He knew that he was right, but all the same he continued staring at the phone. Regardless of the friendship he imagined he had violated, he still had to talk to Slaughter, to smooth things, to fix them so he wasn't cut off from the story. Even so, he debated for ten minutes before picking up the phone again. He dialed Slaughter's number once more and waited while the phone kept ringing. This time Slaughter's voice was angry. "Yes, God damn it, Rettig, what's the matter? Get on out here." Dun-lap didn't answer. "Tell me what you want!" the angry voice demanded. Dunlap set the phone back on its cradle. There was no way he could make a man who sounded like that sympathetic. He would wait until the morning. So he smoked his final cigarette and looked down at his notes, and then he did a thing that he had never done before, had never even dared because he was so bothered by it. Unsettled by his dream, the image fixed in his mind, turning, glaring at him, he was forced (he didn't will it, but was passive, worked on, compelled) to sketch it. He was staring at it, swallowed by its eyes. He kept on staring, couldn't shift his head away. He felt a darkness in his mind begin to open, and he didn't weaken all at once. It took him several minutes, and he fought it, he would later give himself that credit, fought as hard as he could manage, but resolve diminished into pointlessness, and he was reaching for the bourbon.
THREE
The medical examiner gave himself the first shot in the lip, frowning at the mirror while he spread the injured portions and then slipped the needle in. It stung, and he was too quick on the plunger so that he felt the liquid spurting through his tissue. All he could be grateful for was that he held his breath and didn't spill the liquid up across his lip and hence he couldn't taste it. Human antirabies serum manufactured from the blood of persons who'd been vaccinated against rabies virus. That would help his system to produce the necessary antibodies and in tandem with a second kind of treatment, it was his best chance to survive contagion. He winced as he drew the needle out. Next he set it down, undid his pants and dropped them, pulling down his underwear and reaching for a second needle that he inserted into one buttock. This injection too was antirabies serum, and he wouldn't need another needle until just about this time tomorrow. Even so, that didn't give him comfort because, if he winced to draw this needle out, tomorrow's shot would be the start of worse things. It would not be antirabies serum; it would be the second kind of treatment: rabies vaccine. Anyone who'd been injected with it cringed when they remembered it. First developed by an Englishman named Semple who had done his research in India in 1911, it was rabies virus taken from the brains of rabbits, mice, or rats, and then killed by incubation in carbolic acid. The dead cells helped the body's immune system. Although harmless in themselves, they encouraged the body to reject the not-yet-rampant live cells that were like them. But the trouble was that not just one injection of the vaccine was sufficient. Fourteen were the minimum, and twenty-one were even better. Each injection was given daily to the muscles of the abdomen. A clockwise pattern was required because the shots were so excruciating that the muscles became extremely sensitive. And maybe you could bear the first five or the second, but the last few were an agony, and this was not a thing the medical examiner was looking forward to.
He didn't have a choice, though. He had indirectly been exposed, and if indeed he had it, the disease would surely kill him without treatment. There were only two examples in which persons had lived through the virus, and there was doubt that they had really had it since their symptoms had been like encephalitis. With the treatment, he still took the chance that he would die from the disease, that it would be too strong for his precautions, but the likelihood was small, and anyway, as he kept thinking, he didn't have a choice. Even rare reactions to the vaccine, like a fever or paralysis, were nothing when compared with certain death. But all the same, the start of treatment didn't calm his fears. The dog had gone through pre-exposure vaccination. It had died, regardless.
The start of treatment didn't calm his sorrow either. He was thinking of the boy lying on the table in the autopsy room, of how he should have had the foresight not to give him the sedative. Those parents. How could he absolve himself? He could still hear the mother shrieking. Well, he meant to find out everything he could about this thing. When he was finished, he would know this virus more than any other he had ever worked on. He had once been famous as an expert in pathology. So now he would discover just how much an expert he could be. That's right. You think you know so much. Get moving. Now's the time to prove it.
So he pulled his pants up, buckled them, and thinking of the tests he would perform, he turned and started from his office. Owens would be here soon with the dog's brain to compare what he had found with what the medical examiner would find inside the boy downstairs. Meanwhile, he himself would use the simple test for Negri bodies. He would also use a more elaborate test in which a brain smear was treated with fluorescent antirabies serum and examined underneath an ultraviolet microscope. To watch the symptoms of the virus, he'd inject a half dozen newborn mice with portions of the boy's brain. He would also want a picture of the virus using the electron microscope. Whatever this thing was, he meant to have a look at it, and when he opened that body, he would understand why the paralysis occurred so quickly, why it worsened with sedation.
As he walked along the corridor, he saw the nurses staring at him. Word had gotten around, all right, and fast as only people in a hospital could spread it. They were looking at a man whose error had been fatal to a patient. Then he told himself to get control. They maybe were just frightened by a thing they didn't understand. Or maybe they were startled by the grim way he was walking. Well, he didn't plan to ask them, and if they knew what was good for them, they'd stay away from him.
He reached the door down to the basement. He thought of Slaughter who would need injections, and the mother and the man who had been bitten, and the man who owned the dog. There were too many details he had not attended to. What was more, he needed sleep. And food, he hadn't eaten since this morning. Well, he would do this and take care of everything. With Owens here to help him, he could find the time to call those people, get them down here for their shots. But he knew what he really wanted-to learn what had killed this boy.
The medical examiner reached the bottom of the steps and went through to the corridor. He came to the far end of the hallway and entered the morgue. In the anteroom, he washed his hands and put on a lab coat, a cap, a mask, and rubber gloves. Just to be exact and avoid contaminating his samples, he even stepped inside protective coverings for his shoes, and then with nothing further to detain him, he pushed through the door and he was in the autopsy room.