I went plunging out to find somebody and ran into a couple of orderlies pushing a stretcher. I asked them what was going on, and they said they were taking a patient named Gretel Howard to Intensive Care. Other than that, they knew nothing.
I followed along, after they had raised the bed and pulled her across onto the stretcher. They tried to keep me from getting into the elevator with her, but it didn’t work. But they did stop me at the door to the Intensive Care area. I told a very large white-haired nurse that if somebody didn’t come and tell me within ten minutes what was going on, I was coming through that door.
The doctor who came out said his name was Tower. Vance Tower. He led me over to some rattan chairs near a window and we sat down and he said, ‘] need some background here.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
He had taken a little Pearlcorder out of his At and put it into dictation mode. ‘name, address, and occupation, please,” he said, and held it up between us. They make you play their game their way, and if you want a lot of delays, just re- fuse to go along. Travis McGee. Slip F-18, Bahia Mar Marina Salvage Consultant.
“Relationship to patient?”
I hesitated, then said, “Common-law husband.” After ale she had lived aboard the houseboat tenth me for a lot of weeks.
He was a dumpy-looking man, soft and pale and too heavy, going bald, short of breath, looking out of tired little brown eyes at me, showing no react lion at all to my answers.
“How can we contact her close relatives?”
The Green Ripper
“There aren’t any. Parents and only brother are dead. She is divorced from her first husband. No children. I think there may be some distant kin, second cousins and so on, but I would have no idea how to reach them.”
“Where has she been lately? Geographically, that is.”
“Lately? Up until May she was living in Timber Bay over on the west coast. Then we came around to Lauderdale aboard my houseboat. We took our time. Got here in early August. She dived aboard and then moved to one of the model houses at Bonnie Brae to be closer to her work. A temporary arrangement.”
“Did she go out of the country at any time since last May?”
“No.”
“Has she been in swamp country?”
“No. Why?”
‘Jo you know if any of the people she has been associated with have been taken seriously ill, quite suddenly?”
“I don’t know if this is what you mean, but one of the owners of Bonnie Brae fell old his bicycle this morning and ”
“I know about that. I mean an illness like hers, characterized by extremely high temperatures, spo- radic delirium, cardiac arrhythmia, and fading blood pressure.”
‘I can’t think of anyone we know who’s been sick lately. What’s wrong with her?”
“I’ve ordered every lab test I can think of. I don’t approve of the shotgun approach to antibiotics, but I’m giving her a wide range of those. If we can’t knock that fever down any other way, I’m going to try packing her in ice.” He sighed heavily. “The big problem with treating something when you don’t l~now what it is, you can male diagnosis all that more difficult.”
“Can I see her?”
He thought it over, then nodded. ‘They’ll be busy in there. You can see her five minutes out of every hour. I’ll approve that It won’t be pleasant for you, and I doubt if she’ll know you’re there.”
A nurse came out and motioned to him, and he got up and plodded in, through the double doors. Man at work. A very tired man. But he was an empathetic man because, about ten minutes later, he beckoned to me and took me to her bedside. The rapid shallow breathing had eased. There was an LV. rigged, dripping into the vein in her arm. Her cheeks seemed hollower than they had looked an hour before, in her room, her eyes more sunken.
He said in a low voice, ‘~e knocked the fever down almost one degree. First sign of progress.”