Code White

by Scott Britz-Cunningham

  Quite obviously he was. He was neither moving nor breathing. His right hand and right foot dangled loosely, as if attached only by the skin. His head had been squished flat. But oddly enough, there was scarcely any bleeding. Apart from small patches of blood around his ear and at the corner of his mouth, there was no external blood at all. In its freakish capriciousness, the high-impact blast appeared to have crushed him internally, leaving scarcely a mark on his skin.

  “No pulse and no respiration,” said Brower, kneeling at his side.

  Following the almost instinctive protocol of CPR, Ginnie knelt opposite Brower and began pushing with clasped hands against Helvelius’s chest. She realized immediately that something was wrong, though. Helvelius’ breastbone gave way too easily when she pushed against it, and his chest seemed to billow at the sides.

  “His ribcage is flailing. Stop chest compressions,” shouted Brower. As Ginnie pulled back, Brower tore away Helvelius’s necktie and shirt and felt lightly over his chest. “He’s got bilateral rib fractures. CPR isn’t going to work. Get me the crash cart now!”

  The cart came rattling up. Still kneeling on the floor, Brower tilted back Helvelius’s head, pried open his mouth, and deftly inserted the curved blade of the stainless-steel laryngoscope Ginnie handed him out of the top drawer of the cart. In a few seconds, he had inserted a plastic endotracheal tube through the laryngoscope, and pushed air through a small syringe to inflate the retaining cuff at the end of the tube. While one of the nurses attached a football-shaped bag to the tube and started squeezing it to force air into Helvelius’s lungs, Brower listened with his stethoscope to confirm that the tube was working.

  He heard air rushing in and out. What he did not hear was a heartbeat.

  “Give me one milligram of epinephrine in an intracardiac syringe,” he shouted. Ginnie quickly handed him a syringe with a six-inch-long needle. Brower felt along the left side of Helvelius’s breastbone, counting the ribs. When he reached the space between the fourth and fifth ribs, he firmly thrust the needle through the skin, pushing it all the way into the cavity of the left ventricle of the heart. After injecting one cc of the clear solution, he removed the needle and listened again with his stethoscope. He went on listening for about a minute, and then turned toward Ali and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t raise a pulse. He’s gone.”

  “No! For God’s sake, do something!”

  “He’s dead, Ali. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “Get out of the way! I’ll do it!”

  “What? What will you do?”

  “Atropine … Epi … I don’t know, goddamn it! Something! Anything!”

  At a nod from Brower, Ginnie took hold of Ali and pulled her away. As she did so, Brower ripped open a packet of cotton-tipped applicators, moistened one of them in his mouth, and twirled it around the inside of Helvelius’s nose. “Here! Here you are! Look at it!” he said, holding up the swab to Ali. “There’s not a speck of dust on it. Dust everywhere, but not a speck inside his nose. He hasn’t taken a breath in the past ten minutes. He’s dead, Ali.”

  “To hell with you!” Ali broke away from Ginnie and opened the top drawer of the crash cart. Taking out two plastic defibrillation pads, she tore open the paper wrappers and knelt down to spread them against Helvelius’s chest—one in front and one in back, sandwiching the heart.

  “You can’t defibrillate him,” said Brower. “His heart’s been without oxygen for ten minutes. It won’t beat.”

  “I’ll pace him.” She stood up and plugged the leads into the same defibrillator that had just been used on Jamie. But now she turned the Mode dial from “defibrillate” to “pace,” and selected a heart rhythm of sixty beats per minute. If she could force the heart to beat, it might spread enough oxygen through Helvelius’s body to revive him. It was a long shot, but still a chance.

  Brower scooted away from the body as Ali turned up the current dial. Starting at forty milliamps, she turned it slowly higher, watching for the QRS and T waves that would appear on the monitor when Helvelius’s heart had captured the pacing rhythm. But though she turned the dial as far as it would go, no amount of current could prod his heart to beat.

  Still she would compel it, this stubborn heart of his. She would use every weapon she had. “Clear!” she shouted, as she switched the mode from “pace” back to “defibrillate.”

  “No!” shouted Brower. “It won’t work. You know that. He’s not in a shockable rhythm.”

  Her nostrils flaring, Ali ignored him and pressed the red shock button. Helvelius stiffened slightly and then relaxed. The monitor showed a flat line.

  “Okay. Have you had enough?” said Brower.

  “Clear!” shouted Ali again, with a defiant scowl. She twisted the defibrillator control all the way up, to 360 joules, and hit the red button sharply with her palm. For an instant, the body of Richard Helvelius seemed to come alive on the floor, and then sank back into inertness. Once again, the monitor showed no trace of a beat.

  Brower got up and firmly took her hand in his. “He’s gone,” he said. “Give it up!”

  “No! No, not like this!” Ali tore her hand away and kicked the crash cart, which clattered as it pivoted from the blow. Stepping away from Helvelius, away from the stunned hospital staff and Dutch’s gawking camera, she wrung her hands in front of her mouth. She struggled to hold herself together. I’m a doctor, for God’s sake, she thought. Everyone’s watching. I can’t fall apart now.

  Ginnie ran to her. As she felt Ginnie’s touch upon her shoulder, instead of pulling away she turned and threw her arms around the nurse’s neck, clasping her tightly. “It was my fault! It was my fault!” she whispered into Ginnie’s ear.

  “No, no, Doctor. How could it be?” said Ginnie.

  “I should have warned him. It’s my fault! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Suddenly, she pushed Ginnie away and ran into the ICU. She felt an uncontrollable wave of nausea, and barely made it to a sink before her stomach erupted, ejecting a hot, bitter magma of anguish, shock, and despair through her twisted mouth. Three times she vomited, and then she stood, with her head bent so low that her hair drooped below the edge of the sink. Several minutes went by before she looked up at the sound of Brower and Ginnie returning to the ICU.

  “Are you all right, Ali?” asked Brower.

  Ali glared at him. Turning on the faucet, she splashed the stream of water about the sink with her hand to rinse away the vomit. Then she daubed some of the cold water on her face and wiped it off with a paper towel.

  “Where—” she started to say.

  “They took him to the ER,” said Brower. “Some of the nurses and the TV people went with him. I’m sorry. Really sorry. I know that you two worked very closely together.”

  Ali marched past him and pushed through the door into the hallway. Everyone was gone. There was only a clear spot on the dusty floor to mark where Helvelius’s body had lain. The great Dr. Richard Helvelius. Professor of Neurosurgery. Fellow of the American Academy of Sciences. Past President of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Twenty-six years of school and specialty training. Over ninety thousand operations performed. Two hundred and seventeen journal articles and book chapters. Over three hundred residents who had learned the art of surgery at his hand. And then—snuffed out in a single instant.

  The misshapen doors of the elevator yawned before her, with the oblong gap between them resembling the introitus to the womb. She could not bear to look at them. Turning away, she looked about the hallway, until her eye caught something near the high ceiling line. It was a small security camera, pointing toward the elevator, its tiny red RECORD light barely visible. In an instant she understood everything. Moving toward the camera, she stopped just below it and looked up at it with her swollen, reddened eyes. The lens was opaque with dust.

  “You smug little monster!” she cried out, her voice hoarse from the flux of stomach acid. “Did you think you could kill him with impunity? He was your better, Ke
vin. He was a man, not a thumbsucking little brat. He was better, do you hear? Better in every way. A better brain, and, God knows, a better fuck. Do you hear that? You have nothing on him! And you won’t get away with this. I won’t let you. I’m going to bring you down—you and that soulless computer of yours. As God as my witness, I’ll bring you down or die trying. You’re going to be sorry that you ever saw this day.”

  3:54 P.M.

  The wine-colored leather of the chair squeaked as Harry bent forward to speak to Dr. Ernest W. Gosling, the president of Fletcher Memorial. Gosling was half-deaf, but had an irritating tendency to lean far back in his chair, forcing supplicants and subordinates to lean over his desk if they wanted to be heard.

  “Special Agent Scopes and one of our building engineers have made a preliminary inspection,” said Harry. “There doesn’t seem to be any large-scale structural damage. Just to that elevator and the adjacent lobby.”

  “Why did this bomb go off?”

  “I don’t know. It appears to have been a very small-scale charge—a couple of ounces or so of explosive, hidden behind a plate at the base of the elevator. Given the design, it was probably intended as an anti-personnel device. We aren’t excluding the possibility that Dr. Helvelius was a target. The bomber’s first text page this morning was identified as coming from Dr. Helvelius’s office. While that was certainly a ruse, it may have indicated a grudge of some kind.”

  “I knew Richard very well,” said Gosling. “This medical center owes a great deal to his tireless and dedicated work. I can tell you quite frankly that I’m personally devastated.”

  “Yes, sir. We all are.”

  Harry sat quietly as Dr. Gosling removed his gold-framed glasses and tapped them pensively on his desk. From the oak-paneled wall behind Gosling, the founding fathers of Fletcher Hospital—Augustus Fletcher, his son Wilson Hoard Fletcher, and Dr. Lewis Pine—looked down sternly, from a triptych of portraits done in the styles of Gilbert Stuart and Copley.

  Dr. Gosling replaced his glasses. “How many more bombs like this are there?” he asked. “Have the other elevators been checked?”

  “They’re being re-inspected now by our engineers and some experts from the Chicago P.D. Bomb Squad. We have some idea of what to look for now, and we’ve identified two other small elevator bombs so far—one near our own Security Department, the other here in the administrative wing.”

  “That’s the elevator I use.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gosling raised his bushy white eyebrows. “Am I a target?”

  “Quite possibly. I believe these bombs were placed by someone who is intimately familiar with the operations of this hospital. Their purpose may be to confuse and disrupt our emergency response. Or to exact revenge.”

  “Revenge? For what?”

  “I don’t know. But, under the circumstances, I recommend that you and any administrators at the V.P. or Division Directorate level leave the building, separately and as quietly as possible.”

  “I’ll pass your recommendation along to the executive staff. In person. For myself, however, there is no question. I intend to stay here until the crisis is resolved.”

  “That could be dangerous.”

  “I’m an old man, Mr. Lewton. I’m not afraid to die. My presence here could help to allay panic. Plus I might be able to lend support to your own efforts.”

  “That’s admirable, but—”

  Gosling cut him off. “Go on about the elevators, Mr. Lewton. I’m afraid I interrupted you.”

  Harry started to repeat his warning, but Gosling leaned far back, as if to cut off discussion. “As you wish,” said Harry, after a pause. “Bomb squads are at work on the two small bombs we found. We’ve taken all the other elevators out of service until they pass rigorous inspection. But we’re going to need them back on-line soon. I’ve ordered a low-level evacuation.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous? Didn’t the ransom message warn us not to evacuate?”

  “We’ll try to keep it under the radar, but we have to do something. If the big bomb does go off, I don’t want it said that we did nothing. We’ll start with the sickest patients in the Goldmann Towers, moving them out one by one. I’ve worked out a deal with the ambulance companies to maintain radio silence while they transport the patients to Stroger Hospital.”

  “Any progress with the big bomb?”

  “Not much so far. There’s one primary bomb in Tower C. It’s bolted to the wall of a narrow utility shaft, just wide enough for one slim man to squeeze through. It’s in between the first and second basement levels, so we have to do some climbing to get to it. I’m told there aren’t any external features or wires to give us any clue as to how it operates. One peculiar thing has been noted, though. The bomb is guarded by a small video camera, which has been patched in to the Cerberus security network. I can actually get feed from it in my office. Wherever he is, the perpetrator is using it to watch the activity of the bomb squad.”

  “What about the prisoner—this Rahman Al-Sharawi? Did you learn anything from him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The FBI is extremely upset, you know. Some very highly placed people have telephoned me in the past half hour. They want you dismissed. Immediately.”

  “That’s your prerogative, Dr. Gosling.”

  “Yes, well, there will have to be an investigation, I suppose. But in general, I think it’s a bad idea to change leadership in a crisis.”

  There was a knock at the big oak door, and Dr. Gosling’s executive assistant entered, her feet gliding noiselessly across the carpet.

  “There’s a nurse here named Ginnie Ryan, who is asking to speak to Mr. Lewton. She says it’s urgent.”

  Harry was puzzled, but Dr. Gosling promptly stood up and extended his hand across the desk. “Thank you for the update, Mr. Lewton. I know you have a lot to attend to right now. I don’t want to interfere with your efforts.”

  Harry shook Dr. Gosling’s hand. There was no telling what the old man thought of him now. The bomb was a hell of a thing to come up after three months on the job, and the elevator explosion must have made him seem like a bush leaguer. But he was doing everything anybody could do. You had to keep it from getting personal, so you could just carry out your job and not worry about what was going to happen to you tomorrow—if you lived that long and didn’t get sacked because some asshole with a Federal badge couldn’t see past the end of his nose. So far, he was alive, and he hadn’t been sacked. That was enough for now. So he gave Gosling a firm handshake, and walked out without making any excuses.

  In the waiting room, Harry was met by a short, dark-haired woman in scrubs.

  “Mr. Lewton? Dr. O’Day sent me. She said she needs to speak to you right away.”

  “Ali O’Day? Why didn’t she come herself?”

  “She’s afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “What does she want?”

  “She says to meet her in the women’s changing room in Neurosurgery I.”

  “Women’s changing room? You sure you got it right?”

  “Yes.” She tensed her fingers emphatically. “And please hurry. I don’t know what it’s about, but she looked really scared, and it’s making me scared, too.”

  “There’s no need to be scared, Ms. Ryan. We have everything under control.”

  * * *

  Harry stood by the door impatiently as the two female OR techs scuttled out of the changing room. He had barged in while one was in her underwear and the other doing her makeup over the sink, forcing him to retreat back into the hallway under a screen of apologies. Now, as the two women exited, he poked his head inside and shouted out, “Anyone else in there?”

  He heard the showers running, but no one spoke up. Ali was sitting in plain sight on a bench beside the lockers, but she did not answer. She was hunched over, holding her head in her hands. Her hair and the shoulders of her scrub top were wet.

  “This is some m
eeting place, Ali,” said Harry as he approached.

  “Richard Helvelius is dead.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. You must have been close to him.”

  “I should have warned him.” Her voice sounded wet and nasal, as if she had a cold. But Harry knew it wasn’t a cold.

  “Warned him of what?”

  “Kevin lied to me. He said if you people left him alone no one would get hurt. But he hated Richard. He couldn’t resist the chance to kill him. He’s playing God now, and he has to be stopped.”

  “You mean Kevin, your husband?”

  “He’s the bomber. Not Rahman.”

  Harry froze. “How do you know this?”

  “He told me so. Not more than thirty minutes ago.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me immediately?”

  “Why? Because … because I’m stupid and gullible!” She hit her forehead several times with the heel of her hand. From the sound, Harry knew they were hard blows. “I needed to think. I mean, it’s only Kevin, for God’s sake! Or is it? I shared my bed with this man for years, and I have no idea who he is. He … he … Oh, Richard! Richard! God, what have I done?” Her head shook as she tried to smother a burst of sobs. “There was an emergency … Jamie dying … I had to … I’m a doctor, goddamn it! What was I supposed to do? I had to trust Kevin. For five minutes, I did trust him. Five lousy minutes! And then he murdered … murdered Richard. Cold-bloodedly, as if he were euthanizing a dog at the end of an experiment.” She looked up into Harry’s face for the first time. “He threatened to blow up the hospital if I told you, Harry. He’s dangerous. I still can’t believe it, but he’s capable of killing us all.”

  “Where is Kevin now?”

  “In his lab. But you can’t go there. Odin is watching.”

  “Odin? That computer of his? The one he was talking about on TV?”

  “No! No! Odin’s more than a computer. Much more. He’s an intelligence, living and moving about through all the electronic systems of this hospital. He’s taken over your own security surveillance system. That’s why I had you meet me here. It’s the only place I could think of that doesn’t have a security camera. If there are microphones nearby, the showers will mask our voices. I’m not crazy, Harry. Odin’s already been watching us together. I saw it. Kevin showed me a video clip.”