The Hospital Page #8

I'm offering you green silence, and solitude.

The natural order of things.

Mostly, I'm offering me.

I think we're beautiful.

You make it sound almost plausible.

I don't know why you even hesitate.

What's holding you here?

Is it your wife?

That's all over.

If I'm married to anything, it's this hospital.

It's been my whole life.

I can't walk out on it

as though it never mattered.

I'm middle class.

Among us middle class,

love doesn't triumph over all...

responsibility does.

Don't ask me to stay up here with you,

because I love you, and I will.

And we'll both be destroyed.

I have the bill here to pay, yet.

I'll come with you.

You wanted to know the name

of that dialysis nurse?

Who?

The one who goofed

on your patient, Drummond.

Her name is Teresa Campanella.

You're not gonna believe this.

She died on the operating table of OR 3

about an hour ago.

- What?

- You heard about the screwup in OR 3.

- You mean she was the one?

- I just identified her.

What is going on?

Every time I try to find somebody,

they either died of a heart attack...

or anesthesia shock in an OR.

I just came from the OR.

They're trying to find a Dr. Schaefer.

Doesrt a kid named Schaefer work here?

Did. He died yesterday

of an overdose of insulin. Why?

The nurse says there's a Dr. Schaefer

hanging around the holding room.

Wouldrt have been your Schaefer.

Nurse says it was senior staff,

middle-aged man.

There's no senior staff by that name.

I told them that. I said, "I don't know

any senior staff named Schaefer."

They've got detectives down there.

A whole big investigation.

- How'd the nurse know his name?

- His nameplate.

I am the fool for Christ,

and Paraclete of Caborca.

For heavers sakes, Dad.

What the hell's going on?

We thought you were at death's door.

What are you doing out of bed?

What happened?

What's he going at you for?

Did he say anything?

As a matter of fact...

he said, "I am the fool for Christ

and the Paraclete of Caborca."

Shut that door,

because if he tells everybody...

he's the fool for Christ and the Paraclete

of Caborca, they'll put us all away.

He's killed two doctors and a nurse.

I am the wrath of the lamb,

and the angel of the bottomless pit.

What do you mean?

I mean he's killed two doctors and a nurse.

He just tried to kill me.

He has something against doctors.

He got ahold of some insulin and put it

in Dr. Schaefer's intravenous solution.

Somehow, he got Dr. Ives

to die of a heart attack...

in the middle of the Emergency Room.

Somehow, he got a dialysis nurse,

Campanella...

to die of anesthesia shock

on an operating table.

He's been running all over the hospital,

dressed up in Dr. Schaefer's uniform.

They're looking all over the place

for the mysterious Dr. Schaefer.

It's incredible to us both, but as you can

see, your father is not a helpless comatose.

I'm not the one who's crazy.

Ask your crazy father.

I was merely an instrument of God.

I kill no one.

They all three died by their own hands.

Ritual victims of their own institutions...

murdered by irony.

"An eye for an eye."

Biblical retribution.

Schaefer was first, because he killed God.

God was admitted

to this hospital last Monday...

under the name of Guernsey.

I was instantly aware of a divine presence.

I was convinced this porcelain old man

was an angel of the Lord...

perhaps even Christ himself.

Our savior was suffering from emphysema.

He was relentlessly subjected

to the benefits of modern medicine...

and died at 7:
30 that evening.

A few hours later,

he appeared to me in a revelation.

Rise up, Drummond.

You are dead, now you are restored.

Those who killed you,

and those who killed me...

will die in our place.

You are the Paraclete of Caborca.

The wrath of the lamb.

The angel...

of the bottomless pit.

Not quite the burning bush, perhaps,

but prodigal enough for me.

I was to avenge the death of God,

and my own brutalization.

I was to kill doctors Schaefer,

Ives, and Welbeck...

and the dialysis nurse, Miss Campanella...

whose negligence caused my coma.

I awaited a further sign from God,

which was given to me later that evening.

Dr. Schaefer had arranged an assignation...

with a girl from the Hematology Lab

named Sheila.

Boy, I sure hope nobody walks in.

- What about him?

- He's zonked out.

- What's new?

- Nothing.

- What's this?

- It's my insulin.

I forgot to put it back.

What's the insulin for?

I didn't know you were a diabetic.

It ain't contagious, don't worry.

You took the insulin from Dr. Schaefer's

pocket and put it in the IV.

Yes.

Then a nurse came...

and plugged the IVjar into Schaefer.

God clearly intended

a measure of irony here.

The hospital was to do all the killing for me.

All I need do is arrange for the doctors

to become patients in their own hospital.

The next morning,

I pinched some digoxin from the pharmacy...

and a sandbag from a utility can't...

and found my way to Dr. Ives' laboratory.

I crushed him with the sandbag...

and gave him a massive shot of the digoxin.

This brought on an instant condition

of cardiac arrhythmia.

I waited for him to come to.

Then I brought him down

to the Emergency Room.

He had, at that time, perhaps an hour to live.

Prompt treatment would've saved his life.

He was suddenly taken ill.

I got him here right away.

As a staff doctor,

he was seen without preliminaries.

His vital signs were taken.

An electrocardiogram...

which revealed occasional

ventricular premature contractions.

An intern took his history,

and then he was...

promptly, simply...

forgotten to death.

Simply mislaid.

Mislaid among the broken wrists...

the chest pains, the scalp lacerations...

the man whose fingers

were crushed in a taxi door...

the infant with a skin rash,

the child swiped by a car...

the old lady mugged in the subway,

the derelict beaten by sailors...

the teenage suicide, the paranoids...

drunks, asthmatics, the rapes,

the septic abortions...

the overdosed addicts...

the fractures, infarcts, hemorrhages,

concussions, boils, abrasions...

the colonic cancers, the cardiac arrests...

the whole wounded madhouse of our times.

Who's Number 7680202-S?

Is there anybody here who is that number?

In this way...

was it revealed to me

the manner of Nurse Campanella's death.

She was to die

of the great American plague:

Vestigial identity.

So, last night I crushed Miss Campanella

with a sandbag...

sedated her with Thorazine,

shaved her, prepped her...

and parked her in a corridor

of the x-ray department for five hours.

- Why x-ray?

- At x-ray...

a sedated body lying around

unattended for five hours...

- wouldn't seem unusual.

- Of course.

Her operation, that is to say...

Mrs. Mangafranni's operation,

was not scheduled till 9:30.

At 9:
15 this morning, I rang for my nurse.

Rang for your nurse?

To insure one full hour

of uninterrupted privacy.

I got up, wheeled Miss Campanella

off to the operating rooms...

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