A people pleaser. He cries during procedures—the
spinal tap really hurt him—but he holds ‘still and
gives no serious problems.” She stopped for a moment
and fought tears.
“It’s a goddamn crime, their pulling him out of
BLOOD TEST 65
treatment. I don’t like Melendez-Lynch, but’
damn it, he’s right this time! They’re going to kill
that little boy because somehow we screwed up,
and it’s driving me nuts.”
She pounded a small fist on the desk, snapped
herself to a standing position, and paced the cramped
Office. Her lower lip quivered.
I stood up and put my arms around her and she
buried her head in the warmth of my jacket.
“I feel like such a fool!”
“.You’re not.” I held her tightly. “None if it is
your fault.”
She pulled away and dabbed at her eyes. When
she seemed composed I said, “I’d’like to meet
Woody.”
She nodded and led me to the Laminar Airflow
Unit.
Ther.e were four modules, placed in series, like
rooms in a railroad flat, and shielded from one
another by a wall of curtain that could be opened or
drawn by pushing buttons inside each room. The
walls of the units were transparent plastic and
each room resembled an oversized ice cube, eight
feet square.
Three of the cubes were occupied. The fourth
was filled with supplies–toys, cots, bags of cloth-lng.
The interior side of the curtained wall in each
room was a perforated gray panel–the filter through
which air blew audibly. The doors of the modules
were segmented, the bottom half metal and closed,
the top plastic, and left ajar. Microbes were kept
out of the opening by the high speed at which the
air was expelled. Bunning parallel to all four units
were corridors on both sides, the rear passage for
visitors, the front for the medical staff.
66
Jonathan Kellerman
Two feet in front of the doorway to each module
was a no-entry area marked off by red tape on the
vinyl floor. I stood just outside the tape at the
entrance of Module Two and looked at Woody
Swope.
He lay on the bed, under the covers, facing away
fromus. There were plastic gloves attached to the
front wall of the module, which permitted manual
entry into the germ-free environment. Beverly put
her hands inside them and patted him on the head
gently.
“Good morning, sweetie.”
Slowly and with seeming effort, he rolled over
and stared at us.
“Hi.”
A week before Robin left for Japan, she and I
went to an exhibition of photographs by Roman
Vishniac. The pictures had been a chronicle of the
Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe just before the
Holocaust. Many of the portraits were of children,
and the photographer’s lens had caught their small
faces unaware, flash-freezing the confusion and terror
it found there. The images were haunting, and
afterward we cried.
Now, looking into the large dark eyes of the boy
in the plastic room, these same feelings came back
in a rush.
His face was small and thin, the’ skin stretched
across delicate bone structure, translucently pale
in the artificial light of the module. His eyes, ‘like
those of his sister, were black, and glassy with
fever. The hair on his head was a thick mop of
henna-colored curls. Chemotherapy, if it ever happened,
would take care of those curls in a brutal,
though temporary, reminder of the disease.
BLOOD
Beverly stopped stroking his hair and held out
her glove. The boy took it and managed a smile.
“How we doing this morning, doll?”
“Okay.” His voice was soft and barely audible
through the plastic.
“This is Dr. Delaware, Woody.”
At the mention of the title he flinched and moved
back on the bed.
“He’s not the kind of doctor who gives shots. He
just talks to kids, like l do.”
That relaxed him somewhat, but he continued-to
look at me with apprehension.
“Hi, Woody,” I said. “Can we shake hands?”
“Okay.”
I put my hand into the glove Beverly relinquished.
It felt hot and dry–coated with talc, I recalled.
Reaching into the module I searched for his hand
and found it, a small treasure. I held it for a moment
and let go.