Death Rounds (54 page)

“And Rossit?”

“Well, his opportunism got him to the wrong spot at the wrong time. Of course, if I hadn’t left that door unlocked when I ran for a shovel...Who would have thought of rats?”

I couldn’t listen. It was too morbid. “Look, I don’t know what—”

“I murdered them, not you!” he said abruptly.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I was so bewildered by his declarations that I couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

But he didn’t answer. He simply turned his head, his gaze once more traveling far away.

“Why?” I repeated.

Nothing.

He lay completely motionless, and I saw under the glare of the overhead lights a sheen of perspiration break out over his forehead.

Although it could have been the result of his fever, I suspected it was because Miller was back home, in that basement, with
him.

* * * *

I discarded my protective gear, walked to the door of the ICU, and turned to look at him in his cubicle. He slowly brought his stare back around, his one eye burning into me.

Was he out of his mind? Probably. Had he tried to absolve me? Sounded like it. But it also could have been a con, telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. Why? I’d no idea. Except I could think of little else but him as I stood there. Maybe that was the point of his show—to plant a final hook in my thoughts so I’d never be quite free of wondering about him.

I heard the sliding doors glide open behind me, then close.

“I figured you’d go see him.” Riley was at my shoulder. “Did he reveal anything important?”

Important? For the police, not at all. For me, I couldn’t tell yet. Perhaps in time I’d sort out whether his last act toward me was noble or in some way malicious. But I doubted that would lighten the load I’d carry for the deaths of Cam and Rossit. “Not really,” I finally said.

I stood watching Miller in that chamber until he shifted his gaze away from me, once more casting it into the distance. “It does look like he’s in a glass coffin,” I muttered.

“Pardon?”

“It’s what he said when he first saw his mother in isolation at St. Paul’s—that it reminded him of the Snow White story she used to read to him when he was a child.”

Riley said nothing at first. When he did speak, he seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. “Doc, what happened to him as a kid was an atrocity, and in my book those two so-called parents are among the worst kind of lowlifes I deal with. But however it started, he’s a grown man now—and a killer. That means he plays by adult rules, or else other innocents, like Mackie, pay the price.”

My rules as a doctor were so different from Riley’s as a cop. Do no harm; comfort always; treat pain; and whenever possible, cure the illness or injury at hand. Those were the fundamentals of my code. I knew that Miller was beyond the help of any measures from that realm, but it felt like such a failure simply to deliver him into Riley’s domain and its justice.

“Do you know what that isolation room reminds
me
of?” Riley asked.

I turned in time to see a look of satisfaction pass over his face before he answered.

“An execution chamber.”

Epilogue:

Ten Months Later

Mortality Morbidity Bulletin-

Monday, September 1

Update: Vancomydn-Resistant MRSA

A second outbreak of
Staph aureus
resistant to both vancomycin and methicillin has been reported in the United States. The infections occurred in a hospital in Philadelphia and have resulted in six deaths so far. While local health authorities are stressing that there is no danger to the community at large, quarantine measures have been instituted for all staff and patients at the afflicted institution. The first known encounter with this untreatable organism occurred in Buffalo, New York, late last year, but under unnatural circumstances— a deranged individual had acquired the bacterium and was using it to deliberately infect personnel at a university teaching hospital. Although the present outbreak is spontaneous, a CDC spokesperson says that the lessons learned during the previous incident are pertinent to the situation in Pennsylvania. As a result the CDC has created a task force reuniting the physicians and officials who were instrumental in containing the problem in Buffalo and have dispatched them to help out. Unfortunately, fallout from the crisis won’t necessarily end once the infections are dealt with by these experts. In Buffalo, even after officials ultimately gave the affected hospital there a clean bill of health, public confidence was so shaken by the prospect of the superbug recurring on its own that the venerable landmark never reopened and most of its staff and programs had to be transferred to a nearby facility. It is feared that the hospital in Pennsylvania may face a similar fate.

The next issue of the
MMB
will focus on what the natural occurrence of this much-anticipated and much-dreaded superbug means or Americans who must undergo hospitalization in the foreseeable future. Our update will include the transcript of a planned interview with the leaders of the appointed task force—Dr. Douglas Williams of the CDC and Dr. Earl Garnet, chairperson of Emergency Medicine at the newly designated St. Paul’s University Health Center in Buffalo.

Copyright © 1999 by Peter Clement Duffy

Originally published by Fawcett  (ISBN 0449004503)

Electronically published in 2010 by Belgrave House

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.