“Safe and sound in the vault,” said Dr. Ibanez. “They are the property of the institute but you will get them back as soon as you finish Canceran. You see, we want you to concentrate on Canceran and we feel that having your own books might be too much of a temptation.”
“We can’t emphasize enough the need for speed,” added Joshua Weinburger, Jr. “But as an added incentive, if you can have a preliminary study done in five months, we’ll give you a bonus of ten thousand dollars.”
“I’d say that is very generous,” said Dr. Ibanez. “But you don’t have to decide right this moment. In fact, we have agreed to give you twenty-four hours. We don’t want you to feel coerced. But just so you know, we will be making preliminary inquiries into finding your replacement. Until then, Dr. Charles Martel.”
With disgust, Charles whirled and headed for the door. As he reached it, Dr. Ibanez called out: “One other thing. The board of directors and the administration want to convey their condolences regarding your daughter. We hope she recovers quickly. The Institute health plan, by the way, only holds while you are actively employed. Good day, doctor.”
Charles wanted to scream. Instead he ran the length of the administrative department and thundered down the metal fire stairs to his office, but once there, he didn’t know whether he wanted to stay. For the first time he felt that being part of the Weinburger Institute was a disgrace. He hated the fact that they even knew about Michelle. On top of that they were using Michelle’s illness as leverage against him. It was an outrage. God!
He looked around his laboratory, his home for the last eight years. He felt as if he knew every piece of glassware, each instrument, every bottle of reagent. It didn’t seem fair that he could be rudely plucked from this environment at whim, especially now that he was making such progress.
His eye fell on the culture he’d set up with Michelle’s leukemia cells. With great effort he went over to the incubator, peering in at the rows of carefully arranged glass tubes. It appeared to be progressing well, and Charles felt a much-needed sense of satisfaction. As far as he could tell, his progress of isolating and augmenting a cancer antigen seemed to work as well with human cells as it did with animal cells. Since it was already time for the next step, Charles rolled up his sleeves and tucked his tie inside his shirt. Work was Charles’s anesthetic and he bent to the task. After all, he had twenty-four hours before he’d have to bow to the demands of the administration. He knew but did not want to admit to himself that he had to give in for Michelle’s sake. He really had no choice.
Nine
Coming back from Beth Israel Hospital where she’d paid an unsuccessful visit to Marge Schonhauser, Cathryn felt she was being stretched to the limits of her endurance. She’d guessed that Marge must have been bad off or she wouldn’t have been hospitalized, but she was still not prepared for what she found. Apparently some vital thread had snapped in Marge’s brain when Tad had died, because she had sunk into an unresponsive torpor, refusing to eat or even sleep. Cathryn had sat with Marge in silence until a feeling of tension drove Cathryn away. It was as if Marge’s depression were infectious. Cathryn fled back to Pediatric Hospital, going from the casualty of one tragedy to the beginning of another.
Rising in the crowded elevator to Anderson 6, she wondered if what happened to Marge could happen to her or even to Charles. He was a physician and she would have guessed he’d be more capable of dealing with this kind of reality, yet his behavior was far from reassuring. As difficult as she found hospitals and illness, Cathryn tried to gird herself against the future.
The elevator arrived at Anderson 6 and Cathryn struggled to reach the front of the car before the doors closed. She was impatient to get back to Michelle, because the child had been very reluctant to let Cathryn leave. Cathryn had talked Michelle into letting her go after lunch by promising she’d be back in half an hour. Unfortunately it was now closer to an hour.
Michelle had clung to Cathryn earlier that morning after Charles had left, insisting that Charles was angry with her. No matter what Cathryn had said, she’d not been able to change Michelle’s mind.
Now Cathryn pushed open Michelle’s door, hoping the child might be napping. At first she thought perhaps she was, because Michelle didn’t move. But then Cathryn noticed the child had kicked off the covers and slid down in the bed with one leg tucked under her. From the doorway Cathryn could see that Michelle’s chest was heaving violently and worst of all, her face had an alarmingly bluish cast with deep maroon-colored lips.
Rushing to the bedside, Cathryn grasped Michelle by the shoulders.
“Michelle,” she cried, shaking the child. “What’s wrong?”
Michelle’s lips moved and her lids fluttered open but only whites showed; her eyes were rolled up in their sockets.
“Help!” cried Cathryn, running for the corridor. “Help!”
The charge nurse came from behind the nurses’ station followed by an LPN. From a room beyond Michelle’s came another RN. They all rapidly converged on Michelle’s room, pushing past the panic-stricken Cathryn. One went to either side of the bed, another to the foot.
“Call a code,” barked the charge nurse.
The nurse at the foot of the bed sped over to the intercom and yelled for the clerk at the nurses’ station to call a code.
Meanwhile the charge nurse could feel a rapid, thready pulse. “Feels like V-tack,” she said. “Her heart’s beating so fast it’s hard to feel individual beats.”
“I agree,” said the other nurse, putting the blood pressure cuff around Michelle’s arm.
“She’s breathing but cyanotic,” said the charge nurse. “Should I give her mouth-to-mouth?”
“I don’t know,” said the second nurse, pumping up the blood pressure cuff. “Maybe it would help the cyanosis.”
The third nurse came back to the bed and straightened out Michelle’s leg while the charge nurse bent over and, squeezing Michelle’s nose shut, placed her mouth over Michelle’s and blew.
“I can get a blood pressure,” said the second nurse. “Sixty over forty, but it’s variable.”
The charge nurse continued to breathe for Michelle but Michelle’s own rapid respiration made it difficult. The nurse straightened up. “I think I’m hindering her more than helping her. I’d better hold off.”
Cathryn remained pressed against the wall, terrorized by the scene in front of her, afraid to move lest she be in the way. She had no idea what was happening although she knew it was bad. Where was Charles!
A woman resident was the first doctor to arrive. She came through from the hallway so quickly that she had to grab the edge of the door to keep from falling on the polished vinyl floor. She ran directly to the bedside, grasping Michelle’s wrist for a pulse.
“I think she has V-tack,” said the charge nurse. “She’s a leukemic. Myeloblastic. Day two of attempted induction.”
“Any cardiac history?” demanded the woman resident, as she leaned over and elevated Michelle’s eyelids. “At least the pupils are down.”
The three nurses looked at each other. “We don’t think she has any cardiac history. Nothing was said at report,” said the charge nurse.
“Blood pressure?” asked the resident.
“Last time it was sixty over forty but variable,” said the second nurse.
“V-tack,” confirmed the woman resident. “Stand back a second.”
The woman resident made a fist and brought it down on Michelle’s narrow thorax with a resounding thump that made Cathryn wince.
An extremely young-looking chief resident arrived followed by two others pushing a cart filled with all sorts of medical paraphernalia and crowned with electronic instrumentation.