It would be a 2012 meningitis scare in the B wing that prompted Larry’s final desperate move into the old hospital.
A steady flow of the unnamed or unloved had come and gone from the increasingly dreary B wing, with old Peter Doe the only constant. The compromised immune systems of the patients on the row required that they be moved out until the threat could be assessed and with vacancies up throughout the hospital, it was decided to resituate the disenfranchised among the regular population and leave them there.
In the case of Peter Doe, however, administrator Dean Durning decreed that the time had finally come to transfer him to a county facility that could deliver his minimal care more cost effectively. With government funding being rationed more tightly, Holt City could no longer afford such charity cases, especially one that refused to check out.
Walt’s plot was unraveling. But after all this time and such an extraordinary commitment, he was desperate to keep his friend from dying anonymously and alone in a wretched county hospital that would welcome his prompt death as a bookkeeping necessity.
As he bore down on Dean Durning’s office, a long cardboard tube under his arm, he still had one last card to play. As with every new mad knot tied into his endless scheme, he had had years at Larry’s bedside to cook it up.
* * *
To the hospital’s administrator, Walt Bolger had just been one of those legacy cases who kept modest practices well past retirement age seemingly for lack of anything better to do. Durning would encounter the old man sporadically in the hospital’s corridors, and occasionally he was obligated to reverently recognize his place in Holt Memorial history at fund-raisers and other events, but Walt was primarily just one of those dusty old men whose portraits were on display in the lobby. When he barged creakily into Durning’s office one morning in the midst of the meningitis scare, he assumed it was to finally announce his retirement.
Within minutes, it was Durning who was ready to quit.
“We can’t!” Durning cried weakly after Walt bluntly told Durning who Peter Doe was, and the macabre, flagrantly illegal acts that brought him there. Durning’s mind raced to keep up, but he could only blink dimly as Walt proceeded to announce the legal and media hell storm that was about to befall his hospital if they didn’t form an immediate, unthinkable alliance.
As he would a few years later with John, Walt brought evidence of Schiavo and other high-profile right-to-life cases, this time emphasizing the ugly and relentless public protests that came to overwhelm the hospitals where the stories played out. The hospitals in these past cases weren’t guilty of anything, Walt stressed. They just had the misfortune of being the place where the stricken had been allowed to settle while strangers furiously batted around their fate.
It would be a whole other kettle of fish, he prosaically threatened Dean Durning, if Larry’s story came out.
Walt and the others carried out their unconscionable plot as employees of Holt Memorial. Walt—the ringleader who kept Larry in his home for two decades, essentially a kidnap victim—was still on staff. Dr. Lawrence Husted, beloved figurehead of the struggling hospital and life-giving legend to the town, had been residing on the B wing right under the administrator’s nose for seven years. The man’s family was betrayed for decades.
Worse, if the tussle about what to do with Larry went public, and the Right-to-Lifers and Let-Him-Die-ers arrived to set up camp, and the satellite trucks rolled in behind them, and the cell phone videos of shoving matches and prayer circles started hitting the internet, the hospital would be found guilty long before any court ruled on it. At best, it would be a PR disaster; more likely, it would result in a legal judgment that would shut the hospital’s doors for good.
The chill sent down Durning’s spine shook loose his resolve.
“We will terminate the patient,” Durning announced abruptly with terse, unconvincing authority. He knew he was crossing into taboo legal and moral territory.
“This is an untenable situation,” he insisted. “I cannot risk the solvency of this hospital. I cannot risk the care of the patients who need us to be here, because of this insane plot of yours.
“We will terminate,” he concluded firmly. “I will see to it myself if you won’t.”
Walt met his glare with easy, menacing calm.
“Son, I am a dying old man,” he began with unsettling resolve. “I have given thirty years of my life to that man. He and I have come too far together for me to let him go now.
“If you push me, I’ll bring the whole damned world in on this. By the time I would be held accountable, Larry and I will be dead. You’ll wish you were.”
Durning swallowed hard; he knew he was boxed in. Before he could continue flailing for another solution, the frenzied old doctor unfurled the contents of the tube he had come armed with.
These were the blueprints that he and Larry had pored over for years in the early eighties as the move from the old hospital to the new became reality. In the plans drawn with great optimism all those years ago, the B wing where Larry had spent the past seven years was a short tendril that stuck out from the new hospital’s north face. In the blueprint, the wing came to a dead end, with nothing on the other side but Wisconsin countryside. The old building was never intended to stay around.
In reality, the short wing from the new building joined with the long-abandoned hospital. When it became clear that the original building was never coming down, the passage was kept open for a while so that the empty building could be used to store records and discontinued medical equipment. But by the time Dean Durning came along, it had been padlocked for years.
“The B wing’s empty for the first time practically since this hospital opened,” Walt said decisively as he drew his finger to the blueprint. “We’ll finally wall it off, like we’ve done everywhere else.
“Larry will stay behind in the old building. I will assume full responsibility.”
Durning gazed at the blueprint, his head spinning.
“The wing will be closed at both ends,” he said doubtfully.
“Let me worry about that.”
The old man’s insistence was as convincing as the threats that he had promised would befall Durning if he stood in his way.
The conspiracy was on. The hospital administrator already doubted his sanity.
“I am agreeing to this,” Durning concluded resolutely, “because I know you can’t handle this on your own. A man a third your age could not provide him the care he needs. In these circumstances.”
Walt’s shoulders sagged at the reality of this.
“There’s going to come a point—soon—where you and I will bring this to an end,” the administrator said resolutely but not without compassion. “We will do it quietly, and humanely. And it will be done.”