Vanish in an Instant

16

The county hospital was a heterogeneous group of old and new buildings about three miles to the south of town. The so-called prison ward was not a ward but a two-story yellow brick house separated from the other buildings by some fifty yards and a steel fence. Originally the house had been the superintendent’s quarters, but as additional hospital facilities became necessary, the superintendent moved out and the house was used as an isolation ward for victims of the more highly contagious diseases like diphtheria and typhoid. Immunization gradually decreased the number of these diseases to almost nothing, but no immunization had been found against crime, and the number of county prisoners had increased considerably. Some of them were physically sick and needed attention, and some were mentally sick and needed even more. This latter fact was recognized after a series of spirited board meetings, newspaper editorials and a petulant statement from the local congressman who was running for re-election.

The conversion from protecting society from diphtheria to protecting it from its own bastard, the criminal, was accomplished with simple economy. The curtains were removed from the windows and bars were substituted; the fence was constructed; nurses were replaced by orderlies, and what had been first the superintendent’s parlor, and then the children’s ward, was now furnished as a combination chart room, office and lounge for the orderlies.

A sign on the door said, Ring and Walk In. Meecham rang and walked in.

The orderly on duty was sitting at a small desk in the corner reading a chart.

“Good morning, Gill,” Meecham said.

Gill looked up from the chart, frowning. “How did you get past the gate?”

“The trusty’s an old friend of mine.”

“We have rules, Meecham, you know that.”

“I’m not breaking anything.”

Meecham had known Gill for a year or more. The orderly was a stocky young man whose principal interest was disease. He was the only employee of the hospital who could listen, with intense concern, to the complaints and symptoms of every patient under his care. He was, accordingly, very popular and much more useful than he himself realized. Migraines and stomach cramps, asthmatic attacks and cardiospasms, had been talked away into Gill’s receptive ear, and many a fear had been drowned in his liquid brown eyes.

At his own request he had been transferred to the prison ward because he wanted to study the relationship between crime and disease. He was very conscientious about it; he kept a notebook in which he jotted down all kinds of medical lore and symptoms, and observations and remarks made by his charges. But so far he had reached no conclusion beyond the fact that the prisoners were on the whole quieter and made less fuss over their pains than the men in other wards.

“I just want to talk to him for a minute,” Meecham said.

Gill fingered the stethoscope he wore around his neck. It was his own stethoscope, he’d bought it a week ago, and one of the interns was teaching him how to use it and interpret the meaning of its sounds correctly. He wore it with great pride and self-consciousness, like a diamond necklace.

“I told you over the phone, Meecham, no visitors. He’s a very sick boy.” To Gill all his patients, of any age, were boys, as. if by becoming sick they had retrogressed into childhood. Meecham wondered if Gill knew how close to the truth this was.

“I’m not a visitor.”

“He had to have a blood transfusion last night. They took a test when they brought him in yesterday morning and they found out his percentage of myleo — myeloblasts was very high.”

“What’s a myeloblast?”

Gill colored. “It’s a bad sign, anyway, very bad. The transfusion perked him up, though. In fact, he got restless and couldn’t settle down and go to sleep. He wanted to talk so I stayed with him.”

“All night?”

“Sure. I didn’t have anything else to do except sleep, and I never had a leukemia case before. The fact is, I think it’s a coming disease, so I want to find out as much about it as I can. Then by the time I can afford to go to medical school I’ll know a lot of stuff the other guys won’t know, the real inside stuff.”

“Like myeloblasts,” Meecham said. “What did he want to talk about last night?”

“What most of the boys talk about. Himself and women.”

“What women?”

“His mother, for one. It seems his mother is an alcoholic. I’ve often noticed that there’s a history of alcoholism in most...”

“What other woman?”

“He called her Birdie. She was his wife, but he gave her a raw deal and she left him. Say, what do you want to know stuff like this for?”

“I’m interested. You’re interested in Loftus’ myeloblasts and I’m interested in his wife.”

“Are you trying to find her or something?”

“Just out of curiosity, yes.”

“You must be awfully curious, to want to go where she’s gone.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s dead,” Gill said. “She was killed in a car accident in Las Vegas about a year and a half ago.”

“Killed?”

“Not outright. She died several days later in the hospital.”

Meecham felt a little dizzy and off-balance, as if one of the knots in the net of ropes had been cut away under his hand and left him swinging in air.

Birdie was dead, had been dead for a long time. She hadn’t just vanished for an instant around a corner, she had walked away into the shadows of some strange street.

“That’s — too bad,” he said finally.

“It sure is.”

“He didn’t tell me about it.”

“People tell me a lot of things, I don’t know why. But I never heard anyone talk as much as Loftus did last night. He must have been crazy about that woman. Birdie this, Birdie that, I damn near went to sleep a couple of times except the chair was so hard. The funny part of it is that he never mentioned what he was in here for until I asked him. And then I got the impression that the murder seemed to him a very trivial thing, like parking beside a red curb. I’ve had a couple of psychopaths in here and that was their attitude. But Loftus shows no signs of being a psychopath. Except for that one blank spot, the murder itself, he’s a very moral and responsible man. Do you know his mother?”

“I’ve met her.”

“From what I heard, she’s quite a case, eh? You know, I’ve been sort of thinking things out this morning and I was wondering when I get enough money to go to medical school if I shouldn’t concentrate on psychiatry. I haven’t got any education, just what I picked up here and there, but you’re an educated man, don’t you think psychiatry’s the coming thing?”

“We could all use a little.”

“That’s what I mean. When they get most of the physical diseases licked in a test tube, then I’ll have my psychiatry, I won’t be left flat on my rear.”

“I’ll be your first patient,” Meecham said, “if you’ll let me in to see Loftus.”

“I can’t, Meecham. The boy’s sick. Honest-to-God sick, not like some of the fakers I get.”

“I know that.”

“Besides, he’s sleeping. He had a sedative three hours ago.”

“I’ll wait.” Meecham sat down on the edge of the desk and lit a cigarette. “If he’s too sick to talk, all right, I promise not to ask him any questions. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? After all, the sight of me isn’t going to scare him to death. I’ll walk quietly in, and if he’s asleep, I’ll walk quietly out. Where is he?”

“In the bridal suite,” Gill said. The phrase had lost any connotations of humor long ago; it was the standard term used to describe the building’s only private room where the very ill or the post-operative patients were kept. “You go to a lot of trouble just for curiosity’s sake, don’t you?”

“Occasionally.”

“Who are you working for?”

“Myself only.”

“Well, come on. I’ll see if he’s awake.”

“Thanks, Gill. Show up at my office around the middle of February and I’ll help you with your income tax.”

“Who are you kidding?” Gill reached into a drawer and took out a ring of keys. It wasn’t as large as the ring Miss Jennings had at the county jail but there were more keys on it, of every size and shape. “You know, I get kind of sick of locking things up all the time. Lock the doors, lock the windows, lock the lavatory, lock up the thermometers, the rubbing alcohol, the dishes, even the spoons.”

Meecham followed him to the door. “Why the spoons?”

“A couple of years ago a guy was in here who’d been beaten up in a family brawl. He tried to choke himself by swallowing some orange peelings and pushing them down his throat with a spoon. So, no spoons and no oranges.”

He unlocked a door that led into a long narrow hall. In spite of the sun and air, paint and disinfectant, the odor of rotting wood clung to the old house. It trailed up and down the hall and up and down the hollowed steps like the restive ghost of the superintendent looking for a trace of himself.

There were four rooms on the lower floor. From three of them the doors had been removed and full-length gates had been substituted, made of the same material as the fencing around the grounds.

From inside one of the gates a man began to groan with sudden fervor.

Gill paused. “Oh, stop it, Billings,” he said pleasantly. “Be a good boy.”

The boy was an elderly Negro with a tobacco-stained beard and white hair that reached his shoulders. “Them prunes I had for breakfast, they’s setting hard on my belly like billiard balls.”

“Can that phony dialect. Last time you were here you were talking like a Yale man.”

“I’se rumblin inside.”

“I’ll give you something in a little while.”

“Listen. Come here and listen, white boy.”

“I can’t now, Billings. I’m busy.”

“Listen. I’se full of sin. It’s rumblin round my belly. Oh, sweet Jesus stop that rumblin, stop clackin them billiard balls in my insides.”

“There aren’t any billiard balls in your insides,” Gill said. “It’s gas.”

“I’m only an old nigger full of sin, sweet Jesus, no one to turn to ceptin you. Now they’s gonna cut off my hair, cut off my beard, they’s gonna take away what’s rightfully mine, saying I got lice. I never had a lice, Lord, all I got’s the rumblin.”

“Haven’t you heard, Billings? Everybody’s wearing their hair short these days, even the women.”

“You’ll be crawlin through the fires of hell, white boy, and I’ll be ridin into heaven.” The old Negro rolled over on his cot and, face to the wall, he resumed his low melodious groaning.

Gill turned away with a shrug and went on down the hall.

The fourth room had its original oak door, but a small rectangular peephole had been cut out at eye level. Gill looked in through the peephole before he unlocked the door.

The shades were drawn and the room was almost in darkness, so that only light-colored objects were visible at first, the bed, basin, a covered trash container, a white chair lying overturned in the corner, and above the chair Loftus’ face. He had grown enormously during the night. His face reached nearly to the ceiling.

The old Negro was groaning to sweet Jesus and Gill was breathing like a tired horse, and there was a rattle of branches against the windowpane.

Gill crossed the room and pulled up the shade. Then he went to the corner and touched one of Loftus’ dangling hands. Loftus began to swing very slowly back and forth as if a wind was rocking him.

“It’s not my fault,” Gill said. “If they want to die bad enough you can’t stop them. It’s not my fault. I gave him the sedatives and he promised he’d take them and go to sleep.”

He’d kept one part of his promise, Meecham thought, but the two yellow capsules were still lying on the metal table beside the bed.

“White boy, you there, white boy? I’se been talkin to the Lord, white boy, and he says you’re full of sin, says you oughtn’t give a poor old nigger prunes for breakfast. You listenin, boy?”

“How could I have stopped him?” Gill said. “How could I? Maybe all night while he was talking, he was making plans, looking around trying to see what he could use.”

The room had nothing in it that was sharp or pointed, nothing that could be broken to form a cutting edge; even the light bulbs were inaccessible. But Loftus, like other desperate men, found a way. He pried the wire handle off the trash container and attached it to a ventilation hole in the wall near the ceiling. To the handle he fastened a twisted strip torn off the gray hospital blanket from his bed. Standing on the chair he tied the other end of the strip around his neck. He stood there like that, perhaps a minute, perhaps an hour, before he shoved the chair away with his foot.

He had died quietly, without a fight. On the white wall behind him there were no marks of feet kicking in anguish or struggling to get a hold on the wall to ease the pressure around his neck. There were no scratches or fingernail marks on his throat. It was as if he had died by willing, before the twisted strip of blanket had time to cut off his air.

His face was not discolored, and though his mouth was slightly open, his tongue didn’t protrude. He looked quite tranquil, as if the long night that he’d been dreading had turned out well and the dreams it held were pleasant. Its shadows were without terror, and its streets were the same strange streets that Birdie had walked along.

“I hears you, white boy, I hears you talkin and whisperin. You get down on your knees and ask the sweet Jesus to loose the devil in you standin in there whisperin and laughin bout a poor old nigger’s insides.”

Gill wheeled around suddenly and screamed toward the open door: “Shut up! Shut up, I tell you!”

“Whisperin and laughin...”

“Shut up, goddam it!”

“Cursin and yellin and whisperin...”

“I’ll come in and brain you, goddam it!”

“Threatenin, threatenin a poor old man that’s full of sins and lice and gonna have his hair cut off. Get down on your knees, white boy, and ask for the devil to loose you.”

Gill stood with his fists pressed against his ribs, the color draining out of his knuckles. “All right, Billings,” he said at last. “I got down and the devil loosed me.”

“Sing Hallelujah.”

“Hallelujah,” Gill said, with the tears streaming down his face. “Hallelujah.”