“Yeah, sure. What’s up?”
The team leader was flustered. “An emergency thrombectomy ... post-op Cardio Cath .”
“Brichett must be upset. That kind of thing doesn’t happen to him, at least not very often.”
“He’s more like pissed ... she’s one of Mort Tallent’s patients.”
“Why is Brichett doing the surgery if it’s Tallent’s patient?”
“No one gave me the scoop on that,” Gwen said. “All I know is, the ambulance will be here any minute ... and the clock is ticking. The patient has had negative leg and pedal pulses for almost two hours.”
“Jeez, she must have been on anticoagulants. Shouldn’t that have taken care of the clots in the OR?”
“Tell that to the gods.”
Gina hurried to the CCU emergency OR and started pulling packs of wrapped sterile set-ups. She opened the outer layers, then rushed out to the scrub area, masked up, and started brushing hard at her nails, hands, and arms. Pretty soon she was joined by Brichett.
“Thought I’d be eating lunch by now,” he said. “My stomach’s growling like a trapped bear.”
“What’s up with Mort?” Gina had reached her arms and was scrubbing hard at the skin. “This is his patient, right?”
Even with his mask on, Gina could see the irritation in Brichett’s eyes when he turned to her. “Let’s just say, there’s trouble in Oz these days.”
Gina couldn’t let it go. “He really gave my friend Lolly a bad time.”
“We were sorry to lose her,” Brichett said. “Lolly was a great nurse. I don’t know what happened, but she just up and left. She must have been spooked by something; that’s what it looked like to me. Hope it wasn’t the result of something Tallent did.”
I don’t know yet. But I’m going to find out.
Gina turned away from the sink. “Think I better get moving.”
* * *
Kat was inconsolable. Even with the medications they’d given her, she was anxious and couldn’t get past the idea that she might lose her leg. She clutched Cal’s hand in the ambulance.
“Please try to relax.” He leaned over and kissed her. “It’s going to be all right, Kat. You’ll see.”
“But what if I lose my leg?”
“Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it,” he said, “but Dr. Brichett thinks you’re going to be fine.”
“But where’s Dr. Tallent?” she said. “He’s my doctor. Nobody seems to know where he is.”
“Dr. Brichett is his partner. I’m sure he’ll take good care of you.”
The medication was starting to kick in. She looked at Cal and could swear there was an aura of light around him. All her worry and pain took a step back.
She closed her eyes and said, “I love you, Cal. I really do love you.”
* * *
By the time Jon Brichett finished scrubbing and walked into the OR, Gina had set up for an arterial thrombectomy. He couldn’t help feeling uneasy knowing what the patient had at stake. He would do his best and hope the fates were on their side.
Brichett watched as Kathryn Parker was lifted from the gurney to the table with a steadying sheet underneath to keep her from changing position. He needed her as still as possible.
“Let’s see if we can get by without a general,” he said.
The anesthesiologist nodded and started the IV meds for conscious sedation.
“Hopefully, this will be quick,” Brichett said.
“Her leg is white as snow,” Gina said.
“Still no pedal pulse,” said the circulating nurse.
Brichett nodded. “Let’s just do what we have to do and get blood flowing to that leg.”
To Brichett, it seemed like no time between incision and placement of the Fogarty catheter that stabilized and withdrew thrombus material from the proximal and distal segments of the femoral artery.
“And?” Brichett said to the circulating nurse, holding his breath.
It seemed to take forever until the nurse smiled. “Pinking up.”
Every one in the room let out a collective, “Whoa!”
* * *
Cal was in the waiting room, hyperventilating and dizzy. He hadn’t stopped pacing since the door closed behind Kat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this frightened.
He and Kat had just found each other and now he might lose her. He tried to sit down jumped back up, looked around the room helplessly, and started pacing again.
When the door opened, he spun around, stopped, and watched the Dr Brichett come into the waiting room, head in his direction with a smile on his face.
Cal covered his face and sobbed.
Chapter 43
Mort Tallent thought everything had gone well with Kat Parker’s procedure ... until the final moments. There was something about the way the catheter hung up at one point that set off an alarm in his head.
No! Got to get out of here. Now! Run!
“Suture her. Finish her up,” he said to his assistant.
He rushed out of the OR to the locker room, stepped out of his scrubs, and all but ran out of the unit.
Hurrying along the hallways, he took the elevator down to the underground parking garage. As soon as he was in his car and hit the ignition, he accelerated out of the building, tires screeching.
Once on the street, he turned off his cell, and took a deep breath. Finally, he could breathe again.
The rain was coming down hard. The sound of it beating on his windshield, along with the slosh and song of the water under his tires began to calm him.
Have to get away. Can’t stand this anymore.
He could leave his practice behind ... as soon as he knew Gina Mazzio was taken out. She knew what was going on. She was the danger. She was the only obstacle standing between him and freedom.
Freedom! A word he hadn’t thought of for many years.
Lolly and Gina.
Nosy nurses who just couldn’t stay out of his business, had to sneak into his computer, try to ruin his life. Well, that wasn’t going to happen.
He drove around the city aimlessly after he left a message for Vlad at the health club. Then he headed toward Half Moon Bay. With each mile that pushed San Francisco farther behind him, he could feel the tension in his neck easing.
He finally pulled into a parking lot near the ocean and got out of the car. He took off his shoes and walked slowly down to the beach. The rain was like sheets of ice water drenching him, but it also cleansed him and made him feel whole.
He walked back and forth along the water’s edge. The sound of the rain and the crashing waves created peace deep inside. He looked around and saw he was surrounded by absolute emptiness. There wasn’t anyone or anything else within sight as the massive waves rolled toward the shore, crashing onto the rocks, smashing into the shoreline.
He screamed, “Freedom.”
His mind was clear again. Everything in its proper place.
He would finish Gina Mazzio, finish the week’s procedures, finish his life in San Francisco, and leave.
* * *
Jon Brichett was flipping angry. No! He wasn’t angry, he was freaking mad.
What the hell happened to Mort? Walking out, disappearing on a post–op patient like that.
Unbelievable! The man’s unraveling right before our eyes.
Brichett tried Tallent’s telephone number again. He called the exchange that handled their calls. Nothing.
Damn it!
Kat Parker was one lucky woman. It gave him a certain pleasure to know that he’d saved her leg.
No thanks to that fucker Tallent
It always amazed him how tough, yet how fragile the human body was. Working in these dire situations always left him with more questions than answers.
Were all the dangers, the hazards that humans endured, acts of vengeful gods? Or were they only the random acts of a disinterested universe?
He’d stopped trying to figure it out years ago. Now he only tried to do the v
ery best he could every single day.
* * *
It was late when Tallent walked into the offices. He headed straight for the post-op holding area.
The rooms were empty. His heart raced at the thought that the worst might have happened. Something had definitely gone wrong. There were no post-op patients—they were all discharged.
Kat Parker should have been there with the nurses, awaiting his further orders.
He went to his office, turned on the lights, and was startled to see Jon Brichett sitting in the chair opposite his desk. Brichett looked wasted.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” Brichett said with menace. “Where the hell have you been?”
Tallent, soaking wet, collapsed into his desk chair and looked across at the fuming Brichett, normally the best-humored of the three doctors in the three-man practice. “I’m sorry, Jon. I had to leave.”
“Just walk out without telling anyone—without having someone cover your patient? Are you insane?” Brichett leaned forward. “Kat Parker almost lost her leg. She could have died.”
“She was fine when I left.”
“You’re a liar,” Brichett screamed at him. “I back-tracked this. You have no idea what kind of condition she was in. You just walked away. Left the Parker woman high and dry.”
“Is she all right?”
“No thanks to you, you fucking bastard. Thanks to people more caring than you, she still has two legs to walk on.”
Tallent covered his face with both hands. His whole body shook.
“What’s going on?” Cantor asked, his head sticking into Tallent’s office, one hand on the doorframe. “I could hear you shouting all the way down the hall, Jon.”
Brichett turned to face Cantor. “Our friend here decided to finally come back and check on the mess he left behind.”
“What happened to you?” Cantor demanded of Tallent.
Tallent looked at his two partners, knew he should feel some kind of warmth toward these men, with whom he’d share a practice for many years. He felt nothing ... nothing other than an urge to stand and run from the office.
“You know things have been difficult for me since Annie died. Well, it’s become too much. I’ve decided to leave the practice in a week or two, or as soon as I can get everything tidied up. I think it’s best for all of us.”
Cantor and Brichett looked at each other.
“You’re going to walk out on us with only a week or two notice?” Cantor snapped. “That’s it?”
Brichett sat in his chair, looking at Tallent and shaking his head.
“Yes, that’s it.” Tallent slipped out of his wet jacket and laid it across the top of his desk, ignoring the papers underneath that were absorbing the moisture.
“Mort, at least give us six months,” Brichett said. “We need some time to conduct interviews and find someone who might fit into the practice.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Tallent said.
He stood and snatched up his jacket, scattering papers everywhere. He gave a curt nod to Brichett, pushed past Cantor, and walked out.
Chapter 44
Alex sat in his car most of the day, watching, waiting for the man he had to kill. He thought about those years—time lost chasing shadows, wanting to leave and return to his homeland, his wife and children—living on the dribbles of money his people doled out to him.
An empty life bound by his gang’s obsession to kill one meaningless person—the man who was once a boy, and Alex had to kill him.
Why did it matter after all this time?
It was the code. The fucking code that even required proof that he had killed the boy/man.
He read American magazines, looked at streaming movies on his laptop, and studied pictures of his grown children. He thought about the things that were once his—pictures all flashing before him on the small computer screen.
During the past twenty years, he’d spent searching for the son of Nadya and Ivan Antonev, he’d lost any sense of what had been his real life—a life he’d loved and left behind in Russia. There, he’d been someone who had all the money he needed, had real opportunities in the organization. The head man liked him; the people he worked with liked him.
All that changed the day he didn’t find and kill Dimitri Antonev, who became, Karl Pushkin, and now, he was sure was Vlad Folo.
Dimitri’s parents had double-crossed the Russian Mafia, refused to continue to store the gang’s illegal narcotics in their warehouse. The Antonevs had taken one, fatal step that had sealed their doom—they stole and sold the last shipment of drugs to finance their escape from Russia and live fugitive lives in America.
A death warrant had been issued and Alexander was put in charge of finding and carrying out the family’s death sentence.
When he failed to kill the boy, he’d been given a choice: find the boy or forfeit his own life. That was his only choice.
Alex had a family to support in Minsk. How much time could it take to find a Russian boy alone on the streets? A boy with no family, no connections should have been an easy snatch.
He’d been wrong. He’d had no idea of how large the San Francisco Bay Area was, or how many run-aways roamed and survived in the streets.
Over the years, he’d paid and found out information about a hit man that Alex suspected had to be the boy. At times he was right on his heels—the kid managed to escape every time. The hit man may have started out as a boy, but he turned into a man. A man who had learned to change his identity, his address, and become the mist in the morning dew that disappeared in the heat of the sun.
Alex was forced to do menial jobs for the Russian mob, not only in San Francisco, but also New York while he continued to search for Dimitri Antonev/Karl Pushkin. But there still was no retreat from the decision—he could not return home until the matter was settled.
One year, two years ... twenty years disappeared while he sought to redeem himself and follow the shadow of the boy.
* * *
It was four p.m. and Vlad, the suspected Antonev son, had not been to the health club.
Alex watched the receptionist step out of the building, leave for the day.
What was her name?
Saw the name tag pinned on that ample bosom of hers when I made the appointment for a massage.
He closed his eyes, pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, and tried to close out every other thought, every nearby noise.
Rosia! Da, that’s it! Rosia..
He opened his eyes just as she started down the sidewalk. He continued to watch her walk straight as an arrow, in high stiletto heels, swaying her ample hips. In the middle of the block, she got in the driver’s side of a gleaming black, late-model Chrysler 300.
When the car pulled away from the curb, Alex, on a hunch, pulled out and followed.
* * *
Rosia was feeling pretty smug. She’d snapped up an extra C-note today and all she had to do was deliver a dumb message to Vlad from a man in a cheap suit that made appointments for body work with Vlad.
At least Vlad was good for something.
hat an idiot she’d been to pick him up that night—a beaten down, penniless, whipped puppy.
All she ever wanted was to be with strong men who would take care of her, but she always seemed to end up with loser after loser. Not that Vlad ever wanted her—he’d made that pretty plain the first time she came on to him. Right now, she couldn’t remember what she’d ever seen in him. He was very ugly now.
Stupid man!
She’d wanted to take him to a doctor when he was all broken up with his smashed nose. But he refused—said she’d done a good enough job on him. Well, maybe so, but that banged up nose of his wasn’t going to improve with this last beating just by her tape job.
And those scars all over his back. My God! Wouldn’t talk about them. Said it was none of my fuckin’ business. Sponges off of me and it’s none of my business? What a mess!
Helluva way to treat someone who saved your as
s.
She walked into the apartment, expected Vlad to be asleep, but there he was doing push-ups in the living room in his underwear—the same shorts she’d had to go buy at the thrift shop after he refused to let her go to his apartment to get his clothes.
“Well, well, here you are, up and around. You must be feeling more like yourself. It’s about time.”
He ignored her and kept on with his pathetic exercise routine, which pissed her off even more.
“I see the place is still a mess,” she said, looking at the kitchen, where his dirty dishes were strewn around the sink and table, like he expected some maid to come in and clean up after him.
“Hey, you! Vlad! I’m talking to you.”
He moved like lightning, up from the floor, hands encircling her neck. “Listen, bitch! Don’t you ever talk to me like that again. You hear me?”
She nodded, her head moving like a bobble doll.
After he released her, she looked into his eyes. There was nothing there. Not even hatred.
Rosia glared at him, rubbed her neck, and hissed, “I have a note for you.”
* * *
Vlad found the pain irritating as he forced himself to work out. He knew he had to exercise. His ribs obviously had been badly bruised, although not cracked, in the beating because they started healing right away, like the rest of him.
In the past few days, he’d begun to improve rapidly, especially after he started staying under the hot shower until there was only cold water coming out of the shower head. Then he forced himself to remain under the icy spray until he was shaking. He disliked it intensely, but he could feel himself growing stronger, almost by the hour.
When he read Tallent’s note, he knew things would start going his way again. He would kill the nurse and make another easy fifty grand.
Vlad now accepted the signs, the ones that warned him it was time for a new identity and a new place to live. He’d been Vlad Folo for too many years. He could almost feel the dragon’s breath of a stalker burning his neck.
The last time it happened, someone crashed in his door. He was out the window and down the fire escape in an instant. There’d been signs then, but he’d been comfortable then, too.
Bone Crack: A Medical Suspense Thriller (The Gina Mazzio Series Book 6) Page 16
