Janice stepped toward the patient with the blank facial expression of an experienced nurse. Inside, she could feel something tremble. She reached the bed and flicked on the reading lamp. Her knees went wobbly. The patient's eyes, glassy and uncomprehending, looked straight through her. His lips were parted and frozen. His arms felt almost brittle, like the branches on an old tree that would break rather then bend.
Janice ran for the door.
Max stared at Sara.
"Michael has AIDS?"
She nodded.
He collapsed into a chair.
"I don't know what to say, Sara." "He'll be fine," Sara said firmly.
He nodded, unsure what to say next.
"Who knows about Michael's condition?"
"Aside from us," Harvey replied, "just Eric and maybe one of the hospital nurses."
"Maybe?"
"There is a good chance that the nurse might recognize his face."
"Who's the nurse?"
"Her name is Janice Matley."
"You trust her?"
"Completely."
He shook his head.
"I don't care how much security you have around here, there is no way you're going to be able to keep this a secret." "We know that," Sara said.
"Michael has scheduled a press conference for tomorrow evening. It'll be covered live on News Flash
Bernstein's eyes squinted into small slits.
"Are you trying to tell me that Michael is going to tell the world he has AIDS?"
Sara nodded.
"And then you're going to do the report on SRI?"
"Not me," Sara corrected.
"I'm too close to this now. Donald Parker is going to do it." "And what exactly is Parker going to cover?" Max asked.
"The AIDS cure? The Gay Slasher connection? Senator Jenkins' kid being treated at the clinic?"
"All of it," Sara replied.
Max took the pencil out of his mouth and let go a whistle.
"That's going to be one hell of a story. The whole country is already talking about the Gay Slasher story. Wait till John Q. Public finds out that the murders are connected to a clinic that's found a cure for AIDS. And then add the fact that Michael Silverman has AIDS and is being treated at the same clinic." Bernstein shook his head again.
"It's going to be unbelievable."
No one said anything for a moment.
"Okay," Max said, "switch gears with me a second, Doc. You said the lab door was locked when you tried the knob, right?"
"Right."
"Who has a key besides you?"
"Eric and Winston O'Connor, the chief lab technician."
"Does this O'Connor know about Michael?"
"No," Harvey replied, "Winston doesn't know the names of any of the patients in here. Like I said before, the test results are coded. The people in the lab never see the names, only numbers.
In other words Winston O'Connor sees the test results, but he is 'blind' as to whom it involves. We even change their code numbers weekly so that they cannot be traced down."
"You're a cautious man, Dr. Riker."
"Almost paranoid, right?"
Bernstein was about to answer when they heard a shout.
Janice Matley stuck her head through the doorway.
"Dr. Riker, come quick!" Janice shouted, though she knew it was much too late.
"What is its
"Code blue! A patient's arrested!"
12.
Jennifer Riker scanned the contents in the packet.
Little of it made sense. First, there were the files.
Being a doctor's wife, Jennifer had seen plenty of patient files before but these were considerably more vague than most. Specifics were not jotted down more like Bruce's overall opinions and thoughts on the patient. A journal almost. She read the neatly typed name on the label of the first file: Trian, Scott.
She jumped back to the beginning of the file and saw a whole slew of numbers:
1/9 897a83 1/16 084c33 1/23 995d42 1/30 774c09 2/06 786m60 They continued in a similar pattern for two full pages. Jennifer went to the kitchen and grabbed a calendar. She guessed that 1/9 must stand for January 9,1/16 for January 16, and so on. She checked the calendar. January 9 was a Monday, as was every other day that followed. For some reason Bruce had jotted down a five digit number with a letter between the third and fourth numeral on every Monday.
Why?
She shrugged and continued to read. Very little of it made sense to her a lot of medical jargon but early on she read something that she understood all too clearly:
HIV positive. T cell count very low. Signs of Kaposi's sarcoma.
The word wasn't there, but Jennifer knew what Bruce was trying to say: AIDS. In fact she could not find the term anywhere in any of the reports, as though the very acronym should be avoided, whispered, never written in anything but easy-to-erase pencil.
AIDS.
She continued to read. A few pages later another paragraph gave her reason to pause. Bruce's handwriting was bright now, soaring, reflecting the mood he had obviously felt at this moment.
She had seen what the job of medical research could do to a man, the highs and the lows, how every setback brought on depression and every breakthrough a major high. Emotions swayed on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis:
Good news. Trian appears to be getting better. His progress is remarkably similar to the animal tests which proved so successful. It is hard not to get your hopes up when you chart it. The SRI has taken its toll on him, but for the first time he appears genuinely healthy.
Is it simply remission or something much more?
And ten months later:
We are finally ready. Harvey and I will know tomorrow.
I can't believe it. Both of us are so anxious that we keep snapping at one another and anyone who happens to be around us. Poor Eric. Harvey almost bit his head off for nothing.
He felt bad about it afterwards, like Harv always does when he loses his temper. Then he tried to make it up to him by repeatedly complimenting Eric on his work.
I can't blame Harvey for being a little edgy. This is it.
This is what we've been waiting for.
What was Bruce talking about? What were they waiting for?
Jennifer noted the date. Nine months ago. So much had happened to her in the last nine months leaving Harvey, moving to California but when Jennifer read what happened the next day, she realized how insignificant the changes in her life had been.
Bruce's words put her own private world back in perspective, and for the first time in many months she felt the hollow pang of inadequacy ripple anew from the distant recesses of her mind.
"My God," she uttered out loud.
"It can't be."
She swallowed and re-read the page, sure that she had misunderstood the words:
I am not ashamed to say that tears keep running down my face as I write this. Powerful emotions keep crashing over me. It's more than I can take. It's more than I ever expected to hear. But I'm getting ahead of myself so let me go back a moment.
"I'll try to be as precise as possible for the sake of posterity.
Harvey and I wanted to see the Trian results for ourselves. After all, this is hardly the kind of thing you wait for the lab boys to send you a report on. So we walked toward the lab with the controlled rush of school children heading for recess under a teacher's watchful eye.
Winston seemed surprised to see us. He asked what we were doing in the lab. I told him we wanted the results for 443t90. Why the rush?
Winston asked.
Harvey became a little impatient, which was certainly understandable under the circumstances, and told him to hand over the file. Winston did.