Project 137

by Seth Augenstein

  “I need to talk to your Old Man,” Lanza said, shaking his head. “He lives in that apartment complex. He’s a doctor.”

  “Wetherspoon doesn’t have that kind of access to the big labs anymore,” Betty said. “Besides, why would he shit where he eats?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve got a hunch,” I said, patting their arms. “You guys have to give me a day or two, but I have an idea who could have been behind this—or at least someone who would damn well know.”

  “Just don’t get yourself fired, Joe,” Betty said.

  A loud beeping came from the opposite end of the intensive-care unit, followed by a rush of white coats. Instinctively, Betty and I rushed toward it, too, joining the flow of doctors and nurses.

  When I was close enough to see the fray, I could see they were at Rothenberg’s bedside. Rothenberg lay there, tubes askew out of his nose, mouth agape. I realized immediately my colleague was dying. Tears sprang to my eyes.

  The nurses and doctors bellowed back and forth like a religious ritual, a call-and-response prayer of medical science. The rhythm continued as a big strong nurse pounded on his chest. Betty grabbed my arm tightly. I wanted to leap in and help. But there was nothing I could do. I wiped my eyes. The electric paddles came out, the barks grew louder, tubes were attached and then unattached, one drug and then another were administered.

  Minutes passed. The movements slowed, ground to a halt. Then…silence. Everyone looked at the lead doctor, who shook his head. Lanza groaned, Betty shook her head. I wiped my eyes again.

  The whole ceremony broke apart. Nurses left the isolation area, pulled off their masks and walked away. Doctors checked the monitors and the clock on the wall, a handful of others stood there for a moment, glanced at the body, then walked off to other duties. The door shut. After the crowd cleared, one remained, tapping into his Atman, noting the condition of the body, triple-checking instruments and measurements, completing the record before the body was moved to the morgue. I wiped my eyes and stared blearily, the unreality of Rothenberg’s death washing over me in waves of horror. How could this happen—to a doctor who was my friend, no less? Had we done everything we could? Is this another person I could have saved?

  “Hey, is that Culling?” Betty said, nudging me. “What’s he doing on this floor, during the day shift?”

  “I saw him before,” I said. “I don’t know why he’s here.”

  I sniffled and wiped my eyes clear. And then I recognized the tall, slouch-shouldered nightshift nurse. Indeed, he wasn’t supposed to be there. I reached forward and rapped on the glass. Culling raised his head, looking around for the source of the noise. I knocked again—this time harder, more insistent. Culling spun around, his eyes squinting devilishly over his mask.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, loudly.

  Reluctantly, Culling came over to the other side, tapping some words into his Atman. Then he held his wrist to the glass so we could see the message on the tiny implanted screen.

  “WORKING OVERTIME FILLING IN FOR ONE OF THE TRIAGE NURSES WON’T MISS MY SHIFT TONIGHT,” it read.

  “You’re not supposed to be here, you weirdo,” Betty shouted.

  Culling just shrugged. He turned and went back to the body, continuing his vulture circle around the body, the documentation of Rothenberg’s slide into nothingness. The son of a bitch shoved one of the doctor’s lifeless hands out of the way as he circled the gurney. I banged my fist on the glass. But he didn’t turn around.

  “He—is—supposed to be here,” said a voice behind us. The Kraken squeezed herself between us, taking her own notes on her screen as she watched Culling’s ritual around the body. “We have to record how the patient died. Charles has that experience with postmortem environments.”

  The Kraken just stood there, taking notes, watching Culling’s perambulations. I angled my head to sneak a peek at her screen, but from my angle I only saw strange symbols I couldn’t understand.

  Betty stared at me. Her deadened eyes told me to say something, make a move, do something. But before I could do anything, the Kraken turned and marched toward the elevators.

  I hesitated a moment. But then I charged after her, catching her in a few strides, grabbing her shoulder a little too hard. We both slid on the slippery tiles, still wet from the janitor’s JiffySpiff. We caught ourselves—Kranklein grabbed a gurney, and I clung onto a nurses’ terminal on the wall. Her face was flushed, livid.

  “Doctor, what is your problem?” she said, straightening her brown suitjacket. Her twisted face looked all the older and uglier at that moment. I jabbed my finger at her. I felt a migraine building, the rush of rage through my head.

  “Isn’t there something you want to say?” I roared. “That wasn’t just any patient we lost. He was one of our best doctors, goddamnit. And Wetherspoon has vanished. Isn’t there something you need to tell the staff?”

  She actually smirked at me. Her fingers did a little dance on her Atman.

  “This is a hospital, Dr. Barnes,” she said. “People do die, and diseases do spread. We can’t be perfect all the time. I will send out a note on the passing of Dr. Rothenberg, and we will make sure his family is financially solvent. Apart from that, is there anything else you want me to say? Should I send everyone a card? Bake some cupcakes? Don’t be a goddamned child.”

  My temples throbbed, my hands shook. I stared at her as she turned. Her heel slipped a bit, but she caught herself and continued down to the elevators.

  “Oh, and Barnes,” she said, without turning. “If this leaks out to the press, I want you to handle all the calls. Since you’re sensitive to the subject, you can tell the world about how valiant your colleague was in giving his life to save others. Something poignant like that. Make it good, I don’t care. Just know: any more scandals, and I will have you fired.”

  The Kraken barked something at a nurse folding towels, then walked away. That slow strut of hers was unpanicked, unhurried, at ease with the world—it was not the stride of a leader of a hospital in chaos. I felt a hand on my shoulder, then another.

  “Your boss is a heartless tyrant,” Lanza said. “I’d love to have a reason to pepper-spray her.”

  “It’s as if she expected someone on staff to catch an eradicated disease and die on the job,” Betty said. “What an asshole.”

  “Zo,” I said. “I want you to check up on her. She’s hiding something, and I think it may have something to do with all the insanity around here.”

  “Not going to be easy with the Bureau’s regulations,” Lanza said. “But I can do it. I’ll call in a favor from some guys down in records.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m going to look into something myself. I’ll let you guys know what I find.”

  Back in my office I flung open the dossier, releasing a puff of dust over the desk. But just as I ran my fingers over the first page, the Atman rang. I let it ring four and then five times, then finally picked it up.

  “It’s Jim O’Keefe with the Newark FactSecond. Don’t hang up.”

  “You’ve got some gumption, calling me again, you jackass.”

  “Just hear me out,” the reporter said. “I understand one of your colleagues was killed by bubonic plague. Isn’t that the medieval disease? Where did he get it?”

  “Listen, O’Keefe,” I said, feeling my voice quake. “There’s an investigation underway. There were multiple victims, but we don’t know for sure how they contracted it. One of the doctors who responded to the scene was infected, and he died less than an hour ago. I don’t know how you know that already.”

  “Doc, I have my sources. But I was hoping to find out—”

  “And you will find everything out in due time,” I said, cutting him off. “You know as well as I do, O’Keefe, that we can’t put things out there that would panic people. We don’t want to spread mass hysteria, right? So I’m sure there won’t be any misquoting or fabricating stories or splicing together soundbites to take things totally out of context this t
ime. Right?”

  “Doc, I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Yeah, you do. So that’s it for now. Talk to you later. Or maybe never.”

  I hung up. As I pored over the page, the Atman rang once again, and I grabbed it.

  “You goddamned sonofabitch,” I barked into it.

  “Honey?”

  It was Mary’s voice.

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry, Dear. Thought you were somebody else.”

  “Joe,” she said. “Did a doctor just die in the hospital?”

  The silence hung. It was accusatory, seething. I loosened my tie.

  “Yes. It was Stuart Rothenberg. You know—the surgeon who has the pool party every summer,” I said. “The one with the back hair. He got plague. We couldn’t save him.”

  She gasped.

  “Joe, I thought everything was safe.”

  “He contracted it when we were all at the apartments the other day,” I said. “It’s safe. It was a total fluke he got sick.”

  Silence. I continued.

  “We can’t be sure everything always goes as planned. But we have to try and save people. What am I going to do, Mary, just walk away at a time like this?”

  “It’s all over the news, Joe,” she snapped. “Everyone knows there’s some kind of outbreak, and now it’s killing doctors. Apparently I’m the last person to know. The wife of one of them.”

  “But Mary, it’s just the media sensationalizing—”

  The connection clicked dead. I punched in her number, but her Atman wasn’t receiving calls. What could I have told her—that I had taken a risk in doing my job? Only Rothenberg got sick, and only because of a fluke. No one could even have known enough about it to publicize it.

  Except for one person. I lunged for the terminal.

  DEADLY VIRUS KILLS DOC, THREATENS THOUSANDS, screamed the headline of The Newark FactSecond story across my computer screen. I read through it—a story more or less accurate, except every number was inflated tenfold, the plague was referred to as an airborne virus instead of a bacteria transmitted by water, and the sense of panic was palpable in each and every word, each extra adverb flung gleefully into the mix. As I read through it, a voice started speaking through the computer. After a few seconds I realized it was my own voice, then that of O’Keefe. It was the completely unedited recording of the conversation we’d had just minutes before. I listened with horror as I heard myself threaten, then cajole, and hang up on the reporter. It looped back, repeating every syllable. I sounded bad—like an inside man hiding something. I could feel a tingle across the back of my neck. I picked up the Atman.

  “Hello, Newark FactSecond,” O’Keefe said.

  “You son of a bitch—that conversation was private,” I said.

  “Doc, Doc,” said O’Keefe. “You know as well as I do that I was interviewing you—and that you said all those things on the record. As my old editor used to say, ‘That’s baseball.’”

  Insouciance colored the journalist’s voice. He was eating on the other line, crunching something, chewing slowly. My hands shook with rage, my head thundered. He grunted once—then hacked deep in his throat, the unmistakable cough of a smoker of illegal tobacco. He gasped for a few moments. Then he laughed.

  “At any rate, I’m ready to throw this whole conversation on the website as part two of our exclusive interview.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Still recording,” the reporter said, still chewing.

  I smacked my head. But I took a deep breath. The flush of defeat upended my stomach.

  “Alright, turn off the recording. What do you want?” I asked.

  “Thought you’d never ask,” he said. “You know the Double-L Diner? Meet me there in a half hour.” O’Keefe hung up.

  What else could I do? I had no other choice. The Lenni Lenape Automat Diner was a forty-minute drive, including traffic. I got McDermott to cover my rounds, then sped down the ultrahighway heading east. I banged on the steering wheel the whole time, cursing myself for being outwitted by a sleazy reporter. When I walked into the diner, fifteen minutes late, O’Keefe’s huddled form was already sitting at the table Lanza and I always shared. The same two teens, obese boy and girl, were sitting in the same place, tapping away at their Atmans, not looking at one another, muttering, playing hooky from school for yet another day. I gave them a glance, then sat down across from the reporter.

  “Well, hello, Doctor,” O’Keefe said, punching his order into the touch-menu.

  “You unethical piece of—” I said.

  But O’Keefe shook his head and raised a finger to his lips. He held up his wrist, where his Atman was blinking patiently, recording.

  Grabbing the other menu from between the salt and the ketchup, I tapped a few buttons, then slid it back to its slot. O’Keefe smiled.

  “So, Doc,” he said. “I understand you’d like to continue our interview.”

  “Turn off the damn recorder now, or I’m not saying a word.”

  O’Keefe shrugged, then pushed a button on his wrist. The Atman light went off.

  “Alright, what did you have in mind?” the reporter asked.

  “You tell me what you’re after.”

  O’Keefe held up his hands.

  “Doc, you’re the one that’s been saying stuff on the record. You have nobody to blame but yourself. I’m just here to get the story.”

  “Even when you fabricate it,” I said. “You know—after that editing job you pulled on the other one, I could sue you for libel.”

  “Come on, Doc,” O’Keefe said. “Don’t be dramatic. We can settle this like adults, without going to court.”

  “You’ve got some gall, talking like you have the moral high ground here,” I continued. “You’re just a lowlife blackmailer. Before we continue this conversation, you have to admit to me, right here and right now, that you’re an unethical piece of shit.”

  A smirk crossed O’Keefe’s face. He glanced around the diner. He shrugged.

  “Yeah, sure, Doc,” he said. “I’m unethical.”

  I shook my head.

  “Repeat after me: ‘I’m an unethical piece of shit.’ Say it.”

  “I’m an unethical piece of shit. I’m a scumsucking gutter dweller. A two-faced lying rat bastard. Sure. Whatever you want,” said O’Keefe, grinning wide. “But I’m just giving the people what they want. They crave soundbites, they want to see things for themselves, video and audio, graphics, cartoons. Shiny pretty things. They don’t want to read anything. How can words about a murder possibly compete with raw footage of somebody’s brains splattering against a windshield?”

  I pulled out my Atman underneath the table, where O’Keefe couldn’t see, and checked the time. It felt a little warm to the touch. The screen flickered, went blank. Strange. I shook it, then put it back in my pocket. But I was pretty sure it was still recording the conversation—my own little insurance policy I had prepared for the interview. I looked at the reporter and smiled.

  “So what do you want?” I said, as pleasantly as I could.

  “I heard you’ve got some actual paperwork from that older doctor in the hospital there,” O’Keefe said. “Don’t ask me how I know—I can’t reveal my sources.”

  Hot panic slithered along my skin. I wiped a trickle of sweat on my brow.

  “Yeah, I found a bunch of old papers. Why do you care?” I said.

  “I want to know why they’re so important.”

  “Who said they’re important?”

  “From what my source says—and I quote—they’re the ‘key to everything.’”

  “Interesting,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “So I give these files over to you, what are you going to do?”

  “First, I would delete all our combative interviews,” O’Keefe said. “Then I would inspect the papers. Then maybe I can help you with things back at Saint Almachius.”

  “If I don’t give them to you?”

  “Then this all becomes part of a messy story published this
afternoon. Probably within the hour. I’m sure your boss will be pleased. What do they call her—the Kranker or something?”

  I was silent. How had I become trapped in this situation? I remembered the Kraken’s threats from just an hour earlier. My head swam with her grating voice still ringing in my ears.

  “Come on, Barnes, let me take a crack at these papers,” O’Keefe said, smiling, head shifting strangely on his neck. “Maybe I can help you while I’m helping myself.”

  A moment of silence, as we stared at each other like boxers in opposite corners of the ring.

  I stood and walked out of the diner. Muttering to myself the entire way back out the front entrance, I returned to the car. I took the package off the front seat—the brown dossier. Tucking it under my arm, I turned on my heel and walked right back into the diner. I glanced at the waitresses, the same two obese teenagers from the last time at the Double L, the geriatric patrons lining the small tables along the walls. None of them looked suspicious—none of them seemed like they could be Bureau agents. So I slid the dossier across the table.

  “You found it,” the reporter said, pulling it over.

  “It was in my car,” I said, still glancing back and forth. “I didn’t know what to do with it. I can’t even read most of it. It’s impossible to make out those tiny little letters. But I can tell it’s old—and official.”

  “I know how it is, trying to read off paper,” O’Keefe said, ruffling the sheaf beneath the table. “But I have some software for this kind of thing. It’ll be able to digitally scan the old typeface. From there it’s just a matter of picking through these redactions.”

  We ate, listening to each other chewing. The two teenagers to our right made some muffled, halfhearted conversation. The TV in the corner of the room celebrated the latest results of How Low Can You Go. Apparently, someone had eaten their own shit and had advanced past the first round; another had divorced his paraplegic wife to win the bonus round. (She would be able to take double or nothing by attacking him with a chainsaw the following episode). There was analysis of the Vegas odds, how many thousands of gamblers had beaten the spread and had won millions of tax credits. I tried not to listen, but someone had turned up the volume. After my fifth bite, I pushed the plate away. The reporter devoured his fried Twinkies, apparently unaware of the TV. When he finished, bright white cream was smeared through his gray beard. I didn’t tell him.