Raney & Levine (8 page)

16


“S
ecurity called me,” Hutch said, huffing. “Seven
snakes were just caught in the chapel.” He gulped air. “
Seven
. One of
the security guards got so freaked trying to catch ‘em he
shot
one.”

David stared at the hall floor. Phipps’ Nike laces were
untied. Ramu’s socks were red. He looked up to Jill’s eyes, worried,
questioning.

And blinked at her, hearing Hutch.

“…in a paper bag, which
also
held yesterday’s
newspaper photo of the nurse holding Jesse. That’s a clear threat. No more
guesswork after this, huh?”

“No.”

“Security has extra guys watching Neonatal, but they had a
couple last July and
a killer got in there anyway.
Parents –
strangers
- come to visit the babies. They’re in patient rooms, crowding the nursery
view glass. How the hell do you know who’s who?”

“Hutch? How’s your blood pressure?”

“Bad. I just took it. Gotta lose weight.”

“Try to calm.” David spoke in the softest voice imaginable.

“The snakes are in the Security office waiting for Animal
Control or detectives, or both. God help us!”

Hutch stammered a bit more and hung up.

David scanned the interns’ faces. Only Jill knew a frantic
call from Hutch meant something bad. Her face was taut. The others didn’t know,
but their expressions mirrored David’s.

Which wasn’t good. One of the first things you learn in med
school is,
if you have a problem and emote - you have two problems.

David pocketed his phone and got out his clipboard. “Okay,
we’re done,” he said a bit tightly. “What’s the schedule? Hey, two of you are
needed in the clinic.”

The mood changed instantly. They started bickering about
trading clinic duties.

“Somebody take mine, please?” Gary Phipps whined. “I was up
all night.”

“I was too,” Charlie said. “Can I nap right here on the
floor? I’ll just lie down-”

“Find a gurney,” David said. “Okay Jill, Tricia, you do
clinic duty.”

Tricia said fine. But Jill shook her head.

She turned to Ramu. “Switch with me?”

“Sure,” he said. “I owe you a couple.”

Seconds later she was following David through the heavy fire
door to the stairwell - which already meant trouble. The elevators were slow.

“What did Hutch
say
?” She tried to keep up as he
thundered down the stairs. “Where are you going and why’d you try to stick me
in the clinic?”

“’Cause I know what scares you,” he said, rounding a
landing.

Jill stopped. Only one thing scared her, terrified her, and
David knew what it was.

“Hutch…
more snakes?”
she gasped. “Please don’t say
it’s-”

“’Fraid so.” David pounded down, barely turning as he told
her about the chapel.

Breath stopped. Made it harder to catch up, to
speak
.
“That’s the third…snake event.” Jill’s heart hammered. “The anatomy lab, attacking
Jenna, and now, my God, psycho’s
been in the hospital.”

“On the first floor. Chapel’s just off the lobby.”

“I’m aware of that! So what’s to prevent him sneaking up the
stairs? Riding up the elevator like any visitor?”

“Nothing.” Their voices echoed in the stairwell.

“Any creep with a good haircut can walk right past the
security guys - oh!” Jill stumbled on a step. Righted herself. Called down over
the railing, “Do they have surveillance in the chapel?”

David was now two flights below. “Probably. Ha - what’re the
odds Snake Guy wore a disguise?”

“But…evidence? Maybe he left prints or fibers or-”

“Hutch says the cops can so far only treat it as vandalism.”

David reached the first floor. Whammed open the fire door
and held it for Jill to catch up.

“C’mon, slow poke.”

“Shaddup. What can
you
do anyway?”

“You’ll see.”

They hurried through halls and more halls and then down a
ramp into an older part of the hospital.

Security personnel wore gray uniforms but looked like
cops. Many of them were former cops, in what looked like a squad room but with
a wide bank of monitor screens at the rear. Three uniformed men and a woman
watched the monitor screens. Jill and David moved past busy desks to the office
at the end of a hall, where Mike Sivak, the hospital’s Chief of Security, rose
to greet them.

“Three months of quiet and now another nut job,” he said
with a grimace. He was in his late forties, muscular and barrel-chested.

“Any Jesse excitement brings them out of the woodwork,”
David said; and Jill, looking back from the doorway, said, “You’ve got more
monitors.”

“Not enough.” An impatient gesture. “We’re expecting more.
It’s slow, nothing gets done fast enough.” Sivak motioned them over to a large,
open cardboard box a few feet from his desk.

Jill peeked in, and jerked back cringing. Black snakes
writhed and slithered, some trying to climb up the box’s sides, and flopping
back. A shallow bowl of water was surrounded by bits of lettuce and bacon and
what looked like broken up cheeseburgers.

“We ordered out for ‘em,” Sivak said drily. “The cops said
hold off giving them to Animal Control until they decide if they’re evidence.”

“Of something worse than vandalism?” David asked.

“Yeah. The vandalism thing was just from the responding
uniforms. Detectives are en route, said it looks connected to that attack on
the Walsh woman. Doctor Hutchins filled me in on the anatomy lab snake when it
happened.” Sivak grimaced. “Seven heads … I’ve heard of that. It’s from the
Bible, right? Hey! Get back down, mister!”

He reached bare-handed and popped back down a snake who had
reached the top of the carton. Jill cringed further back, and sank unsteadily
into a chair. Sivak shot her a look and grinned thinly. David almost smiled
too.

“Garter snakes,” Sivak told her. “They’re harmless. I used
to play with ‘em.” He hesitated, looked at David. “Oh damn, I should have used
gloves. Those snakes might have prints on them.”

“Nah,” David said. “More likely the guy wore gloves.” He was
glancing around the office.

In her chair Jill made an overdramatic shiver-shudder. ““I
haaate snakes. Yech! Why did it have to be snakes?”

David looked from a cabinet back to Sivak. “Carl Hutchins
said one of them was shot?”

“Oh, yeah, our Miguel was trying to chase ‘em and went nuts.
Tough guy with people but also hates snakes. Feel better?” Another friendly
glance to Jill, then Sivak went to a shelf and held up a big Ziplock bulging
with … snake. Dead, black, coiled and bloodied.

“Miguel blew his head off, poor thing. The snake, I mean.
Miguel’s out in front there, still recovering.”

Sivak leaned to his door, still holding the Ziploc. “Hey
Miguel, feeling better? No more
culebras
!”

Raucous laughter and one protesting male voice answered.

Sivak turned back. David was eyeing the Ziploc.

“The cops won’t need all the snakes, will they?” he asked.
“I’d like to take that dead one.”

Sivak frowned a little, unsure.

“Same guy, they must all be from the same source,”
David pressed. “The cops’ll have the six in the box to examine.”

Sivak shrugged, and gave him the stuffed Ziploc. “Sure. If
they want ‘em all, I’ll tell them you have the seventh. What are you going to
do with it?”

David said autopsy it, holding up the bloody bag for a
closer look.

Jill squirmed and grimaced at the bag. “Argh, I don’t even
want to
look
at that!”

The two men traded looks. Sivak fished a big McDonald’s bag
out of the wastebasket, and they stuffed the Ziploc into it.

“Want a napkin?” Sivak asked. “Lemon-scented hand wipes?”

17


T
heir cell phones didn’t buzz and they didn’t get
called in the dash up to Peter Gregson, in Pathology on the ninth floor. David
had called him from the elevator.

“You just caught me,” Peter said near the lab door, lightly
hugging Jill and greeting David. “With you two, I know it’s never going to be
boring.”

Gregson was the pathology resident who had taught Jill how
to grow out a tissue culture to further examine a cadaver’s cause of death.
Now, bitching about examining boring benign skin moles and leading the way past
counters and microscopes and residents working separately, he stopped at his
workstation and looked back.

“An autopsy of
what?
” he asked. “Did I hear wrong?”

“Nope,” David said, pulling the bulging Ziploc from the
McDonald’s bag. Watery, bloody liquid sloshed at the bottom.

Jill sank down onto a stool. Stared into Gregson’s open
slide box, her mind still seeing all that writhing and slithering in Sivak’s
box. She shuddered again.

“Ignore the gunshot,” she heard David say. “What else can
you tell us about this snake? Like, where’d it come from, if possible.”

“Tall order. They’re common.” Gregson took the Ziploc and
peered in. “This from that chapel fright scene?” he asked somberly.

“Yep.” David crossed his arms.

“It’s already on cable and online, and the whole hospital’s
talking about it like it’s connected to the Walsh case.”

“Ya think?”

Jill made a face at the Ziploc. “This one missed out on a
Big Mac. Security ordered out for the others.”

For a second Gregson thought that was funny. David didn’t
and pulled up a stool next to him. “So the Walsh attack and the chapel snakes –
yeah, this has to be the same whacko.
Which means the snakes are likely from
the same source.”

Peter looked somber again. “How’s the Walsh patient doing?”

“Not well.”

A sad headshake. “Hey, I’m happy to help with this.”

Peter propped the Ziploc against a flask on the counter next
to Jill. It was open, starting to smell. She rolled her stool further away.
Fought nausea watching him push aside glassware, tug on latex gloves, and haul
his microscope closer.

He screwed up his face. “They should have refrigerated this
guy. The soft tissue’s already starting to liquefy.” He opened the Ziploc
wider, and dipped a pipette to the red ooze below the black coils. From the
pipette he placed a drop of snake squish onto a fresh slide, and pushed the
slide below his microscope.

“Wow,” he said, looking in. “Teeming.”

David picked up the still-bulging Ziploc and closed it
carefully. “So refrigerate it now?”

“Oh! Yeah, right.” Excited, not looking up.

David opened a little fridge on the shelf above Peter’s
microscope and shoved in the Ziploc. Next to a sandwich.

Jill didn’t see that. She found herself suddenly fixed on
Gregson, peering down into another world at only one hundred times
magnification, and already fascinated. He was muttering, “Next I’ll dissect its
organs, soft tissue. Use the microtome to cut some really thin slices, then
stain them with-”

David’s cell phone buzzed.

He answered, listened, muttered questions.

“We gotta jet,” he told Jill, hanging up. “Two women in
labor just came in.”

They thanked Gregson, who thanked them for the chance to
help. “Hope they catch this sonofabitch,” he said.

“They?” David echoed. “
For the snakes
,
you’re it
.
The problem is, despite the seeming tie-in the cops may have to consider the
chapel just vandalism, and Walsh just” – he hated air quotes but grimaced and
made them – “an assault.
Only homicide scrambles their jets.”

“Meanwhile,” Jill said intently, “the baby and the hospital
have been threatened.” Adrenalin surged back. “The bag those snakes were left
in also contained a photo of Jesse, the one with the nurse holding him. We’re
worried. I’m
frantic.”

Peter shook his head gravely. Who didn’t remember last July?

“Fingers crossed I come up with something,” he said. “I’m on
it if I have to work all night.”

Bullet holes in the chapel wall, and snakes, writhing…and
the SPAWN OF THE DEVIL sign. Jill couldn’t push the images from her mind.
The
creep had been here, was taunting, would be back…

She and some of the others stood before the OB nurses’ desk
as David fast-skimmed new Admissions Forms. Her mind whirled. The images
collided in her head like frightened birds unwilling to settle.

A ruptured ectopic pregnancy - a serious emergency – had
just been brought in. Added to the two women in labor, suddenly everyone available
was needed.

“Can I help with the ectopic?” Ortega asked. “I’ve never
seen one.”

David’s face was tight. “Wait. I need two of you for the
first delivery, and two for the second. First one looks routine but is further
along. Lemme see…” He was scrolling his schedule. “Trish and Ramu are where?”

“Clinic,” Woody Greenberg said. “You sent them.”

“Oh…yeah, I’m distracted.” David shot Jill a glance. “Okay,
Gary? Help MacIntyre, he’s already with the first one. Jill, check the second
one’s status in labor room three, and call George Mackey. He’s probably
sleeping, and if he yells, ignore, stay sweet.” David flipped the second
patient’s chart page, his brow creasing. “This is odd, re-check her urine for
albumin.”

Jim Holloway, second year resident like Sam, came running
up. “You called about an ectopic?”

“Ruptured,” Woody told him.

“I’ve only seen it done once,” Jim said.

“Learning time,” David said, looking at Woody and Holloway.
“You two go scrub, fast. Phipps - change, you scrub for the ectopic too, Sam
can manage the routine one, he’ll probably just need a catcher’s mitt.

David fast-glanced at Phipps, Holloway, and Greenberg.
“Okay, crew, see you in OR 4.”

He touched Jill’s arm as the others moved off. “You okay?”

“No.”

He exhaled. “Listen,” he said low. “The second you get in
there you’ll see a new life on its way and you’ll get right into it. It will
take your mind off the other thing.”

She smiled weakly. “That ectopic sounds bad.”

“It’ll take longer. I’ll call you when we’re done.”

Minutes later David, his two residents and an intern, were
all in the OR, scrubbed and gowned. The patient was already anesthetized, the
anesthesiologist busy adjusting her intubation and the right amount of
anesthetic. The others took seconds to peer at the ultrasound of her lower
abdomen and pelvis in the view box.

“Refresh me on why ectopics happen?” Phipps asked.

“You sleep through that lecture?” Woody groused.

Holloway spoke fast. “Fertilization happens in one of the
two fallopian tubes. If the tube is scarred from some infection, the fetus gets
stuck there and grows…”

“Fetus is just a few weeks old, nonviable.” David eyed the
bulge in the pencil-diameter fallopian tube. “This must have been incredibly
painful.”

He turned back to the operating table.

“Hemoglobin and hematocrit taken?” he asked the charge
nurse. She answered yes, read the results from a lab sheet, and said two units
of blood were coming.

“Tell them to hurry, we may need to transfuse.”

Beeping suddenly speeded from the patient’s monitor, and
then a high, thin alarm lasting ten seconds.

“BP down to 80 over 50, pulse up to 130,” Woody said,
frowning at the monitor.

“Oh shit, internal hemorrhage.” David took a scalpel from
the scrub nurse. Phipps finished placing sterile towels around the incision
area, and Holloway finished painting it with antiseptic.

“BP 70 over 40, pulse 96!” Woody piped.

“Get the blood here,
” David snapped.

“It’s coming, it’s coming,” from someone.

He barely heard. Made a quick incision in the left lower
quadrant of the abdomen, and saw blood well up.

The clock on the wall read 1:55.