back atop a
heated mattress. Three machines attended to his needs;
wires ran from their mantles and attached to clamps on his
forehead, arms, and legs. From his scattered parts tubes
drained into bottles, bags, and jars. In the screens of his
caretakers I discerned nothing but glowing lines and phos phorescent flashes. He had an erection; I wondered briefly
whether his condition produced it or if it was induced, and
then I noted the bend of his catheter, curving up and then
down again, appearing after a time no more remarkable
than a bishop's crook.

"Did you know him?" Avi asked.

"No," I said. "He's so young. They hire them so young
nowdays."

"They're more impressionable, fresh from college."

The muscle with which Jensen's body was padded assured me that he'd never done a day's worth of physical
labor in his life; his flesh could have been hardened foam,
shaped to suit. I'd known several co-workers who'd suffered coronaries while applying bulk suitable enough to
convince supervisors that they could handle the strain of an
executive career. " I guess it's up to you at this point," Avi
said.

"Lester?" I asked. Until that moment he'd waited at the
room's threshold, as if approaching too quickly without
suitable preparation might disturb whatever mood needed
first to be set. Walking to the bedside he pressed his
fingertips against Jensen's forehead, careful not to dislodge
the wires. Jensen's eyes were open, but he couldn't see; the
pupils were so small as to be absent. As Lester made contact
we listened to the machines' vespers: beeps, pings, brief
gasps of static, and a soft choral hum.

"Any luck?" I asked. Lester suddenly drew his hand up,
as if in probing for something dropped he'd jammed his
fingers into a wall socket.

"What was it?" Avi asked. "What? What'd you see-?"

"Who're you?" A stranger's voice, coming so unexpectedly that, before we turned to see who it might be, I
considered that perhaps Jensen was awake after all, employing ventriloquism to make us go away. "You going to
answer?" the woman asked; she was tall and wore a
candy-striped uniform. Her hair was set in cornrows; her forearms were more muscular than Jensen's. "You family or
what?"

"We're with Dryco," Avi said. "So was he. We came to
visit."

"Everybody on this floor's with Dryco, hear them tell it.
You all may own the place but that doesn't mean you can
run around here like you were home."

"We intended no trouble-"

"None of you all never do. You know how easy it is to
spread diseases to somebody in his shape? You come in
with the sniffles and it'll be pneumonia once he gets it. Who
you think'11 have to deal with the mess?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "We'll leave-"

"Not so fast. I'm saying be careful. Long as you're here,
one of you give me a hand flipping him."

"Why does he need flipping?" Avi asked.

"Even on these special mattresses they get bedsores if
you don't watch 'em. Let 'em lie too long in one place, they
draw all in on themselves. Wind up looking like a pretzel.
Then you got to break their damn arms and legs to
straighten 'em out again. So, you got to turn 'em, once,
twice a day." She regarded her patient. "Somebody's glad
to see me this morning," she said, yanking the catheter free,
and then unclipping the other wires, and tubes.

"Are you the floor nurse?" I asked, reading the name on
her badge so that I could call her by her name, and so not
treat her only as a creation of the hospital. "Nurse
Cordero?"

"I'm paramed." She detached the last connections and
removed the intravenous tube from his left arm's vein. "I'll
get his legs, you put your hands under him. When I say go,
turn him over on his right side. Okay?"

"All right-" said Avi.

"Do you attend him every day?" I asked.

"Doctors attend, I just clean up after 'em. This's the only
chance I get to relax, making the rounds up here."

"Has he ever shown signs of consciousness?"

"No. Stiff as a board. He'll blink his eyes sometimes if the
lights dim but that's involuntary, you know these PVs.
Ready now? Get your hands under there. Don't want to
bruise anything useful. Okay, go."

They folded him as if he were an omelet. Lester had said
nothing since removing his hands from Jensen's head. He'd
picked something up, I knew, and had returned to his place
by the door. Nurse Cordero began reinserting the tubes and
reclamping the wires.

"A week or so ago I had a day off," she said. "Not long
after they brought him in. Girl who's on duty when I'm not
told me he started mumbling about something-"

"Did she say what?"

"Nothing she could understand," she said, wielding the
catheter so deftly that she could have been threading a
needle. "She told the doctor in charge that she thought he
might be coming out of it. Told me he got on the phone to
somebody real worried like before she even got out of his
office. But when I came in, next morning, he looked just the
same to me."

"Which doctor was that?"

"Whichever one was in charge, I don't remember.
Around here one's as good or bad as the next."

After hooking up one final cord she paused, and wiped
the perspiration from her forehead with the side of her
hand. "Well, I'd think he's had about as much visiting'11 be
good for him. Never can tell how the outside's affecting the
inside."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Got to keep him fresh. You know."

"Fresh for what?" Avi asked.

"Recycling."

"What are you talking about?" I asked. "Recycling
what?"

"What he's got," she said. "You said you're with the company, you ought to know. Word passed along this
morning gave the okay. Next week, he's part and parceled."
She nodded that we should follow her as she left the room.
"Maybe you all don't understand how it works up here,"
she said. "Some of the folks up here, are best kept like they
are. Others, though, there's not that much they can find out
from 'em no matter how long they're around, and there's
new ones coming in all the time. Only so much space up
here."

"What are you getting at?" Avi asked.

"When they're young and healthy like he is, and have no
relatives, and once we flush the poisons or the drugs out of
their systems, well, they cut off the machines and then-"

"Distribute the parts to worthy recipients," I said.

"Within the company, as I understand it," she said.
"Cost-effective, I imagine."

"Then he's to be put up for auction?" Avi asked.

"First come, first served, long as you can afford it," she
said. "That's why I was so rough on you at first, didn't know
what you were fiddling with. He's in perfect shape at the
moment."

"And you wanted to keep him that way," I said.

"You understand," she said, and looked him over as he
lay there. "They always take the best-looking ones."

After she let us out, closing the door behind us, we stood
in the hall for several moments, saying nothing.

"Come along to his apartment with me," Avi said. "Let's
see what we find over there."

"How long has Dryco owned the building?" I asked as we
stepped from the car onto the Grand Concourse at 167th
Street. We crossed the broad sidewalk to the building's
entrance, crushing beneath our feet glass vials as empty as
the boulevard.

"Over a year," Avi said. "It belonged to one of the realty
companies he obtained." With little effort he forced open the building's broken door. "Jensen moved in when his
grandmother died. I think he was the only one still living
here. Dryco kept the utilities running."