Triggers (5 page)

But there was no doubt his mind was active. He tried, and failed, to open his eyes; tried, and failed, to sit up; tried, and failed, to speak. And, unlike some horror stories he’d heard about patients feeling every scalpel cut and stitch while supposedly knocked out, he was experiencing no pain at all, thank—well, thank biochemistry!

Ah, and now the white light had begun to appear: pure, brilliant, but not at all painful to…well, not to
look
at; he wasn’t seeing with his eyes, after all. But to
contemplate.

A pristine, bright, soothing, inviting light…

And then, just as those who’d come back from the brink said it sometimes does, his life began to flash in front of his eyes.

A kindly female face.

A playground.

Childhood friends.

A public school.

But he didn’t remember all the graffiti, all the litter, the broken stonework, and—

No, no, that was ridiculous.
Of course
he remembered it—or he wouldn’t be seeing it now.

But…

A knife. Blood.

Tattered clothes.

The air shimmering. Unbearable heat. Screams. The stench of…yes, of burning flesh.

No, no, he’d been a good person! He
had.
He’d done his best always. And even with him agreeing to Counterpunch, he couldn’t be going to hell!

A metaphoric deep breath; he had no control over his body, but it
felt
like he was inhaling.

There is no hell. No heaven, either.

But the
heat.
The flames. The screams.

There is no hell!

All of it was explicable, a natural phenomenon: just the way the brain responded to oxygen starvation.

The images changed, the smells changed, the sounds changed. The hellish vista was replaced by a city street at night.

Another woman’s face.

And much more, in rapid succession: people, incidents, events.

It
was
a life review flashing before him.

But it wasn’t
his
life that he saw.

“EEG
is erratic!”

“BP continues to fall!”

“We’re losing him!”

Eric Redekop lifted his head to look at his team as he continued the manual heart massage. A nurse named Ann January daubed his forehead with a cloth, picking up the sweat. “No,” he said simply. “We are
not.
I’m not going down in history as the surgeon who couldn’t save the president.”

NIKKI
Van Hausen looked at her hands—and an image of them covered with blood filled her mind. She shook her head, trying to dispel the grisly sight—but it came back to her even more forcefully: her hands red and dripping, and—

My God!

And she was holding a knife, and its blade was slick and crimson.

More images: cutting into skin, blood welling up from the wound.

Again: another cut, more blood. And again: another thrust, this time blood spurting.

She sat down and looked—really looked—at her hands: the smooth pale skin, the tiny scar along the side of her right index finger from a wineglass that had broken while she was washing it, the silver ring she wore with a turquoise cabochon, the painted nails—red, yes, but not blood-red.

But again images of her hands covered in blood came to her. And beneath the blood, peeking out here and there: gloves. Like a murderer who knew that fingerprints would otherwise be left behind.

Her heart was pounding. “What’s happening?” she said softly, although no one was paying any attention to her. She raised her voice. “What’s happening to me?”

That caught the interest of a doctor who was walking past her here on the fourth floor of Luther Terry Memorial Hospital. “Miss?” he said.

“What’s happening to me?” she asked again, holding her hands in front of her face, as if he, too, could see the blood on them. But, of course, they were dry—she knew that; she could
see
that. And yet visions of them glistening and red kept coming to her, but—

But her real hands were shaking, and the bloodied hands
never
shook; she somehow knew that.

The doctor looked at her. “Miss, are you a patient here?”

“No, no. Just visiting my brother, but—but
something’s wrong.”

“What’s your name?” the doctor asked.

And she went to answer, but—

But
that
wasn’t her name! And
that
wasn’t where she lived! And
that
wasn’t her hometown! Nikki felt herself teetering. She was still holding her hands up in front of her, and she fell against the doctor, her palms pressing into his chest.

More strange thoughts poured into her head. A knife slicing through fat and muscle. Being tackled in a football game—something that had never happened to her. A funeral—oh God, a funeral for her mother, who was still alive and well.

Her eyes had closed when she’d fallen forward, but she opened them now, looked down, and saw the doctor’s little engraved plastic name
badge, “J. Sturgess, M.D.,” and she knew, even though she’d never seen him before, that the
J
was for Jurgen, and she suddenly also knew that M.D. didn’t stand for “Medical Doctor,” as she’d always thought, but rather for the Latin equivalent,
Medicinae Doctor.

Just then, two nurses walked by, and she heard one of them spouting medical gobbledygook. Or it should have been gobbledygook; she shouldn’t even have been able to say, a moment later, what words the nurse had used but…

But she’d heard it clearly: “Amitriptyline.” And she knew how to spell it, and that it was a tricyclic antidepressant, and…
My God!
…she knew that “tricyclic” referred to the three rings of atoms in its chemical structure, and—

Her flattened hands balled into fists and pounded into the doctor’s chest. “Make it stop!” she said. “Make it stop!”

The doctor—Jurgen, he played golf badly, had two daughters, was divorced, loved sushi—called out to the passing nurses. “Heather, Tamara—help, please.”

One of the nurses—it was Tamara, she
knew
it was Tamara—turned and took hold of Nikki’s shoulders, and the other one, Heather, picked up a wall-mounted phone and dialed four digits; if she was calling security…

How the hell did she know all this?

If she was calling security, she’d just tapped out 4-3-2-1.

Nikki half turned and pushed Tamara away, not because she didn’t want help but because it welled up in her that it was wrong, wrong, wrong to touch a nurse during duty hours.

She felt dizzy again, though, and reached out for support, finding herself grabbing Dr. Sturgess’s stethoscope, which was hanging loosely around his neck; it came free and she was suddenly falling backward. Heather surged in to catch her. “Is she stoned?” the nurse asked.

“I don’t know,” said Sturgess, but Nikki was incensed by the suggestion.

“I’m not stoned, damn it! What’s happening? What’s going on here? What did you
do?”

Tamara moved closer. “Security is on its way, Dr. Sturgess. They’re
sending someone down from five; everyone normally on this floor is downstairs, helping guard the president.”

The president.

And suddenly she saw
him,
Jerrison, his chest split wide, and her hands plunging into his torso, seizing his heart, squeezing it…

And that name again:
Eric Redekop.

“Make it stop!” Nikki said. She moved her hands to the top of her head and pushed down, as if she could somehow squeeze the alien thoughts out. “Make it stop!”

“Tamara,” said Sturgess, “get some secobarbital.”

And
that,
Nikki found she knew, was a sedative.

“It’ll be okay,” Sturgess said to Nikki, his tone soothing. “It’ll be fine.”

She looked up and saw a middle-aged white man: lean, bald, bearded, wearing green surgical garb, and—

“Eric!” she called. “Eric!”

He continued to close the distance but had a puzzled expression on his face.

Sturgess turned and looked at Eric, too. “Eric! My God, how’s—” He glanced at Nikki. “How’s your, um, your special patient?”

Eric sounded weary. “We almost lost him, but he’s stable now. Jono is closing.”

“And you?” asked Sturgess, touching Eric’s arm briefly. “How are you?”

“Dead,” said Eric. “Exhausted.” He shook his head. “What’s the world coming to?”

Nikki was reeling. She’d never seen Eric before, but she knew exactly what he looked like, and—God!—even what he looked like naked. She knew him, this Eric, this man who—

—who was born fifty years ago, on April 11, in Fort Wayne, Indiana; who has an older brother named Carl; who plays a killer game of chess; who is allergic to penicillin; and who—yes!—had just performed surgery, saving the president’s life.

“Eric,” she said, “what’s happening to me?”

“Miss,” he replied, “do I know you?”

The words struck Nikki like a knife—like a
scalpel.
Surely he must
know her, if she knew him. But he didn’t. There was no hint of recognition on his face.

“I’m Nikki,” she said, as if that should mean something to him.

“Hello,” Eric said, sounding bewildered.

“I know you,” Nikki said, imploringly. “I know you, Eric.”

“I’m sorry, um, Nikki. I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“Damn it,” said Nikki. “This is crazy!”

“What’s wrong with her?” Eric asked Sturgess.

Tamara was gesturing to someone; Nikki turned to see who. It was a uniformed security guard.

“No,” she said. “No, I’m sorry I hit you, Jurgen.”

Sturgess’s eyebrows went up. “How did you know my name?”

How the hell
did
she know his name—or Eric’s?

And then it came to her: she knew Jurgen’s name because Eric knew it. They were old friends, although Eric found Jurgen a tad brusque and a bit too humorless for his taste. She knew…well,
everything
Eric knew.

“It’s all right,” Eric said, motioning for the guards to halt their approach. “Nurse Enright here will look after you. We’ll get you help.”

But that was even worse: suddenly a flood of memories came to Nikki: recalcitrant patients, patients screaming obscenities, a heavyset man throwing a punch, another man breaking down and crying—a cascade of disturbed patients Eric had dealt with over the years.

“I—I’m not like that,” Nikki stammered out.

Eric narrowed his eyes. “Like what?”

Christ, she was a real-estate agent, not some fucking psychic. Her sister believed in that shit, but
she
didn’t. This was impossible—she must be having a stroke, or hallucinations, or
something.

“Come with me,” said Heather Enright. “We’ll get you taken care of.”

“Eric, please!” implored Nikki.

But Eric yawned and stretched, and he and Jurgen started walking away, talking intently about the surgery Eric had just performed. She resisted Heather’s attempts to propel her in the opposite direction until Eric had turned the corner and was out of sight.

But not out of mind.

THE
secretary of defense continued to study the wall-mounted deployment map; it had flickered off for a few seconds but now was back on. The aircraft carriers were mostly on station, and, as he watched, the
Reagan
moved a little closer to its goal.

“Mr. Secretary,” said an analyst seated near him, looking up from her workstation, “we’ve lost the White House.”

Peter Muilenburg frowned. “If primary comm is down, switch to aux four.”

The analyst’s voice was anguished. “No, sir, you don’t understand. We’ve
lost
the White House. It’s—it’s
gone.
The bomb they found there just went off.”

Muilenburg staggered backward, stumbling into a table. As he flailed to steady himself, he knocked a large binder onto the floor. His eyes stung, and he tasted vomit.

An aide burst into the room. “Mr. Secretary, they’re asking if we should evacuate the Pentagon as a precaution.”

Muilenburg attempted to speak but found he couldn’t. He gripped
the edge of the table, trying to keep on his feet. The Oval Office, the Roosevelt Room, the Press Room, the Cabinet Room, the State Dining Room, the Lincoln Bedroom, and so much more…could they really be gone?
God…

“Mr. Secretary?” the aide said. “Should we evacuate?”

A deep, shuddering breath; an attempt to regain his equilibrium. “Not yet,” Muilenburg replied, but it was doubtless too soft for the aide to hear. He tried again. “Not yet.” He forced himself to stand up straight. “Have them continue to sweep for bombs here, but we’ve got a job to do.” He looked again at the deployment map and found himself quaking with fury. “And no one can say they don’t have it coming.”

BESSIE
Stilwell looked down at her wrinkled hand; the skin was white, loose, and translucent. She was gently holding the hand of her adult son, which was smoother and not quite as pale.

Bessie had often imagined a scene like this: the two of them in a hospital room, one lying in bed and the other providing comfort. But she’d always expected it to be her in the bed, waiting to die, and Mike sitting next to her, doing his duty. After all, she was eighty-seven and he was fifty-two; that was the way the scene was supposed to be cast, their parts ordained by their ages.

But she was well, more or less. Oh, there was a constant background of aches and pains, her hearing was poor, and she used a cane to walk. But Mike should have been vigorous. Instead, he lay there, on his back, tubes in his arms, a respirator covering his nose and mouth.

His father had made it to sixty before having the heart attack that took his life. At least the coronary Mike had suffered hadn’t killed him—although it had come close. The stress of a Washington job had doubtless been a contributing factor; he should have stayed in Mississippi.

Mike had no family of his own—at least, not anymore; his marriage had ended over a decade ago. He was a workaholic, Jane had said when she left him—or, at least, that was the story Mike had conveyed to Bessie.

“Thanks for coming, Mom,” Mike said, each word an effort for him.