Patterson looked up at me from a form-field-filled computer screen and squinted. “Waldo Butters, aka I Put the Pal in the Paladin. Your guild stiffed our guild on a treasure roll two weeks ago.”
I pushed my glasses up on my nose. “Yeah, I’ve been kind of busy. Haven’t been online to keep the power gamers in check. My word, I’ll have Andi look into it, and we’ll make it up to you guys.”
The nurse scowled at me, but let out a mollified grunt. “Hell are you doing down here? They kick you out of Corpsesicles ’R’ Us?”
“Not yet,” I said. Though they might, with as many times as I’d called in sick lately. I hadn’t been sick. Just too bruised and sore to move right. “Look, I’m kind of here on something personal. Maybe you could help me out.”
Patterson stared at me with unamused eyes. Not to get too much into the details, but HIPAA basically means that no one who wants to remain working in the medical field can share any patient information with anyone who isn’t directly involved in that patient’s care, unless the patient gives permission to do so. It’s the kind of thing people get reflexively paranoid about. Also the kind of thing you have to ask a favor to get them to overlook.
“Why should I?” he asked.
“Because I have something you want,” I said.
“What?”
I leaned a bit closer and looked up and down the hall theatrically before speaking in a lowered tone. “What about … a blue murloc egg?”
Patterson sat up ramrod straight and his eyes widened. “What?”
“You heard me,” I said.
“Dude, don’t even joke about it,” he breathed. “You know it’s the last one I need.”
“Two thousand five was a very good year,” I drawled. I reached into my pocket and produced a plastic card from my wallet. “Behold. One code for one blue murloc. The rarest pet in all the game can be thine.” Patterson reached for the card with twitchy fingers, and I snapped it a bit farther away from him. “Do we have a deal?”
“It’s legit?”
I dropped the drama voice. “Yeah, man, I was actually at the con. It’s real—you have my word.”
Patterson crowed and seized the card with absolutely Gollumesque avarice. “Pleasure doing business with you, I Put the Pal In.” He gestured for me to join him behind the desk, and rubbed his hands together in mock-epic greed. “What you need?”
That’s the thing about knowing a lot of gamers. They do not necessarily count their riches with bank accounts. Not when there are virtual status symbols to acquire.
“Guy got admitted a couple of hours ago, ER, first name Stan,” I said. “I sent him in with Reg Lamar, probable overdose. I want to see him.”
Patterson started thumping on computer keys. “You sent him in?”
“Out jogging this morning, found him seizing,” I said.
He stopped typing for a second and looked at me. Then he looked back at the monitor and said, “Someone’s taking his character way too seriously.”
“Nah, I just have too many corpsesicles already,” I said.
“You’re lucky it happened in the morning. We start getting busy come the afternoon.”
I started to tell him that luck hadn’t had anything to do with it, and felt myself shiver.
I mean, that’s kind of a huge thing to think about, you know? That in all probability, luck really hadn’t been involved. That God, or some version of God, who the Knights simply referred to as the Almighty, had knowingly arranged for me to be in the right place at the right time to help Stan—and that He (or She, or It—I mean I didn’t want to get too presumptuous, all things considered, and how should I know?) had done so in such a way as to make it uniquely possible for me, personally, to go help Stan.
Could God, with all the majesty of the universe at his disposal, with the uncounted myriad of life forms to look after throughout practically uncountable galaxies, really be all that interested in one little drug addict? One little medical examiner, playing at being a hero?
Answer that question with a yes or a no, and tell me which is the more terrifying. I’m not sure I can.
I’d asked Michael the same question, more or less. He’d been of the opinion that God couldn’t not be interested on a personal level. That He knew each and every one of us too well to be anything less than passionately involved in caring about our lives and our choices.
And, honestly, that seemed a little stalkery to me. I mean, bad enough when your mom is too interested in what you do. Do you really want God looking over your shoulder at every moment? Me, personally, that was too embarrassing to even consider.
In the end, I’d decided that whatever the Almighty might care about or not care about, He seemed to be interested in helping people who needed help, at least where the Knights of the Cross were concerned. So, okay. Fine. I could work with the Guy. But all these deep questions bothered me.
“Here he is, top of the list,” Patterson said. “Oh, Stanley Bowers. Been in and out a lot lately. I think I know this guy. Addict. One of the worst I’ve seen. Got maybe a year left in him, if the weather isn’t too bad. Got a sedative, saline, observation.”
“How’s he get the drugs?”
“Disability, and some kind of court settlement. Pretty much sticks it up his nose. Won’t do rehab.”
“Family?”
“Nah. We’ve looked.”
“Damn,” I said.
“You want to help guys like this,” Patterson said. “But he doesn’t want to help himself. You know? You can’t save someone who don’t want to be saved.”
“Doesn’t mean we can’t try,” I said. “Where is he?”
Patterson peered at the monitor and rattled the keys a couple more times. Then he said, “Huh. That’s weird.”
AS A MEDICAL examiner, I don’t spend a lot of time in pediatrics. Neither, as a rule, do adult junkies. But for some reason, Stan had been moved up with the kids.
I rode the elevator up, trying to look distracted and disinterested like a proper physician, most of whom were operating on not much sleep at least part of the time, but it was tough, because I was feeling something that I suspected was a deeper-than-usual anger.
Whatever had hurt Stan was bad enough. But now there were kids involved. And some things you just don’t do. You know?
I walked briskly into pediatrics. There are a ton of pediatric physicians at St. Tony’s, plus various pediatric specialists, consulting physicians, et cetera, et cetera. The floor was busy, its beds full, and the nurses had their plates full—and to make things worse, there were renovators at work on the floor. Plastic sheets hung from some of the walls, shutting parts of the floor off from the rest, and buckets and tools and sawhorses and materials were stacked up, blurry shapes just out of sight on the other side of the first layer of curtains.
Workmen, tagged with hospital tags and clearly utterly ignorant of the place’s rhythms, were walking out, evidently headed to an early lunch break. One of them was flirting with a young nurse who obviously had a mile of work to do. It was kind of pandemonium, or what passes for it in an orderly hospital.
I confess that I took advantage of it. I breezed in without any trouble, swooped up an armful of charts, and kept moving as though I knew exactly where I was going, scanning the charts as I did.
I stepped into the first room where a girl, maybe eight or nine, was curled up into a fetal position on her side. She had a very pale little face, and hollows under her eyes as dark as tire marks on a city road. Her hair was brown and listless. I checked charts and found hers. Her name was Gabrielle. She twitched violently as she slept. Her breathing was unsteady, and she made constant sounds as she exhaled.
I’d never been a father, but I didn’t have to be to know that little girl was in the grips of a nightmare. And given the medicine in her IV, she wasn’t going to be able to get out of it.
I read the charts and they told me the story. Seven kids, plus Stan, were down with a remarkably similar set of symptoms. Paranoia, hysteria, insomnia, and a refusal to go to sleep due to horrible nightmares, especially anytime at night, necessitating chemical intervention.
Eight people.