The Inquisitor by Peter Clement

acquired the same compassion for them that you found for the likes of Artie Baxter when you made sure he didn't suffer in ER."
    With that, the priest released him from the tractor-beam grip of his stare, quietly opened the door, and disappeared into the darkened corridor.
    The head nurse slid her glasses to the tip of her nose, peered at him, then let them drop on their silver chain. "Dr. Garnet! We don't usually see you up here."
    "Here" referred to the Palliative Care Unit, or "terminus," as some of the more callous residents called it.
    "Then it's about time," he answered, straining to read the woman's name tag. "Mrs. Yablonsky, would you be so kind as to grab the chart cart and accompany me as I see the patients?"
    Crinkles at the corners of her eyes lessened. "See the patients?"
    "Yes."
    "All of them?"
    "Yep."
    "Now?"
    He nodded.
    "But why?"
    "I want to check their pain medication."
    The visible portion of her face corrugated itself into a frown. "You mean without their doctors knowing?"
    Jesus, he'd be here all night answering her questions. "We're going to be doing an audit on pain management throughout the whole hospital. Dr. Wyatt himself will be chairing it. I thought I'd get a head start."
    The far smoother foreheads of two younger nurses who had approached from behind her scrunched up in amazement.
    "Dr. Wyatt knows about this?" the supervisor asked.
    Earl smiled in response.
    "Well, it's most peculiar…" She pushed herself out of a swivel seat, surprising him with her height. With eyes nearly at the same level as his, she also possessed the big shoulders and sculpted build of someone who swam laps across Lake Erie.
    While he waited for her to prepare the charts his gaze drifted along the polished, barren corridor, and he shuddered at the thought of being stuck here to die. Just park him under a tree with a nice view and a bottle of whisky when his time came.
    He'd never admitted it to anyone, but deep down he hated hospitals, felt claustrophobic in them. As a patient, he'd loathe every part of surrendering to any regime that a place like St. Paul's would impose on him, especially with his butt hanging out the back of a tie-up gown.
    Through windows at the far end of the unit he watched the sun as it slipped behind a column of thunderheads that had been piling up over the lake. Immediately the passageway darkened, and everything became cast in a thin yellow light. Low rumbles sounded outside, and a crackle of static interrupted the quiet music from a radio on the work counter.
    "Storm's coming," said one of the younger nurses, reaching up and snapping the off button.
    Only then did he hear the weak moans and wailing. Mere wisps of sound that floated out from the semidarkness of the hallway, they were the kind of noises that, once gotten used to, could easily be ignored- with the help of a radio. "Are they always crying like that?"
    "Oh, this is nothing," Yablonsky said. "Sometimes they get to screaming so loud you can't hear yourself think." Oblivious to her own callousness, she never paused in pulling out charts and placing them on a pushcart.
    A twist of anger turned his stomach.
    In the first room they stopped in, he found an old man curled in bed, as withered and emaciated as a mummy. His skin had yellowed with jaundice, and, either comatose or sleeping soundly, he didn't respond when Yablonsky called his name or slipped the mask that had fallen off his face back into place. Earl let him be.
    Next door to him lay an elderly lady in similar shape.
    In the third room, a gaunt, gray-faced woman with the wisps of her remaining hair combed neatly into place sat in a chair and stared out at the approaching rain clouds. Her upper face brightened as soon as she saw him. "How nice, a new doctor."
    A glance at her chart before coming in revealed her name to be Sadie Locke and that she had metastatic cancer of the breast that neither chemotherapy nor radiation could halt. As he stepped up to shake her hand and introduce