"Okay," I said. "Now, how about a drink?"
"Good thinking," said Dr. Hughes, and fetched out his bottle of bourbon. He poured out a couple of large ones, and I swallowed mine just as it came, fiery and revitalizing after a weary day's drive to Albany and back. I sat back and Dr. Hughes offered me a cigarette.
We smoked for a while in silence, then I said: "Dr. Hughes —"
"Why don't you call me Jack? This hospital's pretty formal. It gives the patients confidence if they hear people being called 'doctor' all the time. But I don't think that's the kind of confidence you need."
"Okay, Jack. I'm Harry."
"That's better. Nice to know you, Harry."
I swallowed some more bourbon. "Jack," I said, "have you stopped to consider exactly what we're doing here and why we're doing it? I don't know Karen Tandy much better than I know you. I just sometimes think, what the hell am I doing driving to Albany and back for someone I don't even know."
Jack Hughes grinned. "Don't you think that isn't a question that everybody who helps other people ask themselves? I ask myself that question ten times a day. When you're a doctor of medicine, you're taken for granted. People come to you when they're sick, and think you're terrific, but as soon as they're well again, you cease to be interesting. Some patients are grateful. I get Christmas cards every year from some of them. But most of them wouldn't even recognize me if I bumped into them on the street."
"I guess you're right," I said.
"I know I'm right," replied Jack. "But I think this case is something different. I'm not interested in this case for the usual reasons. The way I see it, this thing that's growing in Karen Tandy represents a whole medical and cultural problem."
"What do you mean?"
Jack Hughes stood up and came over to sit on the edge of his desk right next to me.
"Look at it this way," he said. "The fascinating thing about America is that it was always supposed to be a brand new nation, free of oppression and free of guilt. But from the moment the white man settled here, there was a built-in time bomb of guilt. In the Declaration of Independence, there is even an attempt to gloss over this guilt, you remember? Jefferson wrote about the 'merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.' Right from the beginning, the Indian has not counted as an individual who is endowed by his Creator with those certain inalienable rights.
"Gradually, the guilt of what we did to the Indians has eroded our sense of owning and belonging to our own country. This isn't our land, Harry. This is the land we stole. We make jokes about Peter Minuit buying ManhattanIsland for twenty-four dollars. But, these days, that kind of deal would be considered a theft, an out-and-out con. Then there's all this business about Wounded Knee, and every other Indian massacre. We're guilty, Harry. There's nothing we could or should do about the past, but we're still guilty."
I had never heard Jack Hughes speaking so eloquently. I watched him drag at his cigarette and brush some ash from his crumpled pants.
"That's why this case is so interesting — and so frightening," he said. "If it's really true, this whole medicine man bit, then for the first time ever, white men with a fully developed sense of guilt are going to come into contact with a red man from the earliest days of our settlement. Today, we think about Indians in a totally different way. Back in the seventeenth century, they were savages and they were standing in the way of our need for land and our greed for material wealth. These days, now we have everything we want, we can afford to be softer and more tolerant. I know we've all been talking about destroying this medicine man, and fighting him, but don't you feel some sympathy for him as well?"
I stubbed out my cigarette. "I feel some sympathy for Karen Tandy."
"Yes," said Jack, "of course you do. She's our patient, and her life is in terrible danger. We can't forget that. But don't you feel anything for this savage from the past?"
In a strange way, Jack Hughes was right. I did feel something. There was a tiny part of my brain that wanted him to survive. If there was a way in which both Karen Tandy and the medicine man could live, then that would be the way I would choose. I was frightened of him, I was terrified of his powers and his mastery of the occult, but at the same time he was like a mythical hero of legend, and to destroy him would mean destroying something of America's heritage. He was a lone survivor from our country's shameful past, and to kill him would be like grinding out the last spark of the spirit that had given the United States such a colorful and mystical background. He was the last representative of original American magic.
Just then, the telephone bleeped. Jack Hughes picked it up, and said: "Hughes."
Someone was speaking very excitedly on the other end. Jack Hughes frowned and nodded, and said: "When? Are you sure? Well, have you tried forcing it? What do you mean, you can't?"
Finally, he laid the receiver down.
"Is anything wrong?" I asked.
"I don't know. It's Karen. McEvoy says they can't get the door open. There's something going on in her room, and they can't get the door open."
We left the office and rushed down the corridor to the elevator. There were two nurses in there with a trolleyful of bottles and kidney bowls and we wasted precious seconds while they maneuvered it out of the way. We got in, pressed the button for ten, and sank downwards.
"What the hell do you think has happened?" I asked Jack tersely.
He shook his head. "Who knows?"
"I just hope to God that medicine man isn't able to use his powers already," I said. "If he can, we're totally sunk."
"I don't know," replied Jack Hughes. "Come on, we're here."
The elevator doors hissed open, and we ran swiftly down the corridor to Karen Tandy's room. Dr. McEvoy was standing outside with two male nurses and Selena, the radiologist.
"What's happened?" snapped Jack.
"She was left alone for less than a couple of seconds," explained Dr. McEvoy. "The nurses were changing over their duty. When Michael here tried to get back in, he couldn't open the door. And look."
We peered into Karen Tandy's room through the glass panel in the door. I was shocked to see that she was no longer lying in bed. The sheets and blankets were rumpled and pushed aside.
"There," whispered Jack. "In the corner."
I angled my head and saw Karen Tandy standing at the far corner of the room. Her face was horribly white, and her lips were drawn back over her teeth in a stretched and grotesque grin. She was leaning forward under the weight of the huge distended bulge on her back, and her long white hospital nightgown was torn away from her shoulders, revealing her shrunken breasts and prominent ribs.
"Good God," said Jack, "she's dancing."
He was right. She was hopping slowly from foot to foot, in the same slow silent waltz that Mrs. Herz had been dancing. It seemed as if she were skipping to a soundless drum, a noiseless flute.
"We have to break in there," ordered Jack. "She could kill herself, running about like that."
"Michael, Wolf," said Dr. McEvoy to the two male nurses. "Do you think you can get your shoulders to the door?"
"We'll try, sir," said Wolf, a burly young German with a dark crew cut. "I'm sorry about this, sir, I didn't realize."
"Just get the door down," said Jack.
The two nurses stood back a yard or two, and then rushed at the door together. It splintered and cracked, and the glass broke. A strange cold draught, like the draught that had blown during our seance in Mrs. Karmann's apartment, flowed icily from the jagged hole.