by G. H. Ephron
At the bottom of the box was a short stack of magazines—all back issues of Playboy. All October issues, in fact. The one on top featured “Girls of the Big Ten.” Another boasted “Women of the Ivy League.” That one was from three years back. I opened it and flipped through, knowing what I’d find. Sure enough, a page had been torn out. I was sure the missing page was the one featuring Emily Ryan, the one that had ended up in Philbrick’s desk drawer. And I knew without smelling it that the chewing gum was Juicy Fruit. I wasn’t surprised to find two other fabric hearts in the bottom of the drawer. Whoever had put together this stash had been Emily’s stalker. Emily had said only senior staff had access to the room. Philbrick qualified as senior staff. It could have been his.
I started to put the objects back into the box, trying to remember the order in which I’d taken them out. I set the top back on and slid the box under the freezer where I’d found it. Why were the lock broken and the top damaged? There was no time to think about it. I’d already spent more time here than was prudent.
I listened at the hallway door. Footsteps. Getting louder. I held my breath. I could feel my shirt sticking to my back. Then nothing, as if someone was pausing outside the door. Then the footsteps continued on.
I needed to get back to the control room. I’d wait a few more moments, just to be sure whoever it was had really gone. Then I’d leave.
I waited, staring at the whiteboard with its “master plan.” What I hadn’t noticed before were red checkmarks beside some of the names. Frank Mosticcio’s name had a red check. I pulled Philbrick’s list from my pocket. It looked as if all the names of dead former patients on our list had checkmarks beside them. But there were other names in the table too, names that were not in my list that also had red checkmarks.
There in the middle of the table was JOHN O’NEILL—Annie’s uncle. Beside it, a red check had been erased. Maybe checks meant “deceased, brain harvested.” And maybe Philbrick only collected the names of patients who’d been “helped out.”
I dragged my gaze over to the “<50” column. There I was, PETER ZAK. Not yet checked.
It felt like ice water was dripping down my spine as I realized what I was looking at. This was more than a grand plan. It was a shopping list. Shands needed brains for every cell of the matrix. Every name that didn’t have a red checkmark beside it, including my own, was marked for death. These were innocent people scheduled for appointments at the lab. Maybe it wouldn’t be their next visit, or the one after that. I knew I was pushing it, but I had to copy down the names that weren’t yet checked. The families had to be warned. I got the paper and a pen from my pocket and began to write.
I didn’t hear the door open behind me. All I caught was a glimpse of white lab coat when pain exploded in the back of my head. The last thing I remembered was catching my chin on the edge of the table as I went down.
24
“DR. ZAK, are you all right?” Through a mist, Estelle Pullaski’s face swam toward me.
I had a throbbing headache, and my lip and nose felt bashed in. Something was covering my face. I tried to move it aside, but Dr. Pullaski held my hand.
“You were having trouble breathing,” she said. “Just breathe deeply. This will help.”
I strained to look around.
“Is he conscious?” It was Shands’s voice. He was somewhere behind me.
“He’s coming around,” Dr. Pullaski said, pressing her fingers to my pulse. “Just try to relax.” Her mouth moved as she counted. “Much better,” she said, her voice soothing. She gently lifted the oxygen mask off my face.
She and Shands helped me to a seated position. Too fast. My head felt as if it had a fifty-pound weight attached to it. I touched my face. My lip and nose were swollen, but at least my teeth were intact.
Dr. Pullaski had on a white lab coat and so did Shands. The young man I’d seen working at the main desk stuck his head in to ask whether they wanted him to call an ambulance. He had on a white coat, too.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Dr. Pullaski told him.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We found you unconscious in the hall,” she said.
In the hall? I remembered being in the brain bank, hearing someone behind me, going down. I didn’t remember being out in the hall and I had no idea how I’d gotten up on this stretcher or into the control room.
“We thought you might have had a seizure,” Dr. Pullaski said. “You don’t have epilepsy or anything like that?”
It was tempting to go along: Yeah, gee, forgot to mention, I do have a mild seizure disorder; must have lost consciousness in the hall. But Dr. Pullaski wasn’t waiting for an answer. She was giving me a speculative smile.
The breathing mask was in her hand. I followed the tube from the mask to where it was attached to an oxygen tank. The tank had a piece of yellow paper taped to it, and in black marker it said NON-FERROUS, and beneath that MR-SAFE.
Screwed into the mouth of the tank was a nebulizer, a little gizmo that administers metered doses of medication with every inhale. Suddenly my mouth went dry. I realized this was how they’d done it. Just scrape a little bacteria into the nebulizer, and voila. Combine with oxygen in a nice moist body and it was a recipe for death.
I imagined little green bacteria multiplying like crazy in my lungs, forming a conga line as they marched along the bronchial tubes, down to the alveoli where blood gets aerated and, by the way, where the bacteria can hitch a ride into the bloodstream.
I strained to see the clock on the wall. Best guess, I’d been unconscious for about twenty minutes. I wondered how much of that time I’d been breathing poison. Dr. Pullaski was already rolling away the tank.
Even if I got sick, I couldn’t prove a thing. I wanted to leap down off the table, grab the nebulizer. I swallowed the red fury that was threatening to boil over in me. Shands was eyeing me anxiously. I needed to get myself out of there and over to the hospital where I could have Kwan start me on antibiotics.
“Sheesh,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. “I have no idea what happened. I can’t remember. Must have hit my head.” Gingerly I felt the goose egg that had grown on the crown of my head. I didn’t point out that a goose egg there meant I’d been hit—no way I could have landed headfirst on the floor. “I guess I went looking for you when I finished with my MRI. This is a confusing place, so many corridors.”
I slid down off the stretcher. “I’m fine,” I said, stumbling as I tried to take a step. Shands moved to prop me up. “Just fine.” I took a shallow breath, fighting back nausea as the world threatened to go black again. Deep breathing would only give the bacteria a firmer foothold. I had to get to the Pearce.
It wasn’t until I was in my car, driving back, that I thought to check my pockets. I still had Emily’s map, but the paper with Philbrick’s list with all the information I’d copied from the files and the whiteboard was gone.
I lay on the bed in the on-call room. I watched Kwan wind the tourniquet around my arm, tap for a vein, and then insert the needle. Slowly he withdrew a syringe full of blood.
“Why am I doing this?” he asked. He was looking at me like I was an unripe melon. Grudgingly, he’d given me a healthy shot of amoxicillin and a prescription for more to take orally over the next week. “You don’t look sick. You won’t even give me time to get your blasted blood tests back,” he complained. “Since when did you get a medical degree?”
“Ouch,” I said, as he removed the needle from my arm. “You’ve got to compare whatever my blood test comes back with to what Mr. O’Neill had—I’ll bet anything it’s the same nasty bug.”
“You don’t look sick. Weird, yes. Sick, no.”
“I would have been. In about twenty-four hours.”
“Are you saying the MRI lab is making patients sick?”
“Sick to death.”
“So the mad doctor can get his hands on their brains?” Kwan sounded skeptical but not entirely dismissive. “The only
thing I don’t get is why anyone would want your brain. Clearly inferior blend.”
“I wish I knew who the hell—” I closed my eyes and tried to remember the moment when I was struck. But I couldn’t come up with a face to go with the lab coat.
“Maybe they want to add your brain to their Lewy body collection.” Kwan said it as a joke, but when he saw my reaction he gaped. “They do? Well, that would explain a few things.”
I tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, old friend, habits die hard. I’ll probably be ribbing you on your deathbed…which you are not on! Peter, if you were losing it, I’d be the first one to let you know. And believe me, I look forward to it.”
“Thanks. I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
Gloria came in with an ice pack. I didn’t know whether to apply it to my face or my head. I chose the latter.
“Dr. Shands called,” Gloria said. “Twice. Seems he’s very concerned about your health. Went to great lengths to explain to me that you’d fallen accidentally.” She handed me a piece of paper. “Asked me to give you this number so you could call him back.”
Kwan started to leave.
“Hey, how long do I have to lie here?” I asked.
He wheeled back around. “Damn you. For all I know you don’t have to be lying here at all! I won’t know until I get your blood tests back. I’ll walk your precious bodily fluids over there personally and harass them until it gets done. But I can’t pull hats out of rabbits.” He marched off, tossing back over his shoulder, “And if you’re not good and sick, I’m going to get you certified.”
As I lay there waiting, I mentally smacked myself in the forehead for not getting out of the lab with Philbrick’s list. I could almost feel a bomb ticking beside me. There were patients whose names would sooner or later bloom red checkmarks on Shands’s matrix, and I had no way to warn them.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I told Kwan when he returned a half-hour later.
“Forget about it. Hemophilus influenza, gram-negative coccobacillus,” Kwan said, grim-faced.
“Is that a magic spell or a curse?” I asked.
“The latter. It’s the same thing we found in Mr. O’Neill—a particularly virulent type of bacterial infection that can enter the bloodstream and rapidly spread. Could have given you pneumonia. Maybe kidney failure or pericarditis.”
“I feel fine,” I said. “Except for my head.”
“Sure you do. And I intend to keep you that way. You’re staying here and resting if I have to tie you down. Seriously, you need to give the medication a good headstart.”
I was busy counting ceiling tiles when Annie appeared in the doorway. In my sorry state, to me she looked like an angel in those jeans that showed off her long legs and very nice behind. She must have recognized the look I was giving her because she said, “I thought you were sick.”
“How’d you hear?”
“I’ve got my spies. They say you’ve got to stay put. I’m here to enforce indolence. I’m here anyway visiting Uncle Jack. What happened?”
When I’d finished telling Annie, she exhaled slowly. “So Emily Ryan really was being stalked. And they are killing their own patients.”
“In the name of research.”
“We should call the police. With the evidence you collected—”
I winced.
“You didn’t?”
“I did. But when I came to, I didn’t have the list.”
“Shit,” Annie said. “At least we have a copy. But the police are going to want more than that. You think Shands is Dr. Death?”
“Dr. Pullaski was the one who was administering the oxygen.”
“Maybe she didn’t know what was in the nebulizer.”
I remembered Dr. Pullaski’s look as I lay there breathing the tainted oxygen. I was pretty sure she knew.
Gloria stuck her head in the room. “It’s Dr. Shands again.” She offered me a phone.
I took it and put my hand over the mouthpiece. “He’s been calling to find out if I’m okay. I think they’re afraid I’ll sue before I check out.”
Annie didn’t hesitate. “Get him to meet you somewhere. This afternoon. A place where there’s people around. If we haven’t got hard evidence, then you’ve got to get him to reveal himself.”
“What do I say?”
“Come up with some pretext for meeting him. Then, when you see him, be direct. Just lay out the case and see how he reacts.”
“Hello?” I said into the phone, trying to make my voice sound weak.
Shands asked me how I was. Just a bad bump on the head, I told him.
“I’m extremely sorry,” he said. “I hope you understand. Accidents happen.”
“Of course they do. It’s unavoidable. Our accident rate here at the Pearce is minuscule.” I cleared my throat, making this up as I went along. “I was talking to our safety director just now, told him what happened. He thought maybe you’d like to see a copy of our safety handbook. I don’t believe in lawsuits”—I paused on the word, hoping that would make the mild invitation I was about to offer sound a bit more coercive—“but I’d feel better if you’d let me share what we’ve learned from decades of experience with this.”
“I suppose.” There was a pause. “Sure you’re feeling up to it?”
“I should be fine by later this afternoon,” I assured him.
He didn’t need more convincing.
25
I WAS sitting at a table at the Stavros Diner, waiting for Shands, munching on one of their excellent olives. The sting of the brine reminded me that I had a cut lip. The place was always pretty empty at that time of day. I couldn’t see Annie, but I knew she was listening to me breathe as she sat at the far end of the counter that wrapped from one end of the diner to the other. I was wired.
Jimmy, the owner of the place, was cleaning the grill. When we’d arrived he’d rushed over, making appropriately sympathetic noises. With my swollen face, I looked as if I’d gotten into an argument with a revolving door. He was ignoring Annie only because we’d told him he had to. She’d tied back her hair, pulled a baseball cap low over her forehead, and propped a newspaper in front of her face so if Shands happened to wander into that end of the diner, he wouldn’t recognize her.
Shands arrived, still in his lab coat. He looked frazzled, his hair not quite its usual Grecian perfection. When he saw me, his face fell another notch. He came over.
“I feel just terrible about this,” he said, his eyes searching my face. He was an amazing actor.
He sat and ordered some coffee. I ordered a Coke. I slid my copy of the Pearce safety manual over to him. He opened it, his eyes flicking over the table of contents.
“We really are very careful, too, you know,” he said, “And we have our own safety procedures.”
“I know you do. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Remember when I brought a patient, John O’Neill, over to you for an MRI?”
“Of course I remember him. A shame his family pulled him out of the study.”
“I’ll bet you were disappointed.”
Shands blinked back at me from behind his expensive wire-rimmed glasses. From up close the teeth looked too perfect, as if they were capped. “I was. But I have to say, I don’t much like your tone.”
“Mr. O’Neill almost died two days after you gave him an MRI. You’d think that would be unusual, but it’s not. An awful lot of patients on your treatment protocol die within a few days of coming in to have an MRI.”
“We deal with sick, often elderly patients. Death is…”
“Inevitable?” I said, supplying the word. “Perhaps. Then why not just wait for them to die?”
“What are you suggesting?” He gave me a self-righteous glare.
“Frank Mosticcio?”
“He…”
“Anna Abels?” I reeled off the names of a half-dozen more patients. I laid Annie’s copy of the list on the table. “Th
ese patients all died of pneumonia, or lung infections, or—”
“That’s what old people die of,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me.
“Dr. Philbrick collected death notices of all these patients. And he called me the night before we brought Mr. O’Neill in to you for testing. I never talked to him, but I suspect he was trying to warn me. He never got the chance because, as you may recall, he was killed.”
“But this is absurd,” Shands said.
“And what about Kyle Ronan?”
Now Shands was giving me a blank look, as if the name didn’t register.
“The man whom Emily supposedly ran down with her car? I think he was killed because of something he saw—or something that he should have seen and didn’t. There he is, following Emily, waiting in the garage for her to return to her car the morning Dr. Philbrick was killed. He sees Emily arrive. He sees the police. He sees me.”
Jimmy delivered Shands’s coffee and my Coke.
“But he never sees you,” I said. “I wonder why not, because when I arrived you were already there.” The silence of the diner was broken by the whirring of the milkshake machine. “And isn’t that precisely what made him so dangerous?”
I expected to see a flash of anger, the shifting eyes of someone who’s cornered. But what I saw in Shands’s face was confusion. His jaw had gone slack.
He pushed the coffee away. “Do you have any idea how horrendous this disease is?” he asked. “The data we’re collecting is extraordinary.” His face became animated. “We’re so close to understanding. So close to preventing. Have you any idea how painful it is to watch someone you love become so tortured?” Real emotion, tears even had sprung to his eyes. “How it destroys, crushes the intellect, wipes out personality.” He swallowed. “And all you can do is stand by and watch.”
That’s when it hit me. This passion for his research—Shands had come by it the hard way. He’d lost someone he cared about to Lewy body dementia.
