Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  And it was already tough to see.

  Dale addressed his technician. “Keith, go see if you can round up some additional lighting before these wall units go down. I’m guessing they’ll last another five or ten minutes.”

  The tech ran out the door.

  Blood rose inside the chest around the new heart.

  “Suction?” Dale asked, not certain whether the vacuum was working. Then he realized in the dim light, Sarah was already quickly clearing away the excess. Yes. We still have suction, though it sounded different. Lower pitched.

  Still a host of veins and arteries to be connected. He had to push on. “All right, Teddy. Hold the pulmonary steady for me. Let’s set a speed record!”

  “Right, Dale!”

  Run Big Mombo Now!

  “Close Nicola inputs?” Right radioed.

  “Affirmative, Deters,” Everon responded. “Close ’em!!” — Connect the circuit.

  Seconds later, Right called back, “Inputs closed.”

  Numbers on Lama’s middle-left monitor leapt to life. Each person held his breath, watching that third screen. The numbers climbed. Juniata was now completely powered by Mercer!

  And then, something wonderful. Sam, looking up, a smile in his voice, “The overhead ceiling ducts are sending out heat.”

  Right connected Nicola’s outputs. Holmes connected the Thomas inputs, then the outputs. They were ready to bring power to the hospital.

  Except that Mercer Junior, their only source of power, was running on fumes.

  “What is the tank level?” Turban’s voice radioed.

  Everon stood in Juniata’s control room behind the wide console.

  “I don’t know,” someone’s voice called back. “Just disappeared below the bottom of the gauge.”

  Denny, Everon thought. Mercer Junior running on what’s left in the pipe. Any second that pipe would go dry. Scrounge had already delivered a final tankerful, another 2,000 gallons. Nobody knew where it had come from. There would be no more.

  They had to get Big Mombo to feed itself. To run its grinders, its pumps, its fans off its own generator. Junior had to be shut down. Before lack of diesel made Junior shut itself down.

  Not to do so in the next few minutes would mean days before they could get power into Trenton.

  “Steam is hot and dry at 1,000 degrees, 2,500 pounds per square inch,” Turban reported.

  Needlessly, it seemed to Everon. What’s he waiting for? The boiler’s inside temperature had risen all day. Big Mombo was ready. But Turban was holding back.

  “Labyrinth seals okay?”

  “It seems so, Mr. E.”

  Everon didn’t want to micromanage. It just seemed Turban was taking too much time. If all Big Mombo’s systems are so perfect, then go!

  “How much longer can you keep Junior running, Aja? If we’re going to do it, we better get some power out of Big Mombo now!” This morning he’d been there thinking he should be here at Juniata. Now he felt like he should be back at Mercer. “Let’s do it! Okay, Aja?”

  On Mercer’s sixth floor, standing behind the old gray console, left hand on the radio mic, right hand on the pistol-grip that controlled the huge generator’s velocity, Turban tried to swallow. His throat wouldn’t cooperate.

  He loved this machine. He had to be sure. Not enough heat or pressure would leave liquid water in the steam and that would corrode the turbine blades. All of him, his whole damned body, would self-destruct!

  “Aja!” Everon called.

  Turban placed a hand on the round submarine dive-handle, designed so one man could control the huge machine by himself. He took a deep breath and eased it forward.

  There was a deep hum. The steam took over. It flowed against the blades — whining. Whooshing.

  Turban squinted, took a deep breath and briefly twisted another pistol-grip once . . . twice . . . until the LED readout labeled RPM changed. 0001 . . . 0002 . . .

  But Turban’s eyes were already closed. The engineer in him was listening.

  At Juniata, all eyes were on the readouts. Slowly, numbers on the big turbine began climbing . . . 100 . . . 200 . . . 350.

  Until the display steadied at 0400 RPM.

  Near the top of the console a small red light went out. The green light next to it came on.

  “Off turning gear!” Turban radioed.

  Nick pointed to the third monitor atop the Juniata control console. Without the heavy motor to pull, Mercer’s buss display rebounded several tenths of a volt.

  Two minutes they waited . . . five. “Aja?” Everon urged. “What do you think? Can we go?”

  Slowly, Turban inched the big handle forward.

  The response was a deep hum. The generator accelerated.

  More!

  A thousand revolutions . . . climbing . . .

  Fifteen hundred . . .

  Two thousand! “Not so fast . . .ea-sy . . .” he muttered, pulling the handle back. Twenty-five hundred . . . “Steady . . . thirty-two . . . thirty-five . . .” listening to the deep whining-whoosh. “Careful . . .” he smiled cautiously, “There! 3,600 revolutions!”

  “23,000 volts,” Turban radioed. “Phase good. Temperature good — ready to sync Big Mombo’s generator to Mercer’s main buss!”

  “Go, then, Aja!” came Everon’s response. “Do it now!”

  Sync Crash!

  The tank was empty. Beyond empty. Down to the fuel in the lines.

  Turban had to switch over to Big Mombo now.

  “Aja?” Everon called over the radio.

  Turban moved from Mercer’s desk console to the dinner-plate-size synchroscope whirling on the rear wall. As his hand reached for the control to fine-tune Big Mombo’s speed with Junior, he watched in horror as Junior’s screen filled with random characters.

  At Juniata, lights flickered and dimmed. Onscreen voltage levels dropped. Monitors went black.

  “Aja!” Everon shouted into the radio. Fuck! his mind screamed.

  Junior and Big Mombo! Both shutting down!

  Everon yelled into the microphone, “Turban! Override the trip! Sync it now!”

  “But —”

  At least Turban can still hear me over the portable!

  “Trust me, Aja!” Everon said. “Do it! Right now!”

  Turban knew steam generators, but Everon knew electrical systems. Everon knew what would burn and what wouldn’t. And Everon knew what the engineer was thinking. Connecting the two generators out of sync could do more than damage circuits. There was a 100 tons of generator turning.

  But the control room was solid concrete. Aja, Rani and the rest were safe enough. The yard was deserted.

  “DO IT NOW!”

  Turban closed his eyes. His finger stabbed a button.

  Electrically, the two unsynced generator phase rotations collided — out of sync!

  Outside in Mercer’s yard, sparks filled the air like a series of bombs going off. It looked like it would take the whole generating plant with it.

  “Turban?” Everon called. “Aja!”

  There was no answer. In the flickering darkness at Juniata, Al, Hunt, Lama, Nick, Toni, Andréa, Nan, Sam leaned into the wide, curved desk. No one spoke.

  “Aja!”

  Can Turban hear me anymore? Everon realized he wasn’t breathing.

  “Look!” Nick pointed.

  “The monitors!” Lama said.

  Overhead lights blinked, brightened. Screens flickered back to life. Data fluctuated wildly, then . . . “It’s settling!”

  “Mr. E!” Turban’s voice! “Mr. E! It worked!”

  The control room was taken over by a thunderous cheer.

  The Final Switch

  The emergency wall lights were growing dim.

  Dale Rass worked his way around, sewing the connections at the top of the heart. Stress is the killer, he thought, more tiring than any other. I’ll be tired later. He trimmed . . . when I have time. He began connecting the aorta. Fast, violent stitc
hes. Clean and precise.

  The change in sound was subtle, and Dale’s head snapped to the heart-lung machine, to his perfusionist Sue Childs. Her arm was wearing out. He made a sharp nod at Sunny the med student. “Hand crank!” He commanded. “Take over!”

  Sunny froze.

  “Show her, Sue! I need you two to spell each other. Ten minutes each!”

  Sue placed Sunny’s frightened hand on the crank. “Just a smooth steady rhythm . . . Round and round . . .” The perfusion machine suddenly sounded better.

  Dale pushed on.

  Out in the parking lot, Dale’s technician popped his glove compartment. Flipped through the mess. There! Plucked out the flashlight. Slammed the car door and ran back inside.

  In his locker he found a second one. A penlight. Better than nothing!

  He ran for the OR.

  It was the quietest operating room Dale could remember. No fans. No whirring noise-making machines. Despite the tired ache that ran through him, his concentration was better than average.

  He was a machine.

  Down to the last of the right atrium, using expandable interrupted polydioxanone stitches that would allow Enya’s new heart to adjust — sewing that final half-circle of meat to the new organ. Over, around, under . . . Flying knots — periodically locking the sutures in.

  Got to get her heart pumping on its own juice! Now!

  But both his circulating nurse and his perfusionist were tiring. The hand crank wearing them down — even spelling each other now every five minutes. Dammit! They’ll just have to keep it going.

  Dale shook his head. Keep sewing! Stitch. Over, around . . . No power for defib. Start the organ. A little tap with a retractor should do it.

  He hoped. If the defib’s needed now . . .

  He refused to think about that.

  Dale placed a one-inch-wide plastic strip with what looked like wires embedded inside, bridging the superior vena cava suture.

  “What’s that?” the anesthesiologist asked. “Pacing?”

  “Something like that,” Teddy answered under his breath. Neither he nor Dale were about to explain the use of an unauthorized non-FDA-approved device of Dale’s creation.

  Then Dale checked every connection, every suture one more time.

  “Release a little blood inside, Ted. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Teddy slowly released the clamp across the aorta. Dale kept his left hand underneath the heart, squinting carefully in the dim light.

  “The inferior vena cava now, Teddy, just a little.”

  It was tough to see. The emergency lights on the walls were really getting dim.

  The tech ran in.

  One . . . two small flashlights!

  “That helps!” Any leaks — easy to see against my glove. He let blood flow into Enya’s new heart.

  “Wait! A leak — tie off again, Ted!”

  The smaller penlight blinked out.

  “Shit!” Dale exclaimed. Iron control slipping for but a moment.

  The tech twisted it back and forth. “It’s dead!”

  The larger one was dimming now too. Dale just couldn’t see well enough. One thought growing in his mind: This girl isn’t going to make it!

  “Yes!” Metalhead shouted in the street as with an orange hotstick extending thirty-five feet overhead, she closed the final pole switch.

  Inside, operating lights flared, flooding the OR with brilliant light.

  “Arrgh! Can’t see!” Dale shouted. They were all blinking, each trying to clear their eyes. But Dale heard the sound of the heart-lung machine increasing to its normal healthy pitch.

  The glare cleared. He could see the uneven stitches he’d made around one side of the pulmonary artery.

  Do it right!

  The needle in his right hand stabbed deftly on automatic. In! Out! A couple of other bad spots. Touch them up!

  “Try it again, Ted — let some blood through. That’s it! Hit the heater, Sue! Bring her blood up to temp!”

  “Look!” Al yelled, as Everon circled them over the hospital’s heliport, light blaring from windows.

  “Listen!” Gib transmitted from below, next to the telephone pole base.

  Cries of excitement, shouts of real joy echoed over the helicopter headsets from inside the hospital. Everon wondered what Franklin would say now. He set the MD-900 down on the heliport.

  It had been a grueling run. Replacing fuses, opening branch circuits, closing switches that finally brought the power here. Metalhead, Ortega joined in, whistling and clapping.

  Followed by Al, Everon and Nan ran across the roof, hoping somewhere inside, Enya was okay. Hoping they’d been in time to save her life.

  Inside the OR, Dale Rass slapped Enya’s heart with a pickup. Once . . . Twice . . . “Beat, dammit!”

  “There —” Teddy pointed.

  Beat. Beat-beat.

  They watched the organ speed up. Beat-beat. Beat-beat.

  “Look at it go!” Sue said.

  Moving into steady sinus. Heads turned back and forth between the organ and the screen. It beat faster.

  A few moments later . . . “Solid,” Teddy pronounced.

  “Okay,” Dale answered, “Let’s get those cannula out. Ted, you pull the atrial, I’ll get the two sucker tubes. Let’s take her off the machine.” The moment the tubes were out, Dale reached for a needle fitted with fine thread. “Okay! Let’s close her up!”

  The operating lamp blinked out.

  “Shit!” he exclaimed. It was too much.

  The entire operating team looked around. All the other lights in the OR were on. Sunny was the only one looking in another direction — upward.

  She reached overhead and flipped a switch, changing to the reserve light source.

  Dale Rass laughed. They all did.

  It was just a bulb.

  Return

  They drove north from Pittsburgh in silence, the jeep’s black canvas top whistling lightly.

  The sun would be setting soon, she realized. He turned up the heater. The air filtering through the canvas top was colder. Evening was taking over. She felt the severe strength in his face. She didn’t want the day to end.

  “Sally told me she and Dean met fifteen years ago,” Victoria said out of nowhere. “On a bird-tagging tour in north Brazil.”

  They laughed.

  His voice really got to her. What is it, the way he communicates so clearly, so naturally? Even the feel of this old jeep. His words, his entire manner — that one same quality: eloquence.

  She leaned an arm against his seat, let her left hand drape over the right shoulder of his leather jacket. He didn’t seem to mind. Yet neither did he seem to know how to react.

  There was only one way she could think for the day not to end.

  It’s too soon, she thought, isn’t it? And then she remembered one other time, the only other time she’d ever felt this way. Eight years ago. That had been fast too. Very fast. When it’s right . . .

  “How long has it been — since you’ve had a relationship?” she asked.

  Franklin’s lips pulled inward. She saw his jaw muscle flex. The dark loosely tied hair flowing around it.

  “A long — long time,” he answered.

  He’s so severe. So elegantly handsome. Like a priest from Europe to the New World three hundred years ago. So — beautiful — there’s no other way to say it!

  But he’s a minister! Untouchable. A man of God. It’s wrong to even think about, isn’t it?

  And they were quiet.

  And the wheels rolled on.

  A Place He’d Never Been

  His secretary had left for the night. The outer offices were empty. Victoria noticed the change in him right away.

  He stepped around his desk and sat behind it. As if to place as wide a barrier as possible between them. Looking at her — as if we’re on opposite si
des of something, she thought as she stood in his office doorway watching him. He’s different, back in his own domain. Uneasy. Unsure. Still himself but not comfortable like in the restaurant wanting me to try that sandwich.

  And then she knew.

  He’s unfamiliar with this — the things we both feel. Whatever’s taken him to this point, whatever he’s been through with women before, he doesn’t need any more games.

  Franklin swallowed uncomfortably and considered the plastic brace around her knee, thinking strangely, she’s more mobile than she was in New York.

  “It’s a comfortable couch,” he said awkwardly. “Would you like help sitting down?”

  She merely stared at him.

  Exquisitely, he thought. The look of the disheveled victim is gone. In its place, an elegant confidence he’d only suspected. He tried to focus on something else. The black and red and gray books on the shelves. The picture of Cyn climbing next to him on Red Rock in the Valley. Victoria’s tall slim-hipped frame in perfect posture, dark brown hair in waves to her shoulders, breasts filling the black fabric of her shirt.

  “The power is still out — east of here,” he heard himself say inanely. “I guess my brother’s working on it.”

  She smiled comfortably, lowering herself, half-sitting against the arm of his leather sofa. “I remember a story my father once told me,” she said. “I was twelve. I’d just started thinking about boys. Ever hear of Nicola Tesla?”

  “What?” the sudden response whipped out of him.

  “Nicola Tesla. Another brilliant man,” she replied. “Father of AC power — wall current?” she laughed lightly. “The stuff that makes everything run?”