Radiator let go. They hauled it away."
"Great," Louis said, but he felt relieved nonetheless. At least it wasn't out on a run, which was what he had first feared; "When do we get it back?"
Joan Chariton laughed. "Knowing the University Motor Pool," she said, "it'll come back around December fifteenth wrapped in Christmas ribbon." She glanced at the student. "You've got half a degree of fever," she said. "Take two aspirins and stay out of bars and dark alleys."
The girl got down. She gave Louis a quick appraising glance and then went out.
"Our first customer of the new semester," Charlton said sourly. She began to shake the thermometer down with brisk snaps.
"You don't seem too pleased about it."
"I know the type," she said. "Oh, we get the other type too-athletes who go on playing with bone chips and tendonitis and everything else because they don't want to be benched, they got to be macho men, not let the ream down, even if they're jeopardizing pro careers later on. Then you've got little Miss Half-Degree of Fever-" She jerked her head toward the window, where Louis could see the girl with the peeling sunburn walking in the direction of the Gannett Cumberland-Androscoggin complex of dorms. In the examining room the girl had given the impression of being someone who did not feel well at all but was trying not to let on. Now she was walking briskly, her hips swinging prettily, noticing and being noticed.
Chapter 5
"Your basic college hypochondriac." Charlton dropped the thermometer into a sterilizer. "We'll see her two dozen times this year. Her visits will be more frequent before each round of prelims. A week or so before finals, she'll be convinced she has either mono or pneumonia. Bronchitis is the fall-back position. She'll get out of four or five tests-the ones where the instructors are wimps, to use the word they use-and get easier makeups. They always get sicker if they know the prelim or final is going to be an objective test rather than an essay exam."
"My, aren't we cynical this morning," Louis said. He was, in fact, a little nonplussed.
She tipped him a wink that made him grin. 'I don't take it to heart. Doctor.
Neither should you"
"Where's Stephen now?"
"In your office, answering mail and trying to figure out the latest ton of bureaucratic bullshit from Blue Cross-Blue Shield," she said.
Louis went in. Charlton's cynicism notwithstanding, he felt comfortably in harness.
Looking back on it, Louis would think-when he could bear to think about it at all-that the nightmare really began when they brought the dying boy, Victor Pascow, into the infirmary around ten that morning.
Until then, things were very quiet. At nine, half an hour after Louis arrived, the two candy-stripers who would be working the nine-to-three shift came in.
Louis gave them each a doughnut and a cup of coffee and talked to them for about fifteen minutes, outlining their duties, and what was perhaps more important, what was beyond the scope of their duties. Then Charlton took over. As she led them out of Louis's office, Louis heard her ask: "Either of you allergic to shit or puke? You'll see a lot of both here."
"Oh God," Louis murmured and covered his eyes. But he was smiling. A tough old babe like Charlton was not always a liability.
Louis began filling out the long Blue Cross-Blue Shield forms, which amounted to a complete inventory of drug stock and medical equipment ("Every year," Steve Masterton said in an aggrieved voice. "Every goddam year the same thing. Why don't you write down Complete heart transplant facility, approx. value eight million dollars. Louis? That'II foozle em!"), and he was totally engrossed, thinking only marginally that a cup of coffee would go down well, when Masterton screamed from the direction of the foyer-waiting room: "Louis! Hey, Louis, get out here! We got a mess!"
The near-panic in Masterton's voice got Louis going in a hurry. He bolted out of his chair almost as if he had, in some subconscious way, been expecting this. A shriek, as thin and sharp as a shard of broken glass, arose from the direction of Masterton's shout. It was followed by a sharp slap and Chariton saying, "Stop that or get the hell out of here! Stop it right now!"
Louis burst into the waiting room and was first only conscious of the blood-there was a lot of blood. One of the candy-stripers was sobbing. The other, pale as cream, had put her fisted hands to the corners of her mouth, pulling her lips into a big revolted grin. Masterton was kneeling down, trying to hold the head of the boy sprawled on the floor.
Steve looked up at Louis, eyes grim and wide and frightened He tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
People were congregating at the Student Medical Center's big glass doors, peering in, their hands cupped around their faces to cut out the glare. Louis's mind conjured up an insanely appropriate image: sitting in the living room as a kid of no more than six with his mother in the morning before she went to work.