Miller stammered something about being sorry. Elaine, weeping, begged, “Ma! please don’t cry! Ma!”
The woman, clutching her husband’s note, slumped from the couch to her knees on the floor. She wept so huskily, so brokenly, that Miller was certain that, though perhaps she prayed often, she wept seldom. “Oh God! help me! help me!” she cried. Her great body quaked with wailing, and her red hands clawed in the braided rug. Elaine wept hysterically, her face buried in her mother’s armpit. Miller took the moment to step over the two women and get to the door. He had already photographed the note, and he’d call later by phone to ask about publishing the damned thing.
It was after nine before he reached the hospital. Stopped short at the entrance: realized he was still running. Hadn’t slowed since the rescue. Paused to calm himself. Flicked his cigarette into the bushes, wiped the sweat off his upper lip: coarse growth of stubble scraped his hand. Pocketed his hands and shouldered through the door. He knew the girl at the desk. She told him: “Third floor. Dr. Lewis.”
On third, he was barred by the floor nurse, narrow-waisted girl with an award-winning hind end. Must be new. Dr. Lewis stepped out of the small lab nearby and his greeting cleared the way. Short even-tempered man in late middle-age, thick gray moustache, heavy brow, white jacket. Miller gave him and the nurse copies of the special, asked about Bruno.
“We’re not encouraged, Miller, but that’s not a quote. The man absorbed what should be a fatal quantity of carbon monoxide. It tends to accumulate, you know, doesn’t get passed off like most gases. Hemoglobin sponges up carbon monoxide two hundred and fifty times as fast as it does oxygen, so what happens, the CO prevents the blood from taking in the oxygen it needs, even if there is plenty present. The other six men in the same space with him obviously died earlier from just this cause.”
“Have you made autopsies, or is there—?”
“Blood samples have already told us the story.”
“How is it you think Bruno survived?”
“Frankly, I don’t know. Maybe your headline makes a … valid diagnosis.” Lewis smiled faintly: fellow skeptic’s gentle prod of hypocrisy. The nurse winked. “One thing, he was separated from the others, though no one knows why, and he may have received a much more gradual dosage. The others could have spread out more, there was room, but fright probably closed their circle. Important to stir the air, too, and they may not have moved around much, especially after their light gave out.”
“But if they knew the gas was there, couldn’t they—?”
The nurse stood, smoothed her white skirt down over the pubic knoll, and switched into the small lab nearby.
“Probably didn’t know. Hard to detect. They just dropped off to sleep as they normally would and didn’t wake up after. Or, if they did, they probably lacked the strength in their limbs to move or were too groggy to think things out.” The nurse lacked nothing in her limbs, which, beyond the door of the lab, she stretched for him to see. “Peculiar reversal of the dream process: meant to serve us by protecting our sleep, it more likely than not kept these men confused about reality, might well have convinced their vertiginous minds that the disaster was a dream.”
“Served them after all, then,” Miller said. The nurse was loading medicines on a tray.
Lewis smiled. “In a way. But if Bruno lived, then maybe they all could have.”
“Can I see him?”
“Nothing to see. He’s still in a coma.”
“Is that a bad sign?”
The nurse reached for medicines high on a shelf: made her skirt ruck up and her fanny bobble. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw him looking. He smiled.
“I’m afraid it is. His chances of recovery diminish the longer he remains in it. Usually they come around within the first couple hours, once they’ve got into fresh air or are fed oxygen, if they do at all. If he does come around, the delay increases the likelihood of pulmonary complications. He is still getting transfusions, respiratory stimulants.”
“Can he have any other troubles?”
“Asthenia.” Lewis paused. “Temporary stupor or maybe amnesia. This isn’t for print, of course.”
“No.”
“Carbon monoxide poisoning, Miller, amounts to oxygen lack. And oxygen is the one thing — it and glucose — that the brain cannot do without, even for short periods of time. So some damage is conceivable, and there have been cases of permanent mental illness, although almost always, I should say, in cases where there was a predisposition for it.”
Miller pushed: “Bruno has some of that in his background?”
Lewis hesitated, then replied, “I don’t know, Miller.”
“Is he alone?” The question he’d been saving.
“No, there’s a young girl here. His sister.”
“Can I see her?”
“Rather you didn’t. She’s exhausted and pretty frightened. She has been out at the mine, almost without sleep, these entire three days, and I’m having to keep a close eye on her as well as her brother.” The nurse was doing phallic things, though maybe unintentionally, with a syringe and needle. “We have her on a spare bed in a room that adjoins his, and I was just preparing a light sedative when you came. I’ve kept everyone away from her, of course, and will do so tomorrow, too. However, if you want to drop around, you might call me first, and—”
“Thanks, I will.” Miller gave them spare copies of the special edition for the girl and her brother, as well as for the other patients, stopped in a moment to visit Bert Martini, the guy who’d lost an arm Thursday night. Martini caught on Miller’s semipro baseball team. Used to. Martini was in good-enough spirits, but Miller felt his smile cracking, and left depressed. He wondered what he could do for the guy. Make him the coach maybe.
When he went out, the nurse was gone, busy apparently, and he missed seeing her. Too bad. She was something worth seeing. He thought about the miner’s sister, pajama’d and small in the hospital bed. Tomorrow. Felt the woolly cap in his pocket. He laughed, and the girl at the downstairs desk smiled back.
And the fatherly man with the gray moustache pats her head and wears a white jacket starchy and dark brows a turned-up trenchcoat collar though his face is black dear God! black! and he can’t breathe but smiles dark eyes and wears silk bright shorts silk shirt with a number on it — can’t breathe! oh please! and runs like the wind white jacket number fourteen soothes but soot in his hair and can’t white eyes face like the wind silk mouth and turned-up can’t breathe! the number on it can’t breathe! she screams and he holds her wrist brows with a gray jacket needle fatherly white pats her head and a nurse
6
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate thereon day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein…. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not affrighted, neither be thou dismayed: for Jehovah thy God is with thee whithersoever….
The Baxters’ family worship Sunday evening was interrupted by an unexpected visit from Sister Clara Collins and her daughter Elaine. Abner frowned in concern; Sarah too was surprised: they had brought up Brother Ely’s body only that morning. The simplicities of Sarah’s recent life were fragmenting this weekend, changes had touched her that she could not yet cope with, so she now felt something excessively intrusive — if not improper — about Sister Clara’s unannounced call. Still, no sooner had she arrived than Sarah, almost against her will, began to weep for the other woman. So hard to believe so good a man was gone. Sister Clara clutched a note; she was terribly agitated.