Meyer went to the clothes rack and began shrugging into his coat. "How come," he wanted to know, "you're always catching when it's cold outside?"
"What hospital?" Willis asked.
"General," Temple said. "Call in later, will you? This looks pretty serious."
"How so?" Meyer asked.
"It may turn into a homicide."
Meyer had never liked the smell of hospitals. His mother had died of cancer in a hospital, and he would always remember her pain-wracked face, and he would always remember the smells of sickness and death, the hospital smells that had invaded his nostrils and entrenched themselves there forever.
He did not like doctors, either. His dislike of doctors probably had its origin in the fact that a doctor had originally diagnosed his mother's malignant cancer as a sebaceous cyst. But aside and apart from this indisputably prejudiced viewpoint, he also found doctors unbearably conceited and possessed of, to Meyer, a completely unwarranted sense of self-importance. Meyer was not a man to scoff at education. He himself was a college graduate who happened to be a cop. A medical man was a college graduate who happened to have a doctorate. The doctorate, in Meyer's mind, simply meant four years of additional schooling. These years of schooling, necessary before a physician could begin practice, were akin to the years of apprenticeship any man had to serve in any given field before he became a success in that field. Why then did most doctors feel superior to, for example, advertising men? Meyer would never understand it.
He supposed it broke down to the basic drive for survival. A doctor allegedly held survival in his hands. Meyer's impression, however, was that the physicians had inadvertently and quite unconsciously correctly labeled the pursuit of their chosen profession: practice. As far as Meyer was concerned, all doctors were doing just that: practicing. And until they got perfect, he would stay away from them.
Unfortunately the intern in whose hands the life of Maria Hernandez lay did not help to raise Meyer's opinion of medical men in general.
He was a young boy with bright blond hair clipped close to his scalp. His eyes were brown, and his features were regular, and he looked very handsome and very clean in his hospital tunic. He also looked very frightened. He had perhaps seen cut-up cadavers in medical school, but Maria Hernandez was the first live person he'd seen so mutilated. He stood in the hospital corridor, puffing nervously on a cigarette, talking to Meyer and Willis.
"What's her condition now?" Willis asked.
"Critical," the young doctor said.
"How critical? How much longer has she got?"
"That's… that's hard to say. She's… she's very badly cut. We've… we've managed to stop the blood, but there was so much loss before she got to us…" The Doctor swallowed. "It's hard to say."
"May we talk to her, Doctor Fredericks?" Meyer asked.
"I… I don't think so."
"I… I don't know."
"For Christ's sake, pull yourself together!" Meyer said irritably.
"I beg your pardon?" Fredericks said.
"If you have to vomit, go ahead," Meyer said. "Then come back and talk sensibly."
"What?" Fredericks said. "What?"
"All right, listen to me," Meyer said very patiently. "I know you're in charge of this great big shining hospital, and you're probably the world's foremost brain surgeon, and a little Puerto Rican girl bleeding her guts out over your floors is an inconvenience. But-"
"I didn't say-"
Fredericks seemed stunned.
"Is she?"
"I don't think so."
"Then may we talk to her?"
"I would have to check that."
"Well then, would you please, for the love of God, go check it?"
"Yes. Yes, I'll do that. You understand, the responsibility is not mine. I couldn't grant permission for questioning the girl without check-"
"Go, go, already," Meyer said. "Check. Hurry."
"Yes," Fredericks said, and he hurried off down the corridor in a fury of sudden starched energy.
"You know the questions we're supposed to ask?" Willis said. "To make this admissible?"
"I think so. You want to run over them?"
"Yeah, we'd better. I think we should get a stenographer up here, too."
"Depends on how much time there is. Maybe there's a loose secretary hanging around the hospital. A police stenographer would take-"
"No, not enough time for that. We'll ask Fredericks if someone can take shorthand. Think she'll be able to sign?"
"I don't know. What about the questions?"
"The name and the address first," Willis said.
"Yes. Then,
"Yeah," Willis said. "What comes next?"
"Jesus, I hate this, you know?" Meyer said.
