by Mark Jeffrey
“Not as rich as you think,” Elspeth said, taking another sip of wine, and really feeling it now. “See, everyone thinks doctors are rich. We’re not poor … but you’d be surprised at how not-rich we actually are. Here, I’ll tell you story about that.”
She paused for moment to wolf down some more and then resumed: “About ten years ago, Oscar — that’s my husband — Oscar and I, we had a daughter. I was just starting my own practice, and we didn’t have a lot of money yet. Anyway … these drug companies came calling. You know, Big Pharma. They have lots and lots of money. And they spend it — God, how they spend it!
“They have these salespeople who come and visit you. Always attractive! Did you know that pharmaceutical salespeople have the highest percentage of former prom kings and queens of any profession? It’s true. All those kids who were the hottest in high school, they go to college and then, bam! They’re done. The real world hits them.
“So what do they do? I’ll tell you what. They go into sales — usually pharma, because it’s so lucrative. And just like that, they’re back again, just like high school and college, hanging with the hot crowd, and hotting around with doctors and nurses. It’s sexy.
“Only — they don’t really know what they’re selling. And they don’t much care. All they’re worried about is hitting their quota — and where the next kegger is come Saturday night.
“Anyway, this one smooth talking guy comes along and introduces me to Quaofloxin. It’s a new injectable for a variety of illnesses. The studies on it are out of John Hopkins, Harvard, you name it. They’ve got graphs that all go up, up, up to Mars. Liquid sunshine, just pop it in a vein twice a week.
“But the real attraction is the gifts and kickbacks that come with it. The more you prescribe, the more kickbacks you get. Oh it’s not supposed to work like that, but that’s exactly how it does work. They structure it in ways that make it so it doesn’t appear to be a kickback, it’s a ‘gift’ or a ‘reward’. But the result is the same: your bank account starts filling up.
“Well, Quaofloxin made my practice possible. In the first few years, when my business probably would have folded, those extra reward dollars worked wonders on my account. Even so, right around the second year, I started to have my doubts about Quaofloxin: too many of my patients were showing side effects. Some suffered convulsions; others developed severe neck and back pain. One lost the ability to walk. One even died, after losing the ability to breathe. Now, mind you, I wasn’t absolutely sure that it was the Quaofloxin was directly responsible — and all the studies indicated the opposite, that the drug was completely safe.
“Even still, I might have gotten off the Quaofloxin crack pipe, if it hadn’t been for our baby.”
Elspeth paused for a moment, a spasm of pain wracking her face. “Oscar had just lost his job when I got pregnant. By the time I went on maternity leave, we were basically living off of what I’d managed to sock away from the Quaofloxin ‘rewards’. And that’s when we got our second shock: our baby daughter was born with a faulty heart valve. She wasn’t expected to live.
“So the operations began. There were four of them total. Four! Can you imagine that? On a body that tiny? And of course we had health insurance, but no insurance covers something like this, not really. The medical bills started piling up. I had to go back to work, far sooner than I wanted to, but there was no choice.
“We were desperate. We badly needed money for our baby to live. It was that simple. It was an equation. If you had the money, you could pay for life. If not … well, then not. I mean, holy shit, right? When your child is at stake, you’ll do anything. So I loaded up on the Quaofloxin. I doubled down. I prescribed it like candy.
“And I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, mind you. The rational part of my brain, the scientific part, it reasoned that the best science backed this stuff up. So what if I made money from it? And not just money — money I desperately needed? That was capitalism. That was the free market. But I ignored the little voice in my brain, the gut instinct you get as a doctor, the intuition that something was off. I pushed it down, chalked it up to irrational guilt. Guilt over what? Success? That I was a Doctor? You’re goddamn right I was Doctor! I’d worked my ass off in school for years —!
“Well. This was my reward. This money. The ability to protect my baby. To buy her life. It was my goddamn reward!”
Elspeth was almost in tears. David could see the story was tearing her apart. “And it worked. She lived. She doesn’t have any complications at all. You’d never know she was born with anything. There are miracles in the world. But they cost money. They’re expensive.”
For the first time, she saw the look on David’s face as she had been speaking. He looked sad, strange.
“Yes. You’re right. There are miracles in the world. And they’re very expensive.”
SIX: THE VIZIER
ELSPETH WAS kept on work detail in the arboretum for several days. Her routine was mind-numbingly simple. She now lived the life of a peasant girl in the middle ages, she decided. Penniless and cold, she rose to harvest the crops at hard labor during the day. And at night, she slept on a bed that might as well have been a palette — though she did have the Order to keep her mind occupied.
“Hey,” James Card called out to her one night.
“Yeah, I’m here,” Elspeth said over the racket of the night films. She came to the bars.
“Oh look. It lives!”
“Stop it. You don’t know how hard the work is in the arboretum. Ridiculous.”
“I guess not. They have me in the metal shop now. Pretty easy compared to everywhere else. I’m making barrels. I think.”
“Barrels?”
“Yeah. Big cylinder things. We’re welding them from metal sheets. Could be for wine.”
She laughed. “I doubt it.” Again, she felt the urge to tell him about the Order and even about the wine she’d recently had … but declined to do so. She’d given her word to David.
“Hey. Well anyway I wanted to tell you two things. Ready for the first?”
“Sure. Shoot.”
“Okay … one sec.” He vanished from his bars, and she heard a big band jazz song start up in his cell — she could barely hear it over the din of the movies, but hear it she could. He returned, his face glowing. “Eh? How’s that?”
“What is that?”
“That’s my phonograph! The one I asked for! They actually gave me one!”
Elspeth stared stunned. “They did?”
“Uh-huh!”
“Incredible. I knew you were a good salesman but …”
“Never underestimate my salesmanship, not even in here! I’m always an entrepreneur, no matter where I am!”
She nodded, impressed. “Okay. What’s the second thing?”
“Ah yes, that. Have you heard about this guy ‘the Vizier’?”
“Nope.”
“Well. This Vizier is supposedly Egyptian — and super ill. And getting worse, from the stories. Nobody can even tell what his disease is.”
“So?”
“So you’re a doctor, Doctor Lune. And this guy is not in a normal cell from what everyone says. He’s basically living in a Hilton penthouse suite.”
“And again I say … so?”
“So there’s a reason why. He knows something we don’t. Sure, I can get a phonograph. But I doubt even I could get as set up as this guy. He’s too sick to work, but something tells me that even if he were completely healthy, he’d still be on permanent vacation in here anyway.”
“I’m getting tired of saying ‘so’.”
“So you should get the guards to let you see him. Because you’re a doctor. Get him talking. Find out what he knows.”
“HEY,” Elspeth said to a guard at the end of her shift. “This Vizier guy I keep hearing about. Maybe I can help him. I’m a Doctor.”
The guard ignored her completely.
The next day, she tried the same thing. And the next after that. Each time, th
e guard was as reactive as a piece of steel.
But then one evening, as she was preparing for sleep, a guard appeared at her door. “Come on. You wanted to see the Vizier. I’ll take you to him now.”
“Oh,” Elspeth said, surprised. “Okay. Now?” The guard nodded. “Oh. Okay. Sure.”
THE CELL of the Vizier was unlike any of the others, just as James Card had predicted.
His was filled with amenities of all kinds. His inviting bed was large and heaped with blankets. He had a pantry filled with food, and a small kitchen. Cold, fresh water sat in jugs. There was a small hearth with a fire crackling: this cell was warm and comfortable. His bathroom was private, with folding dividers hiding it modestly. Books lined the walls, as well as tapestries. He had a wardrobe with plenty of clean clothes — mostly crimson robes and black belts and gold turbans. A half-eaten meal on a silver tray with ornate silverware lay on a hard-carved and varnished wooden table. And candles, candles, everywhere, happily lit, throwing warm light everywhere.
One might have thought they had stumbled into the tent of a sheik.
But the Vizier himself was not well. That was clear. He lay on a palette, coughing. It was that gurgling cough of the deeply unwell. He held a handkerchief up to his mouth: when he removed it, bright red mist-dots covered it. His complexion was dark, but his gaze was even darker. Thunder roiled beneath his brow.
“Come in,” the Vizier said to Elspeth.
“I’m a doctor,” she said immediately. “Let me examine you. I can help.” She didn’t have her medical instruments with her, but there was plenty she could still —
The Vizier coughed a laugh. “Your salves are effectless here. Is it possible that you do not yet grasp this? Then you are less than I had hoped for.”
She ignored him and stooped and took his arm, rolling back his sleeve. She took note of the bubble-growths and lesions that covered his arm as she took his pulse. That, and the faint stench of decay: the sickening sweet smell of rot.
“I’m a doctor,” she said. “I ‘grasp’ that.”
It wasn’t like any disease she was familiar with. She had never seen anything like this.
Her medical training took over. She treated him clinically, like a patient with a bad attitude. His pulse was strong at his wrist, same at the neck. Without asking for permission, she pried his eyes apart and watched the pupil dilation response. His eyes were old eyes, though he himself seemed no older than forty-five or so.
“You don’t know what afflicts me, do you?” the Vizier said, his smile crooked and his breath foul.
That roiled her anger immediately. But only for a moment. The funny thing was, though, he was right — and he was wrong. There was something familiar about his condition, it was just that, it shouldn’t be possible, not now …
“Hansen’s disease,” she said suddenly, the words coming out of her mouth surprising even her.
He nodded. “Otherwise known as leprosy.”
The Vizier was a leper.
“You mustn’t worry though,” the Vizier said. “You can’t catch it.” She nodded, remembering facts now from medical school. Leprosy was not particularly contagious: in fact, 95% of humanity was naturally immune.
“I know,” she said.
“But do you?” the Vizier said, coughing out a strained laugh. “I wonder how much you really understand of your predicament here in the Glass Prison.”
She looked up sharply, cocking an eyebrow. “You know about that name?”
“Yes. Anyone who has been on The Road long enough has heard of the Glass Prison. But there’s nothing you can do for me, as I’ve said.”
“Leprosy can be cured nowadays. We’ve got antibiotics that will arrest it, even reverse it.”
“But I’ve already been cured,” the Vizier said, oddly. “I’ve even got my missing toes and fingers back.” He held up a hand that contradicted his claim: leprosy had claimed his fingers. Now a small stump with bubbling flesh was all that remained.
The Vizier was delusional. Of course he wasn’t already cured. Leprosy was gnawing on him, literally eating him alive. Maybe it was eating his brain.
“When you did first notice the symptoms? Do you even know?”
“Oh, yes. They began immediately when I was brought here.”
That got her attention. His leprosy had started when he had entered the Prison?
The exact reverse had happened for her: she had been missing a pinky. When she entered the Glass Prison, it had mysteriously regrown almost overnight.
How was that possible?
More importantly: What did it mean?
That the Prison hurt some people; but it cured others? Why? How?
Part of her mind gibbered, Maybe I have a pinky now because he doesn’t. And maybe this visit is his way of accusing me. But instead of asking about that, she said, “What’s ‘The Road’?”
The Vizier’s eyes flashed: she’d hit a nerve, asked a right question. “The Road,” he said solemnly, reverently. “The Road is what I was on when I was unceremoniously swept into this miserable place. And The Road is whence I shall return when I leave.” And he drew a hexagon in the dust on the floor — a hexagon like those covering the wall of her cell, she realized.
What did that mean though? What was with the hexagons everywhere?
Was there a connection?
“But it’s not a real road,” Elspeth said, her intuition jumping while she slapped his hand away as she continued to examine his legs. “I’m a doctor, cut it out. It’s not a literal road. The Road is a spiritual journey of some kind. Right? What are you, Hindu? Muslim?”
“Egyptian,” the Vizier smiled. “And you could say that about The Road, yes.”
“So what is it, then? This ‘The Road’. I mean exactly.”
The Vizier shook his head. “My wisdom is for me alone, for I alone have earned it.”
“So you’re going to be a dick and not tell me. You think because you have a turban, that makes you a holy man that can’t —”
“Oh, no,” the Vizier said, laughing. “This I do for you. Wisdom burns the mind of the unearned. It is not your time; the knowledge would harm you. Would you give a small child a sharp knife to play with, simply because they asked for it? No. Neither will I do this.”
“So when will it be time?”
“When you’re serious. Tell me: are you serious?”
Elspeth fixed him with her gaze. “Do I look serious?
The Vizier shook his head and withdrew. “No. You are not serious. Not yet. Perhaps you will become so. Perhaps not.”
“I want to get out of here,” she said. “Do you know how to get out of here? Because I’m goddamn serious about that.”
“Yes,” the Vizier said. “The way of escape is plain.”“
She stopped herself and then looked at him anew. “Wait. Is that it? Do you really want to get out of here? To get back to your ‘Road’ or whatever?”
“Oh, yes,” he hissed. There was no mistake about this: his tone said he desperately wanted to leave. “I think of nothing else, continually.”
“Okay, then. That makes us allies. Right?”
“Assuredly.”
“Good. Great. Allies share information. They tell each other things.”
He shook his head. “Not until you are serious. You are not a worthy ally until then.”
“Look at my eyes! I’m furious about being in this place. I want to get out of here! You say we’re allies? Fine. Let’s escape. I’m game. Right now. I’ll come with you. Let’s go. Anytime you say!”
He shook his head. “It is not yet time.” Anticipating her eruption of questions, he said, “It would be … inauspicious to leave. There would be unintended consequences.”
“Okay.” She could barely contain herself. This guy was a princess. “So when would be a convenient time for you to escape this Prison you say you are desperate to leave and know exactly how to do so?”
“When you’re serious.”
She dropped his
robe in disgust. “Is this a goddamn game with you? Because it’s not with me. I am deadly serious! What does it take to convince you? I want out of here! I need to find my husband, and I’m running out of time!”
At the mention of husband, the Vizier grew visibly interested. “You seek your husband. This is good, auspicious.”
“Good to hear. Is that serious enough for you?”
The Vizier frowned. “Alas ...”
She wanted to smack him. “I don’t know how much more serious I could be. I don’t know what you want from me.”
But the Vizier said nothing more, only smiling his creepy Egyptian smile. His golden teeth glinted, even in the low light. “I have faith in you, Elspeth Lune of cell fifteen fifteen.”
“SO?” Card asked the next morning at breakfast. “I heard you went to see him.”
“Hmm. News travels fast.”
“It is a prison, after all. What have we got, but gossip? So what did he say?”
“Not a lot,” Elspeth said. “He’s kind of a weird dude. He wants to escape, though he says he can get out of here anytime he wants.”
“That’s BS,” Card said flatly. “If he could really leave, he would have by now.”
“Yeah. That’s kind of what I think as well.”
“Still … he’s worth keeping tabs on.”
“He’s got leprosy.”
“Oh? Oh.” Card sounded almost panicked now. She’d forgotten how much of a germaphobe he was.
“Relax, boy in the bubble. He’s not contagious. You can’t catch it.”
Still, she couldn’t help but stifle a laugh when she heard Card’s faucet come on — and run continuously for a full half hour. He only stopped because Ione came by and hung around the front of his cell for a full hour, talking with him shyly, asking him if he liked his record player. Elspeth watched this act of Ione’s suspiciously — she managed to pull off a completely different persona out here in the prison than in the tunnels.