Chapter 26 Visiting the Suffering
That morning Bits Bitterly lay groaning in a hospital bed. The effect of the Moore pistol had mostly worn off, leaving him human again but remarkably fat and with an X of crisscrossed bandage over the hole between his eyes. The doctors had said that these results were not terribly serious, by which he was sure they meant they simply had no idea what to do about his altered state.
He remained in the hospital, however, because of the bullet from Fear’s pistol that had put a hole in his side and that, though not life threatening, was terribly painful. Mr. Fear, now newly appointed as spy master in Sordid’s place, had spoken with the doctors during a visit to the hospital, and as a result they had cruelly lowered Bits’ morphine dosage to an inadequate level. This was in order that he might have a clear head for reporting what he had witnessed the previous night. Fear would return soon, Bits knew, to receive the report, and he only hoped the new Chief would be quick about his infernal questions.
The door opened and in came yet another doctor, his third so far, an old one with white hair, wearing scrubs and a surgical mask. A little blonde nurse followed him.
“And how do we feel today?” asked the doctor with rough cheer. He picked up Bits’ chart and examined it for a few moments as if uninterested in any answer from his patient, then dropped the chart back in its holder as if uninterested in it as well.
“Gotta have more morphine, doctor,” Bits said. “They’re stinting me. Just look at those dosages. It’s inhuman to let me suffer like this.”
The doctor made a professional’s sound, something like ‘um,’ in his throat and felt Bits’ pulse. “Yes, we’ll need to do something for your pain,” he said. “Let’s take a look at that wound.”
With the nurse’s help, he carefully removed the bandages from Bits’ newly blubbery body.
Just thinking about the bullet hole frightened Bits. “Is it healing?” he asked unsteadily, being careful not to look down at himself.
“What? Yes, of course it is.”
The doctor laid his hand gently on the wound and then replaced the bandages. He rearranged the hospital gown to cover Bits.
“You must heal quickly because we need this bed for another patient,” he suddenly added.
“You—you what?”
“By the end of the day. We have a constant shortage of rooms, so the Board voted some firm new policies. You’ll find it’s all in the form you signed when you came in.”
“I didn’t read it. I was shot, for God’s sake! There can’t be any such rule.”
“Mammon Mart Hospital policy, number 618-19,” said the simpering nurse. “Once a patient is on the mend, we send him home with instructions for self care.” Was he imagining it, or was she amused? “You’ll get printed brochures, meds, and a phone number to call if there are any problems.”
“Such as bleeding to death!”
“Easy now, honey,” she said. “Don’t be alarmed. Don’t you feel better than when you came? Now I want you to concentrate on your pain. Where would you place it on a scale of one to ten?”
“This is no hospital if you throw me out like this! I’ll sue. What kind of professionals are you? I’ll tell you what the pain feels like! It feels like…” Bits paused, puzzled. “Wait, what’s happened? The pain is down, way down… What have you done?”
“You’ll find it will be bearable now and that you’ll be able to get around,” said the doctor. “That’s important, since your Chief has a job for you. I’m afraid your body swelling won’t go away, so you’d better buy some clothes that will fit.”
Bits stared at the old man. “Who are you?”
Grace pulled down the surgical mask. “A simple subterfuge, Bits. I knew you were wounded, and yet circumstances dictate that we must get you back to work, so here we are. This young neighbor of mine eagerly volunteered to play the nurse. Oh yes, I see that you’re pushing the emergency button. Good thinking.”
“You must have drugged me somehow, some subtle way,” Bits said. “I’m not really healed, you’re just covering the pain. Why don’t they come?” He pushed the button again. “Why would you want to heal me?” he asked with narrowed eyes.
“Why indeed? I see no reason not to be completely open with you. A couple of my agents—shall we call them agents in the spirit of a good spy story?—are going to try to get into Goner House tomorrow by way of the City’s underground tunnels, and our King finds it necessary that they be intercepted. Because you know those tunnels—no, don’t deny it!—because you know them and because you have a certain rapport with the scalies who live in them, your masters will want you to lead the intercepting squad. As for me, I have my own reasons for wishing Mr. Bits Bitterly to meet again with my operatives.”
“But that’s just selling them out,” Bits said unbelievingly. “A fine joke, but don’t expect me to believe the Heavenite Ambassador would damage his own pure, white cause. You aren’t even asking to be paid!”
“Ah, but what I want from you is priceless. That’s all the explanation you’ll get, Bits.”
“Typically and unnecessarily mysterious. You simply mean you want to be paid later. Shall we go so far as to name a price, or leave the tawdry details to sort themselves out?”
Grace ignored this. “My people will be on their way toward Goner House before light in the morning. Be ready for them. Now I have to move on before a real doctor comes along, answering that call button. Wittily, let’s go, and thank you again for your help. Bits, do your best to stay healthy.”
They were scarcely gone before two nurses, presumably genuine, entered the room. They looked with surprise at Bits, who had pulled himself up and was sitting up on the edge of the bed.
“You’ve got your color back,” one said. “What did you call us for?”
In the next half hour, doctors confirmed that the patient, though still wounded, was miraculously advanced in recovery. They declined, however, to give the credit to Grace. By the time Chief Fear arrived, Bits was sitting up in a chair, looking healthily dissatisfied with life, and eating a full meal of his special diet—raw meat. The new spy master seated himself stiffly in another chair and looked at Bits sharply out of a good eye and blearily, on the swollen and discolored side of his face, out of a half shut one. A bandage adorned his head where the butt of his own pistol had been used on him. The two CRISP agents did not make a pretty picture.
“Those doctors are useless fools,” Fear said. “You at least had better not tell me anything about a miracle healing, or I’ll see that things happen to you that you can’t be healed of. I leave it to your imagination. Do we understand each other? All right then. Was old Grace really in here? What did he want?”
Bits told him about Grace’s visit and apparent treachery to the Heavenite cause, leaving out the healing. “I think we’re finally seeing those long awaited cracks in the Heavenite façade of unity and brotherhood,” he concluded. “Even a paragon such as the Ambassador seems to have his price.”
“If he’s really selling out,” Fear said, “we’ll pay him just enough to keep him on the hook and primed to give us more information. But,” he sighed, “it can’t be. The old man’s got too much invested in the other side. Still, we can’t just ignore a tip like that; we have to cover it just in case. Indifference has been returned to us unharmed and tells us that, before she was captured, she did some work on their agent Prayer, who is still in that house. Left alone, she’ll probably waste away to death, and that’s the way we prefer it: she dies of, ahem, natural causes, and no connection made to us. Therefore, we must keep those Heavenites out of Goner House, so they can’t help her or do any other mischief. I hadn’t even thought about them trying the tunnels. No one goes there. Even we don’t, except for the scalies.” He eyed Bits more closely. “Grace is right about one thing: you’re the only one of us who can keep scalies focused on an assignment. You’ll need to round them up and lea
d them. You’re checking out of here, Bits.”
“You’re joking! No, I won’t leave this room. No agent has ever had to take on an assignment the day after being shot—twice.”
Fear smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, but you’ve had a miracle, now haven’t you? Only I don’t believe in miracles. I believe in incompetent doctors who thought you were worse hurt than you are.”
“And isn’t it bad enough that they’ve made me fat?” Bits said. “I’m sick from it. Grace said the effect is permanent, that I’ll be this way the rest of my life. And I’m hurt and my life is ruined. Look at what they’ve done to my face! My dream is over. I’ve never told you my dream, have I? The dream I’ve carried since I was seventeen.”
“Actually you’ve told me several times,” Fear said.
“I may never make it, but the hope is still there,” Bits went on as if he had not heard. “My dream is to be a professional talk show guest. The host will introduce me, and I’ll step out, sit down casually, and cast my spell of banter and dry wit, perhaps mixing in a song or part of a song, humorous anecdotes…”
“I think you have to be famous for something else first,” Fear said in a bored voice.
Bits flushed. “Yes, that’s just the kind of soul-crushing talk I always get from people like you! That’s why I’m stuck in a dead end job like this one, working with gun-toting morons and cave-dwelling reptiles.”
“Poor fellow! Sorry I can’t be more understanding. Now you’ll do as you’re told or go under the City not just for a little visit but never to come up again. Get down there and guard the way to Goner House. No excuses. And this time can you manage to keep from getting shot?”