Deathbed

10

“It was all a matter of timing.”

“Timing!”

“Yes,” affirmed Whitaker. “The timing was off just a bit.”

“Bah! “ said the Third Man. “That’s like a weather forecaster saying that if only the day had lasted forty-eight hours, his prediction of rain would have come true.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Hear him out,” said the Fourth Man.

“Everything worked!” Whitaker said in a tone of incredulity. “It worked just as I had it planned. They gave her the penicillin routinely, without asking any questions or informing anyone else. Just because her chart indicated she was in that study group, they gave her the penicillin. And she had her allergic reaction to it. She got sick and she was getting sicker as time went on.”

“So what was wrong with the timing?” the First Man demanded.

“I’m getting to that. I was watching her very carefully. I was waiting for her to get sick enough so that they would really worry about her dying. Then I was going to get a note to that reporter—Lennon—and inform her of what was going on. That a patient was dying because the hospital messed up her chart and, even though she told them she was allergic to it, they were giving her penicillin for her pneumonia. Once the reporter got involved in saving the woman from the hospital’s mistake, she would have to report what’s going on there. And just as soon as the media started getting in there, the lid would come off.”

“He’s right, you know,” the Fourth Man said. “When a Catholic hospital refuses to follow the clear teachings of the Catholic Church, that’s news. All we have to do is show them what’s going on.”

“Oh, yeah?” the First Man said. “If that’s so, then why didn’t that reporter write up the hospital’s policy on birth control? She knew about it. You led her to it. Or so you said!”

“I did lead her to it! And she did see what was going on! And after that . . . I don’t know!”

“Quiet down,” the Fourth Man cautioned, “or that guard will come over and break up our meeting.”

“I don’t know,” Whitaker repeated in a more restrained tone. “I really don’t. Somebody told me she was working on a feature story on the hospital. But I don’t know; if she changed her mind and was going to do a story on the immoral birth control, she would have just done it. Don’t you think?”

“All I can think of is that the nun must have charmed her, or scared her, or something. But I’m positive Lennon could not look the other way if I could have handed her the story of how the hospital was killing one of its patients. And we would have had it all—the story would have been out and Lennon would have stopped the experiment before it had gone too far and killed the patient!”

“Okay,” the Third Man said, “if, as you claim, you finally did something right, what happened? What threw your goddam timing off?”

“Watch your language!” the Fourth Man cautioned. “There’s no need to take the Lord’s name in vain!”

The Third Man shrugged. “What threw your timing off?”

“That priest! Koesler!”

“What! How?”

“Somehow he found out what was going on. I don’t know how. But he told one of the nurses that the patient was allergic to penicillin. The only thing I can figure is that the woman herself must have told him. It’s the only way he could have known. Just lucky!”

“Was he ‘just lucky’ when he saw through our plot to even the score with those seminary professors a few years ago? Was it just luck that put us in here?” the Third Man challenged.

“You’re right,” the First Man said. “You’re absolutely right. Koesler is a clear and present danger to us. He’s going to ruin our plan again.”

“Unless we do something about it!” The Third Man’s meaning was evident.

“Now, wait a minute!” Whitaker said.

“Yes, wait a minute!” the Fourth Man agreed.

“Why not?” the Third Man pressed. “We are just trying to do God’s holy will and Koesler keeps getting in our way."

“He’s a priest!” Whitaker protested.

“So? What was it, you know, Peter O’Toole said—Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”

“Yes,” Whitaker said, “and they went out and killed Thomas à Becket. And he became a saint.”

“That was different. Henry was wrong. And we are doing God’s work. I only brought that up to show that it’s possible to at least think about killing a priest.”

“The whole thing makes me shudder,” Whitaker complained. “We are doing God’s will. We’re not trying to kill anybody.”

“We may have to.”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“Let’s just put that notion on the back burner,” the Fourth Man said. “What we must consider is where, if anywhere, we are going from here.”

“I’ve got another idea,” Whitaker volunteered.

“No!” the First Man said.

“Not again,” the Third Man said.

“Let’s hear him out,” the Fourth Man said.

“I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open and I’ve got a plan. A very good plan. What would you say if I told you I could shut down the operating room?”

“I’d say you couldn’t do it,” said the Third Man.

“I’d say so what?” the First Man said.

“So what,” Whitaker replied, “is just this: The operating room is the hub of the hospital. It’s where the hospital makes most of its money. If the operating room closes down, there is no possible way the hospital can avoid tons of publicity. It’s like a baseball team trying to play without any pitchers. I guarantee you, once the operating room closes, there will be reporters, radio, and TV crews all over the place. From that point on, it will be easy to get them interested in ‘other things’ that are going on in that supposedly Catholic institution.”

“So,” the Third Man evidently was not convinced, “how can you do that?”

“Leave it to me.”

“Ha!” the Third Man commented.

“We have no one else,” the Fourth Man said. “We must leave it to you. We put our trust in you. “

“Thanks. I won’t fail you. And ... I have this feeling. I mean there are a couple of portents that seem to indicate that things have turned around for us . . . that things are looking up.”

“What are they, Bruce?” The Fourth Man said. “God knows, we certainly could use a favorable sign or two.”

“Well, for one thing, there was that control-group experiment at the hospital.”

“You mean when you got the patient to be given penicillin when she was allergic to it?”

“Yes. I overheard some of the hospital personnel talking about it, several times, as a matter of fact. They kept talking about how not only did she have the wrong protocol number that would include her in the experiment, but she also did not have any sticker on her chart that indicated she was allergic to the medicine.

“So I remember very clearly removing the number they gave her when she was admitted and substituting the number that would put her in the experiment. But I don’t remember pulling off the sticker that said she shouldn’t be given penicillin.”

“How could you—”

“That’s just it—I must have. There was no other way it could have worked. I take that as a sign—a sign that things are turning around for us. It was a miracle, I guess, how that sticker disappeared from the lady’s chart. It must have been a miracle. I didn’t take the sticker off—and yet, I did. What else could anyone call it?”

“Dumb luck,” the Third Man said.

“Maybe he’s right,” the Fourth Man said. “Anyway, Bruce, you said there were a couple of portents that augured well for us. What else beside the disappearance of the telltale sticker?”

“Well, this very meeting right now. We’ve been talking for a long time and nothing’s gone wrong. Not one of us has had an accident or done anything to attract the guard’s attention or anything like that. Now I ask you: Doesn’t that bode well?”

“Maybe. But I still think we’ve got to keep our options open on Father Koesler. He may have to be eliminated.”

“I don’t even want to think about that,” said Whitaker.

“Don’t think about it,” the Fourth Man reassured. “As I said before, we’ll put that on the back burner. We may have to consider it, but, for the moment, let’s just put all our chips on Bruce’s plan. We’re behind you, Bruce.”

“Wait a minute!” The Third Man looked searchingly at the First Man. “Did you take anything from the Big Top again?”

“No . . . .” The First Man hesitated.

“How about the chow cart?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“Then what’s that bulge under your shirt?”

“Nothing.”

“Something. Obviously something.”

“Well, maybe I took a little something out of the Big Top.”

“You’re going to do it to us again, aren’t you, dummy!”

“I’m not doing anything to you guys. It’s just that I get hungry. It’s just for me and don’t worry about it. I can take care of myself. No one is going to catch me at this. I am going to get away with this, just watch.”

And it’s likely he would have gotten away with it if he hadn’t, as he walked past the guard, folded his arms so tightly across his chest that one end of the loaf protruded from the open collar of his shirt. No guard could miss that. And this one didn’t.

* * *

“Let me understand this,” Sister Eileen addressed her somewhat apprehensive secretary, “a patient entered St. Vincent’s with a mild case of pneumonia. Her prognosis was good. There were no known complications.”

Dolly nodded.

“Somehow she was put in a test group that was to be given penicillin, even though she had stated that she was allergic to the drug.”

Dolly nodded.

“The admissions clerk’s records show she was given the correct protocol number that would have excluded her from the test group. Yet, that is not the number that was found on her chart. The number on her chart automatically placed her in the study and insured that she would receive the penicillin.”

Dolly nodded.

“We have on record that someone remembers seeing the allergy-warning sticker on her chart. Yet the sticker seems to have just disappeared somewhere along the way.”

Dolly nodded.

“She was given penicillin and we almost killed her. Is all that a fairly accurate history of this patient?”

“Yes, Sister.”

Eileen leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk. She massaged her temples with her fingertips. “Why wasn’t I told about this immediately?”

“Because”—Dolly shifted her weight; she’d been standing quite a while—“Mr. Haroldson took immediate charge of the investigation. He told everyone you were not feeling well and you were not to be disturbed. But after I thought about it for a while it seemed to me you’d want to know no matter how you felt.”

“I feel fine !” Eileen snapped, though she did not appear well. The unrelenting headache had left her pale and in obvious pain.

“Yes, Sister.”

“On top of it all, the patient might actually have died if Father Koesler had not remembered a conversation wherein she had mentioned her allergy to penicillin.”

“Well, that’s probably true, Sister. Except that the doctors told Mr. Haroldson that they would probably have identified the allergic condition if her symptoms had continued much longer. And Mr. Haroldson says that’s probably true.”

Eileen thought about that for a few moments. “All right, so she probably would not have died. The fact remains, we made her a very sick person.”

Dolly nodded.

“I suppose we ought to prepare for a malpractice suit.”

“I don’t think so, Sister.”

“No?” Eileen was surprised.

“No. It seems Mrs. Power is a very religious woman. According to Father Koesler, she tends to put herself in the hands of God. Father mentioned that she refers to God as ‘Dr. Jesus.’ Anyway, everything that happens to her is fate—”

“Or providence.”

“Yes. So the bad period she just went through—”

“Was God’s will . . . is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“It seems I’ve been getting a lot of ‘good news-bad news’ packages lately.” Her frown intensified. “Whatever else happens, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this. We’ve got to find the responsible party or parties and take appropriate action. This particular calamity seems to have had a relatively happy ending, but there is no doubt it could have been a disaster. We’ve got to find out who’s responsible for this. Dolly, please tell Mr. Haroldson to see me about this at his earliest convenience.”

“Yes, Sister.” Dolly exited.

Eileen continued to massage her temples. Something was wrong; no doubt about that. Never before had she had such a persistent and intense headache. But now was not the time to be sick. So she would not be. She could not be. She had to stay on top of this mess.

Thanks to the remarkable faith of Millie Power, there would be no outside repercussions. But there might have been. There could have been. A malpractice suit could have caused such an increase in their insurance premiums that St. Vincent’s simply could not have afforded it. With no insurance coverage, St. Vincent’s would have been forced, at long last, to close its doors for good and all. And if the unaffordable insurance had not done the job, the media coverage would have accomplished the same.

Cardinal Boyle could be counted on to look the other way as St. Vincent’s fudged on Catholic teaching in order to be relevant to its community. But massive media coverage could not be overlooked. Sister Eileen could not guess how the hierarchy would react to a media exposé of St. Vincent’s. And she didn’t want to find out.

In either eventuality—litigation or publicity—St. Vincent’s seemed the loser.

* * *

Pat Lennon riffled through her notepad. She appeared to be studying the contents. Actually, her attention was some distance from the city room of the Detroit News. She was thinking about St. Vincent’s. She was supposed to be doing a story on St. Vincent’s. But there wasn’t much connection between her notes on St. Vincent’s and her musings about St. Vincent’s.

She had completed all the research needed for the Michigan Magazine article. She had gathered all the background information and done all the interviews. The facts were scattered throughout her notebook. All she had to do was put them together. But rather than collating the material, she was woolgathering.

It was unlike Pat Lennon. She was a professional who could be depended upon. Editors had become used to giving her an assignment and then not having to be concerned about it again. Lennon would bring it in acceptably and on time. While time on a piece for the Sunday magazine was somewhat more leisurely measured than for the regular daily deadline, she was admittedly procrastinating. She had the data. All she had to do was write it up.

But she was distracted by something she could not quite define. Call it a sixth sense, or intuition, or perhaps a hunch. There was some impending danger at St. Vincent’s Hospital. She had felt it during some of her interviews, notably with John Haroldson and Dr. Lee Kim. There was some unrest among certain of the nursing staff. Even Sister Rosamunda seemed to be holding something back. And Lennon had anticipated nothing but the stereotypical sweet little old nun.

Then there was Sister Eileen herself. Somehow she seemed to be the cynosure of the hostility Lennon had uncovered. Pat was also concerned about Eileen’s present state. The crippling headache from which the nun was suffering seemed to make her more vulnerable.

Yet there was nothing Lennon could do about a premonition, or intuition, or a hunch. Staff reporters dealt in facts, events, reality, not in emotional reaction, no matter how strong it might be.

She sighed. Enough of this! Speculation was the purview of columnists and editorialists. She was a pawn in the chess game of journalism. Let’s turn this story out! She switched on the CRT.

“Lennon!” It was Bob Ankenazy.

She looked up and reflexively turned off the word processor.

“All hell’s broken loose at Van’s Can. A full-scale riot! The prisoners have barricaded themselves in the central dining area—the . . . uh . . . Big Top. The riot’s less than half an hour old. We’ve got three people on the scene. We need a rewrite and you’re it! Get on the phone—line three. The story’s coming in right now.”

This, she thought, is more like it. A breaking news story you can sink your teeth into. Nothing speculative or conjectural about this: X-number of prisoners have rioted, X-number of prison guards have been taken hostage, X-number of law enforcement officers will be gathering, armed with everything short of nuclear weapons. There will be X-number of prisoner demands. Eventually, X-number of public officials—mayor, police chief, maybe governor—will assemble.

The first need: Fill in the Xs. Then do a more complete, insightful job of it than either radio or TV, which will reach the public hours before the print medium will be able to tell the story. And, as rewrite, she would quarterback.

For no more than an instant, she thought of Joe Cox. Undoubtedly, he would be covering this for the Free Press. She wondered whether he would be on the scene, where he would want to be, or if he would be, as she was, working from the city room. She had no more luxury than an instant to give to Cox. She put on a headset and activated line three.

“Bill Dunnigan,” the voice identified.

As the story unfolded, Lennon pictured Dunnigan at the scene. Blond, mild-mannered, wearing granny glasses behind which soft blue eyes usually seemed wide with surprise. Dunnigan was the sort of reporter who could be depended on to bring in a careful story faithful to facts. Dunnigan was a professional in the best sense of the term.

“That you, Pat?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good. What we’ve got here is an insurrection—a riot. Occurred at 12:25 p.m. in the central dining area—the Big Top, as the prisoners call it. That’s upper case B and T. Five guards—all male—have been taken hostage. So far, no one’s been hurt. None of the guards was armed. So the prisoners have no weapons except the tools and kitchen utensils they managed to appropriate. That would include screwdrivers, knives, and saws. Of course, to the hostages these things can be both frightening and threatening.

“Actually, the riot just got under way. So there isn’t much more to tell just yet. We know there will be demands made. But so far, we have no intimation of what they’ll be.”

“Is the entire prison population involved—all the inmates?” Lennon was feeding Dunnigan’s information into the CRT.

“No. Just the ones who were in the Big Top at that time. That would exclude those inmates restricted to their cells, the ones in solitary, and the ones in the ‘dog ward’—the most violent ones.”

Lennon liked that. Readers would relish getting acquainted with prison jargon like the “dog ward.”

“No,” Dunnigan continued, “not everybody. Maybe from 85 to 90 percent of the inmates are in on it. There’s talk that the prisoners themselves want to exclude three of their fellow inmates from the riot. None of us can figure that out yet. The word is that these three are born losers, considered jinxes by the others. If this is true, those three jerks must be the crap de la crap. It may make a good side-bar. I’ll get into that later. Right now, we’re waiting for the mayor, who’s supposed to be on his way over. I’ll be back to you.”

The connection went dead. Concise, factual, interesting, current, with a possible side-bar—everything you’d need to begin an important, breaking news story. Lennon had no sooner completed feeding the CRT when the phone rang again.

“Pfeiffer. This you, Lennon?”

Pat shook her head. Mark Pfeiffer was close to being the antithesis of Bill Dunnigan. Where Dunnigan was careful, factual, inclined to understatement, Pfeiffer was careless, and often inaccurate, with a massive ego—built up to defend an equally massive inferiority complex—that crowded out all consideration of others. Pfeiffer’s creed seemed to be: He that doth not tooteth his own horn the same shall not get tooted. Finally, Dunnigan was respected and liked by his peers, while Pfeiffer was neither respected nor generally liked.

“Yes,” Lennon responded wearily.

“Listen, this place is a madhouse. Everyone’s running around like their ass is on fire. Which reminds me, what are you doing tonight, Honey?”

Silence. Lennon knew of several News staffers who would willingly contribute to Pfeiffer’s severance pay just to get rid of him.

“Okay.” Pfeiffer was undaunted by Lennon’s stony silence. “We’ll pursue that and you later. Back to the dull stuff. Right now, nobody knows nothing. Seems some inmates got steamed and rioted at lunchtime. Nobody knows for sure whether they’re armed, but I’d lay you five-to-one they probably broke into the arsenal and got guns. Now that I think of it, I’d lay you for free gratis.”

Silence. Come to think of it, she’d contribute to a fund to have Pfeiffer castrated. Thank God for staffers like Dunnigan. From long experience as well as just the tone of his voice, she could tell Pfeiffer didn’t know what he was talking about. If she hadn’t had Dunnigan, she would have had nothing. She certainly wasn’t going to share a by-line with a nincompoop like Pfeiffer.

“Wait a minute, Sweetie,” Pfeiffer continued, “the mayor just got here. He’s being surrounded by the TV and radio creeps, and he’s got his usual entourage of bodyguards. But I’ll get to him. I’ll be right back with you, Honeypot.”

Not if I can help it, thought Lennon. The problem was, for this story she could not help it. She would have to listen to him, but she didn’t have to use anything he called in. And she was fairly certain she would use nothing of his. It wouldn’t make any difference. He wouldn’t recognize that— despite having his by-line with the others on the story—nothing that he had called in had been used. Lennon would have to rely on the dependable Bill Dunnigan and whoever the third reporter might prove to be.

The phone rang.

“Dunnigan. Pat?”

“Yeah.”

“The mayor’s here. Says it’s too early to comment; he’ll have to hear the demands before he can make a statement. The governor’s on his way. But right now, Mayor Cobb is the authority of record. It’s his jurisdiction and he’s not one to slough it off.

“Pat, this is gonna be a step-by-step procedure. We’re going to have to take one comment at a time. So stay with me and I’ll give you the developments as they happen. One thing: From everything I’ve been able to gather so far, this place is going to be shut up tight as a drum even after the riot’s been settled. It’ll be a long, long time before any of these guys get another visitor from the outside world.”

* * *

Father Koesler wondered why it had taken him so long to find the doctors’ lounge. It was an almost perfect place to wait for the bereaved when there had been a death in emergency or the operating room. The lounge was comfortable, some unseen hand kept the coffee brewing, and it was near the “quiet room” in that area of the hospital where the chaplain and the bereaved would meet.

Koesler was, indeed, waiting for just such an event. An elderly man had suffered a heart attack while shoveling snow. He was dead on arrival at St. Vincent’s emergency room. His next-of-kin had been contacted. Koesler was awaiting them.

In the lounge with Koesler were the members of an OR team, consisting of two surgeons—one of whom was Dr. Lee Kim—an anesthetist, a scrub nurse, and a circulating nurse. They had informed Koesler that they were waiting for a “hand.” Someone had put a hand through a pane of glass and, judging by Dr. Kim’s blood-spattered tunic, the wrist had bled quite a bit. One of the nurses commented on Kim’s stained tunic.

“Wrists bleed,” the principal surgeon observed laconically. He introduced himself to Koesler as Dr. James Meyer.

“She really did a job on herself,” said Kim, who had treated the patient in the emergency room, thus the blood. “Wrist is almost completely severed.”

“Oh. God!” Meyer said, “that means three or four hours.”

Both nurses winced. The anesthetist showed no emotion.

“I was home,” Meyer said. “We were just getting ready to go skiing at Pine Knob when the damn call came.”

“Yeah.” The anesthetist smiled. “You said good-bye to me in OR.”

“Well, hello again.”

“You keep referring to the patient as a ‘wrist,’” Koesler addressed him.

“That is all we will see,” Kim said. The rest of her will be draped. All that will be exposed will be her wrist. You get used to that after awhile. All you deal with in OR are appendages of one sort or another.”

The nurses’ expressions seemed to register a silent protest.

“Do you know what happened to her?” Koesler asked.

Kim shook his head.

“Didn’t you talk to her?” Koesler could not imagine treating a conscious injured person without inquiring what had happened.

“I used to ask people what happened,” Kim said, “but it was always the same story. Nothing unexpected. Just walking down the street. Just washing a window. Just opening a door. When the glass broke, or the piano fell, or my boyfriend shot me. Always the same. So, I stopped asking.”

Koesler thought that an odd explanation.

“What’s the status?” Meyer asked.

“I put a pressure pack on it,” Kim said.

“What time is the hand scheduled?” Meyer asked.

“Four-thirty,” a nurse replied.

The principal surgeon consulted his watch and sighed. “It’ll go right through dinner.”

The intercom squawked. Koesler was not expecting the voice nor was he attuned to it. He needed a short period to grasp part of what he’d heard and put it together.

There had been an announcement of a trauma. About that he was sure. A trauma case had just entered the emergency room. A motorcyclist had been hit by a car. There were multiple head injuries. There was more to the announcement, but that was all Koesler was able to decipher. He thought that must be the substance of the matter.

Dr. Kim said something. It might have been in his own language. It sounded like an expletive. Koesler didn’t understand it, but he recognized the tone. The others registered emotions from disgust to disappointment.

“What’s the matter?” Koesler asked of anyone.

“The head will take precedence over the hand,” Dr. Meyer explained.

“They’ll have to call in another team,” the anesthetist said.

“Looks like we could be here till midnight,” one of the nurses said.

There followed a lively discussion ranging from laws that would compel cyclists to wear helmets to the general danger of riding on anything so unprotected.

“Danger or not,” Kim said, “that is what I want.”

“What’s that?” Meyer asked.

“A bike. A big one. With horses to spare.”

Koesler was slightly surprised. He never associated the notion of doctors with their wanting anything. His concept was too generalized to be all-encompassing, but Koesler subconsciously thought doctors could buy anything they wanted. Evidently, Dr. Kim could not. Not yet. A big expensive motorcycle must be part of his planned upward mobility. The plan that Dr. Scott had described.

“I’ve got a friend with a bike like that,” Meyers said, “who wants me to go along on a ride all the way out to the West Coast. A nut.”

“Sounds terrific,” Kim said. “If you do not want to go, you might tell your friend that there is another doctor at St. Vincent’s who is willing to go along with him.”

“Who said anything about a ‘him’?”

Kim smiled. “Even better.”

The phone rang. Kim picked it up. “Yes, the cyclist . . .? He what . . .?

“You could not, eh . . .?

“Well, that is terrific news! Very good! Magnificent!” Kim hung up and turned to his team. He obviously considered himself the bearer of good news. “The cyclist is dead. He arrested in ER and they could not stabilize him. The hand is coming down now.”

For just a moment, revulsion passed across the faces of the two nurses. Neither Meyer nor the anesthetist displayed any emotion.

“Will we do this with a local or are you going to put her out?” Meyer asked.

“She’ll be asleep,” the anesthetist replied.

A medical student appeared at the door of the lounge. “Your family is here, Father,” he announced.

“Thanks.” Koesler rose and left the lounge for the quiet room that in a few minutes would not be very quiet. He was shocked at Dr. Kim’s reaction to the death of the cyclist. Koesler could not imagine exulting over the death of anyone, much less a stranger whose care would be the cause of nothing more than an inconvenience.

During his time as temporary chaplain at St. Vincent’s, Koesler had met many other Oriental doctors on the hospital’s staff. He had never encountered a shred of indifference to human life from any of them. Before coming to St. Vincent’s, he had shared the Occidental prejudice which held that Orientals had a lesser value for life. That prejudice had been shaken when a Philippine parishioner had reminded Koesler that, to date, only Americans had dropped a nuclear bomb, that it was the Occidental allies who had leveled much of Germany with bombs of just about every description, and it was the United States that nearly destroyed Vietnam and Cambodia.

Considerations like that could shake one’s faith in convenient prejudices.

And, as far as St. Vincent’s was concerned, there was no hint of a lack of respect for life among either Occidentals or Orientals.

With the major exception of Dr. Lee Kim.

Until now, Koesler had only heard-tell of Dr. Kim’s reputedly casual approach to human feelings and life. Now, Koesler felt he had experienced at least the semblance of such an attitude.

Of course it was possible that Kim’s reaction to the death of a patient might have been a poor joke or perhaps an aberrant response. But given his reported history, this probably was Kim’s real personality.

If this were true, Koesler wondered further about Kim’s attitude toward Sister Eileen. If Kim, indeed, had precious little regard for human life, and if Sister Eileen posed a serious challenge to all Kim desired, what might be Kim’s intent with regard to Eileen? Could he be a threat? To her life?

Koesler had no answer to these questions. At the moment, they were no more than hypothetical. But how long could such a dangerous hypothesis go unchallenged? Koesler had no answer to this question either. Nor had he any more time to spend on such speculation. He was nearing the quiet room and a very vocal group was impatiently awaiting.

* * *

George Snell, nonpareil guard of St. Vincent’s Hospital, assessed his situation.

On the plus side: He didn’t have to patrol the ill-lit corridors. All he needed to do for this entire night shift was sit in the command center and watch the closed-circuit monitors. It was a promotion, with a promised raise in the near future. And he was out of harm’s way.

Actually, he never thought of St. Vincent’s Hospital in terms of danger. He was a very large man. And he was imbued with the false confidence of the big man who feels he can handle any challenge. He had never been thrown by a small person who was skilled in the martial arts. He had never even given any consideration to that possibility.

On the negative side: He didn’t have to patrol the ill-lit corridors. Thus he would have no opportunity to find empty rooms with empty beds and a growing list of willing nurses and aides to help fill them. This was the one and only negative factor. But given Snell’s proclivity for rambunctious sex, it was nearly enough to offset all the positive factors.

Upon further thought, he would add one more drawback. It was dull.

He tilted his chair back and propped his feet on the desk. He scanned the four monitors. One was out of order. Well, he thought, three out of four ain’t bad. The three functioning screens revealed little. The areas they covered were, by and large, not sufficiently illuminated to avoid obscuring shadows. Some system, thought Snell; if thieves wanted to clean out St. Vincent’s, nighttime, with a skeleton staff and monitors that were either inadequate or nonfunctioning, would be the time to do it.

Fortunately, there was a commercial television set in the room. It was a miniature set, identical to those provided the patients. The set might be small but the picture was in color and it provided just the distraction that Snell would need to get him through the night.

WKBD-TV, Channel 50, was carrying a rerun of an old “Barney Miller” episode. Snell had seen practically every “Miller” show repeatedly. He now was able to anticipate most of the dialogue. From the first few frames of tonight’s program, Snell instantly recalled the entire plot. Wojo’s girlfriend bakes a batch of cookies. Wojo brings the cookies to the squad room where Sergeants Harris and Yamana eat a goodly supply and then begin to react. Eventually, Barney wants to know what’s happening. A bemused Harris diagnoses that the cookies have been laced with hashish.

Snell could hardly wait for Harris to say he thought there was hash in the cookies. “. . . from the way that I feel . . .” Then Yamana would continue the thought in song: “. . . when that bell starts to peal. Why, it’s almost like being in love.”

Great episode. Snell had always thought Barney Miller was the coolest dude. He intended this as a compliment from one law-enforcement officer to another, of course.

* * *

Before beginning his own evening program, Bruce Whitaker took the time to check out the command center. He was overjoyed to find George Snell ensconced there and completely absorbed by a TV program.

This Bruce took to be a further sign of divine providence. Snell had appeared to be his nemesis. Twice, when Whitaker was on his way toward that ill-fated mission to mutilate the IUDs and while he was altering the pneumonia patient’s chart, he had almost been apprehended by the same guard—George Snell.

But increasingly, Whitaker was becoming convinced that God was prospering his objective.

There was no question that the IUD caper had been botched. But how could anyone have expected him to know the difference between an intrauterine device and curtain hooks when he’d never even seen an IUD and the curtain hooks were in the drawer reserved for IUDs?

On the positive side—and for Whitaker a very definite plus—he hadn’t been caught. That was definitely providential.

God’s protective hand had been even more in evidence in his second attempt, Whitaker thought. While he was altering that woman’s chart, Snell had had him dead-to-rights. All the guard had to do after calling out to him was simply walk the rest of the way down that corridor and Whitaker would have been apprehended red-handed.

But something miraculous had happened: The guard had disappeared somewhere. Figure the odds on something like that! So, Whitaker had been able to finish his work. And even though for the life of him, Whitaker could not remember removing the allergy sticker from the chart, that plan had worked. God was indeed good.

Or at least the plan would have worked if that priest hadn’t interfered. If only the woman had been given the penicillin a bit longer! When she had gotten near death, Whitaker would have seen to it that the news media got the story, and the hospital and all of its immoral deeds would have been exposed for all to see. Then the archdiocese would have been forced to act . . . .

But now he was on the right trail. He knew it. He sensed it. The very fact that his nemesis, Guard Snell, would not be out roaming the halls was an added and very welcome sign that God was with him. God wills it! The battle cry of the Crusades—those of yore as well as this present one.

After checking out the command center, such as it was, Whitaker made his way through the empty corridors en route to the operating room area.

At least Whitaker thought the halls were empty. He saw no one as he kept to the shadowy walls. But someone was there. Someone following him. Someone who had stalked him in the past. But the one keeping vigil was even more careful than Whitaker to remain undetected.

Cautiously, Whitaker eased open the door to the operating room area. A soft, indirect light illuminated the area just enough so that anyone unfamiliar with the territory might avoid running into anything. That is, if he—or she—were careful.

At least one possible major block was missing. No one was in the area. Of course there was no elective surgery at this late hour, but there was no emergency surgery either.

Whitaker had the place to himself. Or so he thought. Aware of his penchant for clumsiness, he moved very slowly and carefully. As he moved, he noted that he was colliding with nothing, upsetting nothing, making no noise whatever. This he again interpreted to mean that God was with him.

Whitaker now stood in the doorway of Operating Room One. By now, his eyes had adjusted to the dim light. He looked around the room. It was an old hospital and an old room. But the equipment was about as up-to-date as St. Vincent’s tight budget could afford. It had long been the hospital’s policy that while they must scrimp on some facilities and functions, OR was given a prime budget position.

Whitaker allowed himself a moment of awe at the many complex machines as well as the thorough sterility of the place.

But he knew what he had to do. He’d gone out of his way both to remain undetected and, at the same time, to listen in on conversations of personnel in the anesthesia department. He had also spent considerable time in the medical library. All this research led him to the head of the operating table, the area where the nurse anesthetist would function.

It was easy to find the container of nitrous oxide. The canister was clearly labeled. Deliberately, Whitaker turned the handle, releasing the gas. That was really all he had to do—just let the gas escape.

He then repeated this same procedure in the other operating rooms.

Tomorrow, when the anesthetists attempted to anesthetize their first patients, an inadequate supply of nitrous oxide would be delivered. The patients would be near death. The anesthetists would notice this and “bag” the patients, manually delivering life-saving oxygen. But the operations would have to be canceled. And no one would know why the patients had arrested. Without knowing the cause of this life-threatening situation, they would have to close down the operating rooms—the chief money-making section of the hospital.

If shutting down the operating rooms for unexplainable reasons didn’t qualify as a good news story . . . well, he certainly missed his guess. And once the news people were in here, he’d make certain they became interested in more than the operating rooms.

And that was the scenario according to Bruce Whitaker!

Having done the deed, he moved most cautiously out, taking extreme care to upset nothing. In this, he succeeded. God was good!

The eyes that had watched intently as Whitaker had busied himself in the operating rooms now watched him leave. It was not difficult to remain undetected, shielded by the dim light, the shadows, and the huge machines. Particularly if one were familiar with the area.

Once Whitaker was gone, allowing a few minutes more to make sure he would not return, the figure moved out of the shadows to the head of the operating table.

What in the world was he doing? Ah, yes, I see. The nitrous oxide. The handle has been turned. The container is empty. He bled the oxide. But why? What must he think that will do?

Does he think that will somehow hinder the operation procedure? Why else would he have done it? How typical of him!

But why would he . . .? Of course; he plans that the shutdown of the OR will bring the notoriety he wants. Yes, of course. Not a bad idea. If only he could have carried it off!

Well, perhaps I can improve on his plan. Let us see. Whatever is done must be bigger than this and much more attention-getting. Bigger and unavoidably catching everyone’s attention.

Of course!

Here, in the maintenance closet, there should be . . . yes . . . a screwdriver and a file. Good.

A tank of nitrogen gas, under enormous pressure. It looks like . . . what?—a torpedo. And it can become one. It rests on its three-wheeled cart. If I loosen the cotter pins of the wheel on one side . . . there. Now, if I file through the cap until it is hanging by a thread . . .

There.

Now I have but to leave it resting against this outer wall. Now it is a bomb waiting to explode. My inept friend would have been so pleased with himself if he had thought of this. Never mind. As long as it accomplishes our purpose. And it will.

Before leaving the operating room, the mysterious figure dropped rubber gloves into a waste container. A precaution Bruce Whitaker had not thought to take.