Page 101 of A Better World

Afraid she’d be recognized—caught—Linda kept walking. She passed more rooms, didn’t see any kids. Someone at the end of the hall was howling to be let alone. It was a scarecrow-skinny man in his late thirties, his arms and legs strapped down. Percy Khoury. Red Rorschached through the white gauze of his freshly bandaged wrists. Like fairy-tale breadcrumbs, it streaked a smeared, hastily mopped trail leading out and down the hall.

“Mr. Khoury, this is too much. You know very well that you’re not allowed to do any maintenance on the reactor until you’re medically cleared to go back to work. You have to stop going there. Do you want expulsion? Because that’s where you’re headed.”

“I have friends. They’re bigger than you think. They’re coming for you.”

“Do I have to adjust your olanzapine, too?”

He noticed Linda. Locked eyes with her as the nurse depressed the plunger on a hypodermic into his blood-smeared arm.

“You’re liars,” he said, his voice fading as he nodded off.

The nurse noticed Linda and launched: “Where’s your access pass?”

Linda shrugged, like:Oh, was I supposed to have a pass?

“Get out,” the nurse said.

She didn’t leave the hospital. She found the stairs and walked the length of the third floor, through surgical and recovery. Then the second floor, mostly offices. Halfway down the east wing, she was at Chernin’s office. Her hands shaking from all she’d seen, she forgot to knock. She needed to see him. To talk to him. He’d wanted to confide in her the other morning. Maybe he would do it, now.

She opened. There was Chernin, lying on his office couch, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell in deep sleep. It wasn’t unusual for doctors to nap during work breaks. It was a habit she’d developed back as an intern, when she’d been working long hours. She was about to back up and let him rest when she noticed the tank on the floor beside him. Rubber tubing ran out of it, ending in a mask that Chernin clutched in his left fist.

NITROUS OXIDE, the label read.

He wasn’t sleeping; he was high.

How had she not guessed this? It was so obvious. Every sign: the big pupils, the spaciness, the general wishy-washy lack of accountability that characterized every junkie she’d ever known—she’d seen all of it before, back in Poughkeepsie.

She shook him by the frail, thin shoulders. Maybe he’d be so high he’d think he was dreaming, and she’d get a straight answer. He grunted. It was a pain sound, though she wasn’t shaking him hard. “Where are the Parker children?”

His dilated pupils didn’t adjust. Squinting through the bleariness, he sat up, still holding the mask, as if believing that if he did not let it go, she wouldn’t notice it. She saw that his wrists were bruised with pinprick centers. He’d been injecting something, too.

Like my dad, she thought, who’d given up snorting Glamp and by the end had been shooting it.

“Where are they?”

“It’s not time for them yet, you maniacs,” he muttered.

“Time for what?”

His eyes regulated, the black shrinking. He reached for his glasses and pushed them over the bridge of his nose with a shaking hand. “No, no. You’re not permitted here.” His voice was slow, confused.

“You’re not permitted to practice medicine while high,” she said.

With great effort, he stood. His voice was clearer than the rest of him. “This is none of your business, Dr. Farmer.”

“What are you doing?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

He eased toward the device on his desk, like he thought she was going to jump him. He picked it up, clumsily dialed. “I’m being attacked. Help,” he said, his voice flat.

She made no move to stop him. They stood there, waiting. Chernin’s eyes stayed lowered. Linda’s stayed pointed.

“She’s threatening me,” he told security when they arrived. “She’s not well.”

Linda indicated the nitrous.

They were both taken to the police station, Linda in cuffs, Chernin freely. He gave his statement first. Linda watched him leave. He glanced at her, the skin around his mouth dry and red for reasons she now understood, his expression so calm as to seem dead.

Linda was ushered into a back office to meet with the police chief, a guy named Pratt. “I did not attack that man,” she said.

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