Code White (11 page)

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,

Keep on the sunny side of life

It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way

If we’ll keep on the sunny side of life.

A simple song, but it had the power to dry away his tears that night. It defined his momma the way he had always known her. And his heart ached to think of it now.

Harry heard the step of a hard leather shoe on the linoleum, and looked up to see a balding, gray-haired man in a white coat come into the room.

“Morning, Dr. Weiss,” said Harry. “Kind of you to drop by.”

Weiss nodded curtly and went directly to the plastic chart binder that was kept in a slot at the foot of the bed. He opened the binder, scanned it briefly, and then slammed it shut.

“Still running a fever, Mrs. Lewton,” the doctor announced.

“Call me Viola. After the things you’ve peeked into, I think we should be on first-name terms.”

Weiss lifted his stethoscope from his shoulders and hooked it into his ears. As if by a prearranged signal, Harry rose out of his chair and gently lifted his mother to an upright sitting position in her bed. He watched silently as Weiss slid the stethoscope under Viola’s gown and moved it around her chest and back.

“I still hear rales at the bases of the lungs,” concluded Weiss, flipping the stethoscope over his shoulders.

“Rolls?” asked Viola.

“
Raaahlls
. It’s a sound like wet velcro ripping. It means your pneumonia hasn’t gotten any better. Hopefully, there’ll be some improvement when the new antibiotic has had a chance to work.”

Harry nodded toward the door. “Doctor Weiss, can I speak to you privately?”

“I have to be at Grand Rounds at ten,” said Weiss, glancing at his watch.

“It’ll only take a minute.” Harry directed Weiss toward the hall. At the doorway, he stopped and turned to Viola. “Anything you need, Momma? I’m going to have to step out for a bit.”

Viola shook her head.

“See you, then.” Harry shut the door. Weiss had already gone ahead several paces, but stopped and looked back at Harry.

“Well?” said Weiss.

Harry said nothing until he had caught up to Weiss. Then he looked to either side, and lowered his voice confidentially. “I want to have her transferred to another hospital.”

Weiss arched his eyebrows. “Are you joking?”

“Stroger, Rush, Northwestern—wherever you think best.”

“Are you unhappy with her care?”

“No, not at all.”

“What then? Last night you practically begged me to take her on as a patient. Why the sudden change of heart?”

“Let’s just say, I have personal reasons. I want her transferred and I need it done within the hour.”

The doctor winced. “That’s just not possible, Mr. Lewton. Your mother isn’t stable enough for transfer.”

“She seems lucid.”

“She spiked a fever of 104 during the night. Her breath sounds are worsening. Her white count is alarmingly high. She has a rapidly progressing pneumonia, Mr. Lewton. If the transfer itself didn’t do her irreparable harm, she would have to start out with a whole new medical team, and the interruption in her care could be catastrophic.”

“If what you say is true, then the sooner it’s done, the better.”

“I won’t sign the discharge order.”

“I have a legal right to move her, don’t I?”

“Absolutely. But there’s not an ambulance in the city that will touch her without a discharge order.”

“Who else can sign one?”

Weiss glared at Harry over the top of his spectacles. “Try the Chief of Medicine,” he said in a defiant tone. “No one else would dare go over my head.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor. No disrespect intended. I do thank you for doing your best for her.”

Weiss stalked off. In his wake, Harry saw shock on the faces of the staff who had been within earshot. Understandable. Although his bedside manner stank, David Weiss was said to be one of the three or four best hospitalist-internists in Chicago. And no doubt he was right, medically speaking. But this wasn’t a medical decision. Harry knew that Weiss would have done exactly the same, if it had been
his
mother, and if
he
knew that she could be annihilated in a second at the whim of some psychotic bastard. Between a pneumonia bug and a bomb, it was no contest. None at all.

Harry did feel like a rat, evacuating his mother on the sly ahead of everyone else. But, hell, it was his mother. As long as she was in the hospital, he would have divided loyalties, and it could cloud his thinking at the exact moment when he needed things to be crystal clear. And if … if the worst happened? How could he live with himself, knowing that he had let slip a chance to keep her out of harm? No, it was an absolute no-brainer. He had to get her out—whatever the cost.

He picked up the nearest wall phone. “Operator,” he said, “get me the office of Dr. Maeda, the Chief of Medicine.”

*   *   *

By the time Ali got back to Neurosurgery I, she was struck by its comparative emptiness. Kathleen Brown and the TV camera crew were gone. There were only two or three grips, who were winding up some cables after taking down the reflectors and sound boom.

Helvelius and Kevin, however, were still in Operating Room Three. From far down from the hallway, she could hear them arguing. It made her feel sick inside. She had felt Kevin’s tension all throughout the morning’s operation. It had spoiled the quiet joy of the moment. Now, hearing the men bicker openly, she felt like a bone dropped between two snarling dogs.

As she pushed open the door to the operating room, she saw Kevin seated at his monitor, with his back toward Helvelius. Helvelius stood holding the microphone that he used to dictate his operative notes, shaking it as though it were a club.

Kevin’s lips were curled with sarcasm. “Hey, I’m sorry I took a piss in your glory pool.”

“Glory?” said Helvelius. “This isn’t about glory. This is about scientific progress. You act as though this TV p-production were all about you—wasting precious air time going on about your d-damned c-c-computer. On live television! Every minute spent on parlor tricks with Odin was a minute lost in getting the real m-m-message out.”

“Look who’s talking. Hell, you did everything but go down on that TV babe. Meanwhile, the rest of us came off like peons on a coffee plantation. ‘
Si, Senor Valdez
! We pick-a the tasty coffee beans for you!’”

“I gave you credit, you ingrate. I gave you a chance to talk about your w-w-work on camera. How did you return the favor? You insulted me, and you insulted K-K-Kathleen Brown—”

“Oh, I think it’s quite clear who came off as the great mastermind of this project. Little does it matter that somebody else actually designed and built the fucking SIPNI device.”

“At my direction.”

“Right! ‘Let’s put a little computer inside some poor bastard’s brain, and see if a miracle happens.’ That was your direction. I never saw one freaking schematic from you. Not one flow chart. Not one practical idea—”

Ali felt the hollow, shaky feeling that always came over her when people raised their voices in anger. It was even worse now, when she knew that, behind it all, they were really fighting over her.

“Kevin, stop!” she said. Both Kevin and Dr. Helvelius turned toward her as she came through the doorway. “What’s the matter with you two? People can hear you, you know.”

Kevin grinned. “Just coming down off that ole makin’ medical history high.”

“To hell with you,” said Helvelius. “Let’s see how well you do getting a g-grant on your own.”

“Go ahead, old man. I don’t need your stinking charity. I have a big grant application of my own in the works. Just got the pink sheets, in fact. My score is outta sight.”

“Stop it!” Ali said. “You’re both acting like children.”

“No! No, I’m not!” Helvelius slammed the microphone back into its cradle on the wall. “I’ve tried to do my best for him. For your sake, Ali, I don’t want to hurt him. But there are things a man doesn’t have to t-t-take.” He tore off his paper gown and wadded it into the trash bin, crushing the loose pile of Chux and drapes and bloody sponges that filled it nearly to the brim. For a moment he stood looking at Ali, his gray-haired chest heaving through the V of his blue scrub suit.

“I’ll be in the f-f-family lounge, if you need me,” he said with exaggerated dignity. “The TV crew is already there. Jamie’s guardian will want to know how the surgery went.”

“I’ll join you in a minute.” Ali waited until Helvelius had left the room, and then turned to Kevin. “Why are you pushing him? Can’t you see that this is the worst possible time?”

“Really? It works for me.”

No, don’t take the bait,
she thought.
Needling is his favorite weapon
. It was better to stay natural, even friendly. “Do you really have a grant coming?” she asked.

“Yes. And once I have it, I’m going to tell the old bastard and all his minions on the university board to shove it. Me and Odin’ll go settle somewhere else. Maybe Kathmandu. I hear they’re an up-and-coming center for high technology. And if not, they at least have the best slopes in the world for climbing.”

“That’s good. Good that you’re getting funding. I was sorry when you didn’t get renewed last year.”

“I would have, if the Bastard in Chief had written a proper letter of support like he promised.”

“No, Kevin. It had nothing to do with him. Everybody’s having trouble with the NIH these days. Labs everywhere are losing their funding.”

“Helvelius didn’t lose his.”

“And you hold that against him? That’s what’s keeping this project—all of us—going. Richard’s been paying your salary. He’s been writing you blank check after blank check. I think a little gratitude might be in order.”

“He just wants to own me. He wants the SIPNI patent.”

“That’s not true, and you know it. This project was a team effort. It’s not just the SIPNI software. There’s the chip design, the contact points, the gel—there are at least a dozen patents involved. All of them are interlocking. None of them are the work of a single person. The university tried to explain this to you. None of us is going to get rich from this. Three-quarters of the royalties will go to the university, to fund future research.”

“In guess whose laboratory?”

“In the Laboratory for Neural Prosthetics. That’s bigger than you or me or Richard Helvelius. It’s something we all believe in. Don’t we?”

“You’re taking his side.”

“No, Kevin. I’m taking your side. I’ve been fighting harder than you know to keep you from getting thrown out of this institution.”

“Fighting, for me? Now, there’s a novelty. You didn’t fight very hard for our marriage.”

“You have no right to say that. I fought for years. I fought your jealousies, your false accusations, your constant carping about my work hours. I fought until I had nothing left to fight with.”

“Work hours? Professional dedication, was it? Is that how you wound up in bed with this guy? I mean, of all the people to dump me for, you had to pick
him
?”

“I didn’t leave you for Richard. I left you because of … us.” She had wanted to say “
you
,” but she knew that an accusation now would only throw fuel on the fire. “I never betrayed you—not once in all the time we were together. But we’re not together anymore. Whatever may or may not be happening between me and Richard is none of your business.”

Kevin gave her a smug, almost childish smile. “I know what beta-hCG is.”

“Beta-hCG? What are you talking about?”

“It’s a blood test they do to see if you’re pregnant.”

Ali felt a shudder down her spine. “You’ve been looking at my medical records. That’s a federal crime, Kevin. You can be discharged from the hospital for that.”

“I didn’t have to look. Someone told me,” he said in a singsong voice.

“Who?”

“It’s his, isn’t it?”

“No. Not necessarily. It could be yours.”

Kevin laughed. “I hardly think so. You moved out over three months ago.”

“You forget. There was that night…” Ali stammered.

“Oh, that.” Kevin drummed his fingers against his lips, in mock deliberation. “Is there a blood test for a crocodile heart? That would settle it.”

“It doesn’t matter whose it is. I’m not having it.”

“Of course not. It would get in the way of your work hours, wouldn’t it? Not to speak of it being one hell of an embarrassment for a certain chief of neurosurgery.”

Ali turned to the wall, to keep him from seeing the anguish in her face. She had unconsciously wrapped her fingers in the lanyard of her ID badge, a half-inch-wide ribbon of heavy pink nylon, embroidered with the red-and-blue targetlike logo of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. It had been a present from Jamie Winslow for her thirty-fourth birthday. Whenever she felt weary or anxious, fondling it—or even just running her thumb down the inside of it—often calmed her. But she now twisted it so tightly that her fingertips hurt. “It’s none of your business, Kevin.”

“Does he know?”

“Yes.”

“So, you told him, but not your lawful husband. Did he ask you to get rid of it?”

“No. He … he wants … Look, I was going to tell you about it. But you’re unreachable, Kevin. I don’t know how to talk to you anymore.”

“Try honesty. Try not sneaking around behind my back. Try not withdrawing into that dark cave you flee to whenever somebody confronts you with real human feelings. Do you have feelings of your own, my sweet jasmine flower? Do you care for the feelings of others?”

“Stop it, Kevin!”

“What are you afraid of? I used to think there was a real flesh and blood woman behind those green eyes of yours. I spent years trying to reach that woman. God knows I did. That woman would not have gone off fucking her chief of surgery, and then cold-bloodedly disposing of the evidence—”

“That’s not fair, Kevin. Stop it, please!” Ali spun around and faced him. Her eyes were still dry. He had not yet driven her to tears. “Look, I know I’ve hurt you, but do you expect me to feel sorry for you when you’re like this?”

“Sorry? Give me a break. I don’t ask anything from you. Why should you feel sorry for me? I’m at the top of my game. You and Dildo Helvelius have no idea of the magnitude of what I’ve developed. All you can think of is that little SIPNI item. But SIPNI’s just a toy. I created SIPNI by creating the system that created SIPNI. And that system can do more—much, much more. You’ll find that out sooner than you think.”