The Edge of Death: (Sequel to ADRENALINE)

by John Benedict

  “Thanks again, Dad.” She hugged the big man. “You’re the best and I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  From the security of her father’s arms, without looking up at him, Kristin asked, “Do you think people can actually read minds?”

  C H A P T E R 4 1

  Sunday, 8:30 a.m.

  Juggling his load of egg sandwiches, orange juice, toast, and glazed donuts, Doug opened the door and entered the PML. The door closed behind him and he was immediately immersed in darkness. He quickly set the breakfast tray on the floor and tried to make sense of things. The only thing he could see was the glowing bank of monitors above Laura’s bed, which bathed the room in an eerie phosphorescent green glow. Why the hell are the lights out? “Dr. Mueller, I’m back,” he called out.

  Silence. Only the whirring of the heart-lung machine that was keeping his wife alive.

  Doug fumbled along the wall by the door and eventually found the light switch. He flipped on the lights and walked over to the bedside and gazed into the unseeing face of his wife. She looked ghastly. Her pale face was swollen, and she had an endotracheal tube coming out of her mouth and a Swan Ganz catheter in her neck. But the worst part was that her head was encased in ice—her nasal temp read 25 degrees Celsius.

  Laura’s EKG was flatline. This was just as it should be; she was on full cardiopulmonary bypass to rest her heart. The heart-lung machine was doing the work now and was responsible for maintaining an adequate perfusion pressure to her brain and vital organs. But Laura’s MAP—her mean arterial pressure—was only 30 mmHg and falling. Something was wrong; this was way too low.

  “Dr. Mueller?” Doug called out again, the first real stab of fear running through him.

  Still no response.

  It was then that he noticed a large bore, antecubital IV in Laura’s right arm. He wasn’t positive, but he could’ve sworn that it wasn’t there earlier; he was intimately familiar with all her lines. The tubing was filled with blood. Perhaps last night while he’d slept, Mueller had seen fit to start another IV to give her a transfusion—not that unusual in a critically ill patient. Except he realized there was no unit of blood or fluid hanging on the IV pole. The tubing ran out of sight off the other side of the bed. Strange. Very strange.

  Doug leaned over to follow the tubing and in a moment of shock and horror, saw a man lying on the floor. He appeared to be unconscious. The tubing was going right into his arm. Blood flows downhill. This could only mean one thing. Laura’s blood was flowing out of her and into this man. What the hell? Doug felt queasy. Something was badly amiss here. And where is Mueller?

  Laura’s MAP was now 20 mmHg. Doug knew she wouldn’t last long like this; she was already very fragile, with all that she had been through. He quickly removed the IV from her arm and applied pressure to stop the bleeding.

  The man on the floor spoke. “Perhaps I can answer your questions.”

  Doug almost jumped out of his skin. “W-what? Who the hell are you?”

  “Nick Chandler.” Chandler sat up and swiped a gray wig off his head. “I’m with environmental services.” He ripped the IV out of his own arm.

  Doug felt as if he had entered the twilight zone; none of this was making any sense. He could only stare at the man and shake his head, hoping he would wake up out of this nightmare—and that the apparition would be gone. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Chandler didn’t answer, but appeared to be studying him.

  Doug turned his attention back to Laura. She looked so pale—unquestionably, she needed blood right away. “I don’t have time for this,” Doug muttered. “This woman is my wife and she’s dying.”

  “I know.”

  Doug ignored the strange man and searched around the area for drugs. Specifically, he needed some Neo or ephedrine or epi—anything to bring her pressure up. And he needed it now.

  “You don’t know me, Dr. Landry. But I know you and Laura.” Chandler smiled condescendingly. “I was a patient of Dr. Mueller’s, too—his first real success story.”

  Doug did his best to block this guy out. What the man was doing here, hooked up to Laura, he couldn’t begin to guess. But time was running out. Laura’s MAP was now 15 mmHg and her pulse ox no longer registered—she would be dead soon. Doug found an anesthesia cart off to the side containing the drugs he was looking for. “I have to give her some medicine now,” Doug mumbled. “Her pressure’s way too low.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “What?” The twilight zone had now expanded grotesquely, pushing aside reality, engulfing him in its insanity. This can’t be real—could it?

  “I said, I can’t let you do that,” Chandler repeated.

  Only one thing mattered. Doug ignored him and prepared to inject Laura’s IV with some epinephrine, but suddenly, Chandler was in front of him, wielding a bloody scalpel blade. Chandler slashed at him. A gash appeared in Doug’s arm. Blood immediately welled up and ran onto the floor, and he dropped the epinephrine syringe. Then he felt the burning pain and winced. What the hell!

  But the pain served to jolt him back to reality. Doug grabbed for the metal instrument tray at Laura’s bedside—something he could use as a shield, or perhaps as a weapon to beat this guy’s brains in.

  Before he could reach it, Chandler already had it in his hands. He flung it aside.

  Exploding with frustration and rage, Doug leapt straight at Chandler, oblivious to the scalpel blade. Chandler sliced at him, but only managed to tear another gash in his arm. Doug hit him squarely in the chest and drove him to the floor. The scalpel blade flew out of Chandler’s hand. Doug wrapped his hands around his neck and squeezed. An image of throttling Raskin years ago flashed across his mind.

  Chandler howled in pain, but Doug didn’t let up. Doug realized Chandler’s neck was a mess—all slimy and bloody. Soon blood started flowing again from the open wounds there. How the heck had Chandler survived these neck wounds? Some creature had been gnawing on his neck. A lion, perhaps? Blood was now flowing freely onto the floor. Chandler appeared to pass out.

  And Laura’s alarm sang out in the background.

  Doug glanced up in time to see her pressure line bottom out. Shit! She would be dead in roughly two minutes. Letting go of Chandler, Doug rushed to Laura’s side. He punched the Code Blue button at the bedside and then gave the entire syringe of epinephrine. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement from Chandler.

  Doug frantically flung open the drawers of the anesthesia cart, searching for more epinephrine.

  Chandler began dragging himself with one arm toward the door. With his other arm, he clutched at his neck, where blood seeped out between his fingers to run onto the floor; he left a broad trail of smeared blood behind him.

  C H A P T E R 4 2

  Sunday, 10:00 a.m.

  Chandler closed the door, threw the dead bolt, then slid down to the floor, his breaths coming in ragged gasps. Shit! That was close, he thought. Very close. Landry had almost killed him! He had almost died at the hands of that fucker, Doug Landry. He started to shake his head in disbelief but quickly aborted this; his neck throbbed so miserably that he felt light-headed. Perhaps Mueller had been right—he should be back in the ICU receiving proper medical treatment. But he knew what he really needed was more blood.

  Blood. He could feel Laura Landry’s blood running through his veins, mingling with his blood, pumped by his heart to the farthest reaches of his body. He savored the knowledge; it felt good. He pictured her beautiful face. If only Landry hadn’t come in when he did. In another fifteen or twenty minutes, the transfusion would have been complete and Laura would have tasted death—just as he had. He pounded the floor and howled with rage and frustration.

  Slowly, his rage gave way to clearer thinking as his self-preservation instincts kicked in. If he wanted to win, he had to stick to a plan. He needed a strategy. Mostly, he needed some time to heal. All his powers were for naught, if he couldn’t stand up.

&nbs
p; Chandler crawled to the kitchen, leaving a streak of blood along the hardwood floor. He grabbed the countertop and pulled himself up to stand. The room swam momentarily as he swayed with vertigo. After retrieving what items he needed from the cabinet, he slumped down on the floor, leaning against the refrigerator door for support. When he had caught his breath, he struggled to pop the top of an Ensure can. Shit! He was ridiculously weak. After several tries he finally succeeded in opening it; he washed down a load of iron pills and vitamins, to help with the synthesis of hemoglobin and generalized healing.

  From his position, sprawled on the kitchen floor, he directed his bone marrow to rev production of red blood cells up to the max. He constricted the blood vessels in his neck to staunch the blood flow from the gashes. Fucking dog! He also directed an avalanche of white blood cells, killer t-cells and lymphocytes and phagocytes, to his neck region to help ward off infection. He also recruited fibroblasts, stimulating them to lay down scar tissue and promote healing and skin growth.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake to visit Mueller in the first place, to return to the med center so soon, with his wounds so fresh. But the urge to see Mueller had been overwhelming—he wanted to learn what had happened to him, and why. Mueller had proven very useful in this regard and Chandler now figured he had a much better understanding of his transformation. Killing Mueller had not been part of his original plan, but it had felt right at the time.

  Besides, his sixth sense had proven a godsend. How else would he have crossed paths with Laura Landry? Clearly fate had been responsible for bringing them back together after he had first laid eyes on her at the CVS. Just as fate had chosen him for the transformation, it had chosen her to be by his side.

  He finished off the can of Ensure and made his way on all fours to the bathroom. Using the sink as leverage, he hauled himself upright again. He regarded his neck wounds in the vanity mirror. It was not a sight for the faint-hearted. His neck musculature had been ripped aside, exposing the vital structures beneath. He could see the outline of his trachea with its regularly spaced cartilaginous rings, glistening in the bathroom light. His carotid artery—miraculously still intact—pulsed defiantly with every beat of his heart. There wasn’t much left of his shredded internal jugular vein; the remnant still seeped blood. If he turned his neck far enough, ignoring the exquisite pain, he could even make out his vertebral column way in the back, which housed his delicate spinal cord, the main neural pathway to and from the brain.

  Chandler realized he was lucky to be alive. He swabbed some iodine on his wounds and immersed himself in the stinging pain. He was actually learning how to modulate the nociceptors responsible for the transmission of pain impulses. With practice, he believed he would be able to abolish the sensation completely.

  Using some sterile gauzes and cotton balls and tape, he redressed his wounds as best he could, then staggered into the master bedroom and crawled between the flannel sheets of the Kopenhavers’ king-size bed, oblivious to the bloodstains he left everywhere. He laid his head on the soft down pillow and tried to relax, but couldn’t. Sadness and despair pushed aside any chance for peace he might have had. The more he took note of them, the greater they seemed to become. He felt so alone—him against the world. Why was it so hard? Why had they hurt him so? He thought back to earlier, happier times with Toby and tears came to his eyes; he missed his good friend.

  Chandler cried for several minutes more, mostly for himself—until his mind recoiled. Until he remembered that they had almost killed him twice in the past two days. He had been through so much, and gained so much, that it would be a tragic waste to give it all up now. This self-pity was a weakness; he had no use for it.

  Chandler cut the parasympathetic nerve output to his lacrimal ducts, thereby effectively cutting off any more tears. He ordered his mind to bury the memory of Toby down deep. He tried to override his limbic system, the seat of his emotions, and blunt the sad, lonely feelings, but he was less successful there. These pathways were not at all logical, but rather horribly tangled and convoluted.

  Chandler yawned deeply. Now, on top of his physical exhaustion, he was mentally drained, and the urge to sleep became overwhelming. But he knew he needed to think things through a bit longer—to make a plan—so he quickly dialed up his brain’s reticular activating system to peak levels to ward off sleep.

  He reviewed his potential enemies—those who were privy to his secrets. Mueller was no longer a threat. He searched his mind for some shred of remorse, but could find none. Curiosity flickered briefly that he felt nothing for the man who had given him his rebirth, but he quickly let it go.

  Also in the “no longer a threat” category was the fucking dog. The dog’s teeth had somehow missed his carotid artery by the narrowest of margins, otherwise, he would be dead. Then there was Kristin, the dog’s sorry ass owner. He dismissed her. After all, she had fled away from him in terror the first chance she got, and left her beloved dog to die at his hand.

  The Allison boy came next to mind. Chandler smiled; he didn’t represent much of a threat, either—he was almost completely hamstrung by his own problems, alcohol not the least of them. Strange, though; the boy’s mind was not entirely open to him. Perhaps due to the alcohol?

  And that left Douglas fucking Landry. Landry had almost killed him. Although his mind stubbornly refused to accept this, Chandler forced himself to embrace this fact, internalize it, study it from every angle. Desperately, he needed to learn from this experience, so he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He couldn’t get too overconfident. He had real limitations. In spite of all his gifts—his strength, his speed, his healing ability, his mind-reading prowess—he wasn’t immortal. And he could be beaten—he could be killed—if he was weakened sufficiently. He must properly rest and heal and stick with the plan.

  His mind also kept returning to the woman in the bed in the lab. The woman whose blood now flowed in his veins. The wife of Dr. Landry. He refused to put her in the foe category. He knew he should forget about her. He should concentrate on healing his body, lying low until he regained some respectable measure of strength. But he also knew he was drawn to her in some powerful, inexplicable way that he seemed powerless to resist. He had to see her again—to find out the truth. He shut his eyes and allowed sleep to come, and against his better instincts, dreamt of the lovely dark-haired woman.

  C H A P T E R 4 3

  Sunday, 2:00 p.m.

  Chip ascended the three flights of stairs to his apartment with ease, whistling as he went. His legs were sore from his time on the treadmill, but it was a good kind of sore. Ever since he had joined the cross-country team in high school, running had been a part of his life; it had always been his stress-buster. During his senior year, he had lowered his mile time to a respectable 5:30, and he still was friends with two buddies from the team. He had run all through college—on the indoor track when necessary.

  This past year, though, his running had become more and more sporadic, until he had finally given up on it entirely. Excuses were never in short supply. He was always too busy either going to class, studying, or partying. Somewhere along the line, he had just plain lost the fire.

  But today, he thought with a smile, he had dragged his sorry butt to the fitness center and huffed and puffed his way through a mile and a half, pounding noisily on the Precor treadmill. The sweat had poured off him and his heart had hammered at an alarming pace. And the time—well, the time was downright embarrassing. But, when all was said and done, he had felt much better than he had in a long time.

  He keyed the lock of his apartment and entered the foyer, tossing his gym bag on the floor. For perhaps the hundredth time that day, he wondered if his good mood had anything to do with Kristin. He couldn’t deny that he had been thinking about her all day. But his thoughts didn’t just center around the strange conversation they’d had this morning about Chandler. More importantly, he was genuinely touched that Kristin had wanted to share her moment of intense grief with him, and th
at she had opened up to him so candidly. Maybe the whole boyfriend thing wasn’t rock solid?

  Second, he was also surprised at how easy it was to talk with her; his usual tongue-tied nervousness just hadn’t been an issue. True, she wasn’t a glamour girl like Heather or Michelle—Victor had been right about that—but that seemed irrelevant. In fact, it seemed like a plus. When, in God’s name, had he ever had such a deep conversation with a girl? Or hugged someone for real—to help them deal with the loss of a loved one? Never.

  He slowed as he approached the kitchen, as his mood shifted. He knew what lay ahead. What had seemed like such a good idea while flying along on the treadmill now seemed a bit foolish. Or at least unnecessary. What was the point of burning all your bridges, anyway; removing all your safety nets? Isn’t that what being prepared means?

  His pace slowed to a crawl. This whole thing had a decidedly drastic feel to it. If he was so serious about severing the relationship, why couldn’t he just avoid them? No need to dump them. Besides, wouldn’t that be a waste of money? Waste not, want not. Maybe he should just pour some of them out, like a peace offering or maybe to serve as a deterrent in some way.

  No, he thought, shaking his head vehemently. He meant to go through with this, and he had to hurry, before he lost his nerve. He recognized that his life was spiraling down the drain, and for the first time in a long time, he was determined to take back some measure of control. Getting hammered all the time was not the path to a good career, or getting back into school, or really, for anything worthwhile. What girl’s gonna want to go out with a drunken loser?

  Besides, he always told himself, he could stop anytime. Just like that. Isn’t that what they all say? Time to prove it. Time to put my money where my mouth is. Where the rubber meets the road, and all that happy horseshit.