Free Alan E. Nourse - The Bladerunner by Alan E. Nourse, Karl Swanson Page B

fluids down now, and had less fever, but there was little other sign of improvement. Finally Doc shook his head. "I can't stay any longer, I've got to get some sleep," he said. "There's nothing more I can do here, anyway. He's still terribly sick, and I urge you to reconsider and take him to a hospital. If you go to Health Control Hospital Number Seven and give them my name, he'll be admitted without delay. He'll have to qualify for care later, but this is a matter of life and death now. I'll check in the morning to see if you've brought him—think it over very carefully. And I'll have to collect a hundred dollars in markers or a hundred and forty in credit now to pay for this infection kit I've used."
    The family had the money ready. The father remained beside the boy, obviously deeply troubled, as the woman escorted Doc back to the elevators. "I'll try to talk him into it, Doctor," she said. "He's very stubborn about the hospitals, but even he can see how sick the boy is. Til do the best I can."
    Doc nodded as he stepped onto the elevator. "Please do," he said soberly. "What we can do here just isn't enough. Keep me posted." Then the elevator door squeaked shut, and a moment later Doc stepped onto the street. It was just past 3:00 now, and the side streets were deserted; he walked to a nearby arterial and flagged down a late-roving ground-cab.
    Like other unmarried staff men at Hospital No. 7, Doc had a small rent-free flat in an Upper City apartment complex near the Hospital, assigned to him by the Department of Health Control. Settling back in the cab, he gave the driver the address, and then closed his aching eyes. Weary as he was, he didn't feel sleepy; his mind was too full of apprehensions and unanswered questions for that. As the ground-cab whispered down the almost deserted arterial, Doc tried to relax, to clear his mind of the worry and frustration he felt for the sick boy he had just seen, and the dismal outcome he foresaw if the boy could not somehow be brought to the Hospital for intensive treatment. At the same time there was the nagging worry about the ambush on the rooftop and Billy's arrest and what this could mean to the future of their underground operation—but here again he found himself up against a solid wall, unable to move. There was not a way in the world that he could force Will Hardy to bring his dying son into the Hospital for treatment; the man had to decide that for himself. And there was not a thing he could do about Billy, either, until Billy himself called and let him know what the situation was.
    Two frustrating dead ends—but that was not all that was bothering Doc. Deep in his mind there was another worry, far more ominous, yet strangely undefined, chipping away stubbornly at his subconscious. It was something quite aside from Billy Gimp or the Hardy boy—a cold, relentless sense of impending disaster that Doc could neither shake aside or identify. Billy and his arrest were part of it, yes, and so was the boy with meningitis —yet somehow Doc sensed that they were only tiny pieces in a much larger puzzle, a frightening pattern of events that doggedly eluded definition. There were other pieces to the puzzle, too: the dangerous game he was playing with his legitimate work at the Hospital, the nightly demonstrations and near-riots occurring outside the Hospital doors, the sense of imminent crisis he felt so strongly as he walked the wards and corridors of the vast medical center—
    He shook his head wearily as the little ground-cab moved swiftly south through the city. Thinking about it now was pointless; he was too bone-weary at this point to think about anything coherently. Perhaps with a few hours of sleep the elusive pattern that was dogging him would come clear in his mind. Maybe by morning the sick boy would have been brought to the Hospital so that he could do something there. At the very least, by then, he should have heard from Billy, so that the two of them together could