are you smiling at?'
Prothero couldn't stop grinning. 'It sounds funny, an expression like 'screw up,' in a Swedish accent.'
'So! You think I'm funny, huh?' She pulled her hand free with ladylike hauteur and slid down until the water lapped her chin.
'That's right, madam, I do,' Prothero said, eyeing her narrowly. 'Not to mention incredibly sexy. Come here.'
With both hands he scooped into the water, wetting the sleeves of his bathrobe up to the elbows, and pulled her up under the arms until they were both standing, his bathrobe open, her wet breasts pressing spongily against his hairy chest. He stooped and picked her up in his arms, a hot wet desirable woman, faintly steaming.
Prothero frowned. 'Just one logistical handicap.' 'Oh?'
'Glasses. Fogged. Can't see my way to the bedroom.'
'No logistical handicap at all,' said the UN secretary-general huskily. She unhooked his glasses and flipped them over her shoulder. They landed in the lavender-scented water with a plop.
For a reason Dr. Ruth Patton had never been able to figure out, from 6:00 p.m. onward was the busiest admissions period of the twenty-four-hour schedule. People collapsed on the streets and were ferried in by ambulance or staggered in themselves to receive treatment at the Manhattan Emergency Hospital in the dilapidated eight-story building on East Sixty-eighth Street that had once housed the Cornell School of Medicine.
The admissions department resembled a battlefield casualty clearing station. Anoxia and pollution cases were sprawled on chairs or laid out on stretchers on the floor, so tightly packed that there was barely enough room to move among them. There was little more she could do except make an instant diagnosis, classifying them as terminal--requiring hospitalization--or short stay. In the latter case they were given a whiff of oxygen, drugs to clear their bronchial tubes, and sent on their way. Orderlies followed her, sorting out the patients according to the red or blue stickers on the soles of their shoes.
Then it was on to the wards.
The unwritten policy of the hospital was not to give anyone over the age of fifty-five a bed. Better to save the life of a younger person than waste bed space on someone whose life expectancy was only a few years at best. Ruth hated the policy. More than once she had been reprimanded for admitting a patient above the 'death line.' She had even falsified the records, subtracting five and sometimes ten years from the patient's age and slipping him through the net.
Fred Walsh, aged sixty-three, had slipped through. He lay shrouded in a plastic oxygen tent, a small wiry man with spiky gray hair and watery brown eyes, who from the day he arrived had not uttered one word of complaint. He had the native New Yorker's caustically laconic wit, honed to a fine art by a lifetime spent as a cutter in the Manhattan rag trade. Ruth didn't know why she had admitted Fred when she had rejected hundreds of others-- some just as bad as he, some younger. Yet a week ago she had written 'Walsh, Frederick Charles; Male; Caucasian; age 52' on the pink admissions sheet after an examination lasting no more than a minute.
In her heart of hearts she suspected a reason. Fred reminded her of Grandpa Patton, the same slight body that was nevertheless as tough as old boots. She remembered her grandfather with much affection; he had taught her to ride in the summer vacations back in Columbus, Ohio, a million years ago.
Ethically it was wrong, of course, she knew that. But was it any less ethical than turning people out onto the streets on the basis of an arbitrary death line? Didn't Fred Walsh deserve at least the same chance as the thousands of others who sought refuge and help in these hopelessly overcrowded wards staffed by doctors and nurses working ceaselessly to save as many lives as possible, be they black, white, yellow, brown, young, or old?
'Hey, you're looking better today,' she told him brightly, which wasn't an outright lie. Indeed there was a spot of color in his sagging cheeks and his lips were noticeably less blue. 'How're you feeling, Fred?'
'Reminds ... me ... of ... my .. . honey . . . moon.' Even with oxygen he had to draw a deep breath between each word.
Ruth smiled. 'How's that, Fred?'
'Flat... on ... my .. . back . . . and . . . shorta . . . breath.' He winked at her through the plastic sheet, his narrow chest rising and falling, the air wheezing and bubbling through his furred tubes. Second-stage anoxia with pneumogastric complications. An operation was out of the question; anyway it was too late. In one respect Fred was lucky. Many anoxic patients suffered a sharp decline in their mental processes, became confused and incoherent due to the reduction of oxygen-rich blood circulating through the brain. Premature senile dementia set in, turning them into cabbages.
Ruth inserted her arms into the plastic sleeves that gave access into the tent; self-sealing collars gripped her wrists. 'Tell me when you feel anything,' she said, pricking his toes and the soles of his feet with a surgical needle. Loss of sensation in the extremities was one of the first indications that the anoxia was getting worse.
Fred lay passively, not responding. The needle had reached his lower calf before he twitched.
'You feel that?'
He nodded. 'Try . . . lower . . . down. My . . . feet ... are . . . cold.'
'We'll do that tomorrow,' Ruth said cheerfully. 'Around here we take our time.' She took hold of his hand, which felt like clammy wax, and pricked his fingers and palm.
'My . . . old . . . lady . . . came . . . yester . . . day.' He paused, wheezing. 'Asks. . . how . . . long . . . this. . . vacation . . . lasts.'
'Well, some time yet, Fred. Why, what's she planning to do, run off with the mailman?' Ruth tried his other hand. No response there either. She pulled her arms free and dropped the needle into the bin. 'Say, how do you feel about being moved to another hospital? There's a clinic in Maryland where they could take better care of you. It's a special treatment center with all the latest facilities. I think I can fix you up with a place. How about it?'
'Hopeless . . . case . . . huh?' His moist brown eyes were fixed intently on her face.
'Hell, no, I wouldn't bullshit you, Fred.' Ruth lowered her voice conspiratorially. 'The temptation's getting to be too strong for me. You're driving me crazy with lust. I've got to get you out of here before I disgrace myself. This thing is bigger than both of us.'
'Not . . . at . . . the . . . moment . . . it . . . ain't.'
'I'll give you some time to think it over, okay?' Ruth said, writing on the chart. 'Talk it over with your wife. Let me know in a day or two.'
Fred Walsh nodded and closed his eyes. Ruth replaced the chart at the foot of the bed and went on with her rounds.
An hour later it was blessed relief to put her feet up and relax with a cup of strong black coffee in the staff room. She'd take ten and then finish off the wards. No pathology lab tonight, unfortunately. Her duty didn't end till midnight and by then she'd be dog-tired.
The door swung open and Dr. Grant McGowan breezed in and helped himself to iced tea. McGowan was head of surgery, in his forties, and happily married with three children. He had a sympathetic ear for Ruth's grouses against Valentine, the chief pathologist, and the hospital at large.
'You still here?' she said, surprised.
McGowan scowled up at the clock. 'I was on my way out when they caught me. Why do people choose such inconsiderate times to have cardiac arrest? I was all set to watch the fights on TV and I get paged at the damn door.'
'Couldn't agree more',' Ruth said fervently. 'All sickness and disease should stop at six p.m. on the dot. Germs and viruses knock off for the day and come back tomorrow.'
MeGowan sat down in the armchair opposite and eyed her critically. 'You look beat, Ruth. What is it? Too much work, not enough sleep, or both?'
'Old age.'
'Are you still working in the path lab after hours?' At her nod he shook his head and sighed. 'You know you're asking for trouble, don't you? Being a resident on the wards is a full-time job without waging a one-woman crusade in the name of medical science. We don't have the staff, the resources, or the backup for that.'
'You sound like Valentine,' Ruth replied testily.
'Christ, I hope not,' said MeGowan with feeling. 'Look, Ruth, I
