A screech behind him. The sunlight’s claws withdrew. Safer, but not safe.
A man pinioned his arms to his sides. He tried to lunge toward him, but the bar against his neck wouldn’t let him move.
He recognized a face now. The man. He’d seen him before.
“It’s OK, Mr. Tesla,” said a voice in his ear. “It’s OK.”
The voice was familiar. Even the words were familiar. A woman. He knew her.
“I don’t want to choke you out, but I will.” She sounded so calm and matter-of-fact.
Vivian. Vivian Torres.
“Joseph Tesla, you calm down this instant.” His mother spoke behind him.
Vivian swung him around to face the voice.
His mother stood against a wall. She held the edge of a closed curtain in her hand. She looked pale and frightened, which was odd because his mother never looked frightened.
“It’s Vivian Torres, Mr. Tesla,” said the woman holding his throat. “I’ve got you, and everything is gonna be OK.”
Joe relaxed. The light was gone. He trusted her.
She had him in a choke hold, but she loosened it a notch when he relaxed. He could breathe again. The black around the edges of his vision went away.
His head pounded, red and insistent, and he felt sick and faint. He’d been hurt. He was in a hospital room. It was dark now, but it hadn’t been a moment ago.
A man in a white coat stood next to his mother. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were wide with surprise.
Something warm and sticky dripped down Joe’s neck. Blood. He’d hurt his head, and he’d been brought to a hospital, and he was bleeding.
He tensed again. Outside. He must have gone outside to reach this place.
“Home.” He tried to face the woman who was holding on to his neck, but she didn’t let go. They both almost fell, but the man next to her pushed them against the wall.
“Soon,” Vivian said. “I promise.”
She let go of his neck and moved her hands to his shoulders as if she expected him to fall. He might. His heart galloped in panic. He had to slow it down. He had to breathe and count.
But he couldn’t. His head hurt too much, and he was afraid of the window. He looked toward the window at the closed curtain.
Vivian turned him so that he faced her. Her brown eyes looked into his. She didn’t look frightened. She smiled at him. She had a safe smile. “It’s all going to be fine.”
“Take me home.” The words came out loud and fast, but that didn’t scare her.
“As soon as I can.” Her hands were warm against his shoulders.
“Now.” He had to make her understand. “Please.”
Sickness rose up inside him.
A flash of white in his peripheral vision. Someone was coming at him. Joe turned his head fast and was overwhelmed by dizziness. A man in a white coat had pulled something from his coat pocket. He broke it in two, and a piece fell onto the carpet. The cap. He’d uncapped something.
Joe stumbled toward the door again. He had to get away. His head hurt so much, he thought it might explode. The man in white kept coming. A sting in his arm. He reached a hand to his arm to feel it. But his hand wouldn’t listen. His legs wouldn’t listen. He threw up on the man in the white coat, pitched forward, and the world went black.
Chapter 37
Vivian felt the doctor had it coming when Tesla vomited on him. The guy had opened the curtain without thinking. He clearly hadn’t known about Tesla’s agoraphobia, but he should have.
She couldn’t blame him for the shot, though—Tesla had looked ready to bolt again. The stuff worked. Tesla went limp as a corpse, but she and Dirk caught him before he hit the ground.
Dirk took his feet, she kept his head and shoulders, and they lifted him onto the bed. She smoothed the blue blanket over him. His head lolled to the side, and she carefully straightened it. She bit back the angry words she wanted to say to the neurologist. Instead, she looked at Tesla lying there, having had to face his greatest fear in front of them.
She took Tesla’s pulse. Slow and steady. He was out.
Dr. Winterbottom took off his puke-covered coat, folded it twice, then rang for a nurse.
Mrs. Tesla rounded on him. “What did you give my son?”
And where can I get some, wondered Vivian. That would come in handy in a lot of situations.
“You OK?” she asked Dirk.
“Better than that guy.” He pointed to Dr. Winterbottom, who was scraping at the vomit that had gotten onto his shirt. Mrs. Tesla fired questions at him. “You?”
“I’m fine.” Vivian wiped blood off the back of Tesla’s hand with a tissue. The blood oozed from where he’d pulled out his IV. His head wound wasn’t bleeding much. Hopefully, this whole fiasco hadn’t done him any permanent damage.
Dirk went back on the door to check in the newly arrived nurse. She said something about getting another kit and left without coming into the room. Vivian supposed she was getting the needles and tubes to get Tesla hooked back up again.
Opening the curtains had been a chump move. Vivian could make sure that didn’t happen again, but that wouldn’t be enough to help Tesla. The neurologist was already talking about involuntary psychiatric observation, even though he looked as if he expected Mrs. Tesla to bite his head off at the suggestion. She obliged. That ought to keep him busy for a while.
Good, because Vivian didn’t know how long and difficult it might be to get Tesla out of here once the headshrinkers got started on him. Tesla was a little nuts, and he’d clearly been a danger to himself when he woke up. Still, she thought he’d be better off at home.
She left them to their argument and called Mr. Rossi, Tesla’s lawyer and her sometime boss. She’d called him when she first heard that Tesla was wounded and again when he was brought into this room for the night. Again, she was transferred to him right away, reminding her of how powerful the unconscious man on the bed really was.
She quietly gave him a sketch of recent events, including Tesla’s desire to go home and the neurologist’s suggestion of psychiatric observation. Mr. Rossi said he’d be right there, and she told him to bring a limo—not a taxi. He didn’t ask why.
“How long will he be out?” Vivian asked Winterbottom, breaking into the lecture he was giving Mrs. Tesla on the dangers of mental illness and the difficult road back from agoraphobia. Clearly, he’d learned a little about Tesla’s history in the past few minutes.
“A few hours, tops,” Winterbottom said. “His system can metabolize—”
“Thank you, sir,” she interrupted and went out to talk to Dirk. She didn’t have a lot of time to follow Mr. Tesla’s last order.
“I’m going to need a gurney,” she told Dirk. “I’ll cover the door here while you get it.”
Dirk’s eyebrows rose. “Last time you had that look, you got drummed out of the service.”
“I’m right this time, too.” She looked at her watch. “Make sure the gurney has a flat sheet on it, not just a fitted sheet on the bottom.”
“Damn,” he said. “Just damn.”
“Mrs. Tesla,” Vivian called. “Can I see you over here for a second?”
Mrs. Tesla broke off in the middle of a sentence and stalked away from Winterbottom.
“Miss Torres,” she said. “Thank you for your prompt action in restraining my son.”
“I didn’t want him to injure himself.”
“I had no idea that his agoraphobia…” She looked over her shoulder at Winterbottom and lowered her voice. “That it was so extreme.”
Extreme? He hadn’t gone outside in months, he’d quit his job, and he’d moved from a penthouse apartment in California to the tunnels of New York City. Those were some pretty damn extreme signs.
“He’s already tried what the doctor in there was suggesting—drugs, talk therapy, hypnosis. The only thing that seems to help him is the dog and being in his house underground.”
Mrs. Tesla lifted her chin. “Can we bring the dog t
o the hospital, for when he wakes up?”
“I’d rather not have to, ma’am.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’d like you to take Dr. Winterbottom out of this room in a few minutes and keep him occupied for as long as you can. Can you do that?”
The nurse was back, carrying a yellow tub full of plastic-wrapped tubes. More stuff to jam into an unconscious Tesla.
Mrs. Tesla looked at her son. “Why?”
“Your son gave me an order, ma’am,” Vivian said.
Mrs. Tesla cocked her head, and a small smile flashed across her face. She’d remembered what Tesla had demanded. To go home.
A few minutes later, the room was empty. The nurse had hooked Tesla back up to everything and strapped him to the bed for good measure. As tall as he was, he still looked small on the bed. Vivian hated the sight of him like that.
Winterbottom had left with Mrs. Tesla, who was leaning on his arm and asking him heartfelt questions about agoraphobia and neurology and who knew what else. Whatever she was saying, he was eating it up with a spoon. Hollingberry had come back and trailed along behind them. The coast was clear.
Dirk rapped on the doorframe and pushed an empty gurney into the room. On top of the mattress rested a flat sheet and a set of green scrubs. She hadn’t asked for those, but they would come in handy.
Mr. Rossi appeared behind him. He hesitated at the sight of Tesla trussed up on the bed, then turned to Dirk and Vivian. “Good evening, Mr. Norbye, Miss Torres.”
“They have surveillance cameras all over the hospital.” Vivian put the folded sheet and scrubs onto Mrs. Tesla’s chair. “I want to take him out. Legally, is that OK?”
“It won’t be a problem,” Mr. Rossi said. “I can assure you. Mr. Tesla has the full right to leave this hospital at any time should he so desire, particularly since they haven’t completed the paperwork to have him admitted against his will for psychiatric evaluation. There’s no legal hazard here.”
“Do you think they’ll let us take him out unconscious?” Vivian asked.
“He can’t consent while unconscious.”
“If he wakes up, we’ll never get him outside and into a car, and I’m worried he’ll panic and hurt himself.”
“I concur,” said Mr. Rossi.
“So,” she said. “How about we sneak him out the back now, and you can deal with the paperwork later.”
Mr. Rossi nodded.
Dirk worked at the leather straps that restrained Tesla while she eased out the IV. “We’ll need a neurologist who makes house calls.”
“I have one in the car,” Mr. Rossi said.
“On three,” Dirk said.
They counted and lifted Tesla onto the gurney. She snapped the flat sheet out and tucked it in all around him, pulling it up over his head.
Vivian jammed pillows under Tesla’s recently vacated bed, tucked them under his sheet, and ran the end of the IV line underneath. The lump in the bed wouldn’t fool anyone for long, but hopefully it wouldn’t have to.
She slipped the green scrubs over her clothes. “How do I look?”
Dirk pointed to her black boots. “Like a badass doctor.”
She took a deep breath and started pushing the gurney toward the door. The sooner she got Joe Tesla out of the hospital, the better.
She walked as quickly as she dared along the polished linoleum corridors, her face a mask of boredom while her heart thumped hard in her chest. Mr. Rossi led the way, and Dirk brought up the rear.
Tesla shifted under the sheet, and her stomach clenched. Don’t wake up, she ordered him silently. Don’t wake up.
It took forever to get to the loading dock. Mr. Rossi and Dirk held the double doors open for her, and she pushed the gurney outside. The heat hit her like a wave, reminding her that she had on another set of clothes under her scrubs.
She looked around the empty loading dock. Nobody here. She hoped the neurologist was right about how long Tesla would be out. This would be the worst possible time for him to wake up.
Mr. Rossi led them to a dark corner of the lot. He, Dirk, and a red-haired man she’d never met helped her to collapse the wheels on the gurney and load it into the limo. The guy didn’t introduce himself, and she didn’t ask, but she guessed he was the doctor.
She stripped off her scrubs and handed them to Dirk. “Keep on Mrs. Tesla. Tesla seemed to think she was in more danger than he was, so be careful.”
He tossed her a mock salute and jogged back to the hospital.
She climbed into the limo and sat in one of the two seats facing the bench. Mr. Rossi came in after, and the limo driver closed the door. The red-haired guy hunched over Tesla’s unconscious form, checking his pulse and bandages.
She leaned up to the panel that separated them from the driver, then glanced at Mr. Rossi for approval. After he nodded, she rapped on the glass and it slid down an inch.
“Grand Central Terminal,” she said. “But take it slow.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said a deep voice, and the partition rolled up.
She touched the lump of keys in her pocket. Edison was a very good dog. She could use those keys to get them into the elevator. Tesla had shown her which key to use months ago, after they’d both nearly been killed not far from where the elevator let out. She was pretty sure she’d be able to figure out which key opened the front door of his house too, but that wasn’t the biggest problem.
The biggest problem was Tesla’s security system. There was a console at the base of the elevator. She’d walked past it many times, and she had seen Tesla enter an eight-digit code to disarm it, but she didn’t know any of the numbers.
She had no idea what would happen once they got to the bottom of the elevator and set off his alarm. Would his system call the police? Release poisonous gas? Set off a loud noise? Do nothing? With Tesla, you never knew. But whatever happened, he’d be safer down there when it went off than he would be in that hospital.
“Is he OK?” she asked the doctor.
“He’s resting comfortably,” he said. “But he needs to be in bed, under medical supervision.”
“We’re on our way,” she said, then leaned back in her seat to think. Worst case, they’d have to all wait by the elevator until Tesla woke up and gave them the code.
The driver had followed her directions and was moving them along smooth and easy. The sun had started to set, and the buildings and sky glowed orange. People were walking a little more quickly now, so it must have cooled down outside.
The limo drove by a beautiful blonde in a black miniskirt and a paint-spattered black T-shirt. She looked like any other terminally cool artist. The sight of her gave Vivian the answer she needed.
Celeste.
If Tesla had told anyone his alarm code, it would be Celeste. Tesla had given her Celeste’s number for emergencies, and this definitely qualified.
But Celeste was sick, and Vivian didn’t want to call to tell her that Tesla had been cracked on the head, and that they’d broken him out of the hospital. She dialed anyway the number and waited.
“Hello?” said a breathy voice.
“Vivian Torres here, ma’am. You don’t know me, but—”
“Is Joe OK?”
“There was an incident—”
“At the New Yorker Hotel. I know. Has he regained consciousness? Can he cope in the hospital?”
“We’ve had to remove him from there, and we’re headed to Grand Central now.”
“Bring him here,” Celeste snapped, as if Vivian were her servant.
“He told us to take him home.”
“Let me speak to him.”
Vivian didn’t know how to put this delicately. “He’s…sleeping right now.”
“Of course. You had to knock him out to get him out of the hospital. If he’s asleep, it doesn’t matter where he goes. Bring him to me.”
Vivian hesitated. Tesla had told her to take him home, but he hadn’t really been able to think things through. What if she did take him t
o Celeste’s house? Then he and Celeste could be trapped in her penthouse together. Who was to say that Tesla wouldn’t prefer that?
But he’d told her to take him home. She kept coming back to that.
“I’ll give you my address,” Celeste said. “And I’ll hire a doctor to come here to care for him. I already have a doctor of my own.”
Vivian looked over at Mr. Rossi. He was staring at her intently.
“Just a moment, ma’am.” She covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “I called Celeste to get Tesla’s security code.”
“Does she have it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. She says we should bring Tesla to her house.”
Mr. Rossi shook his head, one quick, decisive movement. His decision was clearly made. “You said he told you to take him home.”
“He wasn’t completely lucid at the time.”
“Home. If he wants to be put under anesthesia later and taken to Miss Gallo, he can make that choice himself.”
She looked at the phone in her hand.
“I’ll tell her. I’ve known her for years.” Mr. Rossi held out his hand, and she gratefully handed him the phone. After a few minutes of quiet argument, he pulled a gold pen out of his suit pocket and wrote down a long number.
She texted Andres Peterson. By the time Tesla woke up, he’d have his dog by his side.
And then she’d figure out who the hell had done this to him.
Chapter 38
Ash stopped pacing the length of his long living room and dropped onto a ridiculous modern sofa. Rosa had bought it when they were married, and he somehow couldn’t get rid of it even though it was not now, and had never been, comfortable.
He cycled through his email and his chat rooms. Quantum was back. He’d worried that the enterprising young hustler might try to sell the Oscillator to a higher bidder, or use it himself, but he was in the chat room, waiting like a good boy. He let him stew for a few minutes before answering.
ash: hello
quantum: thought it best to stay offline for a bit
ash: can the subject id u?
quantum: no
Ash wondered if this could be true. Not that it mattered. Quantum would not be a problem for long. He’d be richly paid, and then he’d go where all the richly paid went, where everyone went, eventually.
The Tesla Legacy Page 17
