have … well …”
“Injured the fetus?” Wiseman asked. He leaned forward, folding his arms on the desk. “Sally, that’s patently impossible. In order for you to have conceived, the IUD would have to have been flushed out of your system. And that, statistically, happens in two out of ten cases. I told you that right from the start, if you remember. Except for the pill, which you can’t use, there’s no foolproof method of birth control. And with an IUD, you never know when your body rejects it. It happened to you years ago, and you had Jason. Then, for eight years there was no problem. Maybe it was the new device we tried and our mistake was in trying a third kind a couple of years ago. But I’m not sure it would have mattered. You don’t feel it when it’s in, and you don’t feel it when it’s gone. But it absolutely couldn’t have affected the fetus, that I can assure you. The similarities between your case and Jan Ransom’s are simply coincidence. And not much of a coincidence, except for the fact that you both lost your babies to SIDS.”
“Don’t you think that’s enough to make me wonder?” Sally asked.
“Of course it is,” Wiseman said, relaxing back into his chair. “And of course you should have come to see me. But I’m not sure what I can do for you.”
Sally’s eyes moved to the CRT on Wiseman’s desk. It was, she knew, a remote terminal of the computer that served most of the needs of the town. “Perhaps you could show me Julie’s records,” she suggested.
Wiseman hesitated, instinctively searching his mind for a valid excuse to deny Sally’s request. There was none. “All right,” he agreed at last. “But since she was Mark Malone’s patient, I think he should be here too.” He picked up the phone, spoke briefly, and then hung.
“Do you really think we’ll find anything in Julie’s records?” he asked as they waited.
“I don’t know,” Sally said truthfully. “In fact, I’m not even sure I’ll be able to understand them.”
“Well, I can understand them,” Wiseman assured her. A moment later the office door opened, and the pediatrician appeared. He greeted Sally, then looked questioningly toward Wiseman, who explained what Sally had proposed.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Malone said, after quickly reviewing what he remembered of Julie’s records. There was nothing, as far as he knew, that could upset Sally. He switched the computer terminal on and swiftly tapped in some instructions. Then he smiled encouragingly at Sally. “Come around here.”
Sally went around the desk to stand close to Malone as the CRT screen began to fill up with the medical record of her daughter. Other than the birth data, there wasn’t much: the results of the monthly examinations that Julie had been given, the last just two days before she died, all of which, Wiseman explained, reflected a picture of a remarkably healthy baby. Then there was the final report of her death, with a copy of the death certificate.
“I don’t even know what I might be looking for,” Sally said as she scanned the screen.
“You’d be looking for something wrong,” Wiseman told her. “But according to this Julie wasn’t damaged in any way, either before or after the birth.” He looked to Mark Malone for confirmation, and the younger doctor nodded his agreement.
Sally pressed one of the cursor keys on the console, and the record began scrolling upward until the screen was filled with a series of letters and numbers that looked, to Sally’s untrained eyes, like gibberish. “What’s all this?” she asked.
Malone shrugged indifferently. “Test results. Analyses of blood samples, tissue samples, mine samples. All of it very routine and very normal.”
“I see,” Sally muttered. Then she frowned. As the data continued to roll up the screen, a number, set off by itself, suddenly appeared in the lower right-hand corner. Sally took her finger off the cursor key. “What’s that?”
Wiseman stared at the number, frowned slightly, then looked up at Malone. “Do you know what this is?”
“It’s just a code number,” Malone replied. “It refers to a survey being done by a group in Boston, the Children’s Health Institute for Latent Diseases.”
“And they were surveying Julie?” Sally asked. “What for?”
Malone shrugged. “I don’t really know. In fact, I doubt they’re sure themselves.”
“I don’t understand.” Sally moved back to her chair, and faced the two doctors. “This group—”
“It’s called CHILD,” Malone said.
“CHILD is studying children, but they don’t know why?”
“It’s what they call