Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,223

of extenuating circumstances, perhaps even the true one. But in her heart, left to the mercy of who knows what cutthroats and thieves and pestilences, she will not believe I could not have come to get her. If I had truly wanted to.

Dunworthy stood up with difficulty, holding on to the seat and the back of the chair and not looking at Latimer or the displays, and went back out into the corridor. There was an empty stretcher trolley against the wall, and he leaned against it for a moment.

Mrs. Gaddson came out of the ward. “There you are, Mr. Dunworthy,” she said. “I was just coming to read to you.” She opened her Bible. “Should you be up?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, I must say, I’m glad you’re recovering at last. Things have simply fallen apart while you’ve been ill.”

“Yes,” he said.

“You really must do something about Mr. Finch, you know. He allows the Americans to practice their bells at all hours of the day and night, and when I complained to him about it he was quite rude. And he assigned my Willy nursing duties. Nursing duties! When Willy’s always been susceptible to illness. It’s been a miracle that he didn’t come down with the virus before this.”

It very definitely has been, thought Dunworthy, considering the number of very probably infectious young women he had had contact with during the epidemic. He wondered what odds Probability would give on his having remained unscathed.

“And then for Mr. Finch to assign him nursing duties!” Mrs. Gaddson was saying. “I didn’t allow it, of course. ‘I refuse to let you endanger Willy’s health in this irresponsible manner,’ I told him. ‘I cannot stand idly by when my child is in mortal danger,’ I said.”

Mortal danger. “I must go see Ms. Piantini,” Dunworthy said.

“You should go back to bed. You look quite dreadful.” She shook the Bible at him. “It’s scandalous the way they run this Infirmary. Allowing their patients to go gadding about. You’ll have a relapse and die, and you’ll have no one but yourself to blame.”

“No,” Dunworthy said, pushed open the door into the ward, and went inside.

He had expected the ward to be nearly empty, the patients all sent home, but every bed was full. Most of the patients were sitting up, reading or watching portable vidders, and one was sitting in a wheelchair beside his bed, looking out at the rain.

It took Dunworthy a moment to recognize him. Colin had said he’d had a relapse, but he had not expected this. He looked like an old man, his dark face pinched to whiteness under the eyes and in long lines down the sides of the mouth. His hair had gone completely white. “Badri,” he said.

Badri turned around. “Mr. Dunworthy.”

“I didn’t know that you were in this ward,” Dunworthy said.

“They moved me here after—” he stopped. “I heard that you were better.”

“Yes.”

I can’t bear this, Dunworthy thought. How are you feeling? Better, thank you. And you? Much improved. Of course there is the depression, but that is a normal post-viral symptom.

Badri wheeled his chair round to face the window, and Dunworthy wondered if he could not bear it either.

“I made an error in the coordinates when I refed them,” Badri said, looking out at the rain. “I fed in the wrong data.”

He should say, “You were ill, you had a fever.” He should tell him mental confusion was an Early Symptom. He should say, “It was not your fault.”

“I didn’t realize I was ill,” Badri said, picking at his robe as he had plucked at the sheet in his delirium. “I’d had a headache all morning, but I put it down to working the net. I should have realized something was wrong and aborted the drop.”

And I should have refused to tutor her, I should have insisted Gilchrist run parameter checks, I should have made him open the net as soon as you said there was something wrong.

“I should have opened the net the day you fell ill and not waited for the rendezvous,” Badri said, twisting the sash between his fingers. “I should have opened it immediately.”

Dunworthy glanced automatically at the wall above Badri’s head, but there were no screens above the bed. Badri was not even wearing a temp patch. He wondered if it was possible that Badri didn’t know Gilchrist had shut down the net, if in their concern for his recovery they had kept it from Badri as they had kept the news of Mary’s death