Embryo 1: Embryo
Page 1
EMBRYO
A Novel
by
J.A. Schneider
PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EMBRYO:
“It is rare that a book can elicit that much emotion so early in the story. I was blown away. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS BOOK!!”
The Kindle Book Review
“After reading EMBRYO, I had to take a breath. This was one of the most intense books I've ever read.”
The Indie Bookshelf
“Readers will absolutely love it!”
Literati Literature Lovers
“Both EMBRYO 2 and the first EMBRYO start from page one & DO.NOT.STOP. The suspense is continuous! Holy hell, what a read!”
The Reading Café
“Top pick! Intensely fascinating and thrilling.”
Mystery Magazine
“The tension is so high in places if I had any nails left I'd have bitten them off.”
Amazon reviewer Emmy Ellis
“When this book is described as a wild ride, that is no understatement! If this were a movie, you would never take your eyes off the screen! The story was non-stop intense, action-packed and completely engaging.”
Bestselling author Valerie Strawmier
“A white-knuckle Medical Thriller! Gripping from the first heart-stopping scene to the last. Jill Raney is sheer determination in doc scrubs, an endearing character capable of beating a system that would like to cover up its wrongs and seal her mouth.”
Bestselling author Mina de Caro
“The writing is superb, the pace intense, the characters fully developed, and the research flawless.”
Bestselling author Gail M. Baugniet
“Never read a Medical Thriller before but LOVED THIS! Scary *&* fascinating!”
Amazon reviewer Beth Wiggins
“What a ride! I literally found myself turning pages until they finally ran out. The action builds up, there is romance and much danger involved. As a physician myself, I saw some very good technical contributions here; it is all quite accurate until the end, where it gets into a bit of sci-fi, but even then, well done and absorbing. Highly recommend, and like somebody else said, would make quite a movie.”
John Ellis, M.D.
PRAISE FOR EMBRYO 2: CROSSHAIRS
“Again, this new thriller deserves so much MORE than the regular 5 star rating!! Embryo 2 is a follow up book to the characters and storyline of EMBRYO, and equally just as good. As I said in my review of the first book, anyone who enjoys a brilliantly paced thriller, with fact and fiction mixed in, will thoroughly enjoy Embryo 2. Read this book after you finish the prequel, and you'll be left breathless!!”
The Kindle Book Review
“Immediately reels you into a whirlwind!”
Readers Favorite
“Holy hell, what a read!! Both this book, and the first EMBRYO, start from page one and DO.NOT.STOP. The suspense is continuous!”
THE READING CAFÉ
“J.A. Schneider has followed up her first suspense-filled medical thriller with this second one which is as good, maybe even better than the first book in the series. It’s a stunner.” The Mystery Gazette
“I read Embryo and 3 days later followed up with Embryo 2. It is a pleasure to recommend both books as exceptional medical thrillers!”
Top Thrillers Magazine
“Doctors as a new detective duo, what a concept! These two strongly-written characters are making a place for themselves among the list of teams in the suspense genre, holding their own against the likes of Tess Gerritson's Rizzoli and Isles; and Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino.”
Bestselling author Gail Baugniet
“I absolutely loved this book! A brilliant follow up to the first Embryo, and I've just learned there's a third in the works! A medical thriller of gripping proportions, I encourage everyone who loves a good psychological thriller to give this series a go!”
Reviewer Andrew Baker
“J.A. Schneider has done it again! After the heart-racing read of Embryo, Embryo 2: Crosshairs, does not fail to disappoint. Fast paced and full of continual intrigue Ms Schneider successfully transports her readers into a realm of medical drama that easily competes with such writers as Crichton and Cook, although Ms Schneider is a far superior writer than the latter author, her concepts and ideas are an easy match for Crichton lovers of medical drama.”
Amazon reviewer Zeana Romanovna
“A sequel to Embryo, this book is just as explosive as the first!” Amazon reviewer Melanie Adkins
“This book had my heart rocketing again, it took a lot to tear me away from my Kindle. There were some truly scary parts in this book (I don't think I'll ever look at a chicken in the same way again!!) The clown ~ arrrgh... I truly dislike clowns and this made me even more certain of that fact!!”
Amazon reviewer Emily Graff
“J.A. Schneider did it again and if I could have given this book a 10 plus rating I would have. To all who have not read this, please do, you will not be disappointed, so do something good for yourself and read this book!”
Amazon reviewer Louann Van Riper
NEW! EMBRYO 3: RANEY & LEVINE, released February 14, 2014
Another doctors-&-cops adrenalin-packed thriller: First, tension enters Jill's & David's relationship over what to do about newborn Jesse. They both love him, but David feels that he'd be safer adopted anonymously. Suddenly their stress turns to horror when they discover that a murderous religious zealot is after both Jesse - whom he calls “devil spawn” - and Jill & David's hospital which he calls “the devil's workshop which must be destroyed!” This time, the whole hospital is threatened... Jill and David join forces with the police in a terrifying race to track down a killer, and to prevent an unthinkable catastrophe.
Publisher Information
Embryo is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, institutions or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 J.A. Schneider.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce or transmit this book, in any part thereof, in any form or by any means whatsoever, whether now existing or devised at a future time, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
For more information about the author, please visit http://jaschneiderauthor.net
To Bob as always, my husband, and an endlessly patient physician who loves explaining medical concepts which I interweave as I write.
WAGNER:
A man is in the making.
MEPHISTOPHELES:
A man? And what enamored couple
Have you got locked up in your furnace?
WAGNER:
God forbid! We declare all that a farce.
That common mode of him-and-herness.
from Goethe’s Faust
Embryo
Title Page
01 Crisis on Third Avenue
02 Fight in a Linen Closet
03 Obstetrical Tragedy
04 FUO: Fever of Unknown Origin
05 Mystified House Staff
06 The Planet was Violet…
07 Another OB Tragedy
08 Talk About It
09 Researching Strange Cases
10 The Fertility and Genetic Counseling Committee
11 Patient Mary Jo Sayers’ Strange Story
12 Fight with a Superior
13 Required DNA Lecture
14 To the Psych Ward, then the Morgue
15 “Cell Autopsies” of Dead People
16 Threatened
17 Despair
18 The Infant School
19 A Bizarre Murde
r
20 Dead People’s Cells Growing, Alive
21 To the Anthropology Museum
22 Bleeding, Ten Sutures and the Police
23 Investigating in Secret
24 Chinatown
25 Police Open Hospital Investigation
26 Obsessed
27 To the Old Hospital Tunnels
28 Lost
29 The Search
30 A Very Strange Lab
31 Angel’s Gun
32 The Attic
33 Game Over
34 On the Roof
35 Stunned
Author's Note
An excerpt from EMBRYO 2
About the Author
1
Maria Moran’s first inkling of trouble was the coppery taste in her mouth. It came suddenly, a rushing whoosh of something that made her gag, and when she reached up to wipe her mouth, her hand came away smeared with blood.
“What…?” She heard her own high voice. Stopping in her tracks, she stood motionless, staring down in panic at the bright crimson smudge on her hand. Around her, on the sidewalk of Third Avenue in New York City, Monday morning pedestrians jostled past her, but she was oblivious to them, oblivious even to the fact that a moment before she had been worried she’d be late for work.
A hurrying young man in shirtsleeves bumped into her. “Fer crying out - oops, sorry.” Maria looked to see him staring down at her great, melon belly. “Jeez lady, you shouldn’t stan’ there like that!”
Flustered, he rushed off and was swallowed by the crowd.
At Sixtieth Street the light was red. Out of habit, Maria stood a few feet away from the impatient crowd at the corner, overcautious as usual. Gums, she thought; try to relax. Probably every first-time mother feels like this. Stumbling over a curb, getting squeezed in an elevator – these were serious things in the Pregnant Lady Department. A faint, Madonna smile crept over her lips as she felt the baby kick. Saw the baby kick, she was certain – right through her white maternity dress with the lace eyelets that Ryan’s mom had insisted on buying for her. Ryan was so excited. They had fun in the evening, just thinking up names.
The light changed and she started to cross the avenue.
The first wave of dizziness caught her as she passed a jackhammer working near the curb. Swaying for a moment, she blamed her weakness on the July heat and the noise. A policeman flagging traffic around the work crew blew his whistle. Maria shook her head to clear it.
She made it to the yellow line before the second wave of dizziness came, and the avenue began turning slowly, sickeningly, on its axis. She grasped futilely at her shoulder bag. People pushed past her. As the dizziness subsided she noticed that the crowd in the crosswalk had thinned. She worried that the light was about to change.
“My God,” she said aloud. She took a step, then another, and was surprised that it was so hard because her feet had turned to granite blocks. A woman in a sleeveless dress shouldered past her and Maria stumbled.
“Hey! You okay?” A man coming up from behind stopped and grabbed her arm.
She blinked at him, trying to smile. “The heat,” she said. “I’ll be alright.”
“You better hurry,” he said, pointing. “Light’s gonna change.”
He rushed off, and in the next moment Maria was sorry. In a swoop of nauseating terror she knew that her problem wasn’t the heat or bleeding gums or anything so absurdly simple. She was suddenly granite to the waist. The coppery taste came back, this time flooding her mouth too fast to swallow. She bent, gagging violently, put her hand over her mouth and felt a sticky wetness above her lip. Dazed, she looked at her hand again, then felt her nostrils streaming blood.
A nosebleed?
Horns blared, startling her upright again. The flashing red sign had turned to DON’T WALK. Through a blur she saw a line of glinting fenders begin to move toward her.
A whistle. A man’s shout. The intersection was suddenly clogged with traffic, and as she crumpled to the pavement she thought she saw cars swirling around her. From somewhere came a squeal of brakes, and then another.
“Help me!” Her words came out in a feeble cry. She began to crawl on her hands and knees.
Then the pain in her middle came. Not a little, crampy pain, the way contractions were supposed to start, but a queer, viselike tightening, as hard as a rock.
Too soon! Not time yet! Through a fog she saw men running toward her shouting; felt their hands on her, under her arms, lifting, but she could only focus on the pain. Getting tighter, unbearable. Weren’t contractions supposed to let up? This was not what her mother and sister had described to her. Jesus, help me! She was vaguely aware of two men carrying her, a policeman and a man in a yellow hard hat, but her eyes came unfocused as the pain became more agonizing.
She felt herself lowered to hot pavement, saw feet crowding around and hands reaching down to her. The cop holding her was yelling for an ambulance. The final pain hit and she screamed. An explosion of knives went off in her belly. She felt the soft, warm mass well up below and pour rapidly down her thighs. She screamed again.
“They’re coming honey, they’re coming,” the cop said. A middle-aged woman was on her knees, stroking Maria’s arm, too rapidly, her eyes full of horror. Through the haze Maria tried to see the woman, and saw instead her own white dress, turning red.
“Help me,” she whimpered, but her voice sounded slow, far away. Her last conscious thought was hearing the wail of an approaching siren.
Then her head fell back, and blackness closed in.
2
Twenty blocks away, Madison Hospital Medical Center rose in shimmering white blocks above waves of heat, inspiring fear and fascination in people who passed. Not everyone stopped, but many looked at the imposing buildings with nervous, sideways flicks of the eye that acknowledged the world fame of the place; and the gratitude that, today at least, they were on the outside and not the inside.
At that moment Dr. Jill Raney would have preferred being on the outside. Standing in the hall outside the obstetrical suite, she tried not to look too destroyed as she watched her fellow interns troop out of the Special Procedures Room. Ten minutes ago she had nearly blown it. Four years of brutal studies in med school, working hard enough to graduate with top honors, and now this.
She leaned on a gurney and wondered: would it be professional suicide to have a shouting match with one’s academic superior, right here on the ward floor?
“Thinks he’s God’s gift,” she muttered.
“Huh?” from beside her.
Chubby-cheeked Tricia Donovan, her friend since med school, was also in a blue scrub suit, stethoscope and surgical cap, peering up at Jill from behind wire-rimmed glasses. They were both July interns – beginners all over again, raw recruits. About as much appreciated by the older doctors as an outbreak of hepatitis.
Jill turned her remarkable green eyes to her friend. “Nothing,” she said.
“Oh.” Tricia’s round face resumed its look of furious concentration and she went back to scribbling on her clipboard. Jill watched her ruefully. Nothing ever destroyed Tricia’s ability to concentrate.
It was nine o’clock; three babies had been delivered in the last hour alone, and today’s schedule of gynecological surgery was unusually crowded. Nurses rushed up and down the corridor, pushing medication tables and baskets full of bloody linen. Patients, drowsy from the effects of medication, lay parked on gurneys in various staging areas, some just coming out of surgery, others going in.
Watching the corridor bustle, Jill brooded about how everyone else seemed so briskly confident. She felt close to tears, and fought them down.
A clatter of gurney wheels caused her to straighten, and look in the direction of the Special Procedures Room. By the doorway David Levine and Sam MacIntyre, third- and second-year residents respectively, were bending over a relieved-looking patient, smiling and joking with her. Both doctors were in scrub suits with surgical masks pulled down around their necks. Jill stared
. She could not take her eyes off that trio, and the two nurses who were also there, alternately smiling at the patient and gazing with something less than clinical detachment at the dark-haired Levine.
Jill glared at him.
The only thing she knew about him was that he was from Denver, and possessed that air of rugged stamina one usually saw in shaving ads. Well, so what about his looks; it was the patient who really upset her. Mary Hollins, thirty-eight, had just undergone an amniocentesis, the fourth that Jill had seen performed. Clinically, it wasn’t a difficult procedure: amniotic fluid was surgically withdrawn from the abdomen of a pregnant woman, then examined for abnormal cells or chemicals that would indicate whether or not the fetus was in any genetic trouble. For the doctor, the job was almost easy.
But what about the patients? Jill thought. I’ll bet they just love lying there, fully conscious, having their bellies skewered by a twenty cc syringe.
She peered again at Mary Hollins. It was hard to believe that this smiling patient, fervently clasping Levine’s hand, was the same woman who had been hysterical only half an hour ago.
“Amazing,” said Tricia, looking at Jill again. Fluorescents beamed off her glasses. “He’s really something, isn’t he?”
“Who?”
“Levine. Think of some of the residents we could have gotten stuck with – ”
She broke off as Levine left the patient with MacIntyre and headed their way. Coming up behind him was another resident, George Mackey, a broad and jovial sort who two days ago had introduced the interns to fetal sonography.
“David!” Tricia called out. “I have a question about using Procaine as a pain killer. Do you think if the patient – ”
Levine stopped, checking out the troubled expression on Jill Raney’s face. He half-turned in Donovan’s direction.
“Trish,” he said absently. “Why don’t you ask Mackey here? He’d be glad to help.”
Mackey and Levine traded looks. Mackey pulled a ballpoint from his breast pocket while glancing at Jill, who turned, stony-faced, and began walking away from the group.