Natural Causes (45 page)

Battling dread unlike any he had ever known, Matt snatched up the phone and dialed the operator.

“I found Dr. Baldwin,” he said breathlessly. “She’s in cardiac arrest. Fifth floor. Thayer Building. Please get a team up here now!”

I
T WAS A NIGHTMARE WITHIN A NIGHTMARE
. A
T SOME
level of her mind, Sarah struggled to believe that—to remember that as a teen she had always awakened, always been safe and in her bed. But there was nothing she could do with her thoughts, and
absolutely
nothing she could do with her body, to stem the helplessness, the pain, and the unremitting terror. As they had during countless dreams in her early life, rough hands pinned her on her back, then tied her down. She fought to free herself until her arms and legs burned. But the bonds were like steel.

Then thick, powerful fingers began forcing a wadded cloth between her teeth. She pushed against the cloth with her tongue. She shook her head violently from side to side. But the gag was thrust deeper and deeper into her mouth, clogging the back of her throat and choking her. She strained to pull in air through swollen, narrowed nostrils. Her efforts grew weaker. She prayed for unconsciousness or even death. But always there was just enough air to keep going, just enough to prolong the agony.

Please let me die! Please just let me go to sleep and die.…

“Sarah.… Honey, listen to me. It’s Matt.… Try to hold still and listen.… Better. That’s better. You can keep your eyes closed, but please listen.… Sarah, you’re on a ventilator. There’s a tube down your nose and one down your throat and into your lungs helping you breathe. And they’ve got you strapped down. Squeeze my hand if you understand all that.… Good. Good. Just try and keep calm, honey. I’m going to tell the nurse you’re waking up.”

Sarah felt Matt’s huge, comfortable hand squeeze hers and then vanish. She strained to separate nightmare from nightmare. Bit by bit she remembered.

As her consciousness and awareness grew, so did the indescribable discomfort of the endotracheal breathing tube and the fearsome sensation of air hunger. She could hear the ventilator bucking and whirring as it fought against her own attempts to breathe. Clearly, it was set on automatic rather than assist. It was set to breathe for her, not necessarily with her.

Slow down
, she begged herself.
Don’t fight it.… Remember what you tell patients on vents.… Easy now
.… Go
with it.… Relax and go with it.… Meditate.… Find the swan.… Find your spirit.… Find it and just watch it fly.…

“Sarah, can you hear me? Sarah, open your eyes. It’s Alma. Alma Young.… There, that’s it.…”

Sarah blinked against the blurriness and the sting of light. Gradually her vision cleared. The SICU nurse was looking down at her with concern.

“They were full in the medical ICU,” she said. “We all wanted you in here anyway, and Dr. Blankenship said okay. One of the other nurses called to tell me what had happened, and I came back in to ‘special’ you. Do you understand all that?… Good. I’m going to undo the restraints on your wrists. Please don’t touch the tube. Understand?… Good.”

Sarah waited patiently as the broad leather straps were loosened and then removed. Her pounding headache was subsiding. She was fully awake now and rapidly regaining control.
Someone had tried to kill her!
Someone had injected her beneath her scalp with something rapidly acting and incredibly potent. Now she was on a vent. All those school psychologists and university psychiatrists had been wrong. The recurring dreams that had once so plagued and disrupted her life had never been a distorted reenactment of some terrible event hidden in her past. Rather, they were a prophesy, just as Louis Han’s Thai healer had intimated they might be.
This
was the struggle for which the dreams were preparing her.
This
was the battle of her life. And she had survived—first in Chinatown and now in the SICU. Thanks in some way to the horrible nightmares, she was continuing to endure against whatever evil was trying to crush her.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose …

Sarah flexed some circulation into her hand, and then reached up and pointed to the endotracheal tube.

“I know. I know,” Alma said. “As soon as we get your blood gas results, I’m going to call anesthesia and Dr. Blankenship, and see if we can get that tube out. Are you okay for now?… Good. I’ve switched your vent to demand, so you can breathe any way you want. You sure you’re okay? Sarah, I just want to say that whatever’s going on will pass if you let it. There’s never the need to do what you thought you had to. But listen, we can talk about all that later. I’m just glad you’re all right.”

A respiratory therapist came in and drew a sample of blood from the line in Sarah’s radial artery. During the interminable half hour that followed, Matt stayed beside her, doing what he could to keep her calm, and filling her in on the events surrounding her resuscitation.

“It was morphine in the IV bag,” he said. “The empty
vials were on the floor. Dr. Blankenship says we got to you just in time. Whatever the emergency team gave you worked incredibly well. You’ve actually been awake for most of the night. But the nurses have been giving you stuff so that they could keep you on the ventilator. The box of acupuncture needles that you reported as stolen was on the desk in that room, along with an unopened vial of the rattlesnake venom and a scribbled, unsigned note on a prescription blank, that just said ‘I’m sorry.’ The door to the room was bolted from the inside. Right now I’m about the only one in this hospital who doesn’t believe you tried to kill yourself.… Am I right?”

Sarah squeezed his hand and nodded as vigorously as she could manage.

“I knew it,” Matt whispered. “It’s been at least, oh, three or four months since any woman who was
my
lover tried to kill herself.… Squeeze my hand if you think that was funny.… Oh, I see.… Listen, there have been some wild things going on in this Ayurvedic powder business—not the least of which is that Mallon is going to tell the Graysons to drop their suit against you. Not settle,
drop
. I’ll tell you all the details later.

“Rosa told you she found out who engineered that virus, right? The guy who stutters. But she wouldn’t tell you or anyone else his name, right? Well, now she thinks she knows where he is. She tried calling you at home and at the hospital to bring you up to date. Finally, one of the nurses told her what had happened and exactly where you were, and she showed up here around eleven last night. She came in again at two this morning. She really cares about you. I’d be surprised if she’s slept any more than I have. She won’t say where this virus guy is, but she’s driving there today to try to find him. Eli’s arranging for her to use a hospital car for the day, no questions asked.…

“Hey, hang on now, pal. Alma’s coming, and I think the anesthesiologist is with her.”

The news from the laboratory was excellent. Sarah’s
blood gases—her pH, oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels—were all good enough for her to come off of assisted ventilation. The sensation of having her trachea suctioned out, and then the endotracheal tube pulled, was one Sarah hoped never to experience again. She sputtered and gagged, and coughed spasmodically. But again, Matt was there for her, steadying her through the coughing jag, stroking her arm, even kissing her on the forehead.

“Careful you don’t get disbarred,” she rasped, when the cough had finally subsided.

“I told you, they’re dropping the case. I won’t be your attorney anymore. We can go public. In fact, I’ve rented a sound truck for later today just to cruise the streets and tell the people of Boston that I love you and that we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

“I love you, too, Matt. I really do. Hey, what time is it, anyhow?”

“Six. A little after.”

“God, twelve hours of my life, gone just like that.”

“It could have been
all
of it,” Matt reminded her.

Sarah’s response was cut short by the sound of a throat being politely cleared. Standing at the foot of the bed was a rumpled, graying man wearing a red clip-on bow tie. He held Sarah’s loose-leaf SICU record cradled open in one arm and peered down at it through Ben Franklin spectacles. Although she had never met or even seen the man, Sarah correctly guessed his specialty before he introduced himself.

“I’m Dr. Goldschmidt,” he said. “I’m a psychiatrist. Sir, if you’ll excuse us for a few minutes …”

“This is Matt Daniels,” Sarah said quickly. “He’s my—my lawyer.”

Goldschmidt eyed Matt for a few seconds.

“Perhaps he should stay, then,” he said. “If it’s all right with you.”

“Please,” she said hoarsely.

“Very well, then. I know you’ve been through a lot
and that they just took your breathing tube out. So I’ll be as brief as I can.” He moistened his thin, bluish lips with his tongue. “Tell me, Dr. Baldwin. Have you ever tried to hurt yourself before last night?”

Sarah’s eyes flashed. She glanced over at Matt, who motioned for her to keep calm.

“The answer is no. But I did not try to hurt myself last night either, Dr. Goldschmidt. Someone tried to kill me and make it look like suicide.”

“I see,” Goldschmidt said, scratching something down in her chart. “But how do you explain the door being bolted from inside?”

“Someone had a key.”

“Perhaps. But from what I’ve been told, even housekeeping and maintenance don’t have keys to those rooms.”

“I didn’t try to kill myself.”

“Dr. Baldwin, I just want to help you.”

“Then let me go home.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Why?” Matt asked.

“I have been assigned Dr. Baldwin’s case by Dr. Blankenship because it is hospital policy for every attempted suicide to have a psychiatrist, and I am on call for my department today. Her current diagnosis is”—he read from her chart—
“narcotic overdose, suicide attempt
. I have both the power and the obligation to hospitalize her on a secured mental health unit until I am convinced she is neither a danger to herself nor to others. Surely you as a lawyer can appreciate the importance of my doing just that.”

“I do, yes,” Matt said.

He thought about all he wanted to accomplish that day to clarify the connection linking Peter Ettinger, the McGrath Foundation, and the Medical Center of Boston. What safer place could Sarah be for the moment than on a locked, closely controlled ward?

“Sarah,” he said, “I think you’ve got to go along with whatever he says. At least for the time being.”

If the psychiatrist appreciated the support, it did not show on his face, which looked tense. He was about to speak when Eli Blankenship strode up beside him.

“Thanks for coming in so promptly, Mel,” Blankenship said. “Sarah, are you okay?”

“I’m feeling better every second. Dr. Blankenship, please tell Dr. Goldschmidt that I’m not crazy and I didn’t try to kill myself.”

“No one ever said you were crazy.”

“Listen, someone injected me with something right here under my hair, and tried to make it look like I killed myself.”

Blankenship studied her scalp with a penlight and then shook his head. “Nothing.”

“It was a tiny needle. A twenty-nine gauge or smaller. Shave my hair off if you need to,” Sarah pleaded. “You’ll find it.”

“Sarah, please. Just be patient with us and let us do our jobs. Alma says that your lungs are clear and your vital signs are stable. Within an hour or two, when we’re sure your larynx isn’t going to go into spasm, I’d like you transferred out of here to Dr. Goldschmidt’s service. Apparently, they’re going to be very tight on beds here when the surgical schedule starts.”

“Where am I going?”

“The only place you can go and stay in this hospital is Underwood Six.”

“Matt, please. That’s a locked ward. Don’t let them do this.”

“Sarah, it won’t be for long. Besides, with what happened last night, I’d worry if you were anywhere else. I’ve got things to do and people to see today to try and sort out this powder business. Just go for today, and then we’ll see what we can do.”

“I’m telling you, there’s a needle puncture mark
someplace under my hair where the man who tried to kill me injected something.”

“Please, Dr. Baldwin,” Goldschmidt said, “I’m sorry if you have something against psychiatrists, or don’t trust me in particular. I
do
want to help you. But it’s six-thirty in the morning. I’ve been up most of the night, and I have a full day of patients and consultations ahead of me. Try not to make this situation any more difficult than it is.”

“Sarah, listen,” Blankenship said, “my gut tells me that you’re okay, and that you’re telling the truth. But there really is nothing else we can do right now. I’ll tell you what. Twenty-four hours of observation and I’ll do everything in my power to convince Dr. Goldschmidt and the staff to send you home. I promise.”

Sarah studied the determined expressions on the three men’s faces and then reluctantly agreed to the transfer. The psychiatrist wrote a brief note in her chart and promised to be by to see her on Underwood Six as soon as he had a break in his schedule. One of the psych residents would be by to do her intake history and physical.

“I can hardly wait,” Sarah said.

The yellow vinyl police ribbons across the doorway of room 512 on Thayer Five were not unlike those that had been used on Kwong Tian-Wen’s shop. The door itself, with its shattered center panel, was shut. Matt checked to be sure he was unobserved, then loosened the ribbon and slipped inside. The IV pole was still there, but the infusion bag was gone, as was Sarah’s lacquered box. There was no evidence that the room had been dusted for fingerprints. There was no closet, and no room for concealment except under the bed. Someone had found a way to get out and lock the door behind him.

Matt inspected the lock, which seemed no different from others on the floor. Certainly whoever it was could have called in a locksmith and had a key made. But for
the killer to purposely create such a witness hardly seemed likely. He walked to the only windowed wall. The two ancient double-hung windows were nearly opaque with months, if not years, of outside grime. Through them, he could see the next building, some hundred or hundred and fifty feet away. Screw holes told him that at one time in the remote past the windows had had latches. Replacing them had undoubtedly been a low item on the MCB maintenance list. At five stories above the ground, there was hardly any need for outside security. Then Matt glanced down.