Gregor pulled up into the little group and coughed. They all turned to look at him, Jimmy Card with relief so pronounced it was comical. “Hello,” he said. “Hello, Liz. Hello, Jimmy.”
“This is Gregor Demarkian,” Jimmy said.
The young male doctor stuck out his hand. “Mr. Demarkian. I’m Lloyd Copeland. It’s good to meet you.”
“It’s all your fault,” the small woman said, rounding on Gregor. “You’re the one who gave them this ridiculous idea. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but if you’re getting a lot of publicity for yourself by jeopardizing that child’s health and sanity—”
“That child,” Liz said, “is six feet tall and built like a tank. I’d be surprised as hell if he was a virgin, considering the fact that he spent half his life backstage at rock concerts last summer. He’s got an IQ in the one hundred and sixties, and he hasn’t exactly been living in a nursery school for the last sixteen years. I resent your attempts to treat him like a mental defective, and I resent even more your attempts to get me to manipulate him. I have never been anything but honest and honorable with Mark, and I don’t intend to start being less than either now.”
“I haven’t asked you not to be honest,” the small woman said. “I’ve merely pointed out that children need to be given information in doses they can handle, not dumped into a cold bath of bad and frightening news as if they were miniature adults.”
“Mark isn’t a miniature anything,” Liz said. She turned to Gregor and said, “This woman is Brenda Elliot. She’s the doctor attached to the school. She’s also an idiot. I’m going to go talk to Mark.”
She walked off down the hall in the direction of Mark’s room, and Gregor looked at Jimmy Card.
“Don’t ask,” Jimmy said. “It’s been a very long day.”
Brenda Elliot straightened the jacket of her good wool suit. “I suppose I’ll have to come along. Somebody has to look after that child’s interests. He’s already been fed food he shouldn’t have been and thrown it all up. It took the hospital staff half an hour to get that room back into shape.”
“He was throwing up again?” Gregor asked.
Dr. Copeland smiled. “Understandably. It seems he woke up this afternoon and he was hungry, and he prevailed upon Mr. Card here to make a run out to McDonald’s—”
“Three crispy chicken extra value meals supersized with vanilla milkshakes,” Jimmy said. “And he ate it all, too, but then—”
“Irresponsible,” Brenda Elliot sniffed.
She was, Gregor thought, exactly the sort of woman who would sniff. He turned away from her and gestured down the hall in the direction of Mark’s room.
“Right,” Jimmy said. “This ought to be interesting.”
Gregor led the way. It wasn’t a long walk. When they got to the room, Liz was standing by herself at the windows, and Mark was sitting up in bed talking away on a cell phone. He did not look as if he had recently been sick. He did look a million times better than he had the day before.
Mark nodded to Gregor as he came in, said, “I’ve got to go” into the phone, and switched it off. “I was talking to Geoff,” he said. Then, looking around and not too sure of who knew what, “He’s my little brother. He’s got Grandma wrapped, by the way. She’s letting him play video games and eat TV dinners nonstop.”
“I told her she could,” Liz said.
“Cool,” Mark said.
Dr. Copeland waved the folder he was carrying in the air. “Well,” he said, “we ought to get started. Mark, I want to warn you, right now, that what you’re about to hear is probably going to be very disturbing. Dr. Elliot is of the opinion that you should not be told about it at all.”
“I shouldn’t be told about my medical condition?” Mark said. Now he did look sick. “What’s wrong with me? Is it terminal?”
“I told you this was irresponsible,” Brenda Elliot said.
Gregor knew what it was Mark was worried about. “Relax,” he said, “you’ve got no serious medical condition, terminal or otherwise, except maybe an allergy to caffeine; and then it’s just a question of staying off. It’s not that kind of news.”
“So what kind of news is it?” Mark asked.
Dr. Copeland plunged in again. “We did a number of standard tests,” he said, “and they all came out negative, exceptfor the caffeine toxicity, which was abnormally high. High enough to have killed you on its own, by the way. Now, some of the symptoms you’ve been reporting—high levels of anxiety, for instance, and abnormal sweating—can be traced to the caffeine allergy coupled with the fact that you seem to have been ingesting a lot of the stuff you’re allergic to.”