Alas, Babylon

Dan Gunn came out of the bathroom, drying his hands. “You’ve got more trouble waiting in your room,” Randy said. “A woman’s having a baby, or about to. Garcia’s wife.” Dan dropped his towel across the foot of the bed and pulled the ,sheet over the corpse. “Everybody who was going to have a coronary just had one,” he said, “and I suppose that every woman who was due to have a baby in the next two months is having one now. What’s your trouble, Randy?”

“Peyton’s blind. You remember her from last year, don’t you? Helen’s little girl-not so little—eleven. I know you’re swamped, Dan, but “

Dan raised his immensely long, hairy arms and cried out, “Oh, God! Why? Why to that child?”

He looked and sounded like a rebellious Old Testament prophet. He looked and sounded half-mad. The worst thing that Randy could imagine, at that moment, was that Dan Gunn should lose his mental equilibrium. Randy said, “God had nothing to do with it. This was strictly man-made. The one that dropped on MacDill, or somewhere in the Tampa area. Peyton was looking right at it when it blew.”

“Oh, the foul, life-destroying, child-destroying bastards! Those evil men, those evil and callous men! God damn them!” He used the expression as a true and awful curse, and then Dan’s arms drooped, his anger spent. He visibly shook off the madness. He said, “Sounds like a retina flash burn. To the human eye it’s what overexposure is to film. Her eyes can recover from that.”

He looked down at the form on the bed. “Not much I can do for cardiacs. This was the third, right here in the hotel. Maybe the other two will live, for a while. It’s fear that kills ‘em, and the worst fear is that they’ll have a shock and not be able to reach the doctor. I pity all the other cardiacs around here, with the phones out. I pity them, but I can’t help them. You don’t have to worry so much with women having babies. They’ll have them whether I’m there or not, and chances are that both mother and baby will do all right.” He grasped Randy’s elbow. “Now let’s take a look at the Garcia woman, and then I’ll see about Peyton.” They left the room, and its lonely dead.

Marie Garcia said her pains were coming at four—or five minute intervals. Dan said, “It’ll be much better if you can have the baby at home. It’ll be easier for me, too. This hotel is no place to be having a baby. Do you think you can make it?”

Marie looked at her husband and nodded. Garcia said, “You’ll follow us, Doc?”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Dan promised. He helped Marie to her feet. Leaning on John Garcia, she left, her lips compressed, awaiting the next clamp of pain, but her fear gone.

Dan went into his bathroom and came out with a small bottle. “Eyedrops,” he said. “Once every three hours.” He dug into his bag and handed Randy a pillbox. “Sedative. One every four hours. And give her a couple of aspirins as soon as you get home. She stays in a dark room. Better yet, put a dark cloth over her eyes. As long as she knows she can’t see, she won’t strain her eyes trying. And it won’t frighten her so much. It’s frightening to open your eyes and not see.”

“You’re coming out, aren’t you?” Randy asked.

“Certainly. As soon as I can. I have to deliver this baby, and I have to check in at the clinic-God knows what’s waiting for me there-and I have to see Bloomfield. Somehow we have to coordinate what little we’ll be able to do. But soon as I can, I’ll be out to see Peyton. There really isn’t anything more I can do for her than you can do right now. And Randy-”

“Yes?”

“Did you get those prescriptions filled?” “No. I never had time.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it for you. I’ll bring the stuff out when I come.”

They left the hotel together. A gibbering woman, red-dish wig astray on her head like an ill-fitting beret, clawed at Dan’s arm. He shook himself loose. She dove for his medicine bag. He snatched it away and ran.

Outside, they parted. Randy drove through town. Traffic was piling up. Those stores that opened early on Saturdays were crowded, and groups waited in front of others, and on the steps of the bank. There was as yet no disorder. It was a shopping rush, as on Christmas Eve. At the corner of Yulee and St. Johns he saw Cappy Foracre, the Fort Repose Chief of Police, directing traffic. He stopped and yelled, “Cappy, there’s a woman dead in a wreck out on River Road.”

“That’s outside the town limits,” Cappy shouted. “Nothing I can do about it. I’ve got plenty of trouble right here.”