Marker

by Robin Cook

  Back in her apartment, Jazz put away her groceries in the refrigerator and checked the time. It was still too early to go to work. It was at that moment that she caught sight of her computer screen. There, against her screen’s wallpaper, was that same pesky blinking window announcing that she had e-mail.

  Fearing that the Stephen Lewiss mission may have been canceled, even though such a situation had never happened in the past, Jazz quickly sat down and clicked on the window. Her concern ratcheted up a notch when she saw that it was a second message from Mr. Bob. With some trepidation, she opened the e-mail. To her astonishment and delight, it was a second name: Rowena Sobczyk.

  “Yes!” Jazz blurted while shutting her eyes tightly, grimacing, and balling her hands into tight fists with excitement. After getting no names for more than a month, receiving two in the same night was unbelievable. It had never happened before. She was almost faint from holding her breath when she reopened her eyes and looked again at the screen. She wanted to make sure she wasn’t fantasizing, and she wasn’t. The name was still there, boldly standing out against the white background. Vaguely, she wondered what kind of name Sobczyk was, since the juxtaposition of consonants vaguely reminded her of her own.

  Jazz stood up and began peeling off her street clothes as she headed over to her closet. It was still too early to go to the hospital, but she didn’t care. She was going anyway. She was too keyed up to sit around and do nothing. She thought she could at least reconnoiter at the hospital and come up with a general plan of attack. She got out her scrubs and pulled them on. Next came the white coat. While she dressed, she thought about her offshore account. By that time the following evening, the balance would be close to fifty thousand dollars!

  Once in the Hummer, Jazz actively calmed herself. It had been okay to celebrate for a time, but now it was time to get serious. She understood that dispatching two patients would be more than twice as difficult as dispatching one. She briefly thought that perhaps she should do them on successive nights but abandoned the idea. If that was the way Mr. Bob wanted it, he would have e-mailed on successive days. It was obvious to Jazz that she was supposed to sanction them together.

  En route to the hospital, Jazz didn’t even challenge the taxicabs. She was intent on keeping herself composed and focused. She parked the Hummer in its usual location on the second floor and walked into the hospital. After stashing her coat in its customary place, she descended to the first floor and sauntered into the emergency room. She was glad to see that the usual chaos reigned. As had been the case on all her previous missions, she obtained the two potassium chloride ampoules with no problem whatsoever. With one in each side of her white coat, she went back to the elevators and rode up to the sixth floor.

  In comparison to the ER, the surgical floor seemed peaceful, but Jazz could tell it was busy. A glance at the chart rack let her know that every room on the floor was occupied, and a glance in the empty utility room meant that all the nurses and nurse’s aides were out in patients’ rooms. On quiet nights, by that time, the evening-shift nurses were already gathered in the back room, kibitzing and getting ready for report to pass the baton into the hands of the night people. The only person in sight was the ward clerk, Jane Attridge, who was busy getting a stack of laboratory reports into the right charts. Jazz looked into the drug room to make sure Susan Chapman wasn’t around yet. She always came in early.

  Jazz sat down at a monitor and typed in “Stephen Lewis.” She was pleased to learn that his room was 424 in the Goldblatt Wing. Although she’d never been there, she felt it was auspicious. Being the fancy VIP part of the hospital she knew that there would be less nursing activity than on regular floors, which undoubtedly would make things easier for her. The only thing she had to check was whether the guy had a private-duty nurse, which she doubted, because the patient was only thirty-three and all he was in for was a rotator cuff repair.

  With Stephen taken care of, Jazz typed in Rowena Sobczyk’s name. As soon as she did so, a smile spread across her face. Rowena was right there in room 617, just down the corridor. She thought it would be ironic if she were assigned the case, which was a distinct possibility, and if she were, it would make the sanction that much easier. One way or the other, she felt confident that doing both people was going to be like a turkey shoot.

  “You’re in awfully early,” a voice quipped.

  Jazz’s eyes popped up, and a shot of adrenalin coursed through her veins. She found herself looking into Susan Chapman’s chubby face, with its rounded features demarcated by a slight seborrheic rash in the creases. Susan’s expression was more challenging than friendly as she looked over Jazz’s shoulder at the monitor screen. Jazz hated the way she wore her hair pulled back in an old-fashioned, tight bun. Jazz couldn’t help but think she looked like some kind of nursing anachronism, especially with her old-fashioned lace-up leather-soled shoes with inch-thick heels.

  “What, may I ask, are you doing?” Susan demanded.

  “Just trying to familiarize myself with our cases,” Jazz managed. Swallowing her anger at this woman, she forced herself to smile. “It seems like we have a full house.”

  Susan stared at Jazz for what seemed like minutes before speaking. “We almost always have a full house. What’s with this Rowena Sobczyk; do you know her?”

  “Never saw her in my life,” Jazz responded. Her smile lingered but now looked more real since she had recovered from her initial alarm at being discovered accessing Rowena’s record. “I was trying to take a peek at all the new patients to get a jump on the night.”

  “I think looking at the new patients is my job,” Susan said.

  “Fine and dandy,” Jazz said. She blanked out the screen and stood up.

  “We’ve been over this before,” Susan snapped. “We have a rule in this hospital that protects patient confidentiality. I’m going to have to report you if I find you doing this in the future. Do I make myself clear? Looking at records is on a need-to-know basis.”

  “I’m going to need to know if I’m assigned.”

  Susan breathed out audibly as if exasperated. She stared at Jazz with her hands on her hips like an irate grammar-school teacher.

  “It’s funny,” Jazz said, breaking the silence. “I would have thought you and the rest of the brass would encourage individual initiative. But seeing that you don’t, I’ll just take myself down to the coffee shop instead.” She arched her eyebrows questioningly and waited for a beat for Susan to respond. When she didn’t, Jazz flashed one more fake smile and headed down toward the elevators. As she walked, she could feel Susan’s eyes boring into her back. She shook her head imperceptively. She was learning to detest the woman.

  Descending to the first floor in case Susan was watching the floor indicator, Jazz followed the twisting corridors past the closed day clinics and walked into the Goldblatt lobby. She could have gotten off on the fourth or pediatric floor and headed into the Goldblatt Wing from there, but she was worried that Susan was getting too suspicious about her meanderings.

  Even on the first floor, the Goldblatt Wing was different in all regards from the rest of the hospital. The walls were paneled in mahogany, and the corridors were carpeted. Oil paintings hung beneath their picture lamps. The visitors who were disembarking from the elevators and leaving were dressed nattily, and the women sparkled with diamonds. Outside were limousines and valet attendants.

  Despite an elaborate security setup at the front entrance, no one questioned Jazz’s arrival from the hospital proper. She stood at the elevators, waiting for a car, with a few other nurses coming on duty. She noticed they were dressed like Susan Chapman, in old-fashioned nurses’ outfits. Several even wore hats.

  Jazz was the only person to get off on the fourth floor. Like the lobby downstairs, it was carpeted and paneled and decorated with fine art. A number of departing visitors waited for a down elevator. Several smiled at Jazz, and she smiled back.

  It hardly seemed like a hospital. Her cross-trainers hardly made a
sound on the carpet. Glancing into the patient rooms, she could see that they were decorated in an equally refined manner, with upholstered furniture and draperies. Visiting hours were ending and people were saying their good-byes. As she came abreast of room 424, she slowed. About fifty feet ahead was the central nurses’ station, a beacon of bright light compared to the subdued illumination of the hall.

  The door to room 424 was ajar. Jazz glanced up and down the corridor to make sure she went unnoticed. Stepping into the room’s doorway, she had a full view of the interior. As she expected, there was no private-duty nurse. There were also no visitors. The patient was a muscular African-American man stripped to the waist. A large bandage swathed his right shoulder, and an IV ran into his left arm. He was sitting in the hospital bed with the back cranked up, watching a TV suspended from the ceiling over the bed’s foot. Jazz could not see the screen, but from the sound, she could tell it was a sporting event.

  Stephen’s eyes pulled away from the TV and looked over at Jazz. “Can I help you?” he called.

  “Just checking to make sure everything is okay,” Jazz said, which was true. She was pleased. It was going to be a walk in the park.

  “Things would be better if the Knicks would get their game together,” Stephen said.

  Jazz nodded, waved to the patient, then retreated back to the elevator.

  With her reconnoitering accomplished, Jazz returned to the first floor and went into the coffee shop. She was pleased.

  The first half of the night shift went as expected. Jazz had been assigned as nurse manager for eleven patients, which was one more than the other nurses, but she didn’t complain. She was teamed up with the best nurse’s aide, so things evened out. Unfortunately, she had not been assigned to Rowena Sobczyk, and as busy as Jazz was, there was no chance to do anything for Mr. Bob until her lunch break, which had just started.

  Jazz descended in the elevator with the two other nurses and two nurse’s aides who were sharing the lunch slot, but she made sure she lost all of them in the cafeteria. She didn’t want to get caught up with their chitchat and have trouble getting away. Instead, she wolfed down a sandwich and polished off a pint of skim milk without sitting down. She had only thirty minutes, and she had a lot to do.

  During the course of the shift, Jazz had added a couple of syringes to the potassium ampoules in her jacket pockets. Leaving the cafeteria, she ducked into the ladies’ room. A quick check beneath the stalls convinced her that she was alone. For added privacy, she went into one of the stalls and closed the door. Taking out the ampoules one at a time, she snapped off their tops and carefully filled both syringes. With their needle caps back on, the syringes were returned to the depths of her jacket pockets.

  Back out in the main part of the lavatory, Jazz quickly rolled the empty ampoules up in a number of paper towels. Still, no one had come in. Placing the roll on the tile floor, she crushed it with the heel of her shoe. The glass made a faint popping sound. She then tossed the flattened wad of paper and glass into the waste container.

  Jazz looked at herself in the mirror. She ran her fingers through her fringed hair, straightened her jacket, and adjusted the stethoscope that was draped around her neck. Satisfied, she started for the door, now armed and ready for action. It had been as simple as that. She was beginning to appreciate the efficiency of doing two cases in the same night. It was like an assembly line.

  She took the main elevators up to the fourth floor, avoiding the Goldblatt lobby, lest she arouse the curiosity of the security people. The fourth floor was all pediatrics, and as she descended the long hallway en route to the Goldblatt Wing, the thought of sick infants in the various rooms brought back an unpleasant memory of little Janos. Jazz had been the one who’d found him that fateful morning. The poor kid was as stiff as a board and slightly blue, lying face-down in his rumpled blanket. Being a child herself, Jazz had panicked, and desperate for help, she’d dashed in to where her parents were sleeping to try to wake them. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t raise them from their drunken slumber. Jazz ended up calling 911 herself and later letting the EMTs in through the front door.

  A heavy fire door separated the Goldblatt Wing from the hospital proper. It was as if it was rarely opened, and after an unsuccessful tug, Jazz had to put one foot up against the jamb and use her leg muscles to get it to budge. Stepping over the threshold, she was again reminded of how different the Goldblatt décor was. What particularly caught Jazz’s attention was the lighting. Instead of the usual institutional fluorescents, there were incandescent sconces and picture lights, which had been dimmed since Jazz’s earlier visit.

  She put her shoulder against the fire door just to be a hundred percent sure it would reopen for her retreat. It moved with significantly less effort than it had the first time. Jazz set off down the corridor at a deliberate pace. She’d learned from experience not to be hesitant, since such behavior invited attention. She knew where she was going, and she acted like it. Despite a long vista down the hallway, she saw no one, not even at the distant nurses’ station. As she passed patient rooms, she heard the occasional beep of a monitor and even caught a glimpse of a nurse bending over a patient.

  As Jazz neared her objective, she began to feel the same excitement she’d experienced in combat in Kuwait in 1991. It was a sensation that only soldiers who’d been in war could understand. Sometimes there was a flicker of it when she was playing Call of Duty, but not with the intensity of the real thing. For her, it was a little like speed, but better and without the hangover. Jazz smiled inwardly. Getting paid for what she was doing made it even more of a pleasure. She came to room 424 and didn’t hesitate. She walked right in.

  Stephen was still propped up in bed but fast asleep. The TV was off. The room was relatively dark, with the only illumination coming from a combination of a dim nightlight and a vanity light in the bathroom. The bathroom door was open just a crack, causing a stripe of light to fall across the foot of the bed and along the floor like a narrow line of fluorescent paint. The IV was still in place.

  Jazz checked her watch. It was three-fourteen. Quickly but silently, she moved over to the bedside and opened up the IV. Within the Millipore chamber, the drops became a steady stream. She bent over and looked at the IV site where the needle went into Stephen’s arm. There was no swelling. The IV was running just fine.

  Back at the door to the hall, Jazz leaned out and looked up and down the corridor for one last check. Still, no one was in sight. All was calm. Returning to the bedside, she pushed the sleeves of her jacket up above her elbows to get them out of the way. She then pulled out one of her full syringes and took the needle cap off with her teeth while holding the IV port in her left hand. Despite her excitement, she steadied herself before inserting the needle. Straightening up, she listened. She heard nothing.

  With a strong, steady push, Jazz emptied the syringe into the IV port. As she did so, she saw the level of fluid in the Millipore chamber rise, which she expected. The potassium chloride solution was backing up the IV fluid. What she didn’t expect was a rather loud groan from Stephen, followed by his eyes popping open to their fullest extent. Even more unexpected was Stephen’s right hand lunging across his chest and grabbing Jazz’s forearm with shocking strength. A muffled cry of pain escaped from Jazz’s mouth as sharp nails dug into her skin.

  Dropping the syringe onto the side of the bed, Jazz desperately tried to break the hold Stephen had on her arm, but she couldn’t. At the same time, Stephen’s groan melded into a shriek. Abandoning her attempt to release his grip on her arm, Jazz slapped her free hand over Stephen’s mouth and leaned her torso into him in a desperate attempt to quiet him. It worked, although he bucked to try to worm himself free.

  There was a continued brief struggle, but Stephen’s strength quickly ebbed. As his grip on Jazz’s arm weakened, his fingernails were drawn down her forearm, scratching her and causing her to cry out again.

  As quickly as the scuffle started, it ended. Stephe
n’s eyes rolled up inside his head, and his body went limp, his head flopping onto his chest.

  Jazz detached herself. She was furious. “You bastard!” she murmured through clenched teeth. She checked her arm. Several of the scratches were bleeding. She felt like punching the guy, but she held herself in check since she knew the guy was already dead. She snatched up the syringe and then got down on her hands and knees to find the damn needle cap that she’d been holding in her teeth and had dropped when she’d cried out. She quickly gave up. Instead, she merely bent the needle around 180° before putting the empty syringe back in her jacket pocket. She couldn’t believe what had happened. Since she had started dispatching patients, this was the first one to pull off such a stunt.

  After slowing the IV back to where it was when she’d first come in and replacing her stethoscope around her neck, Jazz quickly went to the door. She glanced up and down the corridor. Thankfully, apparently no one had heard Stephen’s cry, since the corridor remained as quiet as a morgue. She gingerly straightened the sleeve of her jacket over the scratches on her forearm, glanced back once more at Stephen to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything, then stepped out into the hallway.