The Inquisitor (15 page)

By the time she worked her way back to the door, she could breathe without using her slip as a filter, and she resumed her search for the switch.

She'd almost given up hope when her hand slid over a flat, slightly raised rectangle. But it had no protruding toggle, which is why she must have passed over it initially. "Please work," she muttered, and pressed it with her fingers. It pivoted slightly, and light flooded the room.

The racks of glistening gray forms in semiopaque body bags, their features partly visible, almost made her prefer the darkness.

No time to be squeamish, she told herself, and returned to the door, searching for some kind of release mechanism.

She saw it in an instant. Not the disc she'd been looking for. Another electronic lock with a slot for her card.

The card she'd left in the outside slot.

The first real flickers of panic began to stir in the pit of her stomach.

If a card is forgotten in a lock at St. Paul's, the security system deactivates the magnetic strip after a few minutes and seals the mechanism to ensure that no unauthorized person who happens on the scene can get in or acquire a functioning key.

The frigid air grew clammy, and a pressure built inside the center of her chest, expanding outward until she thought it would burst.

She couldn't end up stuck here. Not her. Not Dr. Janet Graceton, thirty-five weeks pregnant. No way she'd end up freezing to death in the goddamn morgue of her own hospital.

Yet unless she came up with something soon, that's exactly where things were headed.

She started to shiver.

A phone! Check for a phone. She'd left her cellular in her car, as always, but maybe they had a wall unit somewhere behind one of these racks, for people stupid enough to get locked in.

A quick search found none.

But at the back of the room she spotted what looked like a thermostat. If she jacked up the temperature, would an alarm sound somewhere? On closer inspection, the device seemed only to monitor the degrees, and she could see no way to reset it. Still, somewhere, there might be an alert should the room get too warm.

Whipping off her mask, she used it along with her slip to create an insulated nest around the device. Then, cupping her hands to her mouth, she blew into it. The digital readout jumped ten degrees.

She kept blowing, watching the numbers bounce up and down with each breath, until she felt light-headed again, this time from hyperventilating. As for being out of her mask, she doubted anyone in here would sneeze or cough on her anytime soon.

She frantically continued to exhale, determined to succeed, driven more to save her unborn son than herself.

Her pale swollen abdomen, in which he lay, glistened with moisture in the cold.

And her fury built at the idiot who did this to her… to him.

"That asshole knew," she kept saying, muttering aloud to keep her teeth from chattering. "Heard me yell, yet just ran off. If I get out of here, so help me, whoever it is will pay."

7:45 p.m.

Susanne Roberts met Earl at the ambulance entrance to ER, handing him a full set of protective clothing. "Mrs. Quint and I s me I led the fumes as we were coming down the elevator from a nursing department meeting. She said it reminded her of ether, from the old days, when she'd worked summers in her hometown hospital as a candy striper."

"And you're sure Janet's okay?" he asked, hurriedly pulling on the surgical wear.

"Apart from being as furious as I've ever seen her. She insists whoever dropped the jar deliberately left her down there."

His innards, already knotted, yanked themselves tighter.

"She did sustain some superficial cuts on her palms, though the trail of blood she left and the handprint on the morgue door probably saved her life…"

He pulled on gloves and rushed through the triage area, tying his mask as Susanne continued to explain. He'd gotten her phone call about ten minutes after arriving home. The return trip had taken seven, plus a ten-second tirade at the cop who'd pulled him over, then provided an escort the rest of the way, siren blazing.

He heard Janet the second they entered the inner doors.

"I'm fine, damn it!"

He arrived in a resuscitation room full of people, at the center of which his wife sat on a stretcher, arms defiantly crossed, eyes flashing over the top of her mask, and raising holy hell when anyone tried to touch her.

He relaxed a notch and took in the rest of the scene.

Susanne must have paged everyone she could think of. The inner circle clustered around Janet included an anesthetist and three staff obstetricians, one of them packing up a portable Doppler machine. Outside this group stood Stewart Deloram and Michael. Next was a ring of residents, all offering to draw blood or run batteries of tests, their usual response when they hadn't a clue what to do. To his credit, Thomas stood quietly behind this bunch and attempted to rein in their well-meant enthusiasm. Even Paul Hurst had showed up. He hovered nearby, his gloved fingers held in a pyramid tapping nervously against his mask. Probably afraid of bad publicity, Earl thought, pushing through the crowd.

She saw him. "Earl! Thank God. Now tell these people to let me out of here."

"Of course," he said, grabbing her outstretched hand. "As soon as the doctors looking after you say it's okay."

Immediately the residents fell silent, his authority over them well established. Looks of relief swept through the eyes of her colleagues. Michael gave him a wink, and the anesthetist's shoulders relaxed. At last, they all seemed to say, an adult to take charge. Even Stewart approved, giving a covert thumbs-up signal.

But not Janet. "What are you talking about, Earl Garnet? The Doppler's fine, and I am not staying in this place another second. Now you just tell everyone that we're going home."

"Michael's the doctor in charge, love." He spoke as firmly as he dared, knowing the real reason she sounded so unreasonable. He could always tell when something really scared her, because she started issuing instructions, as if through them she could regain control of a world that frightened her. Threaten her child, and she'd damn well order a whole hospital of doctors to obey her bidding. "Then we'll go, I promise," he added. To further reassure her, he interlaced his latex-covered fingers in hers and squeezed gently, mindful of her cuts.

She glared at him defiantly.

He smiled, knowing she couldn't see it, but hoping his eyes would transmit the message. "Hey, I'm not leaving here without you, trust me," he whispered, leaning closer and touching his forehead to hers.

The darkness in Janet's eyes softened. "All right, I'll be good," she said, her voice a notch lower, but still at a strained pitch.

"Attagirl, Janet," he heard Michael say, and his portly friend stepped up beside her, eyes clearly indicative of a smile. "I'd say you're probably right that there's nothing wrong," he continued, not making the mistake of talking to Earl as if she weren't in the room. His voice resonated with the warmth and encouragement he usually gave to people under his care. Nor was there so much as a trace of the forlornness in his eyes that Earl had seen earlier. "You would have been unconscious a lot longer if your passing out had been the result of chloroform. So I think we can safely conclude you fainted, the consequence of a vasovagal response due to holding your breath."

He referred to how refusing to breathe can slow the heart rate, causing both the blood pressure and the breath holder to drop like a rock.

"Exactly, Michael," she said, "so let me out of here."

"Okay, but why not let me draw one blood test, just to document no significant chloroform levels?"

She studied him. "But won't it have worn off?"

"If there's not even a trace, then you had no significant exposure. If we do pick up a level, however low, we know approximately what time you inhaled it, and can calculate an estimate of what must have been the maximum concentration in your circulation. Either way, it's more reassuring to know, right?"

Only if it's good news, Earl thought. Still, Michael had a point.

Janet seemed to consider his equation as well. "Okay, but just that one test." She scanned her audience of residents. "And no offense, but you lot are a little too eager with the needles. I'd like Michael to do the honors." She held out her arm like a princess expecting a kiss on the hand.

The corners of his eyes corrugated into even deeper smile lines, and he reached for a tourniquet. "Is everyone agreed that's all we do?" he asked, eyeing the anesthetist and the trio of obstetricians.

They all nodded.

Good old Michael, thorough as always, with just the right touch to get everyone to do his bidding.

"But wait," Stewart said. "She could have liver or renal damage, or both, and there's no telling about the fetus-"

"I'm sure that won't be a factor if there's no significant blood levels of chloroform," Earl said. Then he curtly took Stewart by the elbow and led him away from the stretcher. "What the hell's the matter with you?" Earl whispered once they were out of range for her to hear. He felt furious at the man for his insensitivity. "We all know the risks, especially Janet. She's already worried shitless without you spelling out worst-case scenarios. Are you trying to frighten her to death?"

Stewart's eyebrows shot toward his frizzy black hairline, which no cap in the world was apparently able to contain. His stare grew incredulous, as if he truly didn't understand the fuss. "Hey, no need to take my head off. I'm just trying to be helpful, for fuck's sake." He jerked his arm away from Earl's grip and strode out of the room.

Earl resisted the urge to run after him, not sure he wouldn't throttle the jerk for being so clueless and definitely in no mood to initiate the placating that might avoid a lifetime grudge. It was pointless either way, he decided, fed up with Stewart's petulance at the moment. Besides, nothing could sway that stubborn temperament until it cooled off. He'd deal with Stewart tomorrow. Maybe by then he could also get a clearer story about the business with Wyatt's patients.

"Can I have a word with you, Earl?" Hurst said as he glided up beside him, took his elbow, and led the way to a back corner. The glassy smoothness of the CEO's tone chilled the air. "This insistence of Janet's that whoever dropped the bottle of chloroform knowingly left her in danger," he began, facing away from her. "Can you not persuade her to consider the event only an accident? You and I already agree, everyone is scared enough of SARS. We don't want rumors there may be someone running around maliciously endangering the lives of-"

"My wife is the most cool-headed, most fearless, and least hysterical person I know," Earl interrupted, his tone low and cold, his temper, already primed by Stewart, nearing a boil. He leaned closer to Hurst's ear. "If she says someone knowingly left her in danger, then that's what we're dealing with, understand? That means there won't be any sweep-it-under-the-rug cover-up. What's more, if I find the creep, neither you nor the rest of the staff will need to worry about that person doing more harm anytime soon."

Hurst arched a gray eyebrow at him. "Really, Earl, I would have expected a more balanced, mature response. I suggest you need practice in learning to see the big picture."

Earl switched to Hurst's other ear, as if performing an unconsummated French greeting. "Paul, let's just say I feel about someone trying to hurt Janet the way you do about someone trying to hurt this hospital."

Hurst staggered back a step. "I see," he said, and creased his forehead. "Yes, of course you would-"

"Janet!" Len Gardner barged into the room, one of the strings of his mask trailing out behind him, the whole thing threatening to come undone. "What's this I hear about someone trying to chloroform you near the morgue?"

Hurst visibly stiffened but didn't turn around, remaining outwardly calm with his hands clasped behind his back, the way a host might carry himself upon hearing guests becoming unruly at a cocktail party.

Earl brusquely signaled the pathologist to fasten the ties properly. Goddamn it, he of all people should know better.

"Len," Janet answered. "Just the man I wanted to question. What have you got chloroform down there for, anyway? And who the hell would be carrying a jug of the stuff around?"

"That's what is so weird." Len's authoritative voice began to hush surrounding conversations and command everyone's attention. "We hardly use the stuff anymore, just to make Carnoy's solution to speed up tissue fixation. Even then, no one would ever need the whole jar."

He and Janet continued to speculate about the bizarre sequence of events, all to the rapt attention of the three main gossip groups in St. Paul's: residents, nurses, and doctors.

"You see," Hurst said, pupils boring into Earl's, "this kind of sensationalism won't come to any good." He shook his head in a show of sad disapproval, as if he held Earl personally responsible for the conversation unfolding behind him, and turned to leave.

Only then could Earl see that the long fingers of the surgeon's right hand had curled into a fist.

Tuesday, July 8, 2:30 a.m. Palliative Care, St. Paul's Hospital

Sadie Locke started and sat up.

"Father Jimmy?"

She'd been lying with her eyes closed, waiting for his visit, when she heard the rustle of clothing.

No answer.

A shadow by her door moved.

"Sorry, wrong room," whispered a voice.

The shape retreated to the hallway.

Tuesday, July 8, 7:05 a.m.

Thick as a fold of flesh on a pachyderm's ass," Thomas Biggs grumbled, his Tennessee twang cutting the gloom like a buzz saw. He squinted upward as gray tendrils engulfed the upper floors of St. Paul's. A fog bank had bulged off Lake Erie to lean on the downtown core.

Earl shivered in the clammy air. Screening at the hospital entrance progressed more slowly than usual, and chatter among the troops remained muted.

They were an army that had woken to the news their lines had once more been breached. Morning broadcasts reported thirty new cases of possible SARS and three more deaths, all of them identified on a ward in a rehabilitation hospital not three blocks away. The zinger that had this crowd so subdued was that the seminal case involved a woman who'd had hip surgery at St. Paul's, and she must have contracted the virus from an unknown carrier on staff here.

At his urging, Janet had agreed to take the day off, though Earl admitted nothing seemed wrong with her. If anything, her ready acceptance to stay home concerned him. It meant she'd been more shaken by what happened than he realized.

"Any idea who the carrier is yet?" Earl asked when it came his turn to be screened.

"No," the nurse answered, her voice having retreated to the high-pitched, thin tones that are a giveaway of taut vocal cords.

He took a good look at her, at least what remained visible above the mask.

Brown eyes, young and scared, met his, then she looked away, probably embarrassed that he'd seen her fear.

In ER, as usual following a SARS scare implicating St. Paul's, the morning rush of walk-ins hadn't appeared, and the waiting room stood empty.

"A good day to check supplies," Susanne said. She believed the best antidote to anxiety over each new outbreak lay in keeping busy. "How's Janet?"

"She took the day off."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Wow. Is she okay?"

"I think so, at least physically."

Susanne frowned at him. "Why don't you bug out and spend the day with her at home?" She gestured toward the triage desk, where J.S. sat, unoccupied and staring off into space. "There's certainly not much happening here."

She had a point. "I just might do that. Thanks, Susanne." Meantime he had a few things to prepare for next week's death rounds, but that could wait. First he checked with Michael, however.

"Go home," the man said when he learned Janet hadn't come into work. "I can handle things here." He glanced over to where Thomas had gathered the other residents to start morning rounds. "Especially with Dr. Biggs to keep me smart."

The young man from Tennessee looked up. "Thank you, Dr. Popovitch. If you'll put that in writing, I'll apply for a position here next year."

"Anytime," Michael said without hesitation.

"That goes for me too," Earl added, not having heard him express an interest in coming on staff before. "Are you serious?"

"You bet. I like it here. Your department's great. The hospital, the university, and the academic environment for research are perfect for what I see myself doing. The city's not too big and has lots of green spaces, plus being by the lake is terrific. And for a boy from the hills of Tennessee, the mountains an hour's drive south are just like home."

Earl walked over and slapped Thomas on the back. "Well, that helps fix what started as a crappy day." He also noted that every nurse in the room nodded approvingly. "And you evidently got the vote that really counts."

Susanne leaned over and whispered, "Now go home. Tell Janet that you're a gift from all of us."

He grinned. "Hey, take it easy, or I'll think you want to get rid of me."

"Perceptive," Susanne said as she headed into the medication cupboard.

On his way past triage he winked and said, "Kicked out of my own department, J.S. What do you think of that?"

He expected her usual playful response. Instead she started and looked at him as if she hadn't caught what he'd said. In fact, above the mask, she was a little pale. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Dr. G."

"Sure?"

"Of course." She straightened in her chair. "Hey, I'm a triage nurse. Who should know better than me if I'm all right?"

"Of course." He let her be, but on his way to the elevators, he couldn't help but think he should have checked her out more carefully.

Carriers.

The possibility set his stomach churning in high gear.

7:25 a.m.

Intensive care swarmed with its usual rush of morning activities. Patients here were an eclectic enough group with such a variety of multiple problems that they attracted consults from just about every type of specialist in existence. Cardiologists, neurologists, immunologists, oncologists, internists- they all huddled in small groups at the end of one bed after another and took turns pronouncing on the state of the particular system where their expertise lay. Mercifully many recipients of this attention were too sedated to hear or care. But the sentient ones wore puzzled expressions as sage-looking professors introduced themselves, then proceeded to discuss hearts, brains, white cell responses, tumors, and metabolic abnormalities as if these were entities to be considered on their own, objects of interest that happened to be located in the body of whoever occupied the cubicle. True professionals, they at least attempted to mask their glee at each discovery, managing to be no more noisy than excited shoppers at a mall.

Earl ignored them all and walked directly to the nursing station. He came up behind Stewart Deloram, who sat rummaging through a lost-and-found drawer. "Anybody see my goddamned keys? I seem to have lost them again."

Every nurse within hearing distance rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. Earl heard at least three of them mutter something about the need for idiot strings. The guy could keep track of every molecule in a patient's biochemistry, but personal belongings were another matter.

Stewart turned, caught sight of him, and jumped to his feet. "Earl! I intended to come and see you." He blurted out the words with an urgent sincerity that sounded odd coming from him.

"Pardon?" Earl had half expected a fight.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry for not realizing what Janet must have been thinking and feeling. I can be such a dolt about that sort of thing."

Well, well, Earl thought.

"I'll go to the case room and apologize to her in person, as soon as I get the ward settled-"

"She's at home, Stewart."

The thick black eyebrows arched like warring caterpillars. "What?"

"She decided to take it easy today."

"Oh."

"I think she's okay physically. Luckily, the blood levels for chloroform came back virtually negative, so we doubt the baby had a significant exposure. But the deliberateness of what happened really upset her."

"Shit, I hope I didn't add to that."

"No, no, I'm sure that's forgotten. I'm here to discuss something else with you.

Let's find a quiet corner."

They moved to an area behind a large curved console of monitors. The quantified parameters of life- blood pressures, pulses, the forces of cardiac contractions, oxygen saturations, respiratory rates- squiggled and jiggled in a dance of fluorescent green readouts.

"I went to interview the patients you spoke with on Peter Wyatt's ward, the ones who reported the near-death experiences that you called bogus."

"What?" His eyes widened, the way an animal's would if it were taken by surprise.

"Down, boy. If Wyatt had started a vendetta against you, I wanted to know, so as to put an end to it before anything got out of hand."

Stewart remained unappeased, his expression suspended between incredulity and fury.

"But since you visited with them last Friday, they have all either died or slipped into a coma."

Incredulity won.

"They what?"

"You heard me. Dead, or near dead."

"My God."

"Did they strike you as being that ill when you saw them?"

"Well, I don't know. I wasn't evaluating them medically…"

He seemed genuinely stunned by the news, but also to be fishing around for answers.

"Come on, Stewart, you don't need a full workup to sense people are near the end. It looked to me they were in bad shape on their charts, but of course nothing beats seeing them firsthand. Would you have guessed these people were about to die or go unconscious?"

"You mean you didn't talk to a single one of them?"

Earl felt Stewart hadn't heard the question. "No, I didn't. Now answer what I asked."

"Yes, they were ill," he said decisively, his puzzled expression unwinding to neutral. "None of them was going to survive more than a few days."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

An icy cold began to gnaw at the pit of Earl's stomach. "So it doesn't surprise you, three dead, two comatose."

"Not at all." Stewart's expression grew suspicious again. "What are you getting at?"

"You seemed pretty astounded at first."

He sat up straighter, threw his shoulders back, and raised his chin a notch. "Only that you went to question them yourself. But I guess I should thank you for that, considering you appear to be looking out for my interests against Wyatt's."

"St. Paul's interests, actually."

"I don't understand."

"I think you do." Earl turned to leave, in no mood to be stonewalled- he had other ways to find out what he wanted- when inadvertently he glanced toward the isolation chambers at the end of the room. Three were ablaze with light, the nurses busily attending to the patients within. But the one where Teddy Burns had struggled to breathe yesterday loomed dark and empty.

Stewart saw him staring at the glass cubicle. "Yeah, it sucks," he said and gestured helplessly at the heavens with both hands. Whatever else he'd been pretending about, his voice resonated with a blend of anger and remorse that couldn't be faked. "He arrested last night. I couldn't save him."

Earl slumped against the wall of the elevator all the way up to the eighth floor. As VP, medical, he would be the one to arrange a memorial for Teddy. He tried out what he would say.

/ recall all the times we struggled side by side to restore the breath of life to the already dead…

He couldn't finish. The disgust on the man's face as he'd struggled to breathe when no one could help him overwhelmed such treacle.

Earl stopped by the nursing station in Palliative Care and asked the woman in charge, a tiny person with big Elton John glasses, if Monica Yablonsky had left him a list of all her colleagues who'd reported a patient having a near-death experience.

She hadn't.

"Then would you do it, please?" he asked.

She looked at him curiously, shrugged, and made a note of the request.

It was probably better not to deal with Monica Yablonsky anyway, he thought, pressing the button to summon the elevator back. The less he had to confront her, the better his chance to quietly discover what had transpired up here without setting off alarm bells. However much Hurst had infuriated him, what the manipulative old bastard had said about how distractions could be lethal still made sense. And this morning's headlines underlined that everyone must stay focused on the minutest detail of how to protect against the infection. Worst of all, even that might not be enough. Teddy Burns had never been able to tell the SARS control committee what slip cost him his life.

The elevator arrived.

He didn't get in, wanting a quiet place to clear his head.

The roof garden. It ought to be deserted on a day like this.

Minutes later, stepping out into the fog, he might have been on a mountain ledge. Buffalo itself lay completely obscured, and the sounds of the city came to him as if out of a gray dream. Only the potted trees defined his floating world. As he walked their perimeter, droplets of moisture in the air felt cool on his forehead.

But nothing could soothe his churning gut.

Stewart had seemed relieved those patients couldn't repeat what they'd said about their near-death experiences. And it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that, for a few seconds at least, he'd also acted genuinely surprised to hear they had ended up dead or comatose.

Which meant what?

For one, he probably hadn't really thought they were on the brink of death when he first saw them just last week.

Yet why would he not simply say so, instead of suddenly insisting they'd been at death's door, no doubt about it?

Earl looked back at the hospital. The surrounding murk had reduced it to little more than a smudge in the distance.

A real house of secrets, he thought.

But if he could persuade the nurses in Palliative Care to recount the specifics of their patients' near-death encounters, perhaps he could figure out what Stewart seemed so intent on hiding.

And he would also take a closer look at the broader workings of Palliative Care- surreptitiously, of course- as soon as he could find a way to do it. Because if Yablonsky and her crew had killed Elizabeth Matthews with an accidental overdose, he intended to make damn sure they hadn't covered up clusters of anything else.

As for whoever had pulled that numskull move on Janet last night, he'd go after that piece of work with a vengeance. Serve notice that this VP, medical would track the idiot down. Ask around if any witnesses saw somebody in the stairwell at that time. Check in particular if they noticed an aroma of chloroform off his or her clothes. Let everyone know they had a new sheriff in town. Nothing subtle about it. The person's running out on Janet had been criminal.

A rain, thin as needles, began to fall.

He remained where he stood, reluctant to reenter the oppressive confines of the building.

And let his mind fleetingly dredge up the unthinkable.

What if smashing the chloroform bottle had been deliberate?

Immediately he rebelled.

Of course not. Why the hell even think such nonsense? No one in their right mind would do that, not to Janet, not to anyone. The person would be a maniac. God, Hurst would be right to give him shit for allowing such thoughts into his head.