The Select (19 page)

Quinn stepped closer. The woman's
badge read Charlene Turner. She wore a smile but her eyes and
manner were all business.

"I'm supposed to meet Dr. Emerson
upstairs this afternoon," Quinn told her.

"Fifth floor?" she said, her
expression dubious. "He's going to meet you on Fifth? What's your
name?"

"Cleary."

The woman tapped something into her
keyboard and checked her screen.

"You're not down for an appointment.
What time he tell you?"

"No time. He just said to come by
after class this afternoon. I'm going to be working for
him."

"Ah. Why didn't you say so?" More
tapping on her keyboard. "Now I got you. Cleary, Quinn—student
assistant to Dr. Emerson."

"Right," Quinn said. "I can go
upstairs now?"

"Not so fast. You're not official
yet." Charlene Turner flipped through a file drawer and withdrew a
manila envelope. From it she produced an ID badge and something
that looked like a credit card. She compared the photo on the badge
to Quinn.

"Yeah, that's you all right." She
handed both across the counter. "The badge goes on your coat or
blouse or some other visible place as soon as you enter this
building, and it stays there as long as you're in here. The other
goes in your wallet. Don't lose it. Big trouble if you
do."

The ID badge listed her name and
Department of Neuropharmacology assignment next to a photo that
looked like a copy of the one she'd submitted with her application.
Quinn immediately clipped it to the belt on her slacks. But the
card...

"What is this?"

"Your security key," Charlene Turner
said. "You can't get to the fifth floor without it."

"Key?"

The card said "Science Center" on the
dark blue side, with an arrow pointing away from the "S;" the other
side was white with a brown strip running across on the flip side
of the arrow.

"Yeah. It's got a magnetic code in
that little strip at the end. That's the business end. Just stick
it face up into the slot in the elevator and you'll be on your
way."

"Okay. Thanks."

They do go a little overboard on their
security here, Quinn thought as she headed for the
elevators.

One of the pair was
standing open when she got there. The car was deep—deep enough for
a hospital bed. Inside on the control panel were six buttons for
floors 1 through 5 plus the basement. Next to the 5 and the B were
pairs of little indicator lights. The red one was glowing next to
each. On a hunch, Quinn inserted her card—her
key
—into the slot above the row of
buttons and pressed 5. To the accompaniment of a soft click, the
red light next to 5 went off and its companion lit up green. The
elevator doors closed and the car started up.

"All right," Quinn said, smiling as
she removed the key and slipped it into her pocket. She had a key
that let her go where only a select few were allowed. It was
exciting. She felt as if she'd arrived, as if she
belonged.

Stepping out on the fifth floor, she
was lost for a moment. No one was in the hall and she didn't know
where to turn. She tried to remember the layout from the tour last
Christmas and got the feeling she should head to her
right.

And then she saw the glass plate in
the wall—the window onto the place called Ward C.

She stopped in the center of the hall.
She'd forgotten completely about Ward C. Now it was all back,
especially the eyes. She remembered peering through that window and
meeting that pair of dull blue eyes staring up at her from within
their gauze frame, remembered the questing look in them, remembered
the tears as she'd moved away.

How had she
forgotten?
Why
had she forgotten? Too painful a memory? Too
disturbing?

As if in the grip of some invisible
hand that had reached through the glass from the burn ward and
taken hold of her, Quinn gravitated to the window. She couldn't
resist. She stopped before it and gazed within.

It was the same...the gauze-swathed
bodies on their air mattresses, still, white shapes under their
sheets, the IVs, the feeding tubes, the catheters, the blue, green,
red, yellow patches on their limbs and trunks, the nurses gliding
among them like benevolent phantoms, turning them, examining them,
ministering to their unspoken needs. Not a whisper of sound
penetrated the glass...like watching a silent movie.

Quinn hesitated, then forced herself
to look down at the bed directly before the window, fearing yet
yearning for the sight of that same pair of blue eyes, wondering if
that person were still here, still in pain, still alive.

The form on the bed by the window was
sleeping. Yet even though the eyes were closed, Quinn knew it
wasn't the same patient. This one seemed female. Smaller, narrower
in the shoulders, a hint of breasts mounded under the
gauze—

"Miss Cleary?"

Quinn spun, jolted by the voice. Dr.
Emerson was standing behind her.

"I didn't mean to startle you, but
they called from downstairs to let me know you were on your way up.
When you didn't show..."

"I wasn't sure where to
go."

He smiled. "My fault. I should have
realized that and had someone watching for you." He glanced at the
burn ward window. "This is where we first crossed paths, I
believe."

Quinn remembered...the blue-eyed
patient, his obvious pain, Dr. Emerson directing the nurse to
medicate him.

"Yes. The orientation
tour."

"And now you're back in the same
spot."

"It's these patients.
They're..."

Quinn didn't know how to express her
feelings without sounding theatrical, but something about these
unknown, faceless, helpless people was drawing her to them. She
sensed a need in that ward, and an urge within herself to fulfill
it.

"The other patients in the medical
center next door come and go," Dr. Emerson said. "But these are our
orphans, the homeless, the ones nobody wants. They need more care
than a nursing home can provide, yet no hospital can afford to keep
them. So they wind up here, at the Science Center, where they allow
us to try experimental cures for their damaged skin."

Quinn swallowed.
"Experimental?"

He laughed. "You say that as if we're
mad scientists, Miss Cleary. All the patients here on Fifth are
experimental subjects. They or their families have applied to come
here. There's even a waiting list."

"For experimental
treatment?"

"Every new drug and every
therapeutic advance such as Dr. Alston's semi-synthetic skin grafts
goes through exhaustive testing on mice and dogs and monkeys before
it's even considered for use in a human being. And once all that
testing has been reviewed by the FDA and found suitably
safe,
then
it's
tested in human volunteers. Very carefully tested."

Quinn glanced through the window. "But
these—"

"Are all volunteers. Or have been
given over to our care by their families. You hear about new AIDS
drugs being tested. Who do you think they're tested on? AIDS
victims. And cholesterol-lowering agents. Who are they tested on?
People with high cholesterol. And on whom else can you test new
skin grafts but burn victims? Here Dr. Alston and his staff have
taken on the toughest burn cases, the ones who've been failed by
conventional therapy." He moved up to the window and stared into
the ward. His voice softened. "And for the residents of Ward C, The
Ingraham is their last, best hope."

"Why the colored patches?" Quinn
asked.

"Color coding for different strains of
Dr. Alston's grafts. You see, he takes samples of a patient's
healthy skin—and on some of these poor devils that's not easy to
find—and grows sheets of new cells in cultures. Then he coats the
micromesh he's synthesized with the patient's own DNA. The body's
immune system does not react against it's own DNA, therefore
there's no rejection of the mesh. The skin cells in the mesh begin
to multiply, and soon you've got a patch of healthy skin. It's
worked wonders in the animal studies. He's maybe two years away
from approval by the FDA."

Quinn almost wished she were working
for Dr. Alston. Dr. Emerson seemed to be reading her
mind.

"I never told you, but your duties in
my department will have an impact on the burn patients."

Quinn pointed through the window. "You
mean—?"

He gestured down the hall. "Let me
show you my lab and things will be clearer."

The prospect of dealing with real live
patients pumped up Quinn's already soaring excitement as she
accompanied Dr. Emerson down the hall. She followed him past the
nurses station and through a narrow doorway.

"Not very glamorous, I'm afraid," he
said. "But here's the front section of my little
domain."

A small room, its walls lined with
desks and computer terminals. A middle-aged woman was hunched over
a keyboard, typing madly.

"Alice," Dr. Emerson said, touching
her on the shoulder. "This is Quinn Cleary, the student assistant I
told you about."

Alice turned and extended her hand to
Quinn. She looked about fifty; she wore no make-up, had
gray-streaked hair, and unusually dry skin. But her smile was warm
and welcoming.

"Am I glad to see
you
! Are you starting
today?"

Quinn glanced at Dr. Emerson. "I'm not
sure."

"You're on the payroll as of today,"
he said, "so you might as well."

"Great!" Alice said. "We're so backed
up on data entry, you wouldn't believe! Take a seat and
I'll—"

"I think I'll give her the tour first,
Alice," Dr. Emerson said with a tolerant smile.

"Oh, right. Sure. Of course. Go ahead.
I'll be here when you're through."

Dr. Emerson then led Quinn through a
door at the rear of the office. Immediately she noticed a pungent
odor. She sniffed.

"Still noticeable?" Dr. Emerson
said.

"Something is."

"This used to be the vivarium. Lined
with rat cages. But we moved the little fellows back down to the
fourth floor. Not many left. We're long since past that stage." He
gestured to the work stations where two technicians were measuring
minute amounts of amber fluid into pipettes and inserting them into
a wide assortment of autoanalytical machines. "This is where we
used to sacrifice them. Now we've converted this area to analysis
of the sera we draw from the patients."

"The Ward C patients?"

"Yes."

Quinn's face must have reflected her
confusion because Dr. Emerson nodded and motioned her back the way
they had come.

"Follow me."

They passed Alice again, who turned
and looked up at them expectantly.

"Not quite yet, Alice."

Quinn followed him out into the hall
to the nurses station.

"Marguerite," he said to the slim,
middle-aged, mocha-skinned nurse at the counter. Her black hair was
pulled back into a tight bun; her light eye shadow emphasized her
dark, penetrating eyes. "One of the 9574 vials, please."

The nurse reached behind her and
plucked a two-ounce bottle from a pocket in the top of the
medication cart. She handed it to Dr. Emerson, who in turn handed
it to Quinn.

"This," he said, "is the reason Dr.
Alston and I have our labs on the same floor. It's the new
anesthetic I'm developing. We have no name for it yet, so we refer
to it by its entry number in the log when we isolated it. This is
the nine thousand five hundred and seventy-fourth compound we've
registered at The Ingraham."

Quinn stared at the bottle of clear
fluid in her hand. It looked like water.

"So many."

"We've sythesized
tens
of thousands, but
we only register the ones we feel have might have human therapeutic
potential."

"It's good?"

"Good?" His entire
forehead lifted with his eyebrows. "It's
wonderful
. Works like a charm. And
you know the best part?"

Quinn placed the bottle on the
counter. "What?"

"It's non-toxic. That's because it's
not a foreign chemical compound but a naturally-occurring
neuroamine, secreted in minute amounts in the brainstem during REM
sleep."

Quinn couldn't help but smile at him.
His enthusiasm was catching. He was like a little boy talking about
a rocket voyage to Mars. She didn't want to slow him down, so she
prodded him on.

"Really?"

"Yes. You're paralyzed during dream
sleep, you know. Oh, yes. Almost completely paralyzed. Otherwise
you'd be talking, laughing, and generally thrashing all about in
your dreams. Yet your eyes move. You've heard of rapid eye
movements—REM sleep—of course. And your chest wall moves, allowing
your lungs to breath. So what you've got is a selective paralysis,
affecting all the skeletal muscles except the eyes, the
intercostals, and the diaphragm. And of course, you're
unconscious."