Critical Condition

by CJ Lyons

“Just relax,” she told him, using her best charge nurse tone. Calm, collected. “You’re going to be fine.”

  Helping hands arrived. Melissa crouched beside her, starting an IV while a nursing tech put Jim on oxygen and hooked him up to a portable monitor. Nora grabbed her stethoscope and listened.

  “Lung sounds down on the left and heart sounds muffled,” she announced. Signs of a collapsed lung and blood collecting around the heart, strangling it. “He needs a chest tube and pericardiocentesis.”

  “So who’s going to do it?” Melissa asked. “He was the only doctor in here.”

  Nora looked at her, her mind finally catching up—oh hell. “Mark?” she called out. “Someone get Mark down here.”

  “I’m coming.” His voice came through the crowd of spectators. Two men carried Mark past the others and sat him on the floor beside Jim. “I’ll talk you through the chest tube while I needle the heart.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing, you’ve seen enough of them, you know what to do.” It was Jim’s only chance, he didn’t say. Didn’t have to as Jim’s eyes slid shut and the monitor alarmed. “Flatline! Let’s move, people!”

  THE SOUND OF THE GUNSHOT WAS LOUDER OVER the radio than the sound that came through the auditorium wall to reach them in the cafeteria. The screams were loud enough either way—it was heart-wrenching for Amanda to hear them in stereo and not be able to do anything.

  At the sound of the shot, Jerry pulled his gun, useless as it was, from his pocket. “Gina!”

  Amanda had the same impulse, to run and help the people trapped next door. But Lucas saved them both from their folly. He caught Amanda before she could go two steps. “No. You’ll get yourself killed and maybe a lot of innocents as well.”

  Jerry ignored him, continuing to stumble toward the door.

  “Gina’s safe,” Lucas told him, keeping his voice low so that it wouldn’t carry. Not that they’d have to worry about that with the screams and shouts coming from next door. “Jerry. She wasn’t in there. We don’t know where she is, but she’s safe.”

  Jerry stopped, hesitating, leaning on his cane, his body angled toward the exit, a silhouette of desperation, washed red by the emergency exit light above the door.

  “We need more information,” Lucas continued. “We can’t run in there blind.”

  Amanda shook free of Lucas and joined Jerry. “He’s right. No more running around hoping for good luck and a chance to take these guys out. We need a plan.”

  It was hard to make out much in the dark of the kitchen, but she felt Jerry nod. “Ask him.”

  “You mean ask the guard we caught? How can we trust anything he says?” Lucas said.

  Amanda thought about it. Jerry wasn’t up to playing head games with anyone, and Lucas was much too nice to follow through on any threats. But someone had just gotten shot one wall away from her—probably someone she knew. No more games, no more fairy-tale dress-up, this was real.

  Amanda pulled a nine-inch fillet knife from the rack beside her. Much sharper, deadlier than a pair of scissors. “I’ll do it.”

  ONCE AGAIN, GINA WAS ALONE IN DARKNESS AND silence. She lay against the top of the elevator, her body folded around unknown mechanical equipment that jabbed and jutted into her, but she felt as if she were falling. Gravity seemed to have lost all meaning in the immense and total darkness.

  How long had it been? What was happening to LaRose and Ken?

  Was it safe?

  She tried to count her pulse as an approximation of seconds, but it was racing too fast to be of any use. Every inhalation brought a tickle to her nose and the urge to sneeze, but she didn’t dare. She concentrated on breathing slow and steady through her mouth, trying to ignore the various cramps and protests raised by her muscles. Her position—facedown, half crouched, half folded over a metal box, arms outstretched, holding the hatch closed—was precarious at best and definitely not one she could maintain for long.

  Finally when she thought her arms would spasm so hard that she’d drop it anyway, she opened the elevator hatch an inch and listened. No one was moving inside the elevator or just outside its open doors. Her arms surrendered their struggle and let the hatch swing free.

  No one came, no alarm sounded. She ducked her head down through the opening. The red emergency light was the only illumination; the hallway beyond was in shadows. There was no sign of anyone.

  She rearranged herself, sitting upright and adjusting her clothing. She pulled the Maglite out of her pocket and risked turning it on, revealing her surroundings. She was careful to aim it away from the hatch, leaning it upright against the steel box that had kept jabbing her stomach earlier. Her hands were filthy, nails torn, palms abraded. Grease streaked her lab jacket, turning it into from white into a postmodernistic black-and-gray camouflage.

  She pulled the hatch closed again. It looked like it was designed to lock on the roof side too, but the latch was broken. She slid her reflex hammer through the eyebolt on the hatch to keep it shut and ensure her privacy.

  Her instincts told her to stay on the roof—it was relatively safe and no one would look for her here. She fumbled the radio from her lab jacket and turned it back on.

  “Two more,” a man’s voice came through, echoing against the concrete walls of the shaft despite the volume being set on low. She covered the speaker with her hand until she could barely hear. “One’s in a wheelchair. Either send me a few guys to get her up the stairs or I can lock them up down here.”

  “Got names?” She recognized Harris’s voice.

  “Yeah. Patient is one LaRose Freeman and the doctor is a Ken Rosen.”

  They were still alive! Gina bit her lip, fighting tears. Not that anyone would see her crying up here in the void of the elevator shaft, but she needed to concentrate.

  “Where are you?”

  “Pathology. Outside the morgue.”

  She raised the radio to her lips but couldn’t bring herself to speak. Pretending to be Lydia, stalling for time, was suicide, sheer suicide.

  What other choice did she have?

  Bracing herself, planting her feet square against the top of the elevator, stray food wrappers crackling beneath her shoes, she hit the squawk button. “This is Lydia Fiore. I understand you’re looking for me and a piece of evidence I have?”

  Sweat dripped from her forehead and she wiped it away with her sleeve. Gina was used to fear—she’d lived with it all her life. In fact, it felt like her entire life was just a façade, spent waiting for someone to come along and rip her mask away, expose her for who she really was. A coward. Helpless, powerless to face the truth.

  That fear was nothing compared to the terror that circled through her gut now, chilling her from the inside out. God, what had she done?

  The radio came to life again. “Good to hear from you, Lydia. A mutual friend wants the item you inherited from your mother. Tell me where it is or people are going to start getting hurt.”

  “It’s not here. But let those people go and I’ll get it for you.”

  There was a pause. She could almost hear Harris’s irritation over the open radio channel.

  “No. I want to see you in person. Five minutes or someone else dies.”

  Gina stared at the radio. Damn. What the hell was she going to do?

  SIXTEEN

  THE PITTSBURGH ZOO OFFICIALS HAD BEEN AGHAST at their makeshift penguin restraints but relieved to see the penguins all hopping about, happy and healthy, once they were released from the blanket. Zimmerman puffed up with pride, looking not unlike one of his feathered charges, recounting the story of how he’d single-handedly recaptured the wayward birds.

  “Where’s Olsen?” he asked one of the officials.

  “Still at the hospital. Guess he was hurt worse than they thought.”

  That took some of the glee from Zimmerman’s triumphant return. After he thanked Lydia and Trey, they climbed back into Bessie to drive home.

  It was eerie driving through the dark city, no li
ghts anywhere. Even more strange was how they saw no other cars or people during the drive from the zoo—not even anyone out shoveling snow.

  “Do you want to talk more about it?” Lydia asked Trey. The darkness was good for one thing—sharing secrets. And she had one she wanted to tell him. Maybe the time was right.

  “About what?” His rigid posture told her he knew what she meant.

  “The gun. What happened when you were a kid.”

  He gave a little shake of his head and blew out his breath. “No. Not now. There’s not much to talk about anyway. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.”

  Well, hell. Lydia pursed her lips, trying to translate that—learning to figure out what the other person really meant instead of what they actually said was a relationship minefield she was still navigating.

  “I want to know. To understand,” she tried. “When you’re ready.”

  Trey reached across the seat for her hand. “Right now, all I want is to change into clean, dry clothes and a pair of warm socks.”

  They pulled onto Merton Street. Their house was isolated at the end of a cul-de-sac, so Lydia was used to returning home in the dark—but never this dark.

  Trey parked Bessie at the curb and hopped out. The driveway wasn’t shoveled, so he had to stamp down the snow to make a path to the passenger-side door. He opened it and helped her out. Instead of walking directly to the house, though, they stood there enjoying the stillness together.

  Lydia reached up to touch Trey’s face, then laughed when her glove left behind some errant penguin feathers on his cheek. Trey wrinkled his nose and tried to blow them off, but they were stuck fast.

  “You know,” he said, nuzzling her nose with his, “I smell pretty bad. Not so sure the guys at the emergency center will appreciate eau de penguin.”

  “You know,” she replied, brushing his lips with hers, “you’re also freezing. In cases of mild hypothermia, I would medically prescribe a hot shower.”

  “Two birds—” He didn’t finish the pun, but pulled her closer instead. “Hypothermia treatment, doesn’t that also include sharing body heat?”

  “In some cases. Do you think you’re that far gone?”

  He shivered dramatically. “Yes, Doctor.”

  Holding hands, they shuffled-stamped-slipped through the snow that was as high as Lydia’s knees and headed toward the carport. Halfway there, Trey broke away to venture inside the dark carport to open the door to the house.

  “Trey, look at this.” Lydia stood at the edge of the driveway, looking at the horizon. Her house backed onto the cemetery across from Angels and the medical center typically figured prominently in any view, but not tonight. Tonight there was only a black smudge where the hospital stood.

  A black, lightless smudge.

  “Looks like the backup power at Angels is out,” she called to him. He hadn’t come out of the carport—probably couldn’t find his key in the dark. “They’re in trouble. We should go help.”

  No answer from Trey.

  In fact, no sound from the carport at all.

  Lydia peered into the darkness, when a light suddenly blinded her. She raised her hand to block it.

  And felt the cold metal of a gun muzzle touch the back of her neck.

  GINA STARED AT THE MAGLITE’S BEAM IN THE elevator shaft. The light stabbed through the blackness, at first pure, full of hope and promise, but quickly dissolving into nothing. Just like her gambit to stall Harris. Five minutes? She doubted she could even climb down out of here in five minutes.

  Okay, what would the real Lydia do?

  Stay calm for one thing. Look at all the angles, see the big picture. Think out of the box. Every cliché in the book—except for Lydia, they weren’t clichés. She actually did see the world that way. Too bad Gina wasn’t really Lydia.

  Still, she had to try.

  “In case you didn’t notice, these radios have a range of over a mile,” Gina said, hoping that her voice didn’t sound as quavery on the other end of the radio. She was totally making this up as she went—who knew what the range on a trauma radio was? She sure as hell didn’t. “I’m not in the hospital.”

  Harris’s reply was tight with anger. “Where are you?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that. But I will retrieve the evidence, and we can meet in a neutral location as soon as the snow stops. You hurt anyone else before then and I’ll take it to the police instead.”

  There, she’d played her trump card. Either he bought it or . . . The memory of the screams that had filled the radio a few minutes ago flooded over her.

  There was a long pause, and then the sound of heavy breathing rattled through the radio.

  “This is Oliver Tillman,” came a new voice. Tillman? What the hell was he doing? He’d ruin everything! Didn’t he realize that lives were at stake here?

  “Put Harris back on,” she commanded. “I’ll only negotiate with Harris.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you should listen to me, Gina. Before more people die.”

  Her heart skidded into her chest wall. Gina, he’d called her Gina.

  NORA WAS COVERED IN BLOOD. EXHAUSTION HAD begun to rear its giddy head, and she couldn’t imagine how Mark found the energy to continue. But somehow he did—in the darkness of the auditorium it felt like a spotlight shone down on them, the rest of the crowd watching and waiting and holding their breath for a miracle.

  No miracles to be found, not tonight. Mark had cracked Jim’s chest—right there on the floor, lying beside him and using several flashlights to find his way through the blood as he sliced a window in Jim’s pericardium, relieving the pressure that had built around his heart. Mark had pushed fluids, used the internal paddles to defibrillate, done open-heart massage—he’d single-handedly run the entire gamut of the trauma protocol, refusing to let Jim go.

  Nora wasn’t sure if the light glistening from Mark’s cheeks came from sweat or tears. Probably both—plus, she was sure the pain from his broken leg was tremendous and she knew he regarded every member of his ER staff as family. It didn’t matter if you were a doctor, nurse, or janitor, if you worked for Mark he’d defend you to the death.

  Unfortunately, not even Mark could go past that final limit.

  The crowd began to murmur and disperse as people realized the futility of Mark’s desperate efforts. People moved away, some sobbing, others glaring at the men with guns, some talking among themselves trying to make sense of the topsy-turvy direction their lives had taken.

  Finally, only Nora, Mark, and Jason remained with Jim. Jason glanced at Nora, his expression filled with pain, but nothing compared to the anguish on Mark’s face. Nora reached out to stop his hands as they compressed Jim’s heart. “It’s time to call it.”

  “No.” He kept squeezing the dead muscle between his fingers.

  Nora turned off the monitor and removed the oxygen. Mark’s body kept bouncing with his movements, and then slowly he slid his hands out of Jim’s chest cavity. In the dim light, they were black with blood. He stared at them, uncomprehending.

  Then he raised his gaze to meet Nora’s. “He was just starting to understand what it meant to be a doctor.”

  Nora nodded. “Yes, I think he was.” She looked at Jason. “Could you help Mark back to his bed? Get him a clean shirt? I’ll be up in a minute to give him some morphine.”

  Jason appeared numb himself. It took him a few seconds to process what Nora was saying. Then he stood, lifted Mark to his feet, and together they hobbled back to the stage where Mark’s stretcher lay. Nora sat with Jim, unable to perform any of her usual duties of tending to the dead—all she could do for Jim was to cover him with a sheet.

  The South African came over while she knelt beside Jim. He stood where Jim had been when he’d gotten shot and aimed his flashlight on the fabric-covered wall streaked with Jim’s blood.

  “What are you doing?” Nora asked.

  He ignored her, jostling Jim’s body with his foot as he stepped to the wall.

&n
bsp; “Hey. Be careful.”

  He aimed the flashlight with one hand, flicked a wicked-looking knife from the sheath on his belt with the other, and grinned with satisfaction as he dug a bullet from the wall.

  “Good that it’s not in the body,” he told Nora as he worked, his tone conversational, one professional to another. “Bullets are evidence.”

  “What about all those bullets from when you shot up the ceiling?”

  “When we’re done they won’t be looking for bullets in the debris. But they will examine the bodies.”

  Goose bumps rose on Nora’s arms and a chill settled in the pit of the stomach. Her greatest fears confirmed: They weren’t planning to let anyone live through this. Jim was just the first casualty.

  “So, does that mean you won’t be shooting anyone else?” she asked defiantly.

  He turned his grin on her—she’d seen cadavers with friendlier smiles. “If we do, we’ll just have to dig the bullets out.”

  His radio sounded. Nora sidled closer, listening to the voice on his radio that was claiming to be Lydia. That wasn’t her, though. With the static on the small handset it was difficult to tell who it was, but it sounded like—no, it couldn’t be. Gina?

  “Sounds like we might be finished here sooner than we thought,” the South African said.

  Pocketing the bullet, he walked away, leaving Nora alone with Jim’s corpse.

  She climbed to her feet and headed over to the food cart. Taking a bottle of water, she walked to the rear of the auditorium, the area all the others gave a wide berth to, except the men with guns who stood guard. There were no lights here, so she could stand in the darkness, hidden from sight as she washed Jim’s blood from her hands, letting it drip onto the carpet. Tillman would probably bill her for the cleaning.

  Harris stood talking with Tillman and the South African. The CEO was shaking his head, not arguing, more like a prisoner pleading his case. She edged through the shadows until she was close enough to hear.

  “You have to believe me,” Tillman said, “the woman on the radio is not Lydia Fiore. It was an ER resident, a friend of hers, Gina Freeman.”