Read Online The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life by Michael Talbot - Free Book Online

different, and he already had survived an impossible seven days. If I did give him an injection, would I be saving a strange young man from his own madness, or if he was something unearthly, a being with a more sublime body structure, would our coarse and material medications rip through his veins like molten lead? I found myself trapped in an insurmountable state of indecision, a state that my colleagues neither understood nor approved of. There was talk that I was flagrantly ignoring my responsibilities as a physician in catering to Mr Cavalanti’s “condition,” and I became more and more uneasy about the possible consequences of this disapprobation.
    On the morning of the eighth day when I entered Redgewood I discovered a name on the assignment sheet that filled me with panic: Hardwicke. Dr. Cletus Hardwicke had nobly assigned himself to this case. The audacity! I was outraged. Fate had assigned us to the same institution, but we avoided each other like old tigers. After all these years why should he suddenly want to confront me? I rushed to the second floor. As I neared Mr. Cavalanti’s room I noticed that the door next to it was open. Inside was a figure draped in a sheet. The heavyset man had died.
    Outside of Mr. Cavalanti’s room itself a small group of nurses and internes had gathered. As I struggled to push through them I became aware of the sickening odor of paraldehyde. My alarm increased. Before I had a chance to reach the door I rushed headlong into the bloody little man. It was the first time in many years I had had occasion to scrutinize him so directly Age crept in his ugly features; his thinning, reddish hair was streaked with gray, brown spots dotted the bulbous forehead. Bluish veins embroidered his fingers. His brow was bushier, and his eyes, even more piercing.
    “Why?” I demanded as I took his arm and pulled him away from the door.
    At first he was frightened, but when his gaze met mine he calmed. He knew me all too well. He knew I was not capable of violence of any form. As we stared at each other that same familiar and inscrutable amusement drifted into his expression.
    “Gladstone,” he said placidly, almost amiably.
    “Why have you seen my patient?”
    “I thought it best.”
    “I smell paraldehyde.”
    “We tried to put your Mr. Cavalanti under sedation.”
    “Tried?”
    “It’s the damnedest thing, Gladstone,” he said shaking his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
    I watched his face closely. What was he up to? What was he orchestrating now?
    “After three internes and a nurse struggled to hold that young man down I administered enough paraldehyde to knock out a man twice his size—”
    “And?”
    “And he got awfully sick, but after he finished coughing and retching he just sat there and looked at us, cursing in Italian and saying we were fools.” He shook his head.
    “Why were you giving my patient paraldehyde without my permission?”
    He regarded me with surprise. “Your patient? Dr. Gladstone, all I know is that there’s a young man in there who hasn’t eaten in eight days, and if you weren’t considering intravenous feeding, somebody had to.” He looked at me incredulously. “But come now, John. That’s not the point I gave that young man enough paraldehyde to knock out a man twice his size. Do you hear me? Twice his size!” Something fanatical glimmered in the eyes of the little man before me, something that for the slightest mote of a second seemed to overwhelm even him. He ruffled his feathers as if once again regaining control. The internes nearby shifted nervously.
    Dr. Hardwicke glanced at them and then back at me. I could see in his expression that he was not dismissing what he had just witnessed, a medical enigma of no small import. He was much too clever to allow a flare of human irrationality to jeopardize a situation pregnant with as yet unknown possibilities. He looked again at the internes watching and judging our every word.