Sisterhood (38 page)

“Chris, Dr. Armstrong ordered your pupils to be checked every hour. I’ll do it as quickly as I can.”

Christine felt the nurse’s fingers on her right eye, then a searing pain as the beam from the penlight hit her pupil. A brief respite, then a second stab on the left. She tried to lift her hands, but they would not move. Was she restrained? Her right arm, especially, felt heavy and numb. For a moment, she worried that it was gone. Then she remembered being told by Dr. Armstrong that it was broken. She settled back on the pillow and forced herself to relax.

“Listen, I’m going to let you sleep for a while,” the nurse said. “You’re due for a new I.V. in about twenty minutes. I’m going to wake you up then and we’ll try to get some more of this glass out of your hair. Okay?” Christine nodded as best she could. “Hey, I almost forgot. Only a few hours in the hospital and already you’re getting flowers. These were delivered a couple of minutes ago. They’re beautiful. I’m going to put them on the table here. I know you can’t see them, but maybe by tonight you’ll be able to. There’s a card. Do you want me to read it?”

“Yes, please,” Christine said weakly.

“It says best wishes for a speedy recovery, Dahlia.”

Dahlia? The pain and the swelling in her brain made it difficult to concentrate. “But … I … don’t … know … any … Dahlia,” she said.

The woman had already left.

    “David, this killer, this … this Vincent—you must tell me again how you think he found you on the emergency ward and then was able to locate your friend.”

David toyed with the cover of a magazine, then dropped it on the coffee table and rubbed at his eyes. What had started as a comfortable, long-awaited unburdening had mutated into a tense interrogation as Dr. Armstrong probed for every possible detail. He felt off balance, bewildered, and threatened by the persistence of her questions and the strain in her voice.

“Look,” he said, no longer trying to conceal his mounting apprehension, “I’ve told you everything I know. Twice. My theories about how Vincent found Ben and me and then Joey are just that—theories. Dr. Armstrong, I know something is going on here. Something that I’ve said has upset you. I’m not going to tell you any more until you level with me. Now, please, what is the matter?”

The look in her eyes was glacial. “Young man, much of what you have told me is impossible. Preposterous. A series of sick, misguided conclusions that can only cause pain and suffering to many good, innocent people.” David stared at her in disbelief. “You are stirring flames of a fire whose scope you do not understand. This so-called killer you have described—it is impossible that he is connected in any way with The Sisterhood of Life.”

“But …”

“Impossible, I say!” She screamed the words.

“Just what is impossible?” Their heads spun in unison toward the door. Dotty Dalrymple stood calmly watching, her hands buried in the pockets of her uniform. David’s skin began to crawl at the sight of her.

“Oh, Dorothy, I’m glad you could make it down this quickly.” Armstrong’s voice was tense, but composed. “I phoned you because Dr. Shelton here was just telling me a preposterous tale about The Sisterhood of Life and hired killers and—”

“I know what he was telling you,” Dalrymple said, her face puffed in a half-smile. “I know very well what
he was telling you.” She lifted her right hand free. Nearly lost in the fleshy ball of her fist was a snub-nosed revolver.

“The light … please turn it off.” Christine felt the glare even through tightly closed eyes.

Two women—a nurse and an aide—were picking fragments of glass from her hair with tweezers. “All right, Chris,” one of them said. “I guess we’ve tortured you enough for now. I have to rouse you in forty minutes. We can do a little more then. Okay?” She shut off the overhead light. “Wait a minute, I’m sorry, but I have to turn it back on. Just a few seconds to adjust the flow of your new I.V.

“Prime rib of beef and pheasant under glass were on your little menu sheet, but since you didn’t circle anything we decided to serve you the specialty of the house: dextrose and water.”

A ten-second explosion and again the room dimmed. Christine tried to ignore the throbbing in her skull.

“By the way,” the nurse said. “Ol’ Tweedledum was on the floor a few minutes ago. She herded all of us into the conference room just to make it clear that heads would roll if you didn’t get first-class service from everyone. As if we would give you anything else. Well … see you later.”

Christine heard the woman leave. Tweedledum. For a time she wrestled with the name. Then she remembered. Dalrymple! Suddenly bits and pieces of information were swirling about in her head. Dalrymple condemning David. Dalrymple offering a bribe. Her mind, working sluggishly through bruised, swollen tissues, struggled to understand. Deep within her apprehension took hold and fueled the already unbearable pounding in her head. Dalrymple! Could she have been responsible? Nothing made sense. Nothing except that she had to find David. Had to talk to him. She tried to
move, to reach the bedside phone. Her free hand touched it, then knocked it, clattering, to the floor.

She searched for the call button. They had pinned it somewhere. Where? Where had they said it was?

From the darkness over her bed drops of intravenous fluid flowed inexorably from the plastic bag, through the tubing, and into her chest.

Christine was fumbling through the bedclothes for the call button when her pain began to lessen. Deep within her an uncomfortable warmth took hold and spread. Thirty seconds alone at the nurses’ station were all Dotty Dalrymple had needed.

David … call David. Christine battled to maintain her resolve. Her eyelids closed, then refused to open again. So much to do, she thought. David … Sisterhood … so much to do. Her head sank back on the pillow. Her hand relaxed and fell to her side. Suddenly nothing seemed to matter. Nothing at all.

She listened for a time to the strange hum that filled the room. Then, with an inaudible sigh, she surrendered to the darkness.

Dalrymple motioned Armstrong to the chair next to David. Her brown eyes flashed hatred at both of them. Her sausagelike finger moved nervously against the trigger.

“Dorothy, please,” Armstrong begged. “We’ve come so far. Shared so much. You’re just overtired. Perhaps …”

“Oh, Peggy, just sit back and shut up,” she snapped.

David looked at Armstrong. “Peggy? You? But you’re a …”

“Doctor?” Armstrong filled in the word. “A few more years of studying, that’s all. Believe me, nursing school was easily as difficult.” She turned back to Dalrymple. “Dorothy, you know I’m on your side.”

“Are you? Are you really on anyone’s side but your own? It wasn’t you who went to see Beall. It’s not your
name she associates with The Sisterhood. It’s not you whose life goes down the drain as soon as she talks to the police. I have much too much going for me to sit back and let that happen.”

“Then … then you really did it? You hired a killer?” Dalrymple nodded once. “Dorothy, how could you do a thing like that?”

“Don’t start getting high and mighty with me. Killing’s our game, isn’t it? You taught it to me. Now you draw your line one place and I draw mine another. You were perfectly willing to forge prescriptions and sacrifice Shelton here to save your precious Sisterhood. I’ll bet if
you
had gone to see Beall—if it had been your neck on the block—you would have done the same things to protect yourself as I did.”

Armstrong started to protest, but Dalrymple silenced her with a flick of the gun. She reached into her pocket and, smiling, withdrew a large syringe, filled to capacity. Then she checked her watch. “Two o’clock,” she said. “If my nurses are as efficient at their jobs as I have trained them to be, the I.V. you ordered on young Miss Beall should be up and running.”

Christine’s death sentence! David stared at Dalrymple with sudden panic. “What did you give her?” He shifted his feet for better leverage and began searching for an opening, however slight.

Dalrymple sensed the change and leveled the revolver at his face. “It would be useless to try anything.” She glanced again at her watch. “Besides, it’s too late.” She set the syringe on the table in front of him. “The two of you will be a murder/suicide,” she said calmly. “I really don’t care which is which, as long as the police are satisfied there are no loose ends. Doctor, I give you the choice. The needle or a bullet. Astute clinician that you are, I’m sure you can deduce that one will be considerably more painful than the other.”

“Dotty, please, you don’t know what you’re doing,”
Armstrong begged, moving off her chair to grab at Dalrymple’s free hand. Before David could react, the nursing director pulled her arm free and swung a full backhand arc, catching the woman flush on the side of the face. With an audible snap, Armstrong’s left cheekbone shattered. Her slender body shot across the room and slammed against the wall fifteen feet away.

Her revolver still leveled at a spot between David’s eyes, Dalrymple glanced over her shoulder at Armstrong’s crumpled form. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long.” She smiled. “Now, Doctor, you have a choice to make.” She moved around the table, pushing it back with a trunklike leg to allow herself room. The muzzle of the revolver was only a foot from David’s forehead as she offered him the syringe. “Please decide,” she urged softly.

David was staring at her face when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw motion. Margaret Armstrong, on hands and knees, was inching across the floor. Desperately David forced his eyes to maintain contact with Dalrymple’s.

“Well?” said Dalrymple. “My patience is running thin.”

David took the syringe and studied it. “I … I don’t think I can get this in without a tourniquet,” he said, stalling. In the moment Dalrymple looked down he was able to catch another glimpse of Armstrong. The cardiologist was drawing closer. Then he noticed her hands. Each one held a small metal shield. The defibrillator! Armstrong had activated the machine. The paddles, connected to the unit by coiled wires, carried 400 joules.

David rolled up his sleeve and pumped his fist several times. The wires were almost out straight and Armstrong was still ten feet away. Dalrymple’s hand tightened on the revolver.

“Now,” she demanded.

“Dotty!” Armstrong yelled.

Dalrymple spun to the sound at the instant David made his lunge. He threw his shoulder full against her vast chest. The woman stumbled backward, catching the low coffee table just behind her knees. She fell like a giant redwood, shattering the table. As her bulk touched the floor, Armstrong was upon her, jamming one paddle on either side of her face, and, in the same motion, depressing the discharge button.

The muffled pop and spark from the paddles were followed instantly by a puff of smoke. Dalrymple’s arms flew upward as her huge body convulsed several inches off the floor. The odor of searing flesh filled the air. Vomit splashed from her mouth as her head snapped back. At the moment of her death the sphincters of her bladder and bowel released.

For several seconds David stood motionless, staring at the two women—one battered, one dead. Then, with resurgent terror, he broke from the room in an awkward, painful dash toward Four South.

Margaret Armstrong, rubber-legged, leaned against the sink, patting cold water on her face. She felt drugged, unable to sharpen the focus of her mind. Behind her lay the mountain of death that had, moments before, been Dorothy Dalrymple.

With great difficulty she forced her concentration to the situation at hand. If Christine were dead, she realized, David Shelton was all that stood against the continuation of her Sisterhood. Could he be eliminated? Should he be? Peggy Armstrong knew she would gladly confess to murder—sacrifice herself—to save the movement. But was she capable of killing an innocent person?

She walked unsteadily toward the door, then turned and looked back in disgust at Dalrymple. If a woman she thought she knew so well, trusted so implicitly, could have tried to buy her own security at such a price, how could she be sure that in a time of crisis
there wouldn’t be others? Trembling, more from her thoughts than her injury, Armstrong supported herself against a wall. Was it over? After so many years, so many dreams, was it all over?

She slipped out of the office and locked the door. The janitor would not be in until sometime the following morning. Less than twenty-four hours. If she wished to salvage The Sisterhood, she had only that long to plan, to prepare, to act. Questions, one after another, raced through her mind. Was it worth the price of another life? Could she do it? Was there an explanation that would hold up? At that moment the answers were not at all apparent.

U
sing the bannister for leverage, David vaulted down the stairs from North Two to North One. Pulses of adrenaline muffled the screams from his ankle. He exploded through the doorway to the central corridor, scattering a trio of horrified nuns.

The main lobby was in its usual midday chaos. David weaved and bumped his way across it like a halfback in open field, leaving two men sprawled and cursing in his wake.

“Hang on, baby, please hang on,” he gasped, scrambling up the stairs in the South Wing. Even two at a time they seemed endless, doubling back on themselves between each landing. “Fight the bitch. Fight her fucking poison. Please …”

His feet grew leaden. His legs gave way between the third and fourth floors, then again as he stumbled onto Four South.

The corridor was empty except for one aide struggling to tie an old man safely in his wheelchair. In the seconds she spent staring at the apparition limping toward her, the patient, a stroke victim, squirmed free and fell heavily to the floor. The aide, sensing the
emergency, waved him past. “Go on,” she urged. “Clarence does this all the time.”

David nodded and raced to the nurses’ station. “Code Ninety-nine Room Four twelve,” he panted. “Call it and get me some help. Code Ninety-nine Room Four twelve.”

The astonished ward secretary froze for a moment, then grabbed the phone.

For David the scene in Room 412 was the rerun of a horrible dream. The dim light, the bubbling oxygen, the intravenous setup, the motionless body. He flicked on the lights and raced to the bed. Christine, lying serenely on her back, was the dusky color of death. Through the hallway speaker the page operator began calling with uncharacteristic urgency, “Code Ninety-nine, Four South … Code Ninety-nine, Four South …”