Mutant (32 page)

Don’t miss Peter Clement’s latest novel

CRITICAL CONDITION

Available in hardcover from Ballantine Books

Prologue

As a doctor, he knew how to wake up.

Especially when the phone was ringing.

Except it didn’t sound like a phone. More like the
whine of a mosquito, or a dentist’s drill.

And he couldn’t seem to come out of the sleep that
held him.

In fact he knew he shouldn’t.

There was pain waiting for him up there. Better he
stay in the darkness down here.

But he was surfacing anyway.

First he felt his throat hurt. So what’s a sore throat?
Two aspirins and call me in the morning stuff. Nothing
to worry about.

The pain burned across his neck and up his face. He
swallowed, and felt he’d downed a mouthful of fire.
What the hell, he said, but seemed to be speaking flames
instead of words, their heat searing a hole out the front
of his larynx with a loud hiss.

His head began to throb. And his arms. They were
aching all the way from the shoulders, as if someone had
grabbed his hands, yanked them over his head, and was
pulling him out of the deep blackness where he wanted
to stay.

He remembered. Waking up in the early gray of dawn
and seeing someone by his bed who shouldn’t have been
there. He’d been about to shout, when a white explosion
went off in his brain. He tried to call out again, alert
someone now that there had been an intruder, but the
hissing under his chin returned, and the pulling on his
arms continued.

He attempted to run. His feet seemed stuck together.
And the noise continued. A high-pitched whir that he
definitely knew was out of place.

Suddenly he was rocketing upward toward the light,
unable to stop. His eyes flew open. He was in his shower
stall, naked, suspended by his arms from the nozzle
above, his ankles taped together. The whine of what
sounded like a small electrical motor came from outside
the frosted glass door of the cubicle, and he could see a
shadowy form approaching.

He screamed for help, sending another gush of air
wheezing out from below his chin. Someone had cut a
hole in his trachea.

The door opened, and in stepped a figure clad in full
surgical gear carrying a rotary bone saw. He had no idea
who it was. The eyes above the mask were as glitteringly
cold as any he’d ever seen. He began to writhe and buck
against his restraints as the small spinning disc of steel
was brought up to his sternum. His shrieks when its teeth
tore through the skin and bit into the underlying ribs
made no more sound than the morning breeze that stirred
the bathroom window curtains.

Chapter 1

Two Weeks Earlier Wednesday, June 13, 6:45 A.M.

She felt the sound more than heard it.

It came from deep within her brain, and in the first few seconds seemed to have no more significance than the tiny popping noise a congested sinus makes when it clears, or the slight creak that even a healthy neck can produce after the muscles and tendons have stiffened from being too long in one position.

So Kathleen Sullivan ignored it, automatically relegating the minute sensation to the background trivia of everyday life, deeming it part of approaching forty, unimportant, therefore not to be heeded, and resumed making love to Richard Steele, whom she sat astride watching his eyes glitter in the gray traces of morning light that had begun to creep into her still darkened bedroom.

God, she loved him. Their sex seemed always such a celebration of how they matched each other in life.

Then the pain hit her at the base of her skull with the force of a two-by-four. “Oh, my God!” she screamed, clasping the back of her head and freezing.

She felt him initially increase his movements, then slow when she failed to respond, his flushed, smiling features growing puzzled.

A swirl of dizziness sent her reeling to the right as if she’d been slapped. She toppled off him. Nausea overwhelmed her, and vomit arced out of her mouth as if shot from a hose. She flopped down, half on and half off his chest. Blackness came quickly, but it took longer before she lost sensation enough to stop feeling the pain entirely.

And she could still hear.

“Kathleen! Kathleen, what’s the matter?” he cried from somewhere far off.

Someone’s prying open my skull from the inside,
she tried to tell him just before the pressure squeezed all consciousness out of her.

The pain, like roots, ate deep into her sleep, and tendrils of harsh light ripped her out of the merciful dark. She tried to scream, but no sound came. She could see racks of bottles, bags of fluid, and coils of plastic tubing lining the walls of whatever little room they were in, yet everything looked wrong, as if outlined in double. She blinked to clear her vision; it made no difference. She couldn’t shift her eyes from side to side, but she could look up and down. She tried to move her hands, but not even her fingers would budge. Had they tied her to the bed?

Someone loomed over her and placed a black mask on her face, then pumped air into her mouth and down her throat.

“Her breathing’s labored,” she heard Richard say from a place beyond her line of sight. “Step on it!”

“We’re a minute from the door, Doc!”

She felt the room sway hard to the left, and realized they were in an ambulance. Probably on the way to Richard’s ER. But why couldn’t she look at him? Move anything? God, what had happened to her?

“It’s okay, Kathleen,” she heard him say. “We’ve got you. Just relax and let us help you breathe.”

Volleys of air forced their way past the base of her tongue and down into her larynx. Each one felt big as a tennis ball and filled her with the urge to gag, but her pharynx stayed flaccid, refusing to respond. She wanted to shake off the mask and gasp for breath, yet couldn’t.

“If you can hear me Kathleen, we’ve called ahead to the hospital, and the Chief of Neurosurgery is waiting for us. You’ve suffered some kind of stroke, probably hemorrhagic from the way it’s affected your eyes, but you’ll make it okay, Kathleen. Count on it!” His voice trembled and broke, leaving her wondering if he’d sobbed. Squeeze after squeeze of air went down her throat. “Hyper-ventilating you like this blows off carbon dioxide and constricts arteries in the brain,” Richard continued, his words coming in fragments as if they were catching on something sharp. “That’ll slow the bleeding.”

With a squeal of brakes the vehicle lurched to a stop. Instantly she heard the doors at her feet snap open and felt the cool morning air flow into the vehicle. Only then did she realize she was nude under a blanket.

The attendant went on ventilating her and a half dozen men and women in white clustered around to help lift out the stretcher. “Where’s Tony Hamlin?” she heard Richard ask.

“In resus, ready and waiting with his neurosurgical team,” someone answered as they raced into the ER and down a corridor, the sweep of the ceiling past her vertical stare adding to her dizziness. She could feel Richard’s hands against her face as he took over holding the mask tightly in place around her mouth and nose. By straining her eyes upward she could see him. His expression grim, he snapped off orders to his staff as he ran. Even when he glanced down at her and tried to smile it was a miserable attempt to reassure her.

My God,
she thought,
the poor man. He thinks I’m
going to die, just like his wife.

They wheeled her into a vacuous cool chamber filled with a dozen people in green gowns, masks, and surgical gloves. Everyone grabbed a part of her and worked on it as if she were a racecar at a pit stop. While IVs went in her arms, a tube was shoved down her throat, and what looked liked tiny spigots were stuck into her wrists. Once more she felt she had to gag, but not even a cough or sound of any kind emerged. She lay as motionless as a corpse, yet aware.

“We’ve got her stable, Richard. Why don’t you let us take it now?” said a man with long white hair standing by her head.

“Right, of course, Tony,” she heard her lover reply, his voice more strained and uncertain than ever.

No, don’t leave me alone,
she wanted to cry out.

His face once more came into view, his handsome features as tense and pale as latex stretched over a skull. “Kathleen, our Chief of Neurosurgery, Tony Hamlin, is right here to take care of you.”

“Hi, Kathleen,” Hamlin said. “Sorry to meet you in such circumstances.”

“These people are the best,” Richard continued. “They’ll get you through this.” He leaned closer and whispered, “I love you.”

Please stay!

He turned, and out of the corner of her fixed field of vision she watched him disappear.

Then a nurse whipped off her blanket and proceeded to insert a catheter up her urethra. “Did the event happen during intercourse?” she asked coldly, examining the secretions she’d picked up between her gloved fingers.

“Isn’t that one of the classic presentations of an arterial rupture?” asked a curly-haired man in a short clinical jacket as he adjusted her IV. He didn’t look much older than her daughter Lisa, who’d just turned nineteen. Christ, Richard had left her in the hands of a kid.

“When you’ve finished what you’re doing, Doctor, why not step outside and get a proper history from Dr. Steele?” said the white-haired man behind her head as he proceeded to shine a penlight into her eyes. Despite the glare, she couldn’t avert her eyes, only blink. His face looked to be in pieces, like a Picasso.

The novels of
Peter Clement

LETHAL PRACTICE
DEATH ROUNDS
THE PROCEDURE
MUTANT

“Compelling. . .An exciting and original story, well told.”

—Nelson DeMille, on
The Procedure

“An intriguing medical puzzler with memorable characters—a winning combination.”

—Kathy Reichs, on
The Procedure

“Thrilling and compelling.”

—Tess Gerritsen, on
Mutant

Ballantine proudly presents
Peter Clement’s new hardcover
CRITICAL CONDITION

No one captures the complex workings of an urban hospital like former ER physician Dr. Peter Clement. For anyone who has ever had a mortal fear of hospitals, his new ripped-from-the-headlines medical thriller, provides chilling new nightmares and infectious suspense.

Published by Ballantine Books. Available wherever books are sold.

Acknowledgments

Many people generously shared their expertise and patiently played “What If” with me as I worked out the hypothetical scenarios that appear in this story.

To Angela Ryan, geneticist and passionate advocate for the ethical use of science, I say thank you for bringing the intricacy of the gene vividly alive in a way I never learned in medical school. In particular, her concerns regarding the all-powerful genetic vectors currently used to jump naked DNA from one species to another set my imagination spinning.

To epidemiologist Dr. DeWolfe Miller, who responded so wholeheartedly to my request that he play devil’s advocate and challenge my story outline to rid it of any blatantly bad science, I say thank you for helping me make as plausible as possible the leap from documented fact to theoretical hazards.

To Dr. Lee Thompson, who placed his years of experience with level-four virology facilities (where he’s worked with the deadliest organisms on the planet) at my disposal, my thanks for his detailed explanation of their inner workings and his “walking” me through what it’s like to suit up and enter such a place. The compression of some of the details in order to move the story along is due to my own literary license and is not any lack of accuracy on his part.

Thank you to Magda Bruce, who paved the way for my becoming an observer at the January 2000 United Nations Conference on genetically modified food held in Montreal, thereby providing an opportunity to hear and meet with experts in biodiversity from all over the planet.

I once again extend a heartfelt thank-you to my longtime friends Dr. Jennifer Frank and Dr. Brian Connolly for their double-checking the medical detail and thereby keeping me lucid on that front; to my proofreaders Connie, Betty, Johanna, Joan, Jim, and Tamara, for their eagle eyes and ever-helpful editorial comments; to my agent, Denise Marcil, for unwavering support and for her constantly raising the bar; and to my marvelous editor, Joe Blades, who keeps the journey on track.

I’d also be seriously remiss if I didn’t express gratitude to my partners in practice, Ivan and Michael, along with colleagues Judy and David, for taking care of patients and affording me time to write, and to Dr. Julie St. Cyr at my own hospital for showing me the particulars of electrophoresis.

And last but still crucial, a big thank-you to Betty and Nathalie for organizing everything.

Also by Peter Clement

LETHAL PRACTICE
DEATH ROUNDS
THE PROCEDURE

Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1–800–733–3000.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming paperback edition of
Critical Condition
by Peter Clement. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

A Fawcett Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

Copyright © 2001 by Peter Clement Duffy

Excerpt from
Critical Condition
copyright © 2002 by Peter Clement Duffy

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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eISBN: 978-0-307-41616-2

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