Free Better in the Dark by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

one seemed to notice that their coffee tasted like ink. He supposed that in a year or so the doctors who were complaining about the bad food served since Chisholm’s death would no longer be aware that their meals were pap. A year from now... He didn’t want to think about a year from now.
    “You look glum,” observed Jim Braemoore. “Working too hard, I can tell. Just don’t take the job so much to heart. Ruin you if you do, Harry. Tell you what”—he sat down, easing his bulk into the uncomfortable chair beside Harry—“we’re mechanics. Much easier if you think about it that way. Otherwise, thinking about what doctors do, it’ll drive you nuts.”
    “Mechanics?” he repeated numbly. Was that the secret? How had he missed it all these years?
    “You and Natalie. Get all involved, go about in a lather, say foolish things, get into trouble with the administration. No good. Wear yourselves out that way. Can’t do it, Harry. Can’t do it at all.”
    “Natalie? Lebbreau?”
    Jim looked up, startled. “So you were listening, after all. Wouldn’t have thought so. Natalie Lebbreau is the one I meant. Pity about her marriage, but then, I suppose it was inevitable. Too bad about the child, too. Natalie Lebbreau’s a good girl, fine doctor. Intense, very intense. Plain girls often are, don’t you think?” He offered the sugar bowl to Harry. “Energy?”
    It didn’t pour like real sugar, but what the hell. It was sweet and it probably did give energy. At least it disguised the taste of the coffee.
    “Take me, now,” Jim Braemoore went on, his sausagelike hands spread over his broad chest. “Know my limits. Don’t take the office home with me, don’t bother much about the leftover CAs and other terminals. Better off letting them go. Why save $rsquo;em for more agony, that’s the question. No reason for it at all. Put money on the ones who can get well. Ought to be doing the same thing yourself, Harry.” He took a bite out of a droopy slice of pastry. The icing clung like snow to his mustache. “Can’t be a good doctor the way you’re going. Hear you’ve been handling the kids with bronchial trouble. No use fighting for ’em, Harry. Saw a few cases of it myself last week. Can’t save $rsquo;em. No earthly use trying. Set ’em up, make ’em comfortable and get on with the strong ones. Do some good that way. Otherwise...” He shrugged his massive shoulders.
    “Triage?” Harry asked, thinking that he could not be hearing this, that it was all a mistake.
    “That’s a thought severe on us, Harry,” Braemoore said, his words muffled by the pastry.
    “What are you saying to me, Jim? Are you telling me it isn’t my job to save lives?”
    “Didn’t say that—not at all,” Jim Braemoore protested. “Nothing of the sort. Did say that you shouldn’t bother about terminals. Let ’em be. Put your time on the ones that can survive. Don’t call it triage, though. Most people don’t like the sound of it. But those toddlers with that virus, now, they aren’t worth the effort.”
    “Are you sure it is a virus?” Even as he asked, Harry knew that, for some reason he could not understand, he no longer believed that they were treating an unknown virus. Jim was being almost too much the jolly old GP. There was something wrong when a doctor of Jim Braemoore’s standing tried to throw a resident like Harry off the track. And that was what he was doing.
    “Of course it’s an unknown virus. Couldn’t be anything else. Got to expect it in a city like this.”
    “And what do the diagnostic samples say? Or doesn’t Mark Howland do yours, either?”
    Jim looked flustered, his normally pink face turning red as he answered. “Type unknown. Damn it all, you should know. You’re the one who’s been ordering tests. Howland’s been a little high-handed, but he’s right. The lab’s too valuable to do routine. Don’t mind telling you that Justin is pretty unhappy about you. Not that it isn’t his job to