The Einstein Equation

5 The Other Nurse

In the morning light that filtered through the window of Purdue’s window, his wounds looked a lot less grotesque than they did the previous afternoon when Nurse Madison cleaned them. He hid his initial shock at the pasty blue slits, but he could hardly argue that the work of the doctors at the Salisbury Clinic was top notch. Considering the devastating damage done to his lower body, down in the bowels of the Lost City, the corrective surgery was a beaming success.

“Looks better than I thought,” he mentioned to the nurse as she removed the dressing. “Then again, maybe I just heal well?”

The nurse, a young lady whose bedside manner was a tad less personal, gave him an uncertain smile. Purdue realized that she did not share Nurse Madison’s sense of humor, but she was friendly, at least. She seemed quite uncomfortable around him, but he could not fathom why. Being who he was, the extrovert billionaire simply asked.

“Are you allergic?” he jested.

“No, Mr. Purdue?” she answered carefully. “To what?”

“To me,” he smiled.

For a brief moment, she had the old ‘trapped deer’ look on her face, but his grin soon relieved her of the confusion. At once, she smiled at him. “Um, no, I am not. They tested me and found that I am immune to you, actually.”

“Ha!” he cheered, trying to ignore that familiar burn of the stitches’ strain on his skin. “You seem reluctant to speak much, so I gathered there had to be some medical reason.”

The nurse took a deep, drawn out breath before she answered him. “It is a personal thing, Mr. Purdue. Please, try not to take my rigid professionalism to heart. It is just my way. Patients are all dear to me, but I try not to get personally attached to them.”

“Bad experience?” he asked.

“Hospice,” she replied. “Seeing patients come to their end after getting close to them was just too much for me.”

“Holy shit, I hope you are not implying that I am about to expire,” he mumbled with wide eyes.

“No, of course that is not what I meant,” she quickly negated her statement. “It came out wrong, I’m sure. Some of us are just not very sociable people. I became a nurse to help people, not to join the family, if that is not too snide of me to say.”

Purdue understood. “I get it. People think because I am wealthy, a scientific celebrity and such, that I enjoy joining organizations and have meetings with important people.” He shook his head. “All the while I just want to work on my inventions and find the silent harbingers from history that helps clarify some recurring phenomena in our eras, you see? Just because we are out there, achieving great victories in the things of the world that actually matter, people automatically think we are doing it for the glory and the fame.”

She nodded, wincing as she peeled off the last bandage that forced Purdue to catch his breath. “Too true, sir.”

“Please call me David,” he groaned as the cold liquid licked at the stitched incision on his right quadriceps. His hand instinctively grabbed at hers, but he stopped its motion in mid-air. “Christ, that feels horrible. Frigid water on dead flesh, you know?”

“I know, I remember when I had my rotator cuff operation,” she sympathized. “Not to worry, we are almost done.”

A quick knock at the door announced the visit of Dr. Patel. He looked weary, but in high spirits. “Good morning, merry people. How are we all today?”

The nurse just smiled, applying her attention to her work. Purdue had to wait for his breath to return before he could attempt an answer, but the doctor continued to peruse the chart without hesitation. His patient studied his face as he read through the latest results, reading a blank opinion.

“What is it, Doctor?” Purdue frowned. “I think my wounds are looking better already, right?”

“Don’t over-analyze everything, David,” Dr. Patel chuckled. “You are fine and everything looks good. Just had a long all-nighter with an emergency surgery that pretty much took everything out of me.”

“Did the patient pull through?” Purdue joked, hoping he was not too insensitive.

Dr. Patel gave him a mocking look of amusement. “No, in fact, she died of an acute need to have bigger tits than her husband’s mistress.” Before Purdue could work it out, the doctor sighed. “Silicone seeped into the tissue because some of my patients,” he stared Purdue down in warning, “do not adhere to the after-treatment and end up worse for wear.”

“Subtle,” Purdue said. “But I have done nothing to jeopardize your work.”

“Good man,” Dr. Patel said. “Now, we will be starting the laser treatment today, just to loosen up most of the hard tissue around the incisions and release the tension of the nerves.”

The nurse left the room for a moment to allow the doctor to speak to Purdue.

“We are using the IR425,” Dr. Patel bragged, and rightly so. Purdue was the inventor of the rudimentary technique and produced the first line of instruments for the therapy. Now it was time for the creator to benefit from his own work and Purdue was elated to get a first hand look at its efficiency. Dr. Patel smiled proudly. “The latest prototype has exceeded our expectations, David. Perhaps you should use that brain of yours to rocket Britain ahead in the medical machine industry.

Purdue laughed. “If I but had the time, my dear friend, I would gracefully accept the challenge. Unfortunately there are too many things to uncover out there.”

Dr. Patel suddenly looked more serious and concerned. “Like Nazi-engineered poisonous boas?”

He meant to make an impact with that statement, and by the looks of Purdue’s reaction, he succeeded. His hardheaded patient lost a bit of color at the memory of the monstrous snake that had him halfway swallowed before Sam Cleave rescued him. Dr. Patel paused to allow Purdue the horrid recollection, in order to make sure that he stayed aware of how lucky he was to draw breath.

“Do not take anything for granted, that is all I mean to say,” the doctor advised softly. “Look, I understand your free spirit and that innate urge to explore, David. Just try to keep things in perspective. I have worked with you and for you for some time now, and I have to say that your reckless pursuit of adventure… or knowledge… is admirable. All I ask is that you keep track of your mortality. Genius such as yours is rare enough in this world. People like you are the pioneers, the forerunners of progress. Please… do not die.”

Purdue had to smile at that. “Weapons are as important as the instruments that heal their damage, Haroon. It may not appear so to someone in the medical world, but we cannot go unarmed against the enemy.”

“Well, with no weapons in the world, we would never have fatalities to begin with, and no enemies trying to kill us,” Dr. Patel argued somewhat indifferently.

“This debate will reach a stalemate within minutes and you know it,” Purdue promised. “Without destruction and injury you would not have a job, old cock.”

“Doctors assume a versatile array of roles; not just healing of wounds and digging out bullets, David. There will always be childbirth, heart attacks, appendicitis and so on that will keep us employed, even without wars and secret arsenals in the world,” the doctor retorted, but Purdue sealed his argument with a simple comeback. “And there will always be threats to the innocent, even without wars and secret arsenals, too. It is better to have martial prowess during a time of peace than to be confronted by subjugation and extinction for its nobility, Haroon.”

The doctor exhaled and rested his hands in his sides. “I see, yes. Stalemate reached.”

Purdue did not want to continue on this somber note anyway, so he changed the subject to something he had been wanting to ask the plastic surgeon. “Say, Haroon, what is this nurse’s business, then?”

“How do you mean?” Dr. Patel asked while checking Purdue’s scars carefully.

“She is very uncomfortable around me, but I don’t believe that she is just introverted,” Purdue explained curiously. “There is more to her interaction than that.”

“I know,” Dr. Patel muttered, lifting Purdue’s leg to examine the opposite gash that reached over his knee onto the inside of his calf. “Jesus, this one is the worst cuts of all. I grafted this for hours, you know.”

“Very well. The work is amazing. Now, what do you mean you know? Did she say something?” he asked the doctor. “Who is she?”

Dr. Patel looked a bit irritated by the constant interruption. However, he decided to tell Purdue what he wanted to know if only to stop the explorer from acting like a lovelorn schoolboy in need of solace for being jilted.

“Lilith Hurst. She is taken with you, David, but not in the way you think. That is all. But please, by all things holy, do not pursue a woman less than half your age, even if it is fashionable,” he advised. “It is not really as cool as it looks. I find it rather sad.”

“I never said I would pursue her, old boy,” Purdue gasped. “Her manner was just peculiar to me.”

“She used to be quite the scientist, apparently, but she got involved with her colleague and they ended up getting married. From what Nurse Madison told me, the couple was always jokingly compared to Madam Curie and her husband,” Dr. Patel elucidated.

“So what does that have to do with me?” Purdue inquired.

“Her husband contracted Multiple Sclerosis three years into their marriage and rapidly deteriorated, leaving her unable to continue her studies. She had to abandon her program and her research in order to spend more time with him until he died in 2015,” Dr. Patel recounted. “And you were always her husband’s principal inspiration, in both science and technology. Let’s just say the man was a huge follower of your work and always wanted to meet you.”

“Why didn’t they contact me to meet him, then? I would have been glad to get acquainted with him, even just to cheer the man up a little,” Purdue lamented.

Patel’s dark eyes pierced Purdue as he replied, “We tried to contact you, but you were chasing after some Greek relic at the time. Phillip Hurst died shortly before you returned to the modern world.”

“Oh my God, I am so sorry to learn that,” Purdue said. “No wonder she is a bit frigid towards me.”

The doctor could see his patient’s genuine pity, and some inkling of ensuing guilt about the stranger he could have known; whose demeanor he could have uplifted. In turn, Dr. Patel felt sorry for Purdue and elected to remedy his concern with words of solace. “It does not matter, David. Phillip knew that you were a busy man. Besides, he did not even know that his wife had been trying to get in touch with you. No matter, it is all water under the bridge. He could not be disappointed about that which he did not know.

It helped. Purdue nodded, “I suppose you are right, old boy. Still, I should be more accessible. After the trip to New Zealand, I fear I am going to be slightly off-kilter, both psychologically and physically.”

“Wow,” Dr. Patel said, “I am delighted to hear you say that. Between your career whiles and your tenacity, I dreaded proposing a time out from both. Now you have done it for me. Please, David, take some time. You may not think so, but under that tough exterior of yours, you still possess a very human spirit. Human spirits are prone to crack, fold or even break, given the correct impression of the ghastly. Your psyche needs as much of a recess as your flesh.”

“I know,” Purdue conceded. Little did his doctor realize that Purdue’s tenacity had already aided his adept concealment of that which haunted him. Behind the billionaire’s smile there hid a terrible fragility, one that came at all hours, whenever he slipped into slumber.