Fall or, Dodge in Hell. Neal Stephenson

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       5

      Corvallis felt his phone buzzing in his shirt pocket and peeked at the screen. It was a local number that he did not recognize. It ended in two zeroes, suggesting the call was originating from a main switchboard. He excused himself, arose from the table, and walked into the foyer of the suite before answering it.

      A minute later he was back in the dining room. In his absence, chairs had been pushed back, dishes collected, laptops slipped back into bags. Zula caught his eye. “El Shepherd still hassling you?”

      “It was the place,” Corvallis said. Fully aware of how inarticulate he was being, he blinked, shook his head, and circled around for another try. “The medical office where Dodge was yesterday. Where he was, uh, ‘stricken’ I guess is the word.”

      “The people who killed him?” Alice asked. “What did they want?”

      “I’m on record as his emergency contact—I was there when it happened,” Corvallis said. “They were just calling to let me know that they have his bag. With his stuff. And his clothes and his wallet and so on. All of that was left behind when the firemen came and grabbed him. So, I guess I’ll walk over there and pick all of that stuff up.” The Forthrasts were all just staring at him. “If, you know, that makes things easier.”

      “Please,” Alice said.

      “I’ll walk you down,” Stan announced, placing a companionable hand on Corvallis’s shoulder.

      In the elevator, Corvallis asked him, “Did I miss anything?”

      “Zula is going to talk to a couple of vent farms,” Stan said.

      “What’s a vent farm?”

      “Horrible term. When you have a patient like Richard, who is fundamentally stable but who can’t be taken off the ventilator, there’s no need to keep him in the ICU. It is overkill. It’s expensive and it takes up bed space that the hospital could use for people who really need intensive care. There are businesses that exist to serve this market. Think of it like a nursing home, except all of the people who live there are …”

      “Are like Richard?”

      “Yeah. There’s a politically correct term for it, but doctors call it a vent farm.”

      “So we’re thinking of moving Dodge to a vent farm?”

      “Alice is vehemently opposed,” Marcus said. He managed to say it in a manner that, while utterly deadpan, still conveyed some sense of the vivid impressions he had taken in, during the conversation just concluded, of Alice Forthrast.

      “She wants him to stay in the ICU?”

      “The alternative would be to move him back to his apartment and put him back in his real bed,” Stan said. “The ventilator would have to go with him, of course. Round-the-clock nursing care, the whole bit.”

      “Esme Hurlbut is pushing for it hard,” Marcus added.

      “She wants him off the property,” Stan said.

      The elevator doors opened and they walked out into the hotel lobby. “She’s a lawyer,” Corvallis pointed out.

      “She can see where it’s going—the protocol. The ice bath, the freezing of the remains. No way does she want that happening on hospital property.”

      “I see.”

      They stepped out into the hotel’s front drive and paused under the awning, which was giving off faint white noise as small drops of rain filtered down onto it from the silver sky. “You’re going to get Dodge’s effects now?”

      “Effects? Yeah.” Corvallis wondered at what point the clothes, wallet, and so forth became effects.

      “I would be shocked if they tried to pull a fast one,” Stan said, “but say nothing, okay? Other than hello and goodbye.”

      “A fast one?”

      “They are going to be worried about a malpractice suit. If they start pumping you for information—anything other than just handing over the bag—just walk away. Then call me.”

      Corvallis shook hands with Stan and Marcus and then stepped out into the rain and began navigating the streets of First Hill on foot, headed for the medical practice where Dodge had been stricken. It was a short walk but a much-needed head clearer.

      Or at least it was until his phone rang again. He was just outside the building, looking down a street lined with spectacular red maple trees. The very spot where Dodge had yesterday been buttonholed by the young fan with the broken arm, and unwittingly filmed his last video.

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