Dooms Day Book

He scrolled the screen back through his chart. There were M. AHRENS entries up through 8-1-55, the day she had died. She must have nursed him until she could no longer stand. No wonder her heart had stopped.

He switched the console off so that the sister wouldn’t spot the entry and got into bed. He wondered if William planned to sign her name to the discharges as well. He hoped so. She would have wanted to help.

No one came in all evening. The sister hobbled in to check his tach bracelet and give him his temp at eight o’clock, and she entered them in the console but didn’t appear to notice anything. At ten a second nurse, also pretty, came in, repeated the streptomycin infection, and gave him one of gamma globulin.

She left the screen on, and Dunworthy lay down so he could see Mary’s name. He didn’t think he would be able to sleep, but he did. He dreamed of Egypt and the Valley of the Kings.

“Mr. Dunworthy, wake up,” Colin whispered. He was shining a pocket torch in his face.

“What is it?” Dunworthy said, blinking against the light. He groped for his spectacles. “What’s happened?”

“It’s me, Colin,” he whispered. He turned the torch on himself. He was wearing, for some unknown reason, a large white lab coat, and his face looked strained, sinister in the upturned light of the torch.

“What’s wrong?” Dunworthy asked.

“Nothing,” Colin whispered. “You’re being discharged.”

Dunworthy hooked his spectacles over his ears. He still couldn’t see anything. “What time is it?” he whispered.

“Four o’clock.” He thrust his slippers at him and turned the torch on the closet. “Do hurry.” He took Dunworthy’s robe off the hook and handed it to him. “She’s likely to come back any moment.”

Dunworthy fumbled with the robe and slippers, trying to wake up, wondering why they were being discharged at this odd hour and where the sister was.

Colin went to the door and peeked out. He switched the torch off, stuck it in the pocket of the too-large lab coat, and eased the door shut. After a long, breath-holding moment, he opened it a crack and looked out. “All clear,” he said, motioning to Dunworthy. “William’s taken her into the linen room.”

“Who, the nurse?” Dunworthy asked, still groggy. “Why is she on duty?”

“Not the nurse. The sister. William’s keeping her in there till we’re gone.”

“What about Mrs. Gaddson?”

Colin looked sheepish. “She’s reading to Mr. Latimer,” he said defensively. “I had to do something with her, and Mr. Latimer can’t hear her.” He opened the door all the way. There was a wheelchair just outside. He took hold of the handles.

“I can walk,” Dunworthy said.

“There isn’t time,” Colin whispered. “And if anyone sees us I can tell them I’m taking you up to Scanning.”

Dunworthy sat down and let Colin push him down the corridor and past the linen room and Latimer’s room. He could hear Mrs. Gaddson’s voice dimly through the door, reading from Exodus.

Colin continued on tiptoe to the end of the corridor and then took off at a rate that could not possibly be mistaken for taking a patient to Scanning, down another corridor, around a corner, and out the side door where they had been accosted by the “The End of Time Is Near” sandwich board.

It was pitch black in the alley and raining hard. He could only dimly make out the ambulance parked at the street end. Colin knocked on the back of it with his fist, and an ambulance attendant jumped down. It was the medic who had helped bring Badri in. And had picketed Brasenose. “Can you climb up?” she asked, blushing.

Dunworthy nodded and stood up.

“Pull the doors to,” she told Colin and went round to get in the front.

“Don’t tell me, she’s a friend of William’s,” Dunworthy said, looking after her.

“Of course,” Colin said. “She asked me what sort of mother– in-law I thought Mrs. Gaddson would be.” He helped him up the step and into the ambulance.

“Where’s Badri?” Dunworthy asked, wiping the rain off his spectacles.

Colin pulled the doors to. “At Balliol. We took him first, so he could set up the net.” He looked anxiously out the back window. “I do hope Sister doesn’t sound the alarm before we’re gone.”

“I shouldn’t worry about it,” Dunworthy said. He had clearly underestimated William’s powers. The sister was probably on Willam’s lap in the linen room, embroidering their intertwined initials on the towels.

Colin switched on the torch and shone it on the stretcher. “I brought your costume,” he said, handing Dunworthy the black doublet.

Dunworthy took off his robe and put it on. The ambulance started up, nearly knocking him over. He sat down on the side bench, bracing himself against the swaying side, and pulled on the black tights.

William’s medic had not switched on the siren, but she was going at such a rate she should have. Dunworthy clung to the strap with one hand and pulled on the breeches with the other, and Colin, reaching for the boots, nearly went over on his head.