Do No Harm

Clyde's voice was a hoarse, terrified whisper. "It's so awful out there. The cops and people who want to pry at me." He looked at David with a startling clarity. "I don't want to leave this room," he said. "Not ever."

Crouching, David slid his stethoscope from his shoulders and into position. He checked Clyde's heart rate. Tachycardic. His ER instincts flared. Call for a gurney, rush the patient down to the ER, get lines into him. "I need to get you downstairs," he said. "You need help."

Clyde's entire face quivered. "No, no, no. Don't make me. I don't want to anymore. I don't want any of it anymore. Give me a pill to make me end in here."

"I can't do that," David said.

"… please?"

"No. I will not."

Clyde watched him for a moment, his eyes beady and glinting in his wide head. "W-why?"

"I'm your doctor."

"Then let me… " Clyde's breath hitched in his throat, a hiccup of a sob. "Let me stay here." He broke down, weeping pitifully. "Please don't take me to them. Any of them."

David felt emotion welling in his throat, his eyes, his face. His voice was shaking. "If I don't get you downstairs right now, you will die," he said, with a slow vehemence. "Do you understand that?"

"Yes," Clyde said. "Yes."

David's fist tightened on the branch of his stethoscope. He should be irrigating Clyde's wound, paging surgery, pushing morphine. He felt something break inside him.

"I'm sorry," Clyde said. "For everything I've done. I wish I could take it back."

David watched Clyde through his thawing numbness.

Clyde's breath hitched in his chest several times. When he spoke again, his voice took on an eerie calm. "It hurts all the time. Into my head. Sounds and noises and such. Like a train. The only calm is around the edges, where there's quiet dark and no one to look at me." His eyes were watering, steady, silent streams of tears carving down his broad cheeks. He reached and clutched David's leg pitifully. David stood and took a step back, his stethoscope falling from his shoulders. Around him, the yellowed bodies hung and swayed.

David thought of the blood Clyde had lost, and the long and painful surgeries he'd have to endure if he hoped to survive. He thought of the slow, agonizing recovery, the grueling courtroom trial, vicious prison-yard tauntings and cell-block beatings, and he realized that the choice Clyde was making was not much of a choice at all.

"Hold me," Clyde cried. "P-please. Don't leave me… don't leave me alone." He gasped and bled, his eyes never leaving David's. He tried to touch David's leg again, but could not reach.

David watched Clyde writhing on the floor. After a few moments, Clyde's face blurred before him. David sat down beside him on the cold, hard floor.

He took Clyde's hand. It was warm and sticky with blood.

Clyde's breaths were growing more shallow. They were the only sounds to break the silent hum of the crypt. "You'll stay with me?"

David nodded.

"You won't… you won't leave? Until it's over?"

David shook his head.

Clyde squeezed David's hand, his lips trembling. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

He kept his eyes on David, his breaths jerking his chest. An expression of resignation settled across Clyde's features. His body loosened, then his head rolled up and to the side. The wrinkles smoothed from his forehead. David lowered Clyde's limp hand, bringing it to rest on his chest.

He closed Clyde's eyelids with a thumb and forefinger, and stood.

The freight elevator doors opened loudly down the hall. He heard a cavalry of footsteps, and Diane's worried voice calling out, "David, are you here? Where are you?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but was still too close to weeping, so he took a step back from Clyde's body and studied the floor, gathering the scattered threads of his emotions. His stethoscope lay on the tile, curved like a caduceus snake.

Diane cried out for him again, down the hall but growing nearer. Wincing through the pain, David crouched and picked up his stethoscope. He turned to the door, pulling the stethoscope across his shoulders, and began the painful shuffle down the hall to Diane.

"Here," he called out. "I'm here."