She stared flatly back at him. "Dr. Finn, my specialty is wild card. I'm fully aware of the dangers, and prepared to face them to continue my work. I want the key. It's my right."
"Yeah, it's your clinic now," Finn said He made no effort to hide his bitterness. A new set of words were clamoring for release. He weighed, tasted, considered them. Decided to say them. "You ever actually practiced medicine?"
"No." Terse and to the point, and perhaps just a hint defensive.
Finn allowed that admission to hang in the silent air between them for several seconds, then he said, "The suffering and dying at this clinic surpass anything I've ever encountered - even when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. And unlike third world sufferers, the jokers in Manhattan are Americans - or at least until Leo Barnett succeeds in saying we're not - and they think they're entitled to an ease to their sufferings and a painless death. I think you'd better develop some bedside manner, Doctor. Well, shall we visit the wards now?" Finn concluded brightly.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
The tour concluded on the fourth floor. Finn led his new boss down the hall, and pushed open the door to Tachyon's office.
"This is Tachyon's office. I've been using it. I presume you'll want it now."
Van Renssaeller walked past him, angling her body almost completely sideways as she passed to avoid touching him. It wasn't deliberate, he would have sworn it wasn't deliberate, but his tail suddenly flicked, the long white hairs whipped across her legs, tangling briefly in the strap of her purse. The woman shot into the room like she'd been launched. A couple of long strands, still caught in the purse, tore loose. She stared down at them in fascination. Untangled them from the strap, wrapped them around her index finger, suddenly brushed them off like a person afflicted by ants.
She was rattled. She stared around the room, and said stupidly, "There's no chair."
All the pent-up rage emerged in a spurt of angry, sarcastic words. "It may have escaped your notice, but I weigh four hundred pounds and have an ass a foot and a half wide. Chairs are not a big decorating item for me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have patients to treat."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
The days fell into a kind of tense rhythm. Nothing had really changed, and yet Finn couldn't shake this pressure band of rage and unhappiness which had settled about his temples.
He had laid eyes on the new boss once in the past week, when she had come to his office to demand the key and access code to Tachyon's private lab. Later he had bitched to Bob Mengele that van Renssaeler obviously liked germs better than people.
With a sigh that shook him from withers to flank, Finn gathered up his clipboard, and headed off for rounds. As he walked down the hall Finn gave the implacable face of the closed door a glance. When Tachyon had ruled the Clinic with his particular brand of noblesse, the door had always been open. Finn had continued that policy. Now the door, and the nat behind it, had become a metaphor for a joker's life in America of the mid-nineties.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
A knock came around five in the evening, while she sat at Tachyon's desk sorting through the stacks of files she'd pulled from his office cabinets and laboratory file drawers. Her heart skipped into high gear at the sound. She had to restrain herself from hiding the contents of the folder she'd been translating.
Relax, PC - stop acting like a teenager they caught smoking in the girls' room. She removed her reading glasses, smoothed her wool jacket, adjusted the silk bow on her blouse, and arranged her features.
"Come in."
Cody Havero entered, a blue plastic file folder in hand, and surveyed the chaos Clara had made of the office.
"Dr. Havero," Clara said.
"Call me Cody." Her glance fell on the two Takisian-English references that lay open on Clara's desk - one a general usage dictionary; the other an unpublished, three-ring binder containing biomedical terms. Her eyebrows rose. "You speak Takisian?"
"Speak it? No. Merely read a little."
Cody glanced at the contents of the binder. "Someone's done some serious research, there."
Clara laid her hand on the binder, pleased. "I put this collection of terms together during my post-doc research at Harvard, to make use of the research notes Tachyon donated to the World Health Organization."
"Fascinating. You should consider publishing it."
Clara gave Cody a wry smile. "And enable other researchers to compete with me? Besides, I'm sure it's riddled with errors. I had to use a lot of guesswork"
Cody chuckled. Clara glanced at the folder she held. "You have something for me?"
"Tomorrow's surgery schedule." Cody handed her the blue folder. Clara slid her reading glasses back on.
"I'll look it over."
But Cody continued to stand there. Clara looked at the surgeon over the tops of her reading glasses.
"There's something else?"
Cody nodded. "Unfortunately, I'm here to dump a big problem in your lap."
Clara removed the glasses; they fell about her neck on their gold chain. She gestured. "Please, sit."
Cody dropped into the chair Clara offered - one of two old, taped-up, burgundy vinyl chairs Clara had appropriated from the staff lounge as a temporary measure. Propping her chin in her palm, Cody gazed at Clara with her good eye. Evaluating her, perhaps. "It looks like we'll have a severe shortage of nursing and radiology staff next Friday."
"I presume the heads of Nursing and Radiology can deal with these matters."
Cody shrugged. "They're trying. But frankly, it's close to unmanagedble. With all this public hysteria, we're losing staff in droves."
Clara frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Cody gave her a rather surprised, don't you watch the news? look.
"The Clinic has been picketed by hostile nat groups five times in the last two months. The scuttlebutt on the street is we'll have another demonstration next Friday. A big one. That's why half the nursing staff called in sick. They get tired of the cow's blood and spoiled vegetable showers." A little shrug. "Can't say I blame them. We've arranged for escorts and human chains to protect the staff and patients, but ..." Again, a shrug. "The demonstrators usually outnumber us."
Clara winced mentally. She didn't have time for this. She'd be up half the night doing research at her own lab as it was.
"I'll take care of it," she said.
Cody looked skeptical. "If you're thinking of calling the police, don't bother. We've tried that. They don't show. We've already called on some of our own to protect us, though my fear is we'll end up with a riot, and a lot of dead innocents, unless we're very, very careful."
The way she said "our own" bothered Clara. Cody was a nat. Joker vigilantes weren't her people.
But Clara merely gave her a little smile. "I have an idea or two that might help."
Cody appeared to be studying her again, with that intent look.
"I hope you don't mind my directness, Dr. van Renssaeler - "
"Clara."
An appreciative glance crossed her face. "Clara, then. I have a confession. I'm a bit of an admirer. I've read a number of your papers in virology and immunology. You've done some impressive work on the wild card."
That caught Clara by surprise. "Thank you."
"And frankly, I'm surprised you accepted this position, as you are so clearly a researcher. Not a physician, nor an administrator."
Clara eyed the older surgeon for a long moment. Her heart rate had picked up again.
"You want to know why I'm here, you mean. Why I accepted this position."
Cody gave a shrug. "Forgive me if I'm being intrusive. I'm merely surprised that you'd put aside your research this way, when your career seems to be at its peak."
Clara sat back. She had better deal with this now. Cody Havero was really doing her a favor - the questions would be there, behind the polite faces, until she'd addressed them. And, after a fashion, she could even tell the truth.