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?"