VIII
JILL TOLD herself that Ben had gone off on another scent and had forgotten to let her know. But she did not believe it. Ben owed his success to meticulous attention to human details. He remembered birthdays and would rather have welched on a poker debt than have omitted a bread-and-butter note. No matter where he had gone, nor how urgently, he could have — wouldhave! — taken two minutes in the air to record a message to her.
He must have left word! She called his office at her lunch break and spoke with Ben's researcher and office chief, Osbert Kilgallen. He insisted that Ben had left no message for her, nor had any come in since she had called.
«Did he say when he would be back?»
«No. But we always have columns on the hook to fill in when one of these things comes up.»
«Well … where did he call you from? Or am I being snoopy?»
«Not at all, Miss Boardman. He did not call; it was a statprint, filed from Paoli Flat in Philadelphia.»
Jill had to be satisfied with that. She lunched in the nurses' dining room and picked at her food. It wasn't, she told herself, as if anything were wrong … or as if she were in love with the lunk …
«Hey! Boardman! Snap out of the fog!»
Jill looked up to find Molly Wheelwright, the wing's di etitian, looking at her. «Sorry.»
«I said, “Since when does your floor put charity patients in luxury suites?”»
«We don't.»
«Isn't K-12 on your floor?»
«K-12? That's not charity; it's a rich old woman, so wealthy that she can pay to have a doctor watch her breathe.»
«Humph! She must have come into money awfully suddenly. She's been in the N.P. ward of the geriatrics sanctuary the past seventeen months.»
«Some mistake.»
«Not mine — I don't allow mistakes in my kitchen. That tray is tricky — fat-free diet and a long list of sensitivities, plus concealed medication. Believe me, dear, a diet order can be as individual as a fingerprint.» Miss Wheelwright stood up. «Gotta run, chicks.»
«What was Molly sounding off about?» a nurse asked.
«Nothing. She's mixed up.» It occurred to Jill that she might locate the Man from Mars by checking diet kitchens. She put the idea out of her mind; it would take days to visit them all. Bethesda Center had been a naval hospital back when wars were fought on oceans and enormous even then. It had been transferred to Health, Education, & Welfare and expanded; now it belonged to the Federation and was a small city.
But there was something odd about Mrs. Bankerson's case. The hospital accepted all classes of patients, private, charity, and government; Jill's floor usually had government patients and its suites were for Federation Senators or other high officials. It was unusual for a private patient to be on her floor.
Mrs. Bankerson could be overflow, if the part of the Center open to the fee-paying public had no suite available. Yes, probably that was it.
She was too rushed after lunch to think about it, being busy with admissions. Shortly she needed a powered bed. The routine would be to phone for one — but storage was in the basement a quarter of a mile away and Jill wanted it at once. She recalled having seen the powered bed which belonged to K-12 parked in the sitting room of that suite; she remembered telling those marines not to sit on it. Apparently it had been shoved there when the flotation bed had been installed.
Probably it was still there — if so, she could get it at once.
The sitting room door was locked and she found that her pass key would not open it. Making a note to tell maintenance, she went to the watch room of the suite, intending to find out about the bed from the doctor watching Mrs. Bankerson.
The physician was the one she had met before, Dr. Brush. He was not an interne nor a resident, but had been brought in for this patient, so he had said, by Dr. Garner. Brush looked up as she put her head in. «Miss Boardman! Just the person I need!»
«Why didn't you ring? How's your patient?»
«She's all right,» he answered, glancing at the Peeping Tom, «but I am not.»
«Trouble?»
«About five minutes' worth. Nurse, could you spare me that much of your time? And keep your mouth shut?»
«I suppose so. Let me use your phone and I'll tell my assistant where I am.»
«No!» he said urgently. «Just lock that door after I leave and don't open it until you hear me rap “Shave and a Haircut”, that's a good girl.»
«All right, sir,» Jill said dubiously. «Am I to do anything for your patient?»
«No, no, just sit and watch her in the screen. Don't disturb her.»
«Well, if anything happens, where will you be? In the doctors' lounge?»
«I'm going to the men's washroom down the corridor. Now shut up, please — this is urgent.»
He left and Jill locked the door. Then she looked at the patient through the viewer and ran her eye over the dials. The woman was asleep and displays showed pulse strong and breathing even and normal; Jill wondered why a «death watch» was necessary?
Then she decided to see if the bed was in the far room. While it was not according to Dr. Brush's instructions, she would not disturb his patient — she knew how to walk through a room without waking a patient! — and she had decided years ago that what doctors did not know rarely hurt them. She opened the door quietly and went in.
A glance assured her that Mrs. Bankerson was in the typical sleep of the senile. Walking noiselessly she went to the sitting room. It was locked but her pass key let her in.
She saw that the powered bed was there. Then she saw that the room was occupied — sitting in a chair with a picture book in his lap was the Man from Mars.
Smith looked up and gave her the beaming smile of a delighted baby.
Jill felt dizzy. Valentine Smith here? He couldn't be; he had been transferred; the log showed it.
Then ugly implications lined themselves up … the fake «Man from Mars» on stereo … the old woman, ready to die, but in the meantime covering the fact that there was another patient here … the door that would not open to her key — and a nightmare of the «meat wagon» wheeling out some night, with a sheet concealing that it carried not one cadaver, but two.
As this rushed through her mind, it carried fear, awareness of peril through having stumbled onto this secret.
Smith got clumsily up from his chair, held out both hands and said, «Water brother!»
«Hello. Uh … how are you?»
«I am well. I am happy.» He added something in a strange, choking speech, corrected himself and said carefully, «You are here, my brother. You were away. Now you are here. I drink deep of you.»
Jill felt herself helplessly split between emotions, one that melted her heart — and icy fear of being caught. Smith did not notice. Instead he said, «See? I walk! I grow strong.» He took a few steps, then stopped, triumphant, breathless, and smiling.
She forced herself to smile. «We are making progress, aren't we? You keep growing stronger, that's the spirit! But I must go — I just stopped to say hello.»
His expression changed to distress. «Do not go!»
«Oh, I must!»
He looked woebegone, then added with tragic certainty, «I have hurted you. I did not know.»
«Hurt me? Oh, no, not at all! But I must go — and quickly!»
His face was without expression. He stated rather than asked. «Take me with you, my brother.»
«What? Oh, I can't. And I must go, at once. Look, don't tell anyone I was here, please!»
«Not tell that my water brother was here?»
«Yes. Don't tell anyone. Uh…I'll come back. You be a good boy and wait and don't tell anyone.»
Smith digested this, looked serene. «I will wait. I will not tell.»
«Good!» Jill wondered how she could keep her promise. She realized now that the «broken» lock had not been broken and her eye went to the corridor door — and saw why she had not been able to get in. A hand bolt had been screwed to the door. As was always the case, bathroom doors and other doors that could be bolted were arranged to open also by pass key, so that patients could not lock themselves in. Here the lock kept Smith in and a bolt of the sort not permitted in hospitals kept out even those with pass keys.