Free Count Geiger's Blues by Michael Bishop

allergy attack during high communion!
    “Turn that off, Mikhail. Now.”
    The Mick, picking up something implacable in his uncle’s tone, obeyed.

11
Chad, Di Pasqua, and the Therac 4-J
    Teri-Jo Roving’s two-year-old son, Chad, stood on the carpeted speaker’s platform in an auditorium of the Miriam Finesse Cancer Clinic. Dr. Witcover, a visiting oncologist, had just given a lecture on new advances in detection-and-diagnostic procedures, and Chad, podium mike in hand, was doing a dead-on baby-talk impersonation of the departed lecturer. Dr. Di Pasqua heard the noise and returned from the corridor. He had been so busy dispensing hospitality and local color to Dr. Witcover that Teri-Jo hadn’t yet had a chance to talk with him. Well, that chance seemed imminent. . . . “I’m sure you all have things to do,” Dr. Di Pasqua told Teri-Jo and the others watching Chad.
    “Yessir,” everybody said, beginning to leave. Chad stayed on stage, beside the podium, swaying in knock-kneed spasms and talking to a mike that returned nothing but amplified popping. “Your grandson?” Dr. Di Pasqua asked Teri-Jo, now trying to halt the toddler’s performance.
    “No, Dr. Di Pasqua, my firstborn.”
    “Sorry,” Dr. Di Pasqua said. “Of course.”
    Teri-Jo carried Chad down to Dr. Di Pasqua. During her pregnancy, he had been on a research sabbatical. As a result, he had forgotten, or had never learned, that her labor had been hard and her recovery slow.
    “Chaddie’s here because my husband’s sick. Our regular day-care providers are remodeling their building.”
    “Never mind. So long as he isn’t burlesquing a distinguished guest, I don’t object to his being here.”
    “Mamma,” Chad murmured lowly. He placed both hands on her face and pushed his button nose into her hair.
    “Come, Nurse Roving,” Dr. Di Pasqua said. “I’ve something to show you.”
    They left the hall. When Dr. Di Pasqua thought better of Chad’s accompanying them, Teri-Jo took him to Bonnie Gainsboro, a secretary, who seemed even less thrilled by this arrangement than did Chaddie. His heartbroken wails were audible all the way to the service elevator to the basement.
    *
    Downstairs, Dr. Di Pasqua led her into the tunnel connecting the cancer clinic with Salonika General. “A custodian found this yesterday, but Dr. Witcover’s visit kept me from facing the problem until now.” They stopped short of the tunnel’s midway point, in a bleak tributary corridor that Teri-Jo had never really noticed before. Kept me from facing the problem, she amended her boss’s words. That’s what you really meant.
    “This is an auxiliary storage area.” Dr. Di Pasqua opened the door with a tarnished key. “The custodian came in yesterday to inventory cleaning equipment, but ended up”—he escorted Teri-Jo past a tall rack of disinfectants and paper products—“finding something alarming.”
    Briefly, Teri-Jo imagined the janitor stumbling upon a corpse, maybe even Dr. Wayman Huguley’s. Which was absurd. She’d gone to that old man’s funeral.
    “There.” Dr. Di Pasqua pulled a frayed light string to reveal the inanimate cause of his alarm: “ That .”
    Teri-Jo gaped. It was a cancer-therapy device, an antiquated machine whose type the clinic no longer used and a working example of which she hadn’t seen in over fifteen years. Radiation therapy was yet a fairly young science, but before this obsolete treatment machine, Teri-Jo felt as a contemporary sports-car enthusiast might in the presence of a Stanley Steamer.
    “What I’d like to know,” Dr. Di Pasqua said, “is if this thing has been radiation-decommissioned.”
    “Desourced?”
    “Yes. This was one of Dr. Huguley’s purchases. There’s no telling how long it’s been moldering in here.”
    Despite the Scrooge-like slur on Dr. Huguley, her boss might be right. If he were right, he’d shown bad judgment letting them walk in here as if the therapy machine were as benign as any old