Host (32 page)

Thursday, April 9, 5:11
A.M.

A
fter pocketing her phone and taking a deep breath, Lynn looked at herself in the mirror over the sink. She was glad she hadn’t run into anyone since climbing out of the air-conditioning duct. Despite having rinsed her face, Lynn saw it was still streaked with dirt, which made her look somewhat like a raccoon. Recognizing that she would undoubtedly run into people, she knew she had to make herself appear more presentable. With a bit more effort and a little soap, she was able to improve her appearance dramatically. She even straightened her hair, using her fingers as a comb. Accepting that she wouldn’t be able to marshal much more of an improvement, she at last gave up.

Her plan was to try to avoid everybody as much as possible. If approached or questioned, she’d be pleasant but self-contained. The place she was most concerned about was the parking garage, as it was patrolled by hospital security after a recent episode with a nurse being confronted in the wee hours of the morning. She wanted to steer clear of all security people.

Coming out through the door of the women’s lounge, she
noticed that a nurse had appeared and was helping herself to coffee. Lynn started for the exit to the main hall feeling like a cat with its ears back. She avoided so much as glancing at the nurse, hoping to elude attention. Instead she looked off to the side, and because of this, her eye happened to catch a glimpse of the monitor on the wall, which indicated there was a neurosurgical case in progress in OR 12. The surgeon was Norman Phillips. It was what explained the paucity of people in the surgical lounge.

Lynn did a double take and stopped dead in her tracks. She blinked, hoping her eyes were playing tricks on her. The patient’s name was Michael Pender! The diagnosis was subdural hematoma, and the planned procedure was an emergency craniotomy.

A short, involuntary cry—more like something a tortured animal might make—escaped from Lynn’s lips. Frantically, she looked to see what the timing was. The case had started only a few minutes before, at 4:58
A.M.
! “No!” she cried with enough volume to shock the three people in the surgical lounge.

Lynn spun around, her eyes stretched open to their limits. “No! No! Not again!” she yelled to no one in particular. The people in the room stared at her and didn’t move. They were frozen in place, gaping at her unblinkingly, fearing she was mentally unbalanced.

A second later, Lynn was out the door in a headlong rush toward the paired swinging doors leading to the OR proper. As she ran, she pulled out her phone. Just inside the OR’s doors, she paused briefly to bring up onto the screen her last call. Quickly she reconnected it, holding the phone to her ear as she began to run again. Behind her she heard the nurse from the surgical lounge yell for her to stop, saying she was not allowed in the OR. The nurse had burst through the swinging doors right after Lynn and was now chasing after her.

Coming to a halt outside of OR 12, Lynn was relieved to hear Markus’s voice. Breathlessly she told him Michael was in surgery. “This has to be stopped. It can’t be allowed!” Lynn cried. “He’s not
going to wake up. I know it! The same thing that happened to Carl is going to happen to Michael!”

The nurse who had chased Lynn ran up to her. “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded shrilly.

Lynn ignored her, concentrating on talking with Markus. “You have to get someone here now! The police, the FBI, anybody! Please! He is in OR Twelve! You have to stop this!”

“Hello?!” the nurse yelled, extending the word in the form of a question while she tried to get the phone out of Lynn’s hands. “You can’t be in here!”

Lynn disconnected from Markus and roughly pulled the phone away from the nurse’s grasp. For a brief instant she eyed the nurse, who was looking at her as if she were a crazy person.

“Let’s not cause trouble,” the nurse said, trying to speak as calmly as possible. She reached out to grab Lynn’s arm to lead her back out of the OR.

With a blow as forceful as a karate punch, Lynn knocked the nurse’s hand away. Spinning on her heels, Lynn pushed through into the operating room. Inside, there were five people: anesthetized the patient; the gowned and gloved surgeon; a similarly attired operating nurse; the anesthesiologist; and a circulating nurse. Initially, no one looked in Lynn’s direction, and everyone continued their banter. Benton, functioning as the anesthesiologist, and Norman, the neurosurgeon, were talking about golf while Norman operated. The scrub nurse and the circulating nurse were discussing scheduling. It wasn’t until the second nurse burst in behind Lynn and loudly ordered her out of the operating room that activity and conversation in the room stopped, and everyone’s attention galvanized on Lynn’s sudden presence.

Lynn ignored the nurse as she had out in the hallway. Any vestigial hope that the patient might be some other Michael Pender vanished the moment Lynn could see him. It was definitely her dearest friend. She was absolutely sure even though part of his face
and his body was covered with surgical drapes. Michael was in a sitting position, with an endotracheal tube in place and his eyes taped shut. The breathing bag on the anesthesia machine was rhythmically expanding and contracting with his breathing. The cardiac monitor was beeping a steady signal. The surgeon had already turned a scalp flap and was preparing to drill a burr hole.

Without a second’s hesitation, Lynn stepped over to the anesthesia machine and bent down to look at its side. She wanted to see the number. As she feared, it was machine 37. She straightened up. The nurse who had run in after her again loudly ordered her out of the operating room, telling everyone that Lynn was apparently deranged.

Continuing to ignore the nurse, who was again trying to get ahold of Lynn’s arm, Lynn turned to the circulating nurse. “You have to get another anesthesia machine stat! This one’s trouble! People don’t wake up.”

“Please!” the first nurse said, resorting to begging. “You must leave!”

Benton recovered his shock and, after fumbling on the surface of the anesthesia machine, came up with a filled syringe. Without warning he came at Lynn like a bull in a china shop, causing another similar syringe perched on the anesthesia machine to fall to the floor. The nurse who had come in behind Lynn let go of Lynn’s arm and stepped back in fright.

Thanks to Lynn’s inherent and honed athleticism from her years playing lacrosse, she easily eluded Benton, effectively ducking under his arm and running around the operating table with the idea of keeping it between herself and the enraged anesthesiologist. When Benton started one way, Lynn went the other. While they were jockeying for position, Lynn again urged the circulating nurse to get another anesthesia machine. “If you do that, I will leave,” Lynn yelled. “Otherwise I’m going to stay in here until you do.” Her voice echoed off the tiled walls.

The circulating nurse was confused as to what to do and looked toward Benton for direction.

“I’m getting hospital security,” the first nurse declared. Without waiting for a response from the operating team, she disappeared out the door into the OR hallway.

Dr. Norman Phillips, who had been momentarily paralyzed by this unexpected spectacle during his case, quickly recovered. He handed off his craniotome, which he had been about to use, to the scrub nurse and stepped back from standing directly behind Michael. Obviously willing to break scrub—contaminate his gloves and gown—by holding his arms and gloved hands out in front of himself, he threatened to block Lynn from moving in his direction so that she couldn’t continue circling the operating table.

Lynn immediately took the neurosurgeon up on his offer to join the confrontation. She wanted to be as disruptive as possible, knowing that if the surgeon broke scrub he’d have to start all over again, wasting significant time in the process. Her hope was to maximize the delay in order to keep anything from happening to Michael until help, in the form of Markus Vandermeer, somehow got there. The problem was, she didn’t have any idea of how long that might be. What Lynn didn’t want was to have both Benton and Norman get ahold of her at the same time. She could well imagine what was probably in the syringe.

Pretending for the moment she was on a lacrosse field and that she was playing men’s lacrosse and not women’s, she body-checked Norman at full speed, hitting him with her shoulder and driving upward. She had seen Carl do it in old films he had from his college days. It worked superbly, catching the neurosurgeon completely off guard and knocking him off his feet to sprawl on the floor. She knew that was breaking scrub about as much as humanly possible.

Benton, rushing up behind Lynn, caught sight of this impressive display and skidded to a stop. Lynn took the opportunity to give a sharp chop with the edge of her hand to Benton’s outstretched
forearm with the hand holding the syringe. The syringe flew from his grasp, and falling to the floor, it spun safely under the operating table.

Lynn ran back around to the other side of the room after leaping over Norman, who was struggling to catch his breath. Spinning around, she waited for the next attack. Benton went back to the anesthesia machine, pulled out a small drawer, and struggled to get a new syringe filled with a mammoth dose of midazolam. Norman picked himself up off the floor, checking to be sure he had no broken bones.

“A different anesthesia machine!” Lynn yelled yet again to the circulating nurse or anyone else who would listen. “That’s all I’m asking. I’ll leave if you get it and use it.” She didn’t know if the planned surgery was indicated or not. Her guess was that it was not, but the surgery per se wasn’t her main concern. It was the number 37 anesthesia machine.

“Dr. Rhodes?” the circulating nurse said. “What should I do?”

“Nothing,” Benton sneered. He got the syringe filled and tossed aside the vial. Again prepared, he looked over at Norman, who’d now totally recovered. Both nodded and turned their full attention to Lynn. They then started around the OR table in opposite directions with the idea of trapping her.

Having been successful using the body check with Norman and still definitely reluctant to deal with both men at once, Lynn immediately launched a similar attack on Benton as she had done on Norman. Accelerating to near full speed, she ran at him. And once again, just before impact she crouched slightly so that when she hit him she could lunge upward with the point of her shoulder. At the last second before contact, Benton reared back defensively, having witnessed the effect on Norman. The ploy managed to cushion the collision significantly. But it also meant that both he and Lynn lost their footing with her momentum.

Lynn fell directly on top of Benton. She could hear the wind
whoosh out of his lungs, and then she felt him struggling vainly to catch his breath even more than what Norman had experienced. Scrambling to her feet, she realized he had managed to stab her with the syringe, whether he meant to or not, when they when they met head-on. Buried almost to the hilt, it was still sticking out of her forearm.

But she didn’t have time to worry how much of the contents might have been injected or whether it had been enough to compromise her. There was a more pressing problem. Norman had come around the operating table and was rushing at her like she had done to him, and as close as he was at that moment, there was no chance for her to be offensive. Instead, like she had done hundreds of times while playing lacrosse, she stepped aside at the very last moment like a matador, and the man mostly missed her. Yet he was able to grab a handful of her scrub top as he sailed past, and because of it, managed to keep his feet.

With as much force as she could muster, Lynn tried to tear herself free from Norman’s clutches, but he held on and even managed to get a ahold of her left wrist with his other hand. Lynn reached up with her free hand and grabbed his face mask and gave it a fearsome yank, snapping his head forward before the elastic broke. But he didn’t let go of either her clothes or her wrist. She struggled madly to get away, but no matter what she did, Norman held on.

Having caught his breath, Benton came to Norman’s aid. After suffering a few significant slaps in the face, he was able to get Lynn’s still-free arm. But that still left her feet and legs free.

Lynn struggled as much as she could, kicking both of them in the legs at least once. She was aiming higher but unable to manage it.

When the men thought they had the wild woman under a semblance of control, as she seemed to be tiring, they started toward the OR door with the intention of getting her out in the hallway. But that was easier said than done. Lynn made it as difficult as possible,
particularly by getting one foot or the other on the doorjamb on each attempt and lunging backward with as strong a kick as she could muster. From her kickboxing, her legs were powerful.

“Can you hold her while I get more Versed?” Benton squeaked.

“To be honest, I don’t know,” Norman said hoarsely. “What a vixen. Who the hell is she?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Benton said.

“I’ll tell you who I am! I’m a fourth-year medical student. The patient is my friend. I want a different anesthesia machine!”

Without warning, Benton balled his fist and struck Lynn in the face, bringing blood from her already injured nose. The blow caught Norman by surprise and for a second he loosened his grip on Lynn’s arm. Lynn took advantage of this and snatched her right arm free. Mimicking Benton, she formed a fist and hit him with a blow surprisingly similar to his, bloodying his nose, as he had done to hers.

At that moment, directly in front of the three struggling people, the door to the hallway burst open. It was the original nurse. She rushed in. Following her and wearing surgical gowns pulled on like bathrobes over their hospital security uniforms were the same five men who had been chasing Lynn and Michael inside the Shapiro Institute. Lynn didn’t recognize their faces, just their uniforms, as they were slightly different from the normal uniforms worn by hospital security.

“No!” Lynn cried. “I don’t want to go with them.”