Read Half the Kingdom for Free Online

another of his funny ideas. They followed their little boss to the center of the vast space, where a second janitor arrived with a set of nested designer chairs that he arranged in a circle.
    “Sit down,” said Joe, “and keep your eyes skinned.”
    “For what?” asked Bethy.
    What was there to look at? A nicely coiffured elderly volunteer rummaging in a large handbag found her keys and unlocked a door. After a moment, the lights came on inside the hospital’s gift shop, the shelves of which specialized in objects that were not beautiful, interesting, or useful, and which nobody could be imagined to wish to own. Half a dozen interns, their white coats flapping open, with the good faces of people who have the stamina for extended study, moved briskly toward the east elevators. They were laughing.
    Lucy came toward them walking on her upside-down reflection in the high polish of the floor. She carried two paper cups and she was coughing.
    “We’ll have no trouble getting her past triage,” Joe said.
    “What for?” Benedict asked, but Joe was rising from hischair. They all got up. Joe introduced his staff to Dr. Haddad: “You’ve met Lucy Friedgold, you remember, who happened to see the suicide; her son, Benedict Friedgold. Al Lesser. My daughter, Beth Bernstine. Dr. Haddad is going to brief us on a situation in the ER.”
    “Our Chief of Emergency, Dr. Stimson, has been called away and has asked me to be the liaison. Mr. Bernstine likes calling it ‘copycat Alzheimer’s,’ whatever it is that we’re looking at. Alzheimer’s, of course, develops over decades, a lifetime, generations, and we seem to be watching patients becoming demented in front of our eyes. You,” Dr. Haddad said to Joe, “were in Emergency when Anstiss Adams went off the deep end. I’d always thought of her as the sanest person I know.”
    “What did she do?” asked Bethy.
    “How old was she?” asked Lucy.
    “Ninety-plus,” said the doctor.
    Lucy did the arithmetic. At seventy-five, Lucy was at least fifteen years younger than Anstiss, who had gone off the deep end. Lucy experienced relief.
    Joe asked, “And when did you become aware of the unusual number of patients becoming demented? We’re talking of the sixty-two pluses?”
    “Yes,” Dr. Haddad said. “Dr. Stimson began keeping his log—it happened to be the day you yourself checked in the last time around.”
    “And what do these patients do?” asked Bethy.
    Al said, “Don’t old people just naturally get demented?” Al had a grandmother.
    “All the time, but never this many of them.”
    “How many is this many?”
    “Well, every one of the sixty-two-pluses,” said the doctor. And Bethy thought, If nobody is going to pay attention to my question, I’m not going to say another word.
    Dr. Haddad said, “One came in this morning, wheelchair, the son brought him in, eighty-five-year-old male with diabetes and associated problems. He started to cry and he cries and cries and cannot seem to stop.”
    Eighty-five minus seventy-five: The diabetes with associated problems was ten years older than Lucy.
    “And your friends, Mr. Bernstine, Lilly Cobbler and Sadie Woodway. It’s the happenstance of Mr. Bernstine’s acquaintance with the suicide and his input in the ongoing investigation that has suggested some sort of cooperation between your organization and the ER.”
    This was news to the Compendium people—it gave them a turn to think that the dead woman in the courtyard had been alive and walking in the spaces in which they walked, in which they sat at their computers.
    Dr. Haddad told them how Lilly Cobbler had brought in her sister, “One of those Saturday nights from hell. What we need is an adequate ER.”
    “Why don’t you take over the underpopulated atrium?” proposed Benedict. He had been trying to connect with the doctor’s eye. She was young, had a flower face, and wore retro glasses with light-blue frames, and that interesting scarf that entirely