‘Thank you, Mr Clark. That’s a fuckin’ mission,’ Master Gunnery Sergeant Paul Irvin told the pine trees and the bats. ‘So you’re first in and last out?’
‘I’ve worked alone before.’
CHAPTER 23
Altruism
‘Where am I?’ Doris Brown asked in a barely understandable voice.
‘Well, you’re in my house,’ Sandy answered. She sat in the corner of the guest bedroom, switching off the reading light and setting down the paperback she’d been reading for the past few hours.
‘How did I get here?’
‘A friend brought you here. I’m a nurse. The doctor is downstairs fixing breakfast. How are you feeling?’
‘Terrible.’ Her eyes closed. ‘My head …’
“That’s normal, but I know it’s bad.’ Sandy stood and came over, touching the girl’s forehead. No fever, which was good news. Next she felt for a pulse. Strong, regular, though still a touch fast. From the way her eyes were screwed shut, Sandy guessed that the extended barbiturate hangover must have been awful, but that too was normal. The girl smelled from sweating and vomiting. They’d tried to keep her clean, but that had been a losing battle, if a not terribly important one compared to the rest. Until now, perhaps. Doris’s skin was sallow and slack, as though the person inside had shrunk. She must have lost ten or fifteen pounds since arriving, and while that wasn’t an entirely bad thing, she was so weak that she’d not yet noticed the restraints holding her hands, feet, and waist in place.
‘How long?’
‘Almost a week.’ Sandy took a sponge and wiped her face. ‘You gave us quite a scare.’ Which was an understatement. No less than seven convulsions, the second of which had almost panicked both nurse and physician, but number seven – a mild one – was eighteen hours behind them now, and the patient’s vital signs were stabilized. With luck that phase of her recovery was behind them. Sandy let Doris have some water.
‘Thank you,’ Doris said in a very small voice. ‘Where’s Billy and Rick?’
‘I don’t know who they are,’ Sandy replied. It was technically correct. She’d read the articles in the local papers, always stopping short of reading any names. Nurse O’Toole was telling herself that she didn’t really know anything. It was a useful internal defense against feelings so mixed that even had she taken the time to figure things out, she knew she would have only confused herself all the more. It was not a time for bare facts. Sarah had convinced her of that. It was a time for riding with the shape of events, not the substance. ‘Are they the ones who hurt you?’
Doris was nude except for the restraints and the oversized diapers used on patients unable to manage their bodily functions. It was easier to treat her that way. The horrid marks on her breasts and torso were fading now. What had been ugly, discrete marks of blue and black and purple and red were fading to poorly defined areas of yellow-brown as her body struggled to heal itself. She was young, Sandy told herself, and while not yet healthy, she could become so. Enough to heal, perhaps, inside and outside. Already her systemic infections were responding to the massive doses of antibiotics. The fever was gone, and her body could now turn to the more mundane repair tasks.
Doris turned her head and opened her eyes. ‘Why are you doing this for me?’
That answer was an easy one: ‘I’m a nurse, Miss Brown. It’s my job to take care of sick people.’
‘Billy and Rick,’ she said next, remembering again. Memory for Doris was a variable and spotty thing, mainly the recollection of pain.
‘They’re not here,’ O’Toole assured her. She paused before going on, and to her surprise found satisfaction in the words: ‘I don’t think they’ll be bothering you again.’
There was almost comprehension in the patient’s eyes, Sandy thought. Almost. And that was encouraging.
‘I have to go. Please -‘ She started to move and then noticed the restraints.
‘Okay, wait a minute.’ Sandy removed the straps. ‘You think you can stand today?’
‘… try,’ she groaned. Doris rose perhaps thirty degrees before her body betrayed her. Sandy got her sitting up, but the girl couldn’t quite make her bead sit straight on her neck. Standing her up was even harder, but it wasn’t far to the bathroom, and the dignity of making it there was worth the pain and the effort for her patient. Sandy sat her down there, holding her hand. She took the time to dampen a washcloth and do her face.
‘That’s a step forward,’ Sarah Rosen observed from the door. Sandy turned and smiled by way of communicating the patient’s condition. They put a robe on her before bringing her back to the bedroom. Sandy changed the linen first, while Sarah got a cup of tea into the patient.
‘You’re looking much better today, Doris,’ the physician said, watching her drink.
‘I feel awful.’
‘That’s okay, Doris. You have to feel awful before you can start to feel better. Yesterday you weren’t feeling much of anything. Think you can try some toast?’
‘So hungry.’
‘Another good sign,’ Sandy noted. The look in her eyes was so bad that both doctor and nurse could feel the skull-rending headache which today would be treated only with an ice pack. They’d spent a week leaching the drugs from her system, and this wasn’t the time for adding new ones. ‘Lean your head back.’
Doris did that, resting her head on the back of the overstaffed chair Sandy had once bought at a garage sale. Her eyes were closed and her limbs so weak that her arms merely rested on the fabric while Sarah handled the individual slices of dry toast. The nurse took a brush and started working on her patient’s hair. It was filthy and needed washing, but just getting it straightened out would help, she thought. Medical patients put an amazing amount of stock in their physical appearance, and however odd or illogical it might seem to be, it was real, and therefore something which Sandy recognized as important. She was a little surprised by Doris’s shudder a minute or so after she started.
‘Am I alive?’ The alarm in the question was startling.
‘Very much so,’ Sarah answered, almost smiling at the exaggeration. She checked her blood pressure. ‘One twenty-two over seventy-eight.’
‘Excellent!’ Sandy noted. It was the best reading all week.
‘Pam…’
‘What’s that?’ Sarah asked.
It took Doris a moment to go on, still wondering if this were life or death, and if the latter, what part of eternity she had found. ‘Hair … when she was dead… brushed her hair.’
Dear God, Sarah thought. Sam had related that one part of the postmortem report to her, morosely sipping a highball at their home in Green Spring Valley. He hadn’t gone further than that. It hadn’t been necessary. The photo on the front page of the paper had been quite sufficient. Dr Rosen touched her patient’s face as gently as she could.
‘Doris, who killed Pam?’ She thought that she could ask this without increasing the patient’s pain. She was wrong.
‘Rick and Billy and Burt and Henry … killed her … watching …’ The girl started crying, and the racking sobs only magnified the shuddering waves of pain in her head. Sarah held back on the toast. Nausea might soon follow.
‘They made you watch?’
‘Yes …’ Doris’s voice was like one from the grave.
‘Let’s not think about that now.’ Sarah’s body shuddered with the kind of chill she associated with death itself as she stroked the girl’s cheek.
‘There!’ Sandy said brightly, hoping to distract her. ‘That’s much better.’
‘Tired.’
‘Okay, let’s get you back to bed, dear.’ Both women helped her up. Sandy left the robe on her, setting an ice bag on her forehead. Doris faded off into sleep almost at once.
‘Breakfast is on,’ Sarah told the nurse. ‘Leave the restraints off for now.’
‘Brushed her hair? What?’ Sandy asked, heading down the stairs.
‘I didn’t read the report -‘
‘I saw the photo, Sarah – what they did to her – Pam, her name was, right?’ Sandy was almost too tired to remember things herself.
‘Yes. She was my patient, too,’ Dr Rosen confirmed. ‘Sam said it was pretty bad. The odd thing, somebody brushed her hair out after she was dead, he told me that. I guess it was Doris who did it.’
‘Oh.’ Sandy opened the refrigerator and got milk for the morning coffee. ‘I see.’
‘I don’t,’ Dr Rosen said angrily. ‘I don’t see how people can do that. Another few months and Doris would have died. As it was, any closer -‘
‘I’m surprised you didn’t admit her under a Jane Doe,’ Sandy observed.
‘After what happened to Pam, taking a chance like that – and it would have meant -‘
O’Toole nodded. ‘Yes, it would have meant endangering John. That’s what I understand.’