"Well, I try, sir. It's difficult, with Mrs. Gaddson." He stood up. "I don't want to keep you from your rest. If there's anything I can bring you, anything I can do?"
"No," Dunworthy said, "there's nothing you can do."
He started for the door and then stopped. "I hope you'll accept my condolences, Mr. Dunworthy," he said, looking uncomfortable. "I know how close you and Dr. Ahrens were."
Close, he thought after Finch was gone. I wasn't close at all. He tried to remember Mary leaning over him, giving him his temp, looking up anxiously at the screens, to remember Colin standing by his bed in his new jacket and his muffler, saying, "Aunt Mary's dead. Dead. Can't you hear me?" but there was no memory there at all. Nothing.
The sister came in and hooked up another drip that put him out, and when he woke he felt abruptly better.
"It's your T-cell enhancement taking hold," William's nurse told him. "We've been seeing it in a good number of cases. Some of them make miraculous recoveries."
She made him walk to the toilet, and, after lunch, down the corridor. "The farther you can go, the better," she said, kneeling to put his slippers on.
I'm not going anywhere, he thought. Gilchrist shut down the net.
She strapped his drip bag to his shoulder, hooked the portable motor to it, and helped him on with his robe. "You mustn't worry about the depression," she said, helping him out of bed. "It's a common symptom after influenza. It will fade as soon as your chemical balance is restored."
She walked him out into the corridor. "You might want to visit some of your friends," she said. "There are two patients from Balliol in the ward at the end of the corridor. Ms. Piantini's the fourth bed. She could do with a bit of cheering."
"Did Mr. Latimer — " he said, and stopped. "Is Mr. Latimer still a patient?"
"Yes," she said, and he could tell from her voice that Latimer hadn't recovered from his stroke. "He's two doors down."
He shuffled down the corridor to Latimer's room. He hadn't gone to see Latimer after he fell ill, first because of having to wait for Andrews' call and then because the infirmary had run out of SPG's. Mary had said he had suffered complete paralysis and loss of function.
He pushed open the door to Latimer's room. Latimer lay with his arms at his sides, the left one crooked slightly to accommodate the hookups and the drip. There were tubes in his nose and down his throat, and opfibers leading from his head and chest to the screens above the bed. His face was half-obscured by them, but he gave no sign that they bothered him.
"Latimer?" he said, going to stand beside the bed.
There was no indication he'd heard. His eyes were open, but they didn't shift at the sound, and his face under the tangle of tubes didn't change. He looked vague, distant, as if he were trying to remember a line from Chaucer.
"Mr. Latimer," he said more loudly, and looked up at the screens. They didn't change either.
He's not aware of anything, Dunworthy thought. He put his hand on the back of the chair. "You don't know anything that's happened, do you?" he said. "Mary's dead. Kivrin's in 1348," he said, watching the screens, "and you don't even know. Gilchrist shut down the net."
The screens didn't change. The lines continued to move steadily, unconcernedly across the displays.
"You and Gilchrist sent her into the Black Death," he shouted, "and you lie there — " He stopped and sank down in the chair.
"I tried to tell you Great-Aunt Mary was dead," Colin had said, "but you were too ill." Colin had tried to tell him, but he had lain there, like Latimer, unconcerned, oblivious.
Colin will never forgive me, he thought. Any more than he'll forgive his mother for not coming to the funeral. What had Finch said, that it was too difficult to make arrangements on such short notice? He thought of Colin alone at the funeral, looking at the lilies and laser blossoms his mother had sent, at the mercy of Mrs. Gaddson and the bellringers.
"My mother couldn't come," Colin had said, but he didn't believe that. Of course she could have come, if she had truly wanted to.
He will never forgive me, he thought. And neither will Kivrin. She's older than Colin, she'll imagine all sorts of extenuating circumstances, perhaps even the true one. But in her heart, left to the mercy of who knows what cutthroats and thieves and pestilences, she will not believe I could not have come to get her. If I had truly wanted to.
Dunworthy stood up with difficulty, holding onto the seat and the back of the chair and not looking at Latimer or the displays, and went back out into the corridor. There was an empty stretcher trolley against the wall, and he leaned against it for a moment.
Mrs. Gaddson came out of the ward. "There you are, Mr. Dunworthy," she said. "I was just coming to read to you." She opened her Bible. "Should you be up?"
"Yes," he said.
"Well, I must say, I'm glad you're recovering at last. Things have simply fallen apart while you've been ill."
"Yes," he said.
"You really must do something about Mr. Finch, you know. He allows the Americans to practice their bells at all hours of the day and night, and when I complained to him about it he was quite rude. And he assigned my Willie nursing duties. Nursing duties! When Willie's always been susceptible to illness. It's been a miracle that he didn't come down with the virus before this."
It very definitely has been, thought Dunworthy, considering the number of very probably infectious young women he had had contact with during the epidemic. He wondered what odds Probability would give on his remaining unscathed.
"And then for Mr. Finch to assign him nursing duties!" Mrs. Gadsson was saying. "I didn't allow it, of course. 'I refuse to let you endanger Willie's health in this irresponsible manner,' I told him. 'I can not stand idly by when my child is in mortal danger,' I said."
"I must go see Ms. Piantini," Dunworthy said.
"You should go back to bed. You look quite dreadful." She shook the Bible at him. "It's scandalous the way they run this infirmary. Allowing their patients to go gadding about. You'll have a relapse and die, and you'll have no one but yourself to blame."
"No," Dunworthy said, pushed open the door into the ward, and went inside.
He had expected the ward to be nearly empty, the patients all sent home, but every bed was full. Most of the patients were sitting up, reading or watching portable vidders, and one was sitting in a wheelchair beside his bed, looking out at the rain.
It took Dunworthy a moment to recognize him. Colin had said he'd had a relapse, but he had not expected this. He looked like an old man, his dark face pinched to whiteness under the eyes and in long lines down the sides of the mouth. His hair had gone completely white. "Badri," he said.
He turned around. "Mr. Dunworthy."
"I didn't know that you were in this ward," Dunworthy said.
"They moved me here after — " he stopped. "I heard that you were better."
"Yes."
I can't bear this, Dunworthy thought. How are you feeling? Better, thank you. And you? Much improved. Of course there is the depression, but that is a normal post-viral symptom.
Badri wheeled his chair round to face the window, and Dunworthy wondered if he could not bear it either.
"I made an error in the coordinates when I refed them," Badri said, looking out at the rain. "I fed in the wrong data."
He should say, You were ill, you had a fever. He should tell him mental confusion was an Early Symptom. He should say, It was not your fault.
"I didn't realize I was ill," Badri said, picking at his robe as he had plucked at the sheet in his delirium. "I'd had a headache all morning, but I put it down to working the net. I should have realized something was wrong and aborted the drop."