by Jan Coffey
There was a strong smell of rotting meat before she even reached the doorway. She covered her nose and mouth and shone the light inside the room.
She shouldn’t have looked but her gaze was drawn uncontrollably to the body of Eileen Arrington. Her face and neck were a greenish blue color. Her features were already unrecognizable
Marion shook the plastic sheet open and, trying to hold her breath, rushed in and practically threw the bag at the corpse. The plastic only covered the head and upper body of the scientist.
She quickly reached inside the closet and found her duffel bag. On the way out of the room, the light in her hand flashed on a framed picture of her and Amelia. They were eleven in the photo. She remembered the day so clearly. Their mother took the picture at a picnic they threw each summer for the families of the prison employees. She always kept the picture at her bedside wherever she went.
Marion grabbed it and darted out. In the hallway, she felt her head suddenly about to explode. Pain so intense hit her so hard that she could not keep her eyes open or even turn her head. She thought she was about to pass out and grabbed for a wall. Quick flashes of light blinded her in the darkness.
Her brain was playing games with her. Suddenly, she was in a hospital room somewhere. An array of equipment spread out around her. A dark-haired woman was watching her. She could smell the scent of the woman’s shampoo. There were others she couldn’t see. Only voices. Then she was back in the research facility. She stumbled toward the direction of the maintenance closet. After only a few steps, though, her legs stopped moving entirely, as if every muscle and tendon had become rigid.
Marion banged hard against the wall and slid to the floor. She could hear voices again. Someone was asking her questions. One voice was familiar. A man’s voice. She looked down at the picture frame she was holding.
“Amelia,” she said aloud. “Tell them where I am, Amelia.”
But where was she? Marion’s mind was caught between two worlds. She’d become a soul divided.
There was that familiar voice again. Marion closed her eyes and she could see him. Mark.
“WIPP…” she said aloud. “Waste Isolation Pilot Plan. Tell him, Amelia. Tell him where I am.”
Marion opened her eyes. She was back in the dark hallway. The flashlight lay on the floor by her knees, its beam reflecting on the tools and shoulder bag she’d left by the maintenance room door.
Unsure if she even could, she pushed herself to her feet. Her legs were once again working. There was a sense of fear lying like acid in the pit of her stomach. This was much different than how she’d felt an hour before.
She knew what it was. It had to do with Amelia. She only got this sensation when she knew her sister was in trouble.
Marion moved quickly. She had to get out of here.
CHAPTER 42
University of California San Diego Medical Center
“I just finished talking to the doctors, Shawn,” Helen Adrian said into the phone. “I think you should take the next flight home.”
She was relieved when her future son-in-law assured her that he was already in the airport, and he’d be in San Diego by early afternoon tomorrow. Shawn was saying something else, but Helen couldn’t concentrate. She hadn’t had anything to drink since the flight over from Santa Fe. She needed one badly.
She looked up at the signs hanging from the ceiling and wondered if they sold any kind of liquor in the gift shop.
“Yes, I’m here,” she said into the phone, realizing that Shawn was asking something. “What did you say?”
“The extent of Cynthia’s injuries,” he repeated. “How bad is she, Helen?”
“They’re very bad. They say she’s in critical condition.”
He wanted to know exact details, but Helen couldn’t remember everything. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Cynthia was her rock. The responsible adult in her life. She had to make it through.
Her head hurt. Helen sat down on the nearest bench. “I just don’t know, Shawn. I just know they’re doing everything they can for her here. You can call the hospital directly yourself.”
He asked for the name of the doctor in charge. Helen couldn’t remember the name. Everything was moving so fast. Nothing was being given to her in writing. No help for her really. No consideration. Just that young doctor, talking a mile a minute, and Helen having a hard time picking up even every third word he was saying.
“It’s not like that he’s her personal doctor or anything,” she said weakly. “Just call the hospital. They’ll connect you to whomever is in charge of her care.”
Helen wanted to hang up and go to Cynthia’s condo. She needed to sleep.
Shawn needed to be here, taking care of this, she told herself. Cynthia and Helen both needed him. Somebody had to take charge of things.
He was asking something else. “Say that again. I don’t have good cell service here,” she lied.
“Did you see her?”
“Yes, I saw her. They would only allow me to be in there for a few minutes. She’s hooked up to all kinds of equipment. She’s out of it…totally. Still unconscious. She’s so broken up. It’s so sad.” Helen was overwhelmed with so many emotions. She wished she could remember more of what that young doctor had told her about what was wrong with Cynthia. But she couldn’t.
She asked him to wait as she grabbed a tissue and wiped her face and blew her nose. She came back on line.
“When did you say you’ll get here?” she asked, not remembering if he’d told her or not.
He told her he’d be in tomorrow afternoon.
Helen wanted to ask him why so late, but she remembered that he was somewhere in Africa. She’d never been there and had no idea if that was making good time or not.
“I have to go, Shawn,” she told him. “There’s no reason for me to stay here. I’m staying at Cynthia’s condo. They can get hold of me there if they need to. No one tells you anything here, anyway, and the waiting areas are so…public. There is no privacy...”
Helen stopped making excuses when she realized Shawn wasn’t trying to get her stay at the hospital. She was glad they understood each other.
She ended the call and looked around her for one of the nurses to tell them she was leaving. There was a man standing very close to her, a cell phone pressed to his ear. Helen hadn’t seen him before and she hadn’t heard him saying anything. She was sure he’d been eavesdropping.
He turned his back to her when she glared at him.
“Goddamn press,” she muttered under her breath, walking to the nurse’s station.
CHAPTER 43
Waterbury Long-Term Care Facility
Connecticut
Though they were the same age, they’d had different educations and they came from different socioeconomic backgrounds. There paths in life had been entirely different up to this point. Even now, one knew what his future would be like…the other one had no clue. Curiously though, the more time they spent together, the more they both had to admit the similarities between them. They were actually far more alike than they were different.
Mark Shaw and Sid Conway sat next to the computers and other electronic equipment that had been pushed to the side in Amelia’s room. Everything was turned off, and all the equipment was ready to be moved with the patient to the rehabilitation hospital tomorrow afternoon. Between the calls Dr. Baer and Attorney Viera had been making and their insistence on immediate action, Amelia did not have to wait before being transferred.
They both looked at the door at the sound of someone’s footsteps going past. As the sound receded, Sid stifled a yawn and rubbed the back of his neck. It was some time after midnight. They’d been quietly talking in the semi-darkened room for a long time.
“When was the last time you slept?” Mark asked.
Sid shrugged. “I haven’t kept track. I’m not really tired.” Another yawn belied his words.
“Well, you look tired,” Mark told him. He understood, though. Neither one of th
em wanted to miss anything that might happen next with Amelia. “I’ll stay here if you want to go and at least take a shower.”
The neurologist glanced at the bed and the sleeping patient. He seemed to be considering the offer.
Amelia had been sleeping when they came back from the meeting in the conference room. Jennifer went home soon after; she had to work first shift tomorrow. Sid had mentioned that Amelia’s sleep patterns would very likely follow no schedule. She could wake up after a short nap…or sleep for another six years. Both men were hoping for a few short naps and then something more ‘normal.’
Mark hadn’t seen Amelia since the change from her minimally conscious state early Sunday afternoon. He didn’t know if she would still recognize him when she woke up. But he believed what he’d said to everyone in the conference room. He was convinced that some kind of communication between the two sisters had been going on and that was the cause of this sudden change. After talking to Sid tonight, he saw no reason to change his mind about anything he’d said.
“Jennifer mentioned there’s a shower off the staff’s kitchen area that I can use,” Sid told him. “You’ll stay with her until I get back?”
“I have no where else to go,” Mark told him.
The neurologist picked up a shoulder bag that was slung over one of the chairs and left the room.
Mark meant what he said. This is where he needed to be right now. The phone calls from the police station in Waterbury and from his chief in Pennsylvania had given him nothing new. No one at the Gulf of Mexico site was doing anything different now because of their inquiry. As far as those rescuers were concerned, there were no survivors.
He didn’t know where to go, or who else to call. Kim Brown had told him that she and her father were coming east. She was uncommitted, though, as far as the exact timing of her trip. Mark didn’t know how much of a difference the mother’s presence and involvement would make in terms of anyone believing that Marion could be alive.
Mark looked at the sleeping woman. He remembered his talk with Marion so vividly. He thought how happy she’d be if she knew she’d been right all these years…if she knew that her sister was alive.
Amelia knew things, too. And she’d try to tell them. Mark believed there were a lot more answers that lay with her.
There was a soft knock on the door and a young nurse poked her head in. She looked at the bed and her gaze searched the room until it fell on him.
“Officer Shaw?” she whispered.
Mark got up and walked to the door.
The nurse had moved to the hallway and was standing next to a two level pushcart with different prescriptions and medications lined up along the top.
“Yes.”
“Someone’s waiting for you at the front desk.”
Mark stood still, staring in the direction of the double doors that led to the front entry way.
“Are you sure they’re waiting for me?”
The woman reached inside the front pocket of the flowered scrubs top she was wearing and handed him a pink slip of paper with the message on it.
“This was at my station when I came back from down the hall.”
Mark looked down at the note and then at his watch. The time on message was only a couple of minutes ago. He tried to think who could possibly be waiting at the front desk for him at twenty minutes past midnight.
“I can stay with JD if you want to go and check it out,” she offered.
Mark realized that, to a lot of these people, Amelia would always be JD.
She’d seen this nurse a number of times before. The name tag read Pat. There was no receptionist at the front desk at this hour of the night, so the night security person must have been the one who called.
“I think I’ll call the front desk first,” he told her.
She motioned to a phone on the wall. “You can use that one. Dial zero and it will ring at the front desk.”
The door to Amelia’s room was wide open. Mark walked to the phone and dialed the number. No one answered the first or second ring. He turned around toward the door in time to see the nurse who’d been speaking to him walk into Amelia’s room with two syringes and her clipboard.
He dropped the phone on the cradle and ran across the hall into Amelia’s room. The woman was setting up whatever injections she was going to give her on the table next to the bed.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She looked back at him, surprised. “I’m giving JD her meds.”
“What kind of meds?” he asked.
“The med Dr. Baer has prescribed. Is there a problem with that?” Her tone had turned defensive. She motioned to the rolling table next to the bed and the clipboard next to one of the syringes. “See for yourself.”
“Is this something new or medication she’s been getting all along?” he asked.
“Something new,” she said flatly. “I was told by second shift nurses that JD woke up this afternoon, and that Dr. Baer was here and examined her. He has changed her medication. Now, I have a lot of patients to attend to, so if you don’t mind…”
She held up one of the syringes and tapped it, ready to insert it into the IV that they had hooked Amelia up to tonight.
“Wait,” Mark barked.
The nurse jumped. Amelia’s eyes opened. She looked startled. She looked up at the nurse and at the needles she was holding.
“You scared me. Scared her,” she complained, glaring at Mark before her attention shifted back to the patient. “She is looking at me. She never did that before. Does she understand us? Is she conscious now?”
“What’s going on?”
Mark breathed a sigh of relief seeing Sid coming back into the room. Maybe he was overreacting, but somehow his cop instincts were on full alert tonight.
The night nurse quickly complained that Mark was interfering. “I’m trying to do my job and I don’t appreciate being pushed around by people who have no business even being here after visiting hours. The system for distributing meds has worked perfectly fine, and just because a patient has a new scrip—”
“What new scrip, Pat?” Sid asked. It was obvious he knew her, too. The water still dripped from his hair. “Dr. Baer prescribed nothing for Amelia that I know of.”
Frowning, she pushed up the paper with the list of patients and their medications, and nodded to the prescription slip on the clipboard. “Right there.”
The neurologist pulled the piece of paper from under the clip and looked at the writing.
“Where did you find this?” he said immediately, looking and sounding alarmed.
The young woman backed away from the patient. As she did, she dropped the syringe on the table like it was hot coal. “The scrip…was clipped to JD’s folder at my station. Dr. Baer’s name is on top…and there’s a signature on it.”
“Do you know Dr. Baer’s signature?” Sid asked accusingly. “This could be anyone’s.”
Mark reached into his pocket and took out the message she’d given him before. He handed it to Sid. “Does the handwriting match this note?”
“They could be the same,” Sid said.
“And it’s not Dr. Baer’s handwriting, is it?” It was not a question.
Sid was glaring at the nurse. “No, I guarantee you it isn’t.”
“What were they trying to give Amelia?”
“A muscle relaxant called Vecuronium,” Sid said. “At this dosage and with the sedatives still in her system, Amelia would have been dead in minutes.”
CHAPTER 44
Nuclear Fusion Test Facility
Marion had no idea the elevator doors could be so heavy.
Prying the doors open with the four-foot long crow bar she’d brought from the maintenance closet, she pulled until she could get her shoulder and then her body wedged between them. As she did, the crowbar fell with a loud clang that reverberated in diminishing echoes along the corridor.
Marion stopped. She had to rest. The doors were crushing the breath out of her, but
her head was about to explode. The two corpses lying not twenty feet from her made breathing very difficult. She had to do something before she became sick yet again.
She looked around, desperately hoping to find something that would help take some of the pressure off her body. Seeing the duffel bag on the floor, the flashlight beside it, she slid downward to a sitting position—straddling the door with one leg and one arm on either side—and reached for it.
She couldn’t reach it. Not even close.
Terrified that she might not have the strength to open the doors again if she were to let them close, Marion paused, forcing herself to think clearly. Now was not the time to panic.
The crowbar. On the floor in the dark, outside the beam of the flashlight, she spotted it. Reaching with her foot, she was able to pull it closer until her fingers encircled the cool metal bar. It was heavy, but Marion was able to maneuver it well enough to pull the duffel bag over to her.
Quickly taking the hammer from the bag, she laid it on the floor next to her. She took a deep breath and pushed the doors open a few more inches, enough to stuff the hammer beneath her and on the track between the two elevator doors. Still holding the doors with all her strength, she gently eased them back to the point where they rested against the two ends of the hammer.
It was a little more than a foot, but it was all she needed.
Backing out of the elevator entry, she picked up the duffel bag and the shoulder bag and pushed them through the partially opened doors. It seemed to hit the floor not three or four feet beneath from the research lab’s floor level to the bottom of the elevator shaft. She picked up the flashlight and the crowbar, and shot one last look at the bodies of the two scientists she’d covered with plastic bags. Pushing the crowbar through opening, she stepped over the hammer, dropped the light onto the bag and climbed carefully down into the shaft.
The cement at the bottom was rough and the bumpers for the elevator took up most of the space. The drop was more than she’d thought. Standing upright, Marion was looking just over the top of the hammer at floor level. She shone the light down on the unfinished cement surface and gathered up her bag. The air was moist and warm and heavy and unmoving.
