Deadly Cure

by Lawrence Goldstone

  “I suppose so.”

  “No need to suppose. This is science. Let me know as soon as you can lay your hands on one of those tablets. In the meantime, I’ve got some things I wish to try on my own.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  DAY 6. MONDAY, 9/25—NOON

  The door on Lafayette Street swung open quickly, almost striking Noah in the face, and Sasha, the dour Slavic boy with the pock-marked face, burst out. The boy looked up at him for a moment, glowered, then hurried past and down the street. Every errand these people run they think is urgent, Noah thought.

  Noah walked up the stairs to the second floor. Just before he reached New Visions’ door, a series of odd events occurred in rapid sequence.

  The glass on the door seemed to bulge out and then break; the hall seemed to lose its orientation to the horizontal; Noah felt pressure on his chest, as if he had been caught in some great wave at the seashore; and, most frighteningly, he could no longer hear. Just after these singular phenomena, the hall went black.

  Noah opened his eyes. His lungs were choked with dust. Glass and plaster littered the hall. The door to New Visions was gone, as was a good deal of the wall. His vision was blurred, and the scene floated in front of him, as if in a dream. He still could not hear, although a buzz of background seemed to ring in his ears. He was confused. He was aware of where he was, yet unaware at the same time.

  He tried to stand but pitched back to his hands and knees. Sounds had begun to penetrate the buzz. Sharp sounds, although they seemed to be filtered through liquid. Then Noah knew. They were screams. Awareness returned, slowly at first, then faster.

  Bomb. The offices of New Visions had been bombed. The vision of Sasha running away from the building stuck in his mind for a moment, then was replaced.

  Miriam.

  Noah tried once again to stand, but once again fell. Finally, he succeeded in forcing himself to his feet. He began to stagger through the plaster and glass to the destroyed offices. He realized his clothes were torn, his jacket almost shredded. Warm liquid flowed down his forehead. His own blood. He continued through the hall, his steps still unsteady. The screams became clearer, louder, more persistent.

  He reached the yawning opening in the wall and braced himself against a stud. The devastation inside was staggering. Plaster, broken furniture, hanging wires, torn papers, twisted metal, shards of glass and wood were everywhere. Interspersed with the inanimate wreckage was the wreckage of men and women, sometimes whole, sometimes in parts. A man’s leg, still in its trouser, was at his feet. He scanned the room but could not see her. He continued to hear the screams but could make out no one screaming. To his left, he saw that Mauritz Herzberg’s office was completely blown out.

  Noah began to make his way through the room. The first three people he encountered—two women and a man—were dead. One of the men was the owner of traumatically amputated leg. Another man was unconscious with a fractured humerus. Noah propped him up and placed his arm on a piece of desktop. A woman, her clothes in tatters, lay muttering to herself. Noah sat her up as well. Both would survive until ambulances arrived. A bit farther on, Noah saw the door to Mauritz’s office. It had been blown, almost intact, halfway across the main room. Noah was about to keep searching when he saw a foot protruding from underneath. He reached down and flung the door to the side.

  Miriam.

  She was lying half-turned to one side. She seemed conscious. Noah knelt by her and reached for her wrist. Pulse was weak and rapid. Thready. Difficult to palpate. Her skin was pallid; her gaze unfocused. Hemorrhagic shock. Blood loss. Internal or external. If the former, he would be unable to save her. Like Isobel.

  Noah rolled Miriam over. Blood underneath her. As large as a rain puddle. Leg wound. Not pulsing. Venous, not arterial. Warm. Elevate. Pressure. He grabbed for the door that had pinned Miriam to the floor—and very possibly had shielded her and saved her life. Her father’s door. He rolled Miriam onto it and placed one end on some debris, forming an incline. Trendelenburg position. Head below the heart. Maximize blood flow to the brain and lessen it to the wound. He covered her torso with whatever was available. Her eyes—those wonderful eyes—were glazed.

  Noah ripped off his vest, folded it into a compress, and held it to the wound as tightly as he could. Pressure. More effective than a tourniquet, even with major trauma. Would not present the danger of cutting off blood flow completely and mortifying tissue.

  After a few seconds, the bleeding was under control, but Noah dared not release the compress. Miriam’s eyes had cleared slightly. Her brain was getting more oxygen.

  “Noah?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

  “Yes. Be still.”

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  “In the other room.”

  Noah sensed movement and looked up to see a man in the doorway, likely from one of the other offices in the building. “You! Come here!” Noah yelled. For the first time, he noticed that his shirt front was covered in blood.

  The man did not move at first, so Noah yelled again. The man finally began to pick his way through the rubble, looking back and forth in disbelief, as if he had entered the Ninth Circle of Hell.

  “Hold this tight right here!” Noah commanded when the man arrived. Noah showed the man how to keep pressure on the wound. The screaming had stopped, replaced by a soft moaning emanating from many quarters at once. He must help the others.

  “Don’t leave.” Miriam’s voice was still weak, but her articulation had improved.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be right here.”

  As he stood to look around the room, Noah heard bells in the distance. Ambulances. As he combed through the rubble, he located three more dead. He made comfortable another four whose injuries could wait until medical personnel arrived in force, removing shards of glass, supporting broken limbs. He discovered one man bleeding from multiple cuts whom he also placed in the Trendelenburg position. A number of men had begun to appear at the scene. Noah employed them, one after another, directing each to perform whatever emergency function might keep the injured in stasis until professional help arrived. As he moved back and forth through the room, he checked on Miriam often. She seemed no worse. Lacking internal injury, she would survive.

  Finally, when he had done all he could for the living, Noah made his way to Mauritz Herzberg’s office. The room had been reduced to a pile of odd sizes of wood, glass, plaster, and paper, piled together as if at a town dump. The window was gone, completely blown out. What remained of Herzberg’s desk, half a top and one leg, rested against what once had been a side wall.

  Noah saw a right hand protruding from the pile. Although his own head wound seemed to have stopped bleeding, he suddenly felt light-headed, dizzy, vaguely faint. He lowered his head between his knees for a moment, then pushed forward through the debris. Throwing off the larger pieces of flotsam and scraping off the smaller, he uncovered a head and torso. Mauritz would have been unrecognizable to a stranger. His face was largely gone. His left arm had been torn off at the elbow, and massive thoracic trauma was apparent. At least he would be able to tell Miriam that her father had died instantly. The concussion had been so close, so severe, that Mauritz would not have had even a second’s recognition.

  Noah’s fatigue was returning quickly. He staggered out into the main room to see that ambulance attendants had begun to fill the room. His legs suddenly felt like jelly, and the room was moving before his eyes. Voices lost distinction, became hollow, distant. Noah tried to move to where Miriam lay, to instruct the ambulance attendant precisely what care to take of her wound. After his first step, his other leg could not follow. The room began to spin. He was vaguely conscious of a man in white gesturing in his direction. The man seemed to be yelling something, but Noah could not hear him.

  The effort to stand had become overwhelming. Noah leaned backward, coming to rest against a denuded joist. He slid slowly to the floor. He felt his eyes closing, as if drifting off into a deep sleep.

  TWENTY-TH
REE

  DAY 6. MONDAY, 9/25—5 P.M.

  Welcome back, Dr. Whitestone.”

  Noah blinked and looked about. White walls. Overhead lights.

  “Where am I?”

  “Bellevue Hospital.”

  Noah’s vision began to clear. A man was looking down at him. Young. Smiling.

  “You’ll be fine,” the man said soothingly. “I’m Bradley Kerr. We’ve sutured your head wound. Other than some superficial bruises, you’re in remarkably good condition. Drink a lot of water and fruit juice. Of course, you would know to do that already.”

  “How are the others?” Noah was in a private room. He wondered why.

  Kerr frowned. Doctors generally disliked treating other doctors. As patients, physicians tended to be pushy and inquisitive. Nor could they be put off by evasions or platitudes. “Nine dead in total. Out of twenty, we think. Of the eleven, only two will likely not make it. The others will be all right over time. No small thanks to you.”

  “There was a woman . . .”

  “With the leg wound? Yes. She’s the one who told us your name. She’s going to be fine. Miracle, really. Being as close to the blast as she was. We transfused her. Two pints so far. Seemed to take.”

  “Did you mix the blood first?”

  Kerr fought back the urge to be curt. “Of course.”

  Transfusions were dangerous, hit-and-miss affairs. Sometimes, an unpredictable incompatibility seemed to exist between donor and recipient, which caused the recipient to fall critically ill or even die. Surgeons had discovered that mixing the donor’s blood with the recipient’s before transfering back to the patient seemed to radically lessen the number of adverse reactions. There was a theory running around that blood could actually be “typed”—analyzed for properties—but nothing had been proven.

  “You know, Dr. Whitestone, if you had been thirty seconds later treating that wound . . .”

  Noah nodded. The movement sent a dull pain through his skull.

  “You saved her life.” Kerr crossed his arms. “The Red Lady.”

  What was that supposed to mean? “Can I see her?”

  “Soon.” Kerr had seen him wince. “We’ve got something for the pain. New drug. Amazing analgesic properties.”

  “Aspirin?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Kerr lifted a small cloth off the table top to reveal two blue tablets. Noah wondered whether Kerr was aware of the ingredients in the medication he had just recommended. Noah considered for a moment whether to decline the tablets. But he had encountered no adverse reactions from Aspirin, and what better way to learn about new drugs than to take them himself?

  “Do you have Heroin as well?” Noah asked after he swallowed the tablets with a glass of water. “I believe they are marketed by the same company.”

  “The cough remedy? Where did your hear about that? We just received a memorandum from the chief of medicine this morning.”

  “I have a friend at Brooklyn Hospital.”

  “Really?” Kerr walked to the doorway and leaned for moment against the side. “But no, I don’t believe so. I’ll ask for you, if you like.”

  “That’s all right. I was just curious.”

  “Of course. Well, I suppose I should give you the talk.” Kerr then advised him in professional monotone to rest until the medication could begin to take effect. Then he left the room, switching off the electric light as he went.

  Within fifteen minutes, the pain in Noah’s head had begun to substantially subside. A marvelous sensation of relief. Whatever the benefits or detriments of Heroin, if Noah’s experience was any test, Aspirin was destined to reap the enormous rewards that Herold had predicted.

  The door opened and the light switched on once more.

  “Feeling better?” McCluskey wore concern uneasily.

  Noah pulled himself up and propped his back against the pillow. The pain remained moderate.

  “Who’s Sasha, doc?”

  Noah didn’t reply.

  “You must know him. The doc out there said you called out his name . . . more than once . . . and even stuck ‘bastard’ on to it.”

  “I was delirious. I don’t remember doing anything of the sort.”

  “He remembers. Want me to call him back so he can say so?”

  “Sasha worked at the magazine. He was running out just before the explosion. When I said hello, he looked at me strangely and kept going.”

  McCluskey nodded. “Aleksandr Cviec. Belonged to a different group. Communists. We’d been watching him on and off. We watch all of them on and off, except the big fish. Mauritz. Miriam. Them we try to watch more often. So many of them, it’s like keeping track of cockroaches. Can’t say I can really tell them apart . . . socialists, anarchists, communists . . . but they sure seem to hate each other. Somebody had it in for old Mauritz. Took thirteen years, but justice is done at last.”

  “Eight others died as well, McCluskey. And I could have been nine.”

  “Woulda been sad about you, doc. As to the others . . .” McCluskey shrugged.

  “You seem to know a lot about these groups, McCluskey. Dolph. Sasha. If you are so clued in, how come you can’t stop any of the violence?”

  “Oh, we stop plenty, doc. Those stories just don’t make the papers.”

  “Are you going to be able to catch him? Sasha?”

  McCluskey shrugged. “We’ll try, but word is his friends already got him out of town. It’s a big country, doc, to try to find one lousy kid. Oh yeah, the dicks on the McKee case figure the communists did that one, too.”

  “Why? What do communists care about the Patent Medicine Trust?”

  “Don’t know nothing about that,” McCluskey replied. “But we do know he was working on a story saying the communists were betraying the workers. Lot of folks out there talking about the workers. Ain’t none of them workers themselves, though. Notice that, doc?”

  “Why was John J. Coughlin in the newspaper article about the trolley?”

  McCluskey shrugged. “That was me. Thought I was doing you a favor. I figured you’d had enough publicity for one week.”

  Noah tentatively swung his legs off the bed. He was in a hospital robe. His clothes were nowhere to be seen, although his shoes had been placed at the far side of the room.

  “Wait a minute, doc. Where you going? You’re not supposed to move around.”

  “I’m a physician, McCluskey. I know when I can move around and when I cannot.” In truth, he should have remained in bed. If he had suffered a mild concussion, no small possibility, movement could exacerbate the effects. But rest was a luxury he could scant afford.

  The policeman put his hand on Noah’s arm, although lightly, without force. “You don’t think we had any hand in this, do you, doc?” He did sincerity better.

  Noah looked up wearily. “Of course not, McCluskey. How could you think I would judge you so unfairly?”

  “Good. Glad you still got your humor, doc. Go and see your girlfriend then. But don’t forget our conversation.”

  “I never forget anything you say, McCluskey. And she’s not my girlfriend.”

  Noah pushed himself tentatively to his feet. Good. No sharp pain. No dizziness. No blurred vision. Cranial trauma had obviously been minimal. He was sore, his joints ached, and his forehead throbbed where he had been sutured, but under the circumstances, he was in excellent fettle. He wondered how long the Aspirin would remain effective. When the effects waned, he intended to ask for another dose.

  Noah took some tentative steps as McCluskey looked on. His balance was good. He touched a finger to his nose.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Coordination test.”

  “Guess you passed. Unless you was trying to poke yourself in the eye.”

  “Sorry to disappoint, McCluskey. I hit where I was aiming.”

  “And that’s it? You touch your nose and figure that you’re okay after getting knocked silly by a bomb?
You’re eroding my faith in medicine, doc.”

  “Well, McCluskey, since you are so concerned with my welfare . . .” The copper had succeeded in making himself almost likable, although Noah was not altogether certain how he had turned the trick. “If I had the time, I’d check my pupils for focus and dilation, my reflexes, and my heart and lungs. I’d perform a number of hand and arm movements to check for tremors, unilateral or bilateral motor weakness, coordination, and position sense. I would whistle, smile, and clench my teeth to check the trigeminal nerves, which, as I’m sure you know, branch off the cranium and control facial muscles. I would turn my head from side to side, slowly and then more quickly, then palpate the muscles that control head movement. I’d open a bottle of alcohol to test sense of smell, one nostril at a time, to check for frontal lobe damage. And finally, I’d conduct an ad hoc test of my hearing. But I don’t have the time, so I’m simply going to leave it at touching my nose and get about my affairs.”

  McCluskey threw up his hands. “Okay, doc, you’ve won me over. You do know what you’re doing, after all. But before you go roaring on down the hall, I should tell you that you got visitors.”

  “Who?”

  “De Kuypers.”

  “Which ones?”

  McCluskey smirked. “Brother and sister.”

  “Who told them? The explosion couldn’t be in the newspapers this soon.”

  “I did. I thought you’d want your fiancée to know.”

  “What about my parents?”

  McCluskey shook his head. “No need to worry them. I’ll get word to them on the sly . . . now that I know you touched your nose. And don’t worry about reporters. I think I’ll tell them John J. Coughlin was at the scene.”

  “Thank you, McCluskey. I sink deeper into your debt. Can I see Marib—them now?”

  “Sure, doc.” McCluskey started for the door, then turned back. “You know, if Maribeth De Kuyper was ever my fiancée . . . I should be so lucky . . . I’d sure think twice before messing it up.”