One afternoon Kaufman looked down at Frank. “Mr. Gork, we all love you, but would you consider checking out of this hotel? I know it’s not the food that’s keeping you here.”
Everyone snickered but the man who had continued to stare into Frank’s empty face. Later that night, the man had gone into the busy intensive care unit and walked up to Frank Gork with a syringe full of potassium chloride. Within seconds Frank’s regular cardiac rhythm degenerated with T waves peaking, and then flattening out. It had been the man himself who called the code, but the team only made a halfhearted attempt at resuscitation.
After the fact everyone was pleased, from the nursing staff to the attending surgeon. The man almost had to restrain himself from taking credit for the event. It had been so simple, clean, definite, and practical.
The man had to admit that killing Robert Seibert had not been like that. There wasn’t the same sense of euphoria of doing what had to be done and knowing that he was one of the few with the courage to do it. Yet Robert Seibert had had to die. It was his own fault, dredging up all the so-called SSD series.
Returning from the bathroom, the man quickly searched the room for any papers relating to Robert’s research. Finding none, he moved to the door and opened it a crack.
One of the night nurses was coming down the hall with a small metal tray. For a terrifying moment the man thought she might be coming to see Robert. But she turned into another room, leaving the corridor free.
His heart pounding, the man slipped into the hall. It would be a disaster to be seen on the floor. When he was a resident, he had reason to be in the corridors or patients’ rooms or even the intensive care unit at all hours of the night. Now it was different. He had to be more careful.
When he reached the safety of the stairwell, panic overtook him. He plunged down three floors without pausing for breath and kept up this frantic descent until he’d passed the twelfth floor. Only then did he begin to slow down. At the landing on five, he stopped, flattening his back against the bare concrete wall, his chest heaving from his exertion. He knew he had to collect himself.
Taking a deep breath, the man eased open the stairwell door. Within a few moments he felt safe, but his mind wouldn’t stop racing. He kept thinking about the SSD data, realizing that Robert probably had a source in his office, very likely a floppy disc. With a sigh the man decided he’d better visit pathology right away, before Robert’s death was known. Then the only problem would be Cassi. He wondered exactly how much Robert had told her.
Eleven
Cassandra woke up with a start, looking into the smiling face of a lab technician who was calling “Dr. Cassidy” for the third time.
“You do sleep soundly,” she said, seeing Cassi’s eyes finally open.
Cassi shook her head, wondering why she felt drugged. Then she remembered getting the second sleeping pill.
“I’ve got to draw some blood,” apologized the technician. “You’ve got a fasting blood sugar ordered.”
“Okay,” said Cassi equably. She let the technologist have her left arm, remembering that for the next couple of days she would not be administering her own insulin.
A few minutes later a nurse came in and deftly started an IV in Cassi’s left arm, hanging up a bottle of D5W with ten units of regular insulin. Then she gave Cassi her preop medication.
“That should hold you,” said the nurse. “Try to relax now. They should be coming for you presently.”
By the time Cassi was picked up and wheeled down to the elevator she felt a strange sense of detachment, as if the experience were happening to someone else. When she reached the OR holding area, she was only vaguely aware of the profusion of gurneys, nurses, and doctors. She didn’t even recognize Thomas until he bent over and kissed her, and then she told him that he looked silly in his operating paraphernalia. At least she thought she told him so.
“Everything is going to be fine,” said Thomas, squeezing her hand. “I’m glad you decided to go ahead with your surgery. It’s the best thing.”
Dr. Obermeyer materialized on Cassi’s left. “I want you to take good care of my wife!” she heard Thomas say. Then she must have fallen asleep. The next thing she was aware of was being pushed down the OR corridor into the operating room itself. She didn’t feel at all scared.
“I’m going to give you something to make you sleepy,” said the anesthesiologist.
“I am sleepy,” she murmured, watching the drops fall into the micropore chamber of the IV bottle hung over her head. In the next second, she was fast asleep.
The OR team moved swiftly. By 8:05 her eye muscles had been isolated and tapes had been passed around them. As soon as complete immobilization had been achieved, Dr. Obermeyer made stab wounds in the sclera and introduced his cutting and sucking instruments. Using a special microscope, he sighted through the cornea and pupil to the blood-stained vitreous. By 8:45 he began to see Cassi’s retina. By 9:15 he found the source of the recurrent bleeding. It was a single aberrant loop of new vessel coming from Cassi’s optic disc. With great care, Dr. Obermeyer coagulated and obliterated it. He felt very encouraged. Not only was the problem solved, there was no reason to expect it to recur. Cassi was a lucky woman.
• • •
Thomas had finished his only coronary bypass for the day. He’d canceled the next two. Happily the case had gone tolerably well although he again had trouble sewing the anastomoses. Unlike the previous day, though, he was able to finish, but the moment Larry Owen began to close, Thomas changed into his street clothes. Normally he waited until Larry brought the patient to the recovery room, but this morning he was too nervous to sit around with nothing to do. Instead he stopped down in the OR to see how things were going.
“Just fine,” shouted Larry over his shoulder. “We’re closing the skin now. The halothane’s been stopped.”
“Good. I’ve been called on an emergency.”
“Everything under control here.”
Thomas left the hospital, something he rarely did during a working day, and climbed into his Porsche. It thrilled him to hear the powerful engine as he turned on the ignition. After the frustration of the hospital, the car provided an enormous sense of freedom. Nothing on the road could touch him. Nothing!
Driving across Boston, Thomas left the car in a No Parking zone directly in front of a large pharmacy, confident his MD license plate would save him from a ticket. Entering the store, he went directly to the prescription counter.
The pharmacist, in his traditional high-necked tunic, emerged from behind the high counter.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes,” said Thomas. “I called earlier about some drugs.”
“Of course. I’ve got it right here,” said the pharmacist, holding up a small cardboard carton.
“Do you want me to write a script for it?” asked Thomas.
“Nah. Let me see your M.D. license. That’ll be adequate.”
Thomas flipped open his wallet and held it out for the pharmacist who just glanced at the license, then asked: “That’ll be all?”
Thomas nodded, putting his wallet away.
“We don’t have much call for that dosage,” said the pharmacist.
“I’ll bet,” said Thomas, taking the parcel.
Cassandra awoke from her anesthesia, unsure of what was dream and what was reality. She heard voices, but they seemed to be far away, and she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Finally she realized they were calling her name. She heard them tell her to wake up.
Cassi tried to open her eyes but found that she couldn’t. A sense of panic gripped her, and she attempted to sit up only to be immediately restrained.