The patient wasn’t going to survive. Amputation or not, he was probably rotten to the core by this time, and if the shock of amputation didn’t do him in, general debilitation would. It was a good prospect for the show. It was the kind of stomach-turning vicarious suffering that millions of viewers gobbled up avidly.
Northrop looked up and said, “Fifteen thousand if you’ll allow a network-approved surgeon to amputate under our conditions. And we’ll pay the surgeon’s fee besides.”
“Well…”
“And we’ll also underwrite the entire cost of postoperative care for your father,” Northrop added smoothly. “Even if he stays in the hospital for six months, we’ll pay every nickel, over and above the telecast fee.”
He had them. He could see the greed shining in their eyes. They were faced with bankruptcy, and he had come to rescue them, and did it matter all that much if the old man didn’t have anesthetic when they sawed his leg off? He was hardly conscious even now. He wouldn’t really feel a thing, not really.
Northrop produced the documents, the waivers, the contracts covering residuals and Latin-American reruns, the payment vouchers, all the paraphernalia. He sent Maurillo scuttling off for a secretary, and a few moments later a glistening mechanical was taking it all down.
“If you’ll put your name here, Mr. Gardner…”
Northrop handed the pen to the eldest son. Signed, sealed, delivered.
“We’ll operate tonight,” Northrop said. “I’ll send our surgeon over immediately. One of our best men. We’ll give your father the care he deserves.”
He pocketed the documents. It was done. Maybe it was barbaric to operate on an old man that way, Northrop thought, but he didn’t bear the responsibility, after all. He was just giving the public what it wanted, and the public wanted spouting blood and tortured nerves. And what did it matter to the old man, really? Any experienced medic could tell you he was as good as dead. The operation wouldn’t save him. Anesthesia wouldn’t save him. If the gangrene didn’t get him, postoperative shock would do him in. At worst, he would suffer only a few minutes under the knife, but at least his family would be free from the fear of financial ruin.
On the way out, Maurillo said, “Don’t you think it’s a little risky, chief? Offering to pay the hospitalization expenses, I mean?”
“You’ve got to gamble a little sometimes to get what you want,” Northrop said.
“Yeah, but that could run to fifty, sixty thousand! What‘ll that do to the budget?”
Northrop shrugged. “We’ll survive. Which is more than the old man will. He can’t make it through the night. We haven’t risked a penny, Maurillo. Not a stinking cent.”
Returning to the office, Northrop turned the papers on the Gardner amputation over to his assistants, set the wheels in motion for the show, and prepared to call it a day. There was only one bit of dirty work left to do. He had to fire Maurillo.
It wasn’t called firing, of course. Maurillo had tenure, just like the hospital orderlies and everyone else below executive rank. It was more a demotion than anything else. Northrop had been increasingly dissatisfied with the little man’s work for months, now, and today had been the clincher. Maurillo had no imagination. He didn’t know how to close a deal. Why hadn’t he thought of underwriting the hospitalization? If I can’t delegate responsibility to him, Northrop told himself, I can’t use him at all. There were plenty of other assistant producers in the outfit who’d be glad to step in.
Northrop spoke to a couple of them. He made his choice. A young fellow named Barton, who had been working on documentaries all year. Barton had done the plane-crash deal in London in the spring. He had a fine touch for the gruesome. He had been on hand at the World’s Fair fire last year in Juneau. Yes, Barton was the man.
The next part was the sticky one. Northrop phoned Maurillo, even though Maurillo was only two rooms away—these things were never done in person—and said, “I’ve got some good news for you, Ted. We’re shifting you to a new program.”
“Shifting…?”
“That’s right. We had a talk in here this afternoon, and we decided you were being wasted on the blood and guts show. You need more scope for your talents. So we’re moving you over to Kiddie Time. We think you’ll really blossom there. You and Sam Kline and Ed Bragan ought to make a terrific team.”
Northrop saw Maurillo’s pudgy face crumble. The arithmetic was getting home; over here, Maurillo was Number Two, and on the new show, a much less important one, he’d be Number Three. It was a thumping boot downstairs, and Maurillo knew it.
The mores of the situation called for Maurillo to pretend he was receiving a rare honor. He didn’t play the game. He squinted and said, “Just because I didn’t sign up that old man’s amputation?”
“What makes you think…?”
“Three years I’ve been with you! Three years, and you kick me out just like that!”
“I told you, Ted, we thought this would be a big opportunity for you. It’s a step up the ladder. It’s—”
Maurillo’s fleshy face puffed up with rage. “It’s getting junked,” he said bitterly. “Well, never mind, huh? It so happens I’ve got another offer. I’m quitting before you can can me. You can take your tenure and—”
Northrop blanked the screen.
The idiot, he thought. The fat little idiot. Well, to hell with him!
He cleared his desk, and cleared his mind of Ted Maurillo and his problems. Life was real, life was earnest. Maurillo just couldn’t take the pace, that was all.
Northrop prepared to go home. It had been a long day.
At eight that evening came word that old Gardner was about to undergo the amputation. At ten, Northrop was phoned by the network’s own head surgeon, Dr. Steele, with the news that the operation had failed.
“We lost him,” Steele said in a flat, unconcerned voice. “We did our best, but he was a mess. Fibrillation set in, and his heart just ran away. Not a damned thing we could do.”
“Did the leg come off?”
“Oh, sure. All this was after the operation.”
“Did it get taped?”
“They’re processing it now. I‘m on my way out.”
“Okay,” Northrop said. “Thanks for calling.”
“Sorry about the patient.”
“Don‘t worry yourself,” Northrop said. “It happens to the best of us.”
The next morning, Northrop had a look at the rushes. The screening was in the twenty-third floor studio, and a select audience was on hand—Northrop, his new assistant producer Barton, a handful of network executives, a couple of men from the cutting room. Slick, bosomy girls handed out intensifier helmets—no mechanicals doing the work here!
Northrop slipped the helmet on over his head. He felt the familiar surge of excitement as the electrodes descended, as contact was made. He closed his eyes. There was a thrum of power somewhere in the room as the EEG-amplifier went into action. The screen brightened.
There was the old man. There was the gangrenous leg. There was Dr. Steele, crisp and rugged and dimple-chinned, the network’s star surgeon, $250,000-a-year’s worth of talent. There was the scalpel, gleaming in Steele’s hand.
Northrop began to sweat. The amplified brain waves were coming through the intensifier, and he felt the throbbing in the old man’s leg, felt the dull haze of pain behind the old man’s forehead, felt the weakness of being eighty years old and half dead.
Steele was checking out the electronic scalpel, now, while the nurses fussed around, preparing the man for the amputation. In the finished tape, there would be music, narration, all the trimmings, but now there was just a soundless series of images, and, of course, the tapped brainwaves of the sick man.