Do No Harm

"No," David said. "That's all right. She actually asked I not visit. I've just been concerned."

The nurse gave him an odd look.

"Are the skin grafts taking?" David asked.

"Some are, some aren't. Right now, our primary objective is making sure she doesn't get septic."

Nancy's looks were the least of their concerns.

"I was just dropping by to let you know that I'm not going to be around for a while. The hospital." He was surprised by how difficult that was for him to say. "But if there's anything I can do to facilitate Nancy's treatment, please let me know."

"Thanks, Doctor." The nurse touched his arm curtly, then pivoted and headed back to the nursing station.

Twilight crept through the windows, turning the room gray and ashy. The curtains were spread to Nancy's bed, ever so slightly, and David could see through the gap.

The front half of her crown was little more than mottled flesh, the hair having all fallen out. Her eyeballs had shriveled further, and the sockets were oozing a thick pus. The skin of her face was the worst of all-most of the grafts had not taken, and the flesh hung loosely in gray and yellow squares, a grotesque patchwork. A cheek wound had begun to contract, drawing her right nostril down toward the corner of her mouth.

Her lips, cracked and oozing, moved slowly; she was murmuring something to herself.

David wondered whether the plastic surgeons were working on her as fastidiously as they were on their other patients. There was little reason to risk complications and infection from plastics work; after all, Nancy would never have to see her own face again. Probably a blessing.

To think this was all caused by a confused, pathetic man and a beaker of alkali. Nancy would probably survive, and drag out the rest of her days in pain, hidden from her own sight and the eyes of others. Clyde's perverse turning of the tables.

The mindless embolus that had claimed Elisabeth's brain seemed almost humane by comparison.

Nancy's lips continued to whisper, and when David realized what she was saying, his mouth flooded with saliva as it sometimes did before he vomited.

"I wanna die," Nancy was saying. "I wanna die I wanna die I wanna-"

David drew back quietly and headed for the door, feeling his pulse race.

A man sat on a visitor's chair beside the last unoccupied bed in the row, his shoulders hunched, his hands dangling between his legs. Jenkins. David had not noticed him on his way in.

Jenkins wore a blank stare, his cheeks hollowed with grief. David paused before him, his breathing slowing. Jenkins's eyes moved slowly up to David's face, but showed no glint of recognition. Jenkins lowered his head again, studying the tiled floor. "What the fuck are you doing by my sister's bed?" he murmured.

Across the ward, a woman cried out in pain, and Jenkins flinched, the skin around his eyes drawing up in a squint. He did not look up.

"I shouldn't be there," David said. "But you should."

David reached out his hand, an offering to be taken or slapped away. A moment passed, then another. Jenkins's shoulders vibrated once, an intimation of a sob. He reached up with a trembling hand and grasped David's. Then he leaned forward, his weight pulling on David's arm, his face downturned, both hands gripping David's so tightly the skin of his knuckles turned white.

Motionless, he hung from David's hand, clinging to sanity, a man receiving an unexpected blessing. After a moment, he stood.

David left quietly as Jenkins headed to his sister's bed.

Chapter 62

DASH pulled off his sweatshirt and draped it over David's couch, where it sprawled like a gray blanket. He put his feet up on the table, and David worried momentarily it would give under the weight of his legs. Dash flipped through the bad photocopy of Connolly's abstract-Yale had taken the original-and let a grumble escape his chest.

Someone had leaked the story of the torture-tape call, causing a fresh influx of reporters to sweep through the Med Center grounds. David had all but waded through reporters on his way to his car after work. News of David and Don's dispute in the ER had not helped to abate the media frenzy. David had returned home to find a photographer camped out across the street and six messages on his answering machine from trashy TV "news" producers and more legitimate reporters. David's problem-resolution instincts had been firing inside him, phantom synapses-to call Sandy, to protect the hospital, to spin control. When he'd closed and bolted his front door, an intense burst of stress-lined relief had hit him; at least for the duration of his time off, he was no longer a part of the medical establishment. For the first time in his life.

Dash set down the abstract on top of the stack of other materials he and David had spent the late afternoon reviewing, and gripped his shoulder, working it with a thumb-an athlete's habit. "Have the detectives finished running down the other subjects?"