Critical Condition

by CJ Lyons

  Panic seized her and she rushed into the open revolving door of the darkroom entrance. She stopped it halfway, not wanting to reveal herself if one of the men had gone into the darkroom next door. It was pitch-black in the narrow cylinder—it was designed that way, so that no light would accidentally contaminate the darkroom or expose any film. But she’d never realized how tiny the chamber was. It was like being trapped inside a torpedo. Or a coffin.

  She wished she hadn’t thought of that particular metaphor. Visions of being buried alive flooded over her.

  Her breath reverberated against the plastic walls and she was disoriented—if she hadn’t been standing on her feet, she’d have no idea which direction was up. She was about to risk entering the darkroom—anything to escape this claustrophobic sensory deprivation chamber—when she heard a man’s voice.

  If one man was in the darkroom, was the other behind her, in the fluoro room? If so, then she was trapped between them, nothing more than a plastic wall separating her from them.

  She covered her mouth and nose with her hands, hoping to muffle her breathing. Because there was no way in hell the plastic wall of the revolving door would stop a bullet.

  AMANDA SWAYED AS A NASTY BLAST OF WIND shook the skywalk. She would have fallen if not for Lucas. Damn, she’d never had trouble finding her sea legs before, not even in the worst storms back home on her father’s boat. Then she looked down and realized what the problem was: Gina’s damned stilettos.

  “Keep going with Jerry,” she told Lucas.

  She stopped and leaned against the glass wall, tugging off one high heel and then the other. That was much better. She caught up to the two men just as Lucas was opening the door at the opposite end of the skywalk. Together they pushed Jerry through, let the door clang shut behind them, and stopped to catch their breath.

  The research tower was brand-new, and it showed. On the Angels side, where they had just come from, the lobby was painted a dingy gray and featured peeling linoleum. Here the walls were covered in mauve wallpaper and hung with tasteful photographs of famous Pittsburgh scientists, and the floors were done in a nice industrial pile carpet. Even the emergency lighting seemed brighter than it had on the Angels side.

  “We’re not going back that way,” Lucas said as he pressed his nose against the glass door and measured the arc of the bridge’s movement with his finger. “If it oscillates at a certain frequency—”

  “It will collapse,” Amanda said. “Like that movie they show in science class, that bridge.”

  “The Tacoma Narrows Bridge.” Of course Lucas would know—he knew everything. It was really annoying at times. He turned away from the view and leaned against the wall. “What’s your plan?”

  Jerry spun his wheelchair around and looked up at her with expectation. She’d gotten them this far—was she now supposed to come up with a plan to save everyone in the hospital?

  “Gina said they were gathering people in the auditorium. We’ll sneak down to the ground floor, cross over, and surprise them.”

  Lucas frowned. “She also said they were planning to burn the hospital down. So where do we take the hostages once we’ve rescued them?”

  Good point. “We can’t take them outside.”

  Jerry drummed his cane against the arm of his wheelchair. “Bring them here.”

  “To the tower?” Lucas looked up at that, his gaze searching, then glanced out across the distance separating the tower from the main hospital building.

  “Do you think it’s far enough away?” Amanda asked him.

  He thought for a moment longer. “Maybe. If they’re really planning to start a fire—and there are countless ways to do that, given all the flammables the hospital uses every day—then probably. We could move everyone to the fire stairs farthest away from the hospital building. But if it’s some kind of explosive device—”

  Amanda blew her breath out. “We’ll have to take our chances. Jerry, can you manage the stairs? The last announcement said the power would be cut in a few more minutes and I don’t want to risk being on an elevator when that happens.”

  “The elevators have a backup battery that’s designed to lower them to the bottom of the shaft,” Lucas said. More exciting tidbits from the safety committee, no doubt.

  “But they might know that and be waiting.”

  He nodded. “Or they could just grab the fire key from the security office, and that would lock them all down on the basement level as well.”

  “Either way, we should avoid them. Jerry?”

  Jerry didn’t hesitate; instead he climbed out of his chair and headed to the fire door, pushing it open. “Let’s go.”

  ELEVEN

  GINA STOOD FROZEN, TRAPPED IN THE UTTER BLACKNESS of the darkroom’s revolving door. Her breathing cocooned her, smothering her hearing. The men could be right outside the door on either side and she wouldn’t be able to hear them. They could be raising their guns, taking aim, right now, right now, right now. . . .

  Panic clawed up her nerve endings. She forced herself to stand still, not move a muscle. It took all her willpower not to run screaming from her hiding place, just to end the awful anticipation.

  Crazy, that was crazy. She’d get herself killed.

  She had to find a way to calm down. Breathe in, breathe out. She’d been in danger before.

  There was another time she’d felt powerless like this. Out of control. Her sophomore year of college when she’d realized she wouldn’t be making the dean’s list. The thought of facing Moses’s wrath and LaRose’s disappointment was crushing, too much for her to bear. Her eating disorder, always barely manageable—a tightrope of pleasure and pain—had flared, turned into a wildfire single-mindedly bent on her destruction.

  Suicidal fantasies had combined with depression and despair to leave her feeling helpless, unable to even fight for her life. If it hadn’t been for a resident advisor who refused to put up with Gina’s excuses, denial, and bullshit, she wouldn’t have survived.

  That RA reminded her a lot of Lydia, Gina thought, an unbidden smile curling her lips. What would Lydia do now?

  She wouldn’t give up, that was for damn sure. She’d go out fighting.

  Gina took another deep breath. Unlike back during her sophomore year, now she was in control of her actions. She couldn’t stay here forever—she had to find her mother.

  She patted her pockets, taking inventory. Jerry had often told her of the power of a well-aimed bright light and the element of surprise. She gripped the Maglite in her left hand.

  Her only other weapon was a disposable scalpel—useless except at extremely close range. Who was she fooling? She’d be mowed down by bullets long before she got close enough to use it. Still, it made her feel better having it, so she slipped the handle into her sleeve and hid the blade against her palm.

  Before she could retreat into fear, she twisted her feet against the floor, activating its swivel mechanism. The floor rotated silently, bringing her closer to the darkroom entrance.

  She pressed herself against the far wall, watching as the red light the techs used when developing film edged through the opening. The opening enlarged from a slit to a few inches to a foot and she sprang out, aiming her flashlight beam and ready to do battle with her plastic disposable scalpel.

  The light zigzagged around the room before hitting a target. A man standing at the rack that held freshly developed films. He shielded his eyes against her light.

  “Gina, is that you?”

  “Ken, what are you doing here?”

  He flicked on the main lights. “I wanted to get your mom’s CT scan transferred onto hard copies before the power goes out for good. I thought you were the tech. What were you doing in there?”

  “We need to leave.” She pocketed the Maglite but kept the scalpel at hand as she ran to the door and opened it a crack, looking out. The hallway was silent.

  “Why?” Ken asked, joining her, a sheaf of films in his hand.

  “The power isn’t going
out because of the weather. There are armed men taking over the hospital.”

  Her dramatic statement thudded against the silence that followed. She could sense Ken staring at the back of her head. Sifting through her words and actions, his uncanny mind would skip past inane questions like was she joking and arrive at a conclusion—either what she said was true or that she was mentally unstable.

  She didn’t have long to wait for his decision.

  “They picked a silly time to do it—they’re as trapped as we are by the weather.” His tone was mild, disapproving of the gunmen’s lack of forethought.

  As always, Ken’s Zen-like calmness infuriated her, though she knew that he had good reason to protect himself behind his Panglossian façade of acceptance—it was a hard-won defense mechanism he’d built after his wife and daughter had been killed.

  “They don’t care about the weather—or about anyone else. I saw them shoot three men. And they’re planning to kill us all to cover their tracks.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Lydia—apparently she has some kind of evidence they want.” Gina cracked the door and peeked out. No one in the corridor. “We have to find LaRose. Where is she?”

  “Everyone left when Tillman made the announcement about the power. Surely they took her with them?”

  Gina didn’t trust radiologists—they spent too much time in the virtual world of their computer scans and darkrooms to remember that the images they peered at belonged to real, live people. “We’d better make sure. Which scanner was she in? We’ll start there.”

  “Scanner two.” He followed her into the deserted hallway. “Her scan showed an ischemic stroke.”

  Gina slowed to check both corridors as they came to an intersection. A stroke. Exactly what she’d feared.

  “We need to get her started on TPA,” Ken said. There was a narrow window to successfully treat strokes with the “clot-buster” drug, and the sooner LaRose began therapy, the better her response would be. “If these men are only looking for Lydia, your mother should be safe with everyone else in the auditorium and she can get the TPA there.”

  “No. These men are crazy. They were talking about burning down the hospital to cover their tracks. And they aren’t going to find Lydia because she’s not here. Which is really going to piss them off. So we may not have much time.”

  “They can’t burn down anything until the weather clears enough for them to escape.”

  Typical logical Ken. But logic had nothing to do with their situation. “I’m not risking my mother to the whims of Mother Nature and a bunch of psychopaths.” She thought hard. There weren’t many options to weigh. “Lucas Stone is with Jerry and Amanda on the eighth floor. We’ll take LaRose there.”

  “It would be good to have a neurologist check her before we begin the TPA,” Ken conceded. “But maybe we should just stay here and hide.”

  Gina shook her head. “No. If we can get to the eighth floor, we can get the others and cross over to the research tower; it would be safer there.”

  Ken was silent. She knew he realized that as much as she liked Lucas and Amanda, part of her motivation in getting to them was also to get to Jerry, make sure he was safe. She didn’t want to hurt Ken more by coming flat out and saying it, but he was smart, he’d figure out where her priorities lay.

  They halted at another intersection. Ken rocked back on his heels, thinking hard, but as always his train of thought veered away from her expectations. “This place, Angels, was the closest thing I had to a home after I lost my family. But now I think it’s got bad karma.”

  “Nothing bad ever happened around here until Lydia came along. If it weren’t for her, Jerry would never have been shot.” Bitterness colored Gina’s tone but she was too frazzled to care.

  “Just answer me this, Gina. If Jerry hadn’t been shot, do you think you—I mean, could we have ever—” Ken’s words stuttered into silence.

  Ahhh . . . the question they’d been dancing around for weeks. Gina touched his arm. He flinched and she shoved her hand into her pocket.

  “Sorry, Ken, but no. I like you; I love the way your mind works and how you make me think about things and you see me for who I really am and that doesn’t frighten or disgust you or anything. But I can’t help it. Jerry loves me; he takes care of me and puts up with me and, I don’t know, I feel safe with him.”

  “You still haven’t said that you love him.” He turned to her, his gaze holding hers steady. He wasn’t flinching now. Or backing down. As always, Ken was forcing her to take a good hard look at the one place she preferred to leave alone in the dark: her own heart.

  “I’m not sure I know how to love or what love really is. But what I feel for Jerry is the closest I’ve ever come.”

  She turned away before he could respond and crossed the corridor to the CT scanner. Empty, as was the control room. She pushed through the door to the small patient waiting area.

  There, huddled in a wheelchair backed up behind the door and almost hidden from sight, looking frail and frightened and utterly unlike the Queen Mother Gina was accustomed to, sat LaRose.

  NORA STOOD AT THE SIDE AISLE BELOW THE STAGE and looked around the auditorium. There were now eighty-six people gathered, with hospital staff—nurses, nursing assistants, ward clerks, dietary workers, housekeepers, lab and radiology techs—far outnumbering the handful of patients and their families. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because it meant that the dormitory area on the stage had gotten sorted out quickly as well as a patient care area for dressing changes and medication infusions. The medication carts were arranged around the stretchers so that if they suddenly became inundated with ER patients once the storm let up, they’d be ready.

  The cafeteria workers had even brought in food, including milk and cookies to keep the nine kids and their families occupied. In fact, it seemed as if boredom would be their chief enemy once the night wore on. People were already joking about the stories they would tell about their unusual New Year’s Eve, spent trapped in a hospital by a blizzard.

  Even Jim Lazarov had made himself useful, splinting Mark’s leg and having the men from the zoo give an impromptu presentation on penguins to the kids to keep them entertained. Nora hated to think what they’d do once the sugar high from the cookies set in.

  Emma Grey approached her. She and her great-grandson, Deon, had also gotten trapped in the hospital by the storm. “I could help,” Emma said. “How about some reading material?”

  Nora smiled at the older woman. Emma was the hospital librarian and always provided a soothing presence to patients and their families. “Great minds think alike.”

  “Just one problem. The security guards won’t let me go to the library. Maybe you could talk to them? The one with the accent seems to be in charge.”

  “He must also be new. I don’t know him.” Nora didn’t recognize the other two guards who stood inside the doors either. “Tillman must have hired them after the shooting.”

  As if she’d conjured him by using his name, the doors opened and Oliver Tillman appeared, flanked by the DEA agent, Harris, and one of the guards. Tillman appeared frazzled, his hair mussed, plastered to his forehead with sweat. No one else seemed to notice his arrival—the hum of conversations continued unabated.

  “Something’s wrong,” Nora said. Emma nodded.

  “I need your attention,” Tillman said. He couldn’t raise his voice loud enough to be heard over the crowd. In fact, it came out as a thin squeak. “Please. Listen to me.”

  Harris nodded to the guard, who jerked the doors open again. Two more men entered, wearing black combat suits and carrying machine guns slung across their chests, holding them sideways like bad guys in a movie.

  Before anyone could react, both men fired their weapons into the ceiling. Nora pushed Emma down between the nearest row of seats, covering her with her body. The sound was like hail on a tin roof, not as dramatic as Hollywood portrayed it, but when added to the ghastly smiles on the men’s faces and t
he shower of shredded acoustical material, it effectively inspired terror.

  When Nora dared to look up again, she saw people gaping heavenward, some ducking beneath the seats, mothers shielding their children, husbands and wives clinging to each other. Screams echoed from every corner of the auditorium.

  The storm of bullets lasted only a few seconds, but the shouts and cries took longer to die down. Several people actually started forward, faces flushed with anger and fear, but the men in black pointed their guns at them and they froze where they were.

  “Quiet!” Harris shouted. He shoved Tillman forward, adding him to the crowd. Slowly everyone hushed except for a few sobs. “I need your attention. Now!”

  All eyes were on him. Nora clutched at Emma’s arm to prevent the older woman from running to find Deon.

  “No sudden movement,” she whispered as she helped Emma to her feet. Emma’s eyes were narrowed in fury; she looked ready to take on Harris and his men single-handedly, but she nodded and stayed put.

  “What do you want?” Nora stepped forward so that she was in front of Emma. Her heart was thudding as fast as the machine-gun bullets and she couldn’t swallow—her mouth was too dry—but she was damned if she was going to let him see any of that. “I take it you’re not from the DEA, Mr. Harris. Or whatever your name is.”

  “Harris will do just fine,” he said with a benevolent smile. “And I want the same thing I did before: Lydia Fiore.” He turned his head to address the entire auditorium, his words carrying effortlessly thanks to the acoustics. “Dr. Lydia Fiore. It’s urgent that I find her—life and death, in fact. Your lives. Once we find her, we’ll leave.”

  He paused, letting that sink in. Then he unholstered his own weapon and raised it, aiming at Nora. “Anyone who gets in our way dies.”

  EVEN THOUGH THE MAIN HOSPITAL STILL HAD backup power from the generator, the research tower was low priority and had only battery-operated emergency lighting, which meant that the stairwell was a mass of shadows punctuated by a few halfhearted lightbulbs.