Embryo 2: Crosshairs

by JA Schneider

  One woman carrying a sign told the reporter, “Oh, they’re wonderful, we just want to call attention to our cause;” and a man next to her said “A life is a life! Adopt an embryo!”

  Another couple, young, said excitedly, “We just came to see them!” Then the camera caught a man handing Jill a bouquet. She took it. In close-up her lovely, pallid face thanked him. David gave him a hard look, and with his arm around her moved them both forward. The rain grew heavier and wind gusted. The camera showed his face, stony-handsome with his dark hair blowing over his brow.

  “David! Daaavid!” wailed a young woman.

  “Jill, look this way!”

  “Over here! Over here!”

  “You do abortions?” yelled a man who’d gotten too close to Jill.

  She looked painfully at him. “No! I just want to deliver healthy babies!”

  David tightened his grip on her and pulled her away. “Ambulance bay,” he said low.

  They pushed that way through more cameras and people asking for…autographs? Yards to go, as cops and hospital security guards coming to them spread their arms and kept people back. “Sorry!” they said. “Move back, please. Emergency only!”

  They were in. Headed to the E.R. loading dock as a small group of other scrubs ran out jubilantly to greet them.

  But cameras kept taping.

  One man in particular adjusted his telephoto lens.

  2

  Buck Loki taped them until the last instant, when the sliding E.R. doors closed behind them. Then he wiped his lens and bent, just in time, to put his camera back in his black bag. A cop walked by and he froze; faked nervous busyness in the bag. Cops always had that effect on him, even though he had changed his appearance.

  And so I begin, he thought giddily. I shall have my revenge on those two. They stole my life!

  His heart exploded with fury as he looked around at the adoring, admiring crowd, the still-craning, excited faces, strangers yakking with strangers. “I got a close-up!” trilled one stupid female to another. “His eyes are dark blue! He looked right at me!”

  What morons they all were. No one had noticed anything odd about him, dressed for the occasion in a shabby janitor’s outfit but using such an expensive camera. No one ever really observed anything, wasn’t that wonderful?

  He edged his way out, adjusting his sunglasses and baseball cap low over his wig with the thinning gray hair. A precaution: there was still the danger of cops filming the crowd as they often did.

  Quickly, he walked six blocks, then checked his watch. 8:35, a perfect time. Working people had left, and the crappy apartment building he had cased on this crappy block had no security. From across the street he walked slowly, arthritically, and watched.

  A first female came out of the building, anxiously checked her watch, and hurried off. No good. That one was just late.

  Buck Loki waited, pretending to study the menu of a little Italian restaurant, watching the reflection of the building across on its glass.

  There! A cute young female came out and stopped, her face happily turned up to the now brightening sky. Unemployed or part timer. They were easy to spot.

  Plus she had long, dark hair like Jill Raney! Oh, this was too good! It made him more excited! She would fit – like that! – into his revenge plan.

  She walked a few doors down and turned into Tanaka’s grocery. He crossed the street, head down, to admire the array of fresh vegetables. Took a basket and started to poke through some mushrooms until she came out, carrying a paper bag.

  He put back the basket and mushrooms, waited a moment, then followed her to her building’s entrance, huffing theatrically, making his bag seem heavier than it was.

  “Hi Meredith,” he smiled as she stood uncertainly at the door.

  “It’s Lainey,” she smiled back, leaving the door open for him.

  “Oh, sorry, you two look a little alike,” he said affably, following her in. The thinning gray hair and scraggly gray mustache must have helped.

  He’d worried he’d have to follow her up to her apartment - which still ran the risk of being seen - but instead she turned right and started down cement stairs. What luck! He guessed where she was headed. Where else in this kind of building?

  The laundry room, yes! Empty, abandoned, all the wage slaves off to wherever!

  He walked in, passing her to the rear of the room where he dropped his black bag with the clunk of tools inside. She had her back turned; had placed her groceries on a washer and was bending to empty her laundry from one of the dryers. Her short cotton skirt rode up. Nice legs.

  She must have felt his eyes on her, because she turned and smiled self-consciously.

  He looked quickly away as he knelt, pulling on work gloves and adjusting a wrench. She turned back and resumed what she was doing.

  Fast, he got out his favorite items and did what his plan against them dictated. This was the second one. His first rape was outside in an alley at night. In a building there was greater risk, so he plunged and plunged in fast fury.

  He finished, put his important things away, and looked down at her, bleeding. Lainie, was it? She’d seemed sweet.

  Pity she and the other one were only instruments, poor things…but was that his fault? No, he raged, it was THEIR fault - those new media darlings who’d taken everything from him. He’d get them, make them pay, oh yes.

  3

  Despite the hugs, and emotional welcomes and Emergency doors sliding blessedly closed behind them, Jill felt panic surge through her.

  Tricia Donovan, her fellow intern and friend since med school, was hugging her and crying. Big Sam MacIntyre, second-year resident, was group-hugging them all including first-year resident Woody Greenberg, who looked close to tears himself. “Missed you,” he kept gibbering. “Can I stop having heart attacks now?” He stumbled over his words, looking skinnier and more wiry than he did four days ago.

  It seemed so much longer.

  Tricia, wiping tears from her chubby cheeks, peered at Jill from behind her wire-rimmed glasses. “So? You still sane?”

  “Was until that crowd,” Jill managed. “Somebody give me a sedative?”

  “Sedatives for everybody!” Woody hollered in the noisy E.R. “The good stuff!”

  They had all called, fretfully checking in, but had managed to restrain themselves from running over and hovering. Now Sam was inspecting David’s bandage. “Looks just changed,” he said.

  “This morning.” David shot Jill a little grin.

  “Nice work, Jill,” Sam said. “Okay, who gets to take out the sutures?”

  She hadn’t heard him. She felt so lost. The glass Emergency doors had slid open again and a gurney was being rolled in. Yelling EMTs, patient unconscious with head trauma. Very bloody.

  Shakily, she looked down at the bouquet she still held. Red roses, slightly squished from all the hugging.

  Woody read her and said, “Want me to take those? Leave ‘em at the nurses’ station?”

  “Please.” She smiled weakly at him and handed him the roses.

  Tricia said, “I saw the guy on TV who gave them to you. He looked creepy.”

  David sent Tricia a Don’t look, and she was immediately sorry. Stupid blurter, she scolded herself, feeling awful. Jill did look a little shocky.

  Other staff members greeted and hugged them as the small group wove through Emergency, past orderlies pushing more gurneys, and rushing doctors and nurses and rolling laundry baskets full of bloody sheets.

  “You hangin’ in?” David’s arm was around her shoulders.

  She swallowed and nodded.

  Jim Holloway, tall, dark-haired, and another first-year Ob/Gyn resident, stopped to hug them one-armed because he was carrying a test tube rack. He looked like he hadn’t slept.

  “Welcome back, I think,” he grimaced.

  Jill gave a faintly hysterical laugh. “Ha! Lemme know when you decide!”

  He’d struck the right note. The others smiled faintly.

&nb
sp; The old Jill was coming back maybe? Let’s hope…

  Two nurses were fixing the roses Woody left on their counter. They had seen the awful, continuous TV coverage. Who hadn’t?

  “I fear for them,” the younger one said.

  “Me too,” said the older nurse, frowning up from a broken stem she’d just snipped. She spoke low. “Why’d the hospital have to announce when they’d be back? Publicity, that’s why. Use the heroes to offset the bad headlines, the lawsuits!”

  Her colleague shuddered. “That madman Arnett tinkering with women’s bodies, causing those Ob tragedies. Horrible. Unspeakable.”

  “Media’s the worst,” said the older nurse. Her tone turned sarcastic. “My, don’t doctors fighting on a roof shown over and over beat stupid car chases taped from news choppers?”

  “A media wet dream.”

  “Emails pouring in to every department, the hospital’s website is swamped. I’ve heard the mail room has bales of perfumed envelopes for him and letters for her.”

  “Sicko mail included. Next will come stalkers and– “

  “Bite your tongue!” The older nurse glanced balefully at the roses. Their color was a deep red. She peered again at Jill, David, and their friends moving away down the busy gray hall.

  “Hey!” The younger nurse charged out yelling at an orderly. “Put that cell phone away! Why are you taping them?”

  The orderly stopped, his face all injured innocence.

  Neither nurse recognized him. Orderlies came and went, it was hard to keep track of them. Hard to keep track of anybody in this place.

  They muttered together, visualizing the E.R. waiting area beyond, teeming with ailing or injured people and their relatives – none of them checked or even watched by security of any kind. Clerks and nurses at the desk out there were too harried to notice anything.

  “You realize?” the younger nurse said. “Anyone can walk into the hospital through Emergency? Disappear into the halls, the stairs, go up in the elevators looking all innocent?”

  “I think of that all the time. It’s scary.”

  “These roses make me nervous. Can we throw them out?”

  Woody had stayed for clinic duty, and in the elevator Sam MacIntyre brought the others up to speed. Rounds had been delayed for their arrival but David…sorry, sorry…wouldn’t be leading them. He’d been switched to a nine o’clock surgery by, uh, Tom Ganon, and Ganon would be leading rounds.

  “You’re kidding,” Tricia said.

  “I’m serious. Doctor Sensitive did a lot of switching and re-scheduling. Plans to hover over us, I guess.” Sam looked at Jill. “You can still run out of the building,” he said dryly.

  Jill looked as if she was considering it.

  Tom Ganon was the fourth-year chief resident of Ob/Gyn, and the hospital Nasty. A stop-at-nothing politician, he had intrigued his way to the position of head researcher under William Stryker, a world-famous fertility expert, chief of Madison’s Ob/Gyn department, and chairman of the hospital’s Genetic Counseling Committee.

  Ganon scorned interns; just wanted to spend time in the research lab with his blasted blastocysts. Even Stryker had told him to start spending less time with his rabbit and mouse eggs, and more like a teaching fourth year resident.

  “Ganon,” David muttered to Jill. “Just what you needed.”

  Tricia wondered out loud if they’d all make it to next year, when David would have Ganon’s job. “They can lock Ganon in some research ivory tower and throw away the key. I’ll bet he’d love that. Nobody human to deal with.”

  “I wanted to warn you,” Sam told Jill, who stood very still. “He’s been going around saying” – a hesitation - “that you’re weak, too emotional to come back, you’ll cave after five minutes.” Unhappily Sam ran a hand through his sandy hair and looked at David. “I’m sorry. I thought maybe preparing Jill would be good.”

  David said quietly, “She knows. We both expect it.”

  He looked at Jill for a reaction. Held his breath.

  She was silent as she stared at the floor. Then, slowly, she raised her head and gave a thin smile.

  “Thanks, Sam.” She inhaled as she felt a change come over her. Panic was still there, but a welcome shot of adrenalin charged in too. “I needed that. Something to make me mad.” Her gaze swept all of them. “Amazing how a little anger can make you feel better. Fulla fight instead of depressed. Let’s throw Ganon off the roof!”

  They all laughed. The elevator dinged and they got off, still chuckling and looking as if someone had just told the most hilarious joke.

  Then, oh dear…

  Straight ahead, glaring up from charts at the nurses’ station, was white-jacketed Tom Ganon, a humorless, long-faced man with a receding dark hairline and dark little rat eyes. Three interns stood at a safe distance from him, waiting, looking anxious.

  But mirth is contagious.

  “Hi Tom!” Jill greeted Nasty as they approached. No sign of the fear inside. “How are your mouse embryos? Multiplying like rabbits?”

  Grins broke out on the other interns, who rushed to greet them.

  Charlie Ortega gave Jill a thrilled hug and bear-hugged David.

  So did Gary Phipps, after pocketing his bagel, and Ramu Chitkara, who in his emotional, lilting British voice kept saying, “Sew glad, sew very glad!”

  Jill hugged them all back as Ganon and Levine coldly shook hands.

  “Have a nice rest?” Ganon curtly asked Levine.

  “Yeah, a week on the beach,” David snapped back. Ganon was already pushing a chart at him. “Tubal ligation, patient’s prepped. I’m leading rounds today- in Gyn.” His glance brushed over Jill with no eye contact. “You up on your Gyn surgery, Doctor Raney? Okay grunts, this way.”

  He was off without looking back, headed down the hall directly across from the Ob hall. The other interns fell in behind him, grimacing, while Jill and Tricia, annoyed, hung back. Almost in unison they said, “Tubal ligation? He doesn’t need a third year resident for that.”

  “He’s humbling me.” David smirked. “Marking his territory. Has an invisible pecker he sprays all over the place.”

  “Blech! So that’s what wet my shoes!” Tricia peered down in mock horror and did a disgusted little dance.

  David snickered, then looked seriously at Jill. “Gyn surgery? It’s an ambush. There’ll be cases you haven’t seen.”

  “The rest of us know them,” Tricia said. “We’ll start the presentations and Jill can fill in.”

  “Hopefully.” Jill paled again. Became aware that the procession down the Gyn hall had stopped, with Storm Cloud Ganon glaring back at her.

  “I’ll be okay,” she told David.

  He kissed her cheek and told them both to hang tight.

  4

  Almost time for visiting hours…it would work, wouldn’t it?

  Nurse Kassie Doyle was in such pain. Propping herself with her left hand on the mattress, she used her right hand to tuck the covers gently around the patient, who was sedated with a breathing tube in. End stage ovarian cancer, poor woman. She had suffered so, it was good they’d knocked her out.

  Imagine…pain gone forever…

  For a long moment Kassie envied her. Her back had been giving her such trouble, but she hadn’t mentioned it because she’d already gone through her sick leave and her vacation and personal days. And sure, they’d let her take more time off if she needed it, but she wouldn’t get paid for those days.

  And then what? Recover again and come back to lifting patients? Pushing beds down the hall and another relapse?

  She thought: I’m forty-two and a bit plump – but I’m still pretty! I just so want to feel better, feel young again, maybe even find a new love…

  But this day shift work was for the birds. She had to go back to her night shift: it was easier, the patients were sleeping, there were no visitors getting in the way, no residents writing new orders and making demands. It was quiet too: hours could go by between having to check on p
atients.

  She also had friends on the night shift. A couple even sympathized and helped her score pills. That was easier at night, too.

  She’d gone through the Percocet she’d nabbed, and then some Dilaudid from a patient who had died…and then she’d gotten really chummy with Steve a hospital pharmacist, who God help her was off today. When she found that out, she was desperate, close to tears. Her back was screaming in pain.

  This patient’s room was at the end of the hall, and there was a morphine drip going in here. Kassie had known that, had probably wandered in to … what? Gaze helplessly at the bag of fluid hanging from the IV pole with the dope already mixed in? There’d be no stealing the whole damn bag…

  And then she’d seen this.

  Still leaning on her left hand, she looked back to the patient’s bed table. There glinted the miracle of miracles, what her ex would have called a druggie’s boner dream. In this hospital where you needed a doctor’s signature just to pick up a Tylenol, some fool had left a 30 mg. vial of morphine.

  Grab it, she thought.

  Her heart hammered. She was terrified. Suddenly the patient’s beeping heart monitor seemed louder and so did the whooshing respirator. Kassie looked furtively over her shoulder. Was anyone coming? The crepe soles staff wore were so silent. If she was caught she’d be out on the street.

  No, she realized, she could be arrested.

  But picture four or five mg. of liquid morphine in your decaff! Deliverance! Thirty milligrams could last her for days!

  She grabbed the vial and shoved it into her pocket. Gasp! Done!

  The patient’s family would be here soon. Hopefully they’d have their druggy-looking son with them. Hair a mess, looked spacey, had passed a regular IV drip in the hall and called it “the good stuff, better ‘n sex.”

  If anyone missed the morphine, they’d think the son took it. And the family would deny it, of course. Ha, try to get them back to co-operate. What could anyone prove?