Do No Harm

David stared at the dark, lumpy body bag. The cadaver inside was obese and tall, like Clyde. The pain in David's side flared when his feet hit the floor. He shuffled to the gurney and leaned over it, taking a deep breath before unzipping the bag.

The face of an elderly black man peered out at him. David let his breath out in a rush. Though the cadaver was fresh, a bitter, medicinal smell wafted from the fabric of the body bag. Just like the odor he'd noticed emanating from Clyde in Peter's office. He bent over slowly, though it pained him, and picked up the swatch of fabric from Clyde's scrubs. He pressed it to his nose, and inhaled.

The stench of formalin.

At once, David knew with the same gut assurance that came when he pulled a cluster of symptoms together and produced a diagnosis. He trudged slowly down the hall, past the frenzied trauma room, back into the heart of the hospital.

"Hey, Dr. Spier," a lab tech called out. "Get back to the room. Someone'll stitch you up in a sec."

David kept walking, drawing looks from patients and other physicians. Blood dribbled from his wound, leaving a vivid red drop every five or so feet-his spool of thread through the labyrinth. He headed down the quieter halls of the hospital.

Punching a four-digit code into the Omnilock, he stepped through the door into the back corridor. He walked slowly to the freight elevators used for hauling dead bodies up to the crypt. The elevator whirred and creaked on its way up, the bright light overhead assaulting his senses.

It halted with a definitive thud on the seventh floor, and the doors spread. David stepped out into the unlit corridor and walked to the anatomy lab. Another door, another four-digit code. The dissecting-table doors that closed up over the cadavers were all laid open, the units resembling hatched pods. The tables were bare and scrubbed clean. David noticed a ball of wadded cheesecloth at the head of one of the tables. Clyde had used it as a pillow these last days; he'd slept on the dissecting table like a vampire in a coffin. Beside the table was a mound of food that looked to be scavenged from trash cans-sandwich rinds, skins of oranges, bent yogurt cups. Next to that, a scattering of scalpels, scissors, and beakers. And, of course, a container of liquid DrainEze.

The light in the prep room was also off. David stepped through, approaching the mighty wooden door of the crypt. The door clicked loudly when he tugged the handle, then he was standing in the flood of light from the interior, the strong odor of formalin gusting around him. Row upon row of bodies hung from their heads, swaying ever so slightly on creaking chains and forcipiform clamps. Propped against the far wall, at the terminating point of a messy band of blood, was Clyde. A handcuff encircled one hand; the other was pressed to the gunshot wound in his side. He'd been crying.

He reached for David shakily, the loose cuff swaying beneath his wrist. No sensation of fear flickered through David; he felt only a steady, hardened calm. He propped the crypt door open.

Clyde's voice was jerky from his irregular breathing. "They don't

… they don't look at me here." He gestured to the hanging bodies. "And they don't leave. They can't up and leave me." His face trembled, his lips down-bending and spreading in a guttural cry. "It hurts… it hurts a lot."

"I know," David said.

"I just wanted to be better. That's all I ever wanted." Clyde banged his head against the wall, sending a dull vibration through the room. "I took the pills, so many pills, but they didn't work. Nothing worked."

Still swathed in a blanket of veritable calm, David moved toward him.

"Don't take me to them," Clyde moaned. "Please don't let them have me."

David crouched over him, ignoring the hand Clyde curled in his shirt. Jenkins's bullet had left a neat hole in Clyde's right upper quadrant abdomen. The entry wound was just beneath the ribs, angled upward. The bullet had probably nicked the liver. Clyde gasped, sending a spurt of blood through the wound and across his spread fingers.

"God, don't let them poke and pry at me. I'm scared of them. S-so scared." His legs kicked dumbly against the blood-slick floor. "It hurts oh Jesus it hurts."

The top of Clyde's fist pressed hard into David's cheek. David shoved Clyde's hand away roughly, and Clyde whimpered. Panting and grunting, Clyde tried to slide himself up the wall to a standing position, but collapsed. David watched him with an angry calm. He thought of Nancy's distorted face, and Diane's cringing as he kissed her, and felt his anger intensify until it burned hard and gemlike.

Clyde slid away from the wall, using a hand to move his legs. He eased himself onto his back, trembling, the stray handcuff chattering against the cold floor. He reached gently for David, but, again, David pushed his hand away.