Besides, Valium's so much mellower.'
'Jesus- Reed, You've got to stop that shit.'
'why? I'm still conscious.'
'Can you tell me what happened?'
'I fucked up. That's what happened.'
'We all fuck up, all the time,' Eric said. 'That's the nature of this job, and you know it as well, as I do.
If we had all night to sit and debate and hold court, we could do the right thing every time. But the people we deal with are sick, and we have to make decisions.
That's just the way things are.'
'Well said, mr. amigo. Well said.'
'Dammit, Reed, I mean it. Now please, just tell me what happened.'
'The woman had a rhythm and I ignored it. I fucked up. it's as simple as that.'
Eric felt a sudden tightness in this throat.
'What kind of a rhythm?' he asked.
'Eight, ten beats a minute. Broad complexes.
Looked useless at the time. But I guess they were enough to generate a contraction, 'cause that's what the M. E. said was happening'. Now, if that isn't fucking up, I don't know-'
'Re did you stick the tracings in her chart?'
Eric's pulse was beginning to race.
'Course I did. Mr. Thorough, that's me.'
'well, listen. Get rid of that goddam Valium and don't give up on yourself, okay?'
'Whatever you say, Doc. Well, thanks for callin'.
See you around, ol' buddy.'
'Reed, put Carolyn on for a minute, will you?'
Eric heard him fumble with the phone and then knock something over.
Moments later his wife came on.
'Listen,' Eric said, 'Reed's got Valium someplace.
'He does?'
'Find it and throw it out, okay?'
'O-okay. Eric, do you understand what happened?'
'Nothing that should have caused all this trouble.
Carolyn, we pronounce people like this woman all the time-believe me we do. I've done it plenty.'
The admission brought a sudden chill. All Eric could think about was the need to review Loretta Leone's chart.
'You're not just saying that, are you?' Carolyn asked.
'No way. Joe Silver nearly fired me just now for sticking up for Reed.
I meant what I said to him and I'm not lying to you.'
'Thank you,' she said. 'Will you keep in touch?'
'Of course I will. But for now, just get all the booze and tranquilizers out of the house. Reed once mentioned he was seeing a therapist. Is he still?'
'Why, yes. Yes, he is.'
'Well, call him. I think Reed might need to be hospitalized. At least let his doctor decide.'
By the time Eric hung up, he was damp with sweat.
It took nearly half an hour to track down Loretta Leone's hospital record. It was in Joe Silver's office, but at first the E.R. chief refused to allow him to see it. Eric persisted. Finally the man relented, extracting the promise that it would go no further than Eric's office-and be-discussed with no one. unable to wait, Eric flipped open the chart in the hallway. From what he remembered, the E.K.G complexes were identical to those of the derelict he had pronounced dead. Not similar-identical. He spent an hour getting through the mounting backlog of patients, and then sent to the record room for the derelict's chart. He was right. The man's cardiogram and Loretta Leone's were interchangeable.
Was the man who might have been Laura's brother still alive when his monitor was shut off.
Given what evidence he had, Eric knew there was little reason to believe otherwise. The prospect sickened him. Trying desperately to make sense of things, he wandered from the triage area to the deserted residents' lounge and dropped into a battered easy chair.
Could the similarity between the tracings be Coincidence?
Once, in medical school, when confronted with a confusing set of findings in a patient, he had suggested to a favorite professor that the explanation might be coincidence. The woman patiently allowed him to braid his own noose before turning to the class.
'Your cohort Mr. Najarian has chosen coincidence as his solution to this problem,' she said. 'I suggest to you all that while coincidence might from time to time exist in diagnostic medicine, the concept is in the main God's way of placating the intellectually lazy.
Eric managed a thin smile at the memory. Never since that day-had he accepted coincidence as an explanation for anything without one hell of a fight.
He took the two charts to his office and locked them in his desk.
As soon as he could break from the E.R he would head for the library to begin the process of becoming an expert on metabolic poisons and deathlike states.
Somewhere there existed an explanation for the findings in the derelict and Loretta Leone- And until there was not a source left in Boston he hadn't tapped, Eric vowed that there was no way he would settle for anything even remotely like coincidence.
Soon after Eric had left for the hospital, Laura floated back to sleep.
She awoke after nine, bewildered and confused to find herself not in her cabana on Little Cayman. Across the room, Verdi was scuffing about beneath his cage cover.
Laura set the cover aside and spent a fruitless five minutes endeavoring to coax the bird into a t'good e bed, morning.' Finally, she sat on the edge of the bed, trying to map out some sort of plan for the day ahead.
For the first time since leaving the island she felt restless and ill at ease.
Gradually she began to see that meeting Ericgrowing to care for him and to have him care for her seemed somehow to have blunted her sense of urgency in finding Scott.
Was her commitment that fragile? it frightened and angered her to think that it might not be fear for her brother that had been driving her so, but fear of losing the only real connection she had kept to life beyond the island.
Had her life grown that thin?
She got dressed and walked downtown to the Carisle- the day was cloudless and a little overcast begging for the relief that rain would bring. Several times during her walk she tried without success to spot anyone following her.
Just the notion that somone might constantly be watching was sickening.
The Iranian desk clerk had no new messages.
Laura went up to her room, turned on some talk show, and lay down.
Almost immediately she could feel herself begin to drift off again.
The search for Scott was so much easier with Eric along to help, she reasoned. She could catch up on some sleep, do some shopping, and wait.until tomorrow to see the police.
The thought of another encounter with another bored, condescending officer was not at all appealing. Besides, there was little chance of their helping anyway.
Her eyes closed. and it is our belief as antivivisectionisis,' one of the program's guests was saying, 'that the medical researchers and animal providers have a lobby going in Washington that is as strong and well-funded as any special interest group…
Laura- forced her eyes open, pushed herself up, and stared at the screen. The speaker droned on, castigating the loss of perspective in the medical world.
'First mice and hamsters, then dogs, then primates, then so-called volunteer prisoners,' she was saying. 'And where do you suppose all this is heading?
