Trinity's Legacy

by P A Vasey

  Navarro ignored him and continued to scroll through the images, enlarging sections here and there, adjusting contrast and windows to delineate and define soft tissue structures, bones, lung parenchyma. I was racking my brain for diseases and conditions that could fit with what was going on. Diagnostic medicine was all about interpreting signs and symptoms as clues in a mystery, and using pattern recognition to arrive at an answer. Nothing appeared to be forthcoming.

  Navarro enlarged a section of the spinal cord from the cervical region to the upper thoracic and toggled between the soft tissue view and bone view. He then stopped abruptly and put both hands on his chin, staring at the screen.

  “What?” I said.

  He was shaking his head and when he looked up and there was a slightly mad glint to his eyes. He flicked his chin at the screen where he had frozen the last image.

  “This is the most anatomically perfect scan I’ve ever seen. Every organ and every structure looks like it was drawn from Gray’s Anatomy. There’re no abnormalities anywhere. No cysts, no anatomical variants - nothing.”

  “That can’t be right,” I said. “The driver of the pickup said they hit him full on doing fifty clicks, so he should be broken into little pieces.”

  Reynolds stood up and stretched. He was still in his running kit. “It’s a puzzle to be sure.”

  I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye and saw the radiographer in the scan room waving his hand frantically in a motion for us to come in. He pointed wordlessly at the cardiac monitor that had been silently displaying the patient’s vital signs. I could see a number of flat lines and flashing red numbers indicating a drop in both blood pressure and heart rate.

  “Shit,” I said. “Looks like he’s in trouble again.”

  I ran out of the reporting room, followed closely by Reynolds. A brief glance at the monitor confirmed a situation requiring urgent action. Clem put his stethoscope on the patient’s abdomen, and shook his head, indicating no bowel sounds. The abdominal wall was still rigid to touch. I pulled my ophthalmoscope out and gazed into the man’s eyes again, and tested his pupils for reflexes.

  Clem reached out and touched my arm, “Kate, I think he needs surgery. A diagnostic laparotomy at least.”

  I picked up my mobile phone and started dialling but then I stopped, thinking hard. “Clem, what if there’s progressive cerebral oedema, and we just aren’t seeing it yet on the scans. Fluid squashing his brain could explain this presentation. A head injury from the impact, brief neurological improvement, then he deteriorates… it would fit.”

  I started moving the man’s limbs around, checking for neurological damage and indicators of normal neurological function. Clem looked nervously at the monitors, seeing a sea of red numbers. “Kate, we need to do something, now.”

  I continued to pedantically evaluate the man’s neurological status. Something wasn’t right with this whole picture. Clem shook my arm again, but I gritted my teeth.

  “He’s been in a car accident Clem, and he’s unconscious. That’s our most pressing problem. We need a central IV line to give him steroids, diuretics, and anything else to keep him alive. But we’ll need to do this quickly, and in the operating theatre.”

  The monitors continued to show agonal-looking traces and unrecordable blood pressure readings. I called through to Navarro. “Pete, can you rustle up the porters to get him taken through to theatre.”

  Navarro nodded and picked up the phone. I turned to Reynolds, “Clem, you go scrub while I see if I can stabilise him”

  Reynolds gave a sigh of resignation. “Right. See you in five”. He took off down the corridor towards the changing room.

  Navarro pointed at the monitor. “Look, we’re getting that afterimage again. I don’t think we can rely on these scans to tell us what’s going on.”

  “OK, so much for your fancy scanners then,” I said.

  Navarro gave me a ‘fuck you’ look that I ignored.

  I helped the radiographer unhook the monitoring machines from the patient and together we started manoeuvring the trolley towards the door. Silently, and without warning, all the lights went out in the scanning room. At the same time, the displays on the monitors and recording devices scattered around the room went dark. The reporting room behind the window where Navarro was watching was also plunged into darkness, and there was a loud decrescendo electronic burble as the CT scanner powered down. As my eyes struggled to dark-adjust I could just make out Navarro getting up from his station and coming through to us. He bumped into the doorframe, cursing. “Power’s gone out across the board. Why hasn’t the emergency generator kicked in?”

  I had no answer for that. “Get the front of the trolley Pete, let’s see if we can still push him through to the OR.”

  As I took hold of the bed I heard a new voice, calm and relaxed, toneless, echoing around my head.

  That will not be necessary.

  The voice was male, but not Navarro’s. I looked around the room, squinting, trying to see into the corners, identify the source. I shook my head to clear it.

  “Who’s there?”

  Navarro’s voice answered, “Just me Kate, who else?”

  “No, there’s someone else here, didn’t you hear him? Clem, is that you?”

  There was silence. Then the radiographer piped up. “There’s no-one here Dr Morgan. There’s only one way in to this room.”

  I looked down at the figure on the trolley, but couldn’t make out anything other than a prostrate form lying under the blanket. “Was that you?” I whispered.

  Without warning, the lights came back on and the computer terminals and scanner started to reboot noisily. As my vision adjusted to the new lighting, I saw that the man on the trolley was no longer unconscious, and was staring up at me. There was a hint of green phosphorescence coming from his eyes, and then his pupils constricted, shutting it out.

  Yes, Kate. Thank you for trying to help me.

  The soundless words reverberated around inside my head, and an unwelcome shiver ran down my spine, like a bolt of electricity.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Indian Springs Hospital and Medical Centre

  I stopped in front of the patient’s room and turned to the police officer that had insisted on coming with me. He was an overweight Latino with a moustache that would have looked awkward on Yosemite Sam. Not for the first time I wondered what the dress code was for cops in this town. He went to open the door and I gestured for him to wait up.

  “I need to speak with him first. When I’m happy that he can give an interview I’ll give you a shout. Okay?”

  He nodded reluctantly and leaned back against the wall, taking out his cell phone. I gently pushed the door open and entered, closing it behind me. The room was an airy, magnolia-coloured space eight yards square with a large double window facing the desert and overlooking the airbase and its two main runways. There was a low three-seater couch under the window, and a cupboard built into the sidewall surrounded by various shelves that housed a few figurines and other items designed to make the room less clinical. A single hospital bed was adjacent to the right hand wall, braced on one side by a bank of monitors and on the other by a table sporting a jug of water and two glasses. There was a solitary vase with a bunch of pink and red flowers on a shelf by the window, presumably left by a previous occupant of the room. People take flowers into hospital rooms because, despite all the technology and medicine, there’s something in our humanity that requires natural beauty as part of the healing ‘process’. Otherwise aren’t we just carbon-based machines getting fixed up, tuned and serviced?

  The man’s face in was in near-profile, sitting upright in the bed. His skin was lighter than mine by a few tones, his high cheekbones accentuating angular drawn-in cheeks and his thin mouth. His nose seemed smaller in proportion than it should be now that he was sitting up. There were no lines around his eyes, but I could make out thin grooves tracking down the sides of his mouth from his nose. His short hair was catching some
of the sunlight from the window, and glistened bluish-black without a hint of grey. His age was hard to pick; in the ER I had figured forty-something, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  He slowly turned his head towards me but made no other acknowledgement of my presence. I moved to the side of the bed and picked up the clipboard. I made a note that there were no red lights or muted warning alarms on the machine and scribbled down the readings from the cardiac monitor which was giving off a steady beep every two seconds or so. I stopped writing and took a breath.

  “Hello. How are you feeling?”

  He met my gaze and blinked a few times before moving his mouth slowly. At first no sound emerged, but then as I leaned forward he spoke, initially in a whisper, but then with increased volume. “I am … better.”

  I smiled and stood up straighter. “That’s good, I’m glad to hear it. You gave everyone a bit of a fright earlier. Do you remember much about what happened?”

  He continued to stare directly at me, which was starting to get unnerving. I wished he would blink more frequently. It was a bit reptilian.

  “Well, how about you give me your name?” I said, attempting to break the ice.

  “My name is Adam,” he said, the words coming out slowly and deliberate, as if he wasn’t sure and was testing the name to see if it fitted.

  “Adam, what? Can you remember your full name?”

  He turned his head back to the window, looking out at the clear blue sky and scorched earth of the airfield. A twin engine jet fighter was cranking up to speed, preparing for take-off on the runway a couple of hundred yards away.

  “I remember walking down a road,” he began, slowly. “I remember a vehicle approaching.”

  I looked up from the chart, nodded encouragingly. “Yes, a truck hit you, full on. You were out cold for quite some time. Do you have any pain?”

  He looked up at the ceiling, a slight tilt to his head. “No. There is no pain.”

  “You’ve been very lucky. You don’t appear to have suffered any injuries.” I tried a sympathetic smile, “Amazingly so.”

  “I died,” he said, so softly that I couldn’t be sure I had heard him correctly.

  I felt a strange unease creep over me, a chill in the air like someone had opened a window to let a winter breeze get in. The hairs on the back of my neck tugged erect and I had to make a conscious effort not to hug myself.

  “What d’you mean?”

  He turned to look at me again, and I found it hard to keep looking at him, so intense was his gaze.

  “You are in danger.”

  I shook my head, and briefly closed my eyes. There was a pressure in my temples, like the first signs of a migraine. And then I heard the other voice, this one inside my head.

  I must leave this place. Do not try and stop me.

  What the hell was happening? Why was I hearing voices again?

  I looked at him. “Was that you?” I whispered. “In my head?”

  “Yes,” he replied out loud, matter of factly. Then the voice within spoke again, more urgently.

  I must leave. Before anyone is harmed.

  He suddenly reached out and grabbed my wrist. There was a wave of nausea and my head seemed weightless as if I was going to pass out. My body felt like it had been plunged into ice-cold water and everything seemed to pixelate and spin before me.

  -

  I was suddenly standing on a cliff edge in an underground space, in some sort of oval cavern with dark furrowed walls curving smoothly down to a creviced floor, and the walls above arching up a hundred feet or more to the open sky. In the near distance and illuminating the cavern was a spherical object the size of a basketball floating three or four yards above the floor. It was pulsing silently and rhythmically cycling through the colours of the rainbow. The immediate volume of air surrounding it appeared hazy and the surrounding cave walls were out of focus and blurred as if seen through a mirage. I saw my own breath frosting in the semi-darkness.

  Adam was standing between the sphere and me. He looked different. His hair was longer and he had a couple of days’ growth of a dark beard. He had tanned crow’s feet around his eyes, which crinkled as he smiled at me. For some reason, I felt very afraid.

  “Adam, wait,” I heard myself saying. Strangely, it was not my voice.

  At first he appeared not to hear, and didn’t respond. Then he looked back, a puzzled expression on his face. “It’s so cold, Gabe,” he said. “Can you feel the tingling in the air?”

  I put a hand up to shield my eyes from the light, which was becoming more intense and silvery. At that instant the sphere rapidly compressed and contracted to the size of a golf ball before surging to become a fluorescent pink and red freckled orb a yard in diameter. I became aware of an increase in the static charge over my skin as the temperature fell further.

  Adam continued to walk slowly towards the globe, one hand shielding his eyes, the other arm raised as if in greeting.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” I shouted, again in another voice. Male, high pitched, a bit whiny.

  He was now almost directly under the sphere. I tried to move, but my legs wouldn’t take me forward. There was a pressure building around my head and shoulders, as if the atmosphere had thickened and gravity had been augmented. I crumpled to my knees, my legs unable to support my weight. Adam was now standing upright directly under the sphere, gingerly reaching up to touch it. I felt a terrible foreboding that I couldn’t explain. My mouth felt dry, my stomach turning and twisting, nausea bubbling to the surface.

  “Adam, move away!” I managed, my voice cracking.

  He again looked back towards me and some part of my brain registered that he didn’t appear affected by the pressure wave, and that the blinding light didn’t seem to bother him. There was another oscillation and the globe expanded so that his face was now only a foot or so below the sphere.

  “It’s … beautiful,” I heard him say.

  I felt dizzy, my head was spinning and acid was starting to tickle my larynx. I tried to say something, to call out again, but greyness was speckling the edges of my vision. He turned and gave a half-smile. There was sadness in his voice, a tinge of melancholy.

  “It’s going to be okay Gabe,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  I wondered who Gabe was, but then the sphere contracted and surged outwards, completely enveloping him. I was crushed by a pressure wave of searing intensity and toppled over hitting my head on the rocky cavern floor. The last thing I saw was the roiling surface of the globe, an ocean of orange, yellow and red waves, inexorably expanding towards me before exploding in a burst of blinding white light, and a kaleidoscope of stars and galaxies.

  -

  I forced my eyes to open, and I was sitting on the hospital bed. A fog wrapped around my brain like a blanket and I felt like I’d been held underwater and just come up for air. Adam was next to me, and had his arm around my shoulders. He was still holding my hand. I looked into his eyes and again there was a brief flash of phosphorescent green from behind the pupils.

  “What did I just see?” I said, a quiver in my voice.

  I am not sure yet. But it is important.

  I hesitated. “What happened to you?”

  Before he could answer, there was a knock on the door and the cop who’d been waiting outside entered. He coughed into his fist and moved towards the bed with a lopsided smile as he took in the fact that doctor and patient were sitting on the bed and the patient had his arm around the doctor.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Dr Morgan.” He raised an eyebrow, pulled out his notebook and flipped it open while licking his fingers theatrically. I got up from the bed, somewhat awkwardly, and Adam’s eyes followed me.

  “My name is Officer Ramirez,” the policeman said, looking at Adam. “You were involved in an accident along I-95 today. I have witness statements that you were walking down the middle of the highway just after midnight. Do you have any recollection of those events?”

  Adam’s eyes flicked ov
er to Ramirez and he regarded him silently. Ramirez met his stare and held it. “Sir? I’m asking if you remember what happened?”

  There was another long pause, then a slight nod. “Yes.”

  Ramirez smiled. “Can you tell me about it?”

  Adam continued to stare, but said nothing further.

  Ramirez pursed his lips. Sighing, he pulled out his phone, and held it up, activating the flash. “Okay, well first I’ll just take a picture, run it through our databases. Look straight into the lens please.”

  Adam held up his hand and shook his head. “No. I do not think so.”

  Ramirez frowned. “Sir, I was being polite. I’m going to take your photograph now, so please put your hand down.” A puzzled expression appeared on his face as his fingers tippy tapped over the screen. “Hmm, none of the buttons are working.”

  At that moment Adam swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, still connected to the panel by monitor wires. He was wearing a hospital gown which was buttoned up the back and even in his bare feet he towered over the cop. Ramirez took a big step back, one hand now resting on his holstered gun.

  I had a bad feeling about this, so I reached out and gently touched Adam’s arm. “It’s OK, they’re just trying to help you. Let’s get you back into bed.”

  He looked down at me, expressionless.

  I must leave this place.

  The voice in my head again. What was going on?

  Ramirez put his notebook back in his pocket and moved forward, entering Adam’s personal space. He reached out and firmly took hold of Adam’s wrist.

  “Sir, I think you should do as the good doctor said, get back into bed and let us do our job.”

  Adam flat-palmed Ramirez directly on the sternum. There was no warning, and the speed and violence of the act gave the cop no chance to react. He flew across the room like a swatted fly and crashed into the wall, his head leaving a bloody indentation half way up, before he slid to the ground. I screamed, and instinctively jerked backwards into the monitor, knocking a couple of glasses over along with all the charts. Adam briefly glanced at me and then strode over to the fallen cop, snapping the cables and wires connecting him to the monitors. Unhappy-sounding bleeps and pings started coming from the equipment, and the readings became random and meaningless. He knelt down to examine the cop and I watched him feel for a pulse and rest his head Ramirez’ chest. He then gently turned him over and laid him in the recovery position so that secretions or blood would not block his larynx. He stood up and waved a dismissive hand at the machines, which went instantly silent.