“Jesus Christ,” Patton said without thinking. “How depressing.”
Oliver shook his head. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Once you break through that superficial layer, you realize that most people are just like you. We all are driven by the same needs, we all want the same things, and we all are plagued by the same insecurities. All the same basic programs have been written into our souls, and that’s what connects us.”
Oliver’s voice trailed away as a young couple approached. The woman was carrying a new baby and was engrossed in his smiles and cooing. The young man shuffled behind them; an aura of blackness enveloped him. Even Patton could feel the cloud of malignancy that surrounded him.
The elevator door opened, and Patton stopped his appraisal of the young man long enough to squeeze into the car behind him. The door closed, and Oliver shifted closer to the two parents, pushing Patton’s stomach up against the polished stainless steel. Patton grunted and looked down at the priest and found him staring intently at the couple. For a moment, he thought he was about to bless the baby, but then the elevator dinged and the door slid open. Patton took three large steps and waited for Oliver. The priest caught up to him and paused. “Wait here for just a moment, Rodney,” he whispered as the young parents walked toward the lobby doors.
The young man stumbled a little, and then he let out a scream that filled the two-story atrium. He grabbed his head and fell to his knees, cries of pain echoing off the glass. The new mother was startled at first. She tried to bend down to her husband, but he was thrashing so wildly he threatened her baby. Then she started to scream for help, and the baby began to cry. Patton leapt forward and gently brushed her aside. He took hold of the smaller man’s shoulders and eased him to the floor. His screams were reduced to intermittent yelps that were almost as bad as the blood-curdling yells; his wife and child were crying so loudly that Patton wanted to be anywhere other than between them.
A few moments later, a nurse and two white-coated older men arrived and took over. Patton backed away as rapidly as the growing crowd would let him and just stared as they attended to the stricken young man. He found Oliver comforting the young mother; he had guided her away from the commotion and was practically whispering in her ear. The baby had quieted, but Mom continued to cry. She began to respond to what the priest was telling her, nodding her head. Patton didn’t think it was wise to intrude, so he waited as more help arrived, some of which was directed to the woman.
“Go with these nice people, honey. They’ll take care of everything,” Oliver said quietly. The woman’s eyes were wide, but unfocused, almost as if she was coming out of a trance. Oliver walked towards Patton. They exchanged glances and proceeded without a word through the double doors and into the early spring sunshine.
“You did that, didn’t you?” Patton said as they approached the car. “Was he going to hurt them?”
“Yes,” Oliver said without further explanation.
“Be careful how you use that,” Patton said softly, but then thought, if you can’t trust a priest, who can you trust?
“Don’t put too much faith in any man, Chief, including me,” Oliver responded to his thought. “But I will be careful.”
Chapter 38
The MRI looked terrible. Streaks of gray and black filled the screen, and no matter how they tweaked the dials, they just couldn’t image his brain. The CAT scan had been a similar failure, and James Neval was running out of options. Dr. Rucker had sustained a devastating injury on top of an unidentifiable infection, and nothing he did seemed to make a difference. They had placed a small monitor under his scalp to measure the pressure inside his brain, and the last time he had checked that number blinked 42. It should have been less than 15. He was in a deep chemical coma; it was the last reasonable thing that could be done, and it wasn’t working.
“I’ve tried everything I know, and even some things I don’t know,” the neuroradiologist said. “I just can’t get you an image. He’s got to have metal or some strange paramagnetic effect in his head.” He was frustrated. It was their second attempt, and these pictures were worse than the first.
“What do you think?” Dr. Neval asked him.
“I think he’s fucked,” he answered glibly. “You can’t control his ICP without meds, and the meds make him hypotensive. I think its game over.”
Neval was about to respond, but his pager suddenly beeped. “Guess who?” he said, exasperated, after checking the message.
“Rucker.”
“Right the first time. You’re almost smart enough to be a neurosurgeon,” Neval said while leaving the reading room, ignoring the sarcastic response of his friend.
“We can’t keep his pressure up with all this sedation, Doctor,” said Sandy Fuller, confronting Neval at the doors of the emergency unit. All the ICU patients had been moved to the emergency room, doubling its burden. “I’ve had three nurses with him for six hours now, and we’re only losing ground. I hate myself for saying this, but we’re going to lose other patients who can be saved.”
Neval knew this was more than just nursing exhaustion. Even before the destruction of the ICU this morning, it had been working at twice its capacity with only two-thirds the nursing staff.
“If we extubate him, can we keep him where he’s at?” asked Neval. Removing Phil’s breathing tube was tantamount to a death sentence. Without the respirator hyperventilating him, the pressure in Phil’s brain would build to the point where blood could no longer circulate through it.
“It’s not a question of space. I just can’t have three nurses in with him every moment, and right now, that’s what it takes.”
“Extubate him,” Neval said reluctantly. Phil Rucker was going to die, but his death would allow the nurses to save two, maybe three more lives. “Turn off the Propofol drip, and let his blood pressure find its own level.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she said, and she was. Both of them knew that with proper resources, Phil could have been saved. “Goddamn them,” she said, walking away.
Neval was a Muslim; it wasn’t a secret, but it also wasn’t something he advertised. He watched the head nurse as she communicated his orders to her staff and wondered who Sandy Fuller was damning. If someone like Sandy had started condemning all Muslims to hell, then he too wanted the terrorists to burn for all eternity. The president had vowed that the United States would survive this cowardly attack and bring to justice all those involved, no matter who they were. It was the last line that had echoed in his mind. Jeser had replaced Al-Qaeda, and Jaime Avanti had replaced Osama bin Laden; but they were all Muslims, and twice in ten years, Muslims had attacked the United States.
Neval began to walk towards the ER’s single isolation room, but noticed several nurses huddled at the operations desk. He swung a little closer and saw that they were watching a television. “What’s going on?” he said, suddenly conscious of his slight accent.
Several people shushed him, and a large black man glared at him for a long second before turning back to the screen. One of the nurses suddenly realized who they had just shushed and motioned to her colleagues. The knot parted a little, allowing him to see the screen. “The Iranians just shot thirty-six cruise missiles at the Eisenhower battle group,” one of the supervisors said.
Neval noticed that a woman he didn’t know was sitting in a chair, a handkerchief over her mouth and tears streaming down her face.