I’ll bet he did. A nice little place, is it? Pretty? Good service? And lots of nice doctors who will spend all their time making me well again? But I’m not sick, Steve.”
“Sally—” Steve moved toward her, but she backed away.
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered. It was all catching up with her now, all the anger, all the hurt, all the boiling emotions she’d been holding in check for so long. “Don’t put your arms around me and tell me you love me and that you’ll make me well again.” Her voice began to rise as her self-control slipped away. “Don’t tell me that, Steve. It’s a lie. It’s all lies. Everything that man has told you is a lie!” She wheeled around to face Wiseman, her expression a mask of fury. “What have you done to us?” she shrieked. “What have you done to us and to our children?” She hurled herself on Wiseman, her fists pounding against his chest. “How many of us were there? Five? Ten? A hundred? How many dead babies? How many little boys gone? How many? And why? God damn you! Why?”
The last of her energy drained, she collapsed to the floor, her screams giving way to sobs. Lucy Corliss crouched beside her, stroking her gently, but her eyes, as they fastened on Wiseman, reflected a cold fury that seemed to cut through to the old doctor’s soul.
“I don’t understand—” he began.
“Don’t tell us that” Lucy cut him off. “Sally isn’t crazy. None of us is. We’re tired because we’ve been up all night trying to figure out what you’ve been doing. But we’re not crazy.”
“I?” Wiseman asked, his voice hollow. “What I’ve been doing?”
Before anyone could say anything else, Jason came into the room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. At the sight of his father and Dr. Wiseman, he hesitated a moment, his eyes confused, then made up his mind. “I don’t want to go to that hospital,” he cried. “There’s nothing wrong with me, and I don’t want to go!” He ran to his mother.
Though she was still huddled on the floor, Sally gathered him into her protective arms. She peered up at Lucy with frightened eyes. “Don’t let them take us away, Lucy. Please don’t let them take us away.”
As he watched his wife and son on the floor Steve felt himself begin to come apart. He sank into a chair, his face pale, his hands working helplessly. There before him were the two people he loved best in the world, and they were terrified of him. His eyes searched the room, looking for help, and finally came to rest on Mark Malone.
“I—I—” His voice faltered, then fell silent.
Arthur Wiseman’s eyes, too, turned to Malone. “What’s going on, Mark?”
Malone coldly eyed the older doctor. “You don’t know?”
Wiseman lowered himself uncertainly into a chair. “All I know is that for ten days I’ve watched one of my favorite patients change from a normal, level-headed, charming woman, into—” He gestured toward Sally, was silent for a moment, then continued. “And now she accuses me of things I can’t even imagine. Dead babies? Missing boys? What is she talking about?”
Malone walked to the coffee table and picked up a sheaf of papers. “Maybe you’d better take a look at these.” He offered them to Wiseman, who made no move to take them.
“What are they?”
“Records. Correlations. Data that Sally took out of the computer last night”.
Wiseman frowned. “The hospital computer? She had no right—”
“I authorized it,” Malone told him. “I’m a doctor, remember? Not that I give a damn right now who had the right to do what. The only thing that matters is what’s here and what it means.”
When Wiseman still hesitated, Malone’s voice grew cold. “We’re not crazy, Arthur. And it’s not just us. It’s Jim Corliss and Carl Bronski too. And unless you have an explanation for what’s here, I don’t mind telling you that I’ll see to it you’re barred from practice, stripped of your license, and put in prison for the rest of your life. I don’t know if I can prove it, Arthur, but all this looks to me like the closest thing I’ve ever seen to mass murder. I don’t know how you did it, and I don’t know why, but I know it’s all here.”
His hands trembling, Wiseman reached out to take the sheaf of papers from Malone. When he spoke, his voice shook. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mark. Believe me, I don’t.”