Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [77]
“Out, everyone out!” Chimbu was already working on the patient, giving orders, directing nurses. The startled woman and her entourage were ejected from the room, despite the halfhearted protests of the man in uniform. Only Chimbu, two assistants who had arrived with him, and Tse, standing by the door, stayed.
When the patient had been sedated and was once more resting quietly, eyes closed, heart rate and other vitals stabilized, Chimbu drew the nurse aside.
“I saw what happened on the monitor replay. He grabbed your wrist. Is that correct?”
She nodded slowly. “First I felt something—him—touch me. Then he grabbed me.”
“You touched his face in the vicinity of his left eye and then put your finger to your mouth.” Chimbu’s words were composed, professional. “What was that about?”
“I saw moisture there. I thought it might be left from the bath I had just administered. It was salty. He was tearing.”
The doctor nodded. “He also moved his lips. The pickups that are in place are sensitive, but they’re not perfect. Did he say anything to you?” The quiet intensity in the physician’s voice unsettled her. Chimbu was no automaton, but around the hospital he was not noted for exhibiting a wide range of emotion.
She licked her lips before replying. “Yes. He said, ‘Don’t.’”
“That’s all?” The doctor’s expression wrinkled. “‘Don’t’?”
She nodded, and he seemed disappointed. “Don’t ‘what’?”
“I had the impression he didn’t want me to leave.”
“Ah.” Chimbu looked back at the stabilized, immobile patient for a long moment. “Then stay. If he even hinted that he might want you to stay, you should stay.”
“Doctor? I have to complete my rounds.” What was happening here? she found herself wondering.
“Not anymore,” he informed her firmly. “As of right now you are relieved of all other duties. Replacements are already being scheduled. From this moment you are assigned to this patient exclusively. Furthermore, you are being placed on extended half-day shifts.” Raising a hand, he forestalled her imminent objections. “You’re also on double pay. No, triple.” Murmuring more to himself than to her, he added, “Administration will approve it on my recommendation. They don’t have any choice in the matter anyway.” Raising his eyes back to hers, he remembered that he was speaking to another human being and not to a mechanical or a recorder.
“I would like to make arrangements to move another bed in here, so you can sleep in the room when you’re not officially on duty.”
She gaped at him. “Doctor? I take pride in my work, but I have a life outside it, you know.”
“I know; I know.” He made mollifying gestures. “You’ll be fully compensated for your sacrifice. And if the patient begins speaking rationally to others, you will be permitted to leave. On extended vacation, at hospital expense.”
Her eyes widened. “‘Permitted’ to leave? What is this?” Looking past him, she focused on the man in the bed. The ordinary, now officially semicomatose man whose brief stirring had aroused an unexpected tidal wave of activity. “Who is this ‘Mr. Jones’ that you called Alwyn Mallory?”
“You’re a good nurse, Tse. You don’t miss much.” Chimbu pushed his physician’s probe back from his forehead to the crest of his skull so that it pressed tightly against the receding hairline. “You know about Treetrunk?”
She searched his face. He looked suddenly tired, weighed down by unexpected and unsought responsibility. “I’m not dead, so of course I know. What’s that to do with this Mallory person?”
“If you’re going to attend him you have to know, so you might as well know now.” The hospital’s chief of staff was as serious as Tse had ever seen him. “He may be a survivor of the massacre.”
Overwhelmed by the implication, for a long moment she had nothing to say. Finally she stammered, “There are no survivors of what happened on Treetrunk.”
“You heard what the woman from the bureau said. He was found in a lifeboat on the planet’s inner moon, traumatized and speechless. He might be a refugee from a passing ship, or