The Armageddon Prophecy
Raymond Finkle
Contents
About the Author
Also By Raymond Finkle
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
19. Leave a Review
20. The Mendelian Protocol 1
21. The Mendelian Protocol 2
22. Keep reading
About the Author
Raymond Finkle is a physician living in New England.
He writes mystery and suspense thrillers. His work is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
He can be reached at [email protected]
AMAZON Author Page Link amazon.com/author/raymondfinkle
Visit www.RaymondFinkle.com
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Keep updated on new releases
Also By Raymond Finkle
Three Stories
(short stories, suspense/mystery/horror)
The Mendelian Protocol
(suspense thriller/medical sci-fi)
The Insanity Criterion
(suspense thriller/medical sci-fi)
The Gatsby Murders
(mystery/suspense thriller)
Text copyright © 2021 Raymond Finkle
All Rights Reserved
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Chapter 1
I was working the overnight shift in the Emergency Department when they brought her in. It was about three in the morning, the time of night when nothing usually happens. I might even doze off at my computer if it’s slow. Not this time.
She was about 18 or 19, we didn’t know exactly, because she had no identification on her, and she couldn’t talk. A motel clerk had called 911. He had reported a woman having trouble breathing. He said she wandered into his motel in the middle of the night. A Sheriff’s deputy had arrived quickly, but EMS took a bit longer. It’s a rural town and the ambulance is staffed by volunteers.
Hawk Claw, Colorado has a population of 1,200 and is situated in the northwestern part of the state. Per square mile, there’s more wildlife than people, and emergency personnel don’t have the same response time as they would in an urban area. So, the point is, by the time they brought this young woman in to the resuscitation room, she looked bad. Really, really bad.
I thought she must be having an asthma attack because she was leaning forward, struggling to get air in and out of her lungs. But the EMTs had given her a nebulizer treatment on the way in and it hadn’t helped. I knew right away that she was going to need intubation. She was barely breathing, her skin a greyish blue, and she was almost unconscious from oxygen deprivation. I was fortunate enough to be working with two nurses and a respiratory therapist who had years of experience and I didn’t even have to tell them the plan. They began prepping her for the procedure.
Endotracheal intubation is like the take-off or landing of an aircraft. It’s the only part where the pilot’s pulse is elevated, because if anything is going to go wrong, this is when it will happen. So, if you have a minute or two to prepare, you should use your time wisely. Which is what we did. The nurses drew up the drugs to administer—etomidate, a sedative to knock her unconscious, and succinylcholine, a paralytic agent. The idea is to paralyze the patient’s vocal cords so a plastic tube can be passed through them. Which is fine, as long as you get the tube in. But since you’ve just paralyzed the patient, they will not breathe on their own anymore. There isn’t a lot of room for error.
In this case, the intubation went fine. We gave her the medications, she stopped breathing, I inserted the tube and from then on, a ventilator was doing the breathing for her. It was textbook, no big deal… except for one thing. As I was putting the tube in, I noticed that her throat appeared burned and her vocal cords were brown instead of white. It looked like she had inhaled smoke from a house fire. She hadn’t had any external burns, so I didn’t know what to think of it. I listened to her chest—she still had her clothes on—with my stethoscope. There was still lots of wheezing and rhonchorous lung sounds, but she was oxygenating normally, so I ordered a chest x-ray and wiped the sweat from my brow. Job well done, I thought, The hard part is over.
I remember thinking she was a very pretty young woman, and I wondered why she was wearing strange clothes that reminded me of a burlap sack. She was probably from out of town. Someone would have known her if she was from Hawk Claw. In a town that size, everyone knows everyone.
“Umm… Doctor O’Neill… Aren’t burns one of the contraindications to succinylcholine?” asked my respiratory therapist. I didn’t bother responding, because we both knew the answer, and I didn’t like where this was going. Now that we had stabilized her, they had gotten around to removing her clothes to put her in a hospital gown and that’s when things suddenly got very weird.
One of the reasons we undress patients is because sometimes we find suprises—bruises that indicate broken ribs, lacerations, or even—in some cases—gunshot wounds that were missed on the initial evaluation. Such things happen when the patient can’t talk to you to tell you they’ve been shot. In this case, however, we found something even more surprising than a bullet hole.
Large bold black letters were tattooed all over her bare chest and belly. It was an gothic font, and each letter was about one inch high. They were verses from the Bible. At least that’s what I assumed—they sure seemed biblical. I am not very religious myself and couldn’t place them. But I could see that they were fresh tattoos that looked red and raw.
They were all over her back, too. No one had noticed because… well, because she had been dying and we had been busy saving her life. She had been wearing a white blouse, brown leggings and a grey shawl of some kind. They were odd clothes, very plain and old fashioned—but no one was really paying attention to them at first.
As I stared at the letters, the thing that the respiratory therapist had already figured out dawned on me. These weren’t tattoos at all. They were burns. This young woman had been branded. Someone had taken the time to distinctly burn the following words into her chest and abdomen, covering her from just below the neckline to just above the beltline:
But the fearful and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death
The same exact words were written on her back, as well. There was nothing else, no signature or notation telling where the words originated, although I would learn that later. So, I just stared at this poor girl’s bare body wondering how such a thing could have happened.
I was speechless. In fact, we all were, and then finally I said something like, “It must have taken twenty or thirty minutes to do this to her… and it’s perfectly done, like she didn’t move at all during the process.”
“Maybe she was unconscious,” said one of the nurses.
“Maybe,” I said, and right then the patient began to crash, and there was no time for speculating anymore. Her blood pressure dropped, and I had to back off on the propofol drip that was keeping her in a medically induced coma. This led to her waking up and trying to pull the tube out of her throat. So, then I gave her a little fentanyl to try to sedate her without
dropping her blood pressure. I gave her I.V. fluids and pretty soon I had to start a vasoconstrictor to try to raise her blood pressure. It was becoming clear that she was in shock. I had them draw blood cultures and gave her antibiotics and then I saw the chest x-ray. It looked like someone had stuffed her lungs full of cotton balls. The radiologist called me to inform me that my patient had “one of the worst chest x-rays I’ve ever seen” which was not helpful, but I thanked him anyway. He also told me the patient had a bullet in her upper back—possibly lodged in her spine, he would need a lateral view to say for sure. I said, Yes, I had seen it on the x-ray, but it had to be from an old injury because she did not have a gunshot wound.
I had to start a central line by inserting a massive needle in her neck so we could continue to administer a cocktail of medicines just to keep her alive. I called the ICU doctor to admit her upstairs and she argued with me for several minutes about transferring the patient to a burn center. I said, absolutely we should, as soon as she is stable enough to be transferred, but I wasn’t taking that chance now.
And then the patient solved my dilemma. The heart monitor registered ventricular fibrillation and every alarm in the room went off at once. I yelled clear and a nurse shocked her with the defibrillator, and the patient’s heart rhythm was restored instantly. I remember thinking that I wished the ICU doc would come down here and take some responsibility for this slow-motion train wreck. Then I looked over and saw her standing at the bedside.
“Dr. Lancaster,” I said, “Thanks for coming down.”
“You weren’t kidding, she isn’t stable to transfer,” she said.
“No, she isn’t.”
“Did you see burns during intubation?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “Her vocal cords were singed, and there was some soot. She’s had massive inhalation injuries.”
“And yet… no external burns. Except the scripture.”
“Yeah,” I said dazedly, because I was still trying to process what it all meant.
“We’d better treat her for cyanide poisoning,” she said.
“I already ordered hydroxocobalamin,” I said. I was referring to the antidote for cyanide—which is a toxic byproduct of many items, such as plastics, that burn during house fires. It can cause poisoning that kills the patient even after they’ve escaped the fire. Since this patient had clearly had smoke inhalation, we had to assume the worst—and any confirmatory tests for cyanide in her blood would take way too long—better to treat her presumptively. I had no idea how her lungs had gotten burned like that, but whatever it was might have caused cyanide poisoning.
“So, I’ll make you a deal,” Dr. Angela Lancaster said. She was tall—about six feet, and lean and muscular, with graying hair and a ruddy complexion. She was probably in her early fifties, and I remember thinking she looked like a ‘cowgirl.’ She had clearly spent a lot of time in the Colorado sun.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“I’ll call the M.E. if you call the cops.”
“What?” I asked, not understanding what she meant.
“You saw her chest x-ray,” she said, “There’s no way she’s going to survive the next 24 hours no matter what we do. So, I’ll take her upstairs and do my best but when she dies, I’ll have to call the Medical Examiner. But you’re in charge of calling the cops. And you should call them right now. Because when she dies—whether it’s tonight or tomorrow—it’s going to be a homicide.”
And I think, despite everything that had happened up until that point, that was the moment when I finally understood the gravity of the situation. I’m slow like that—I can take a while to really register the meaning of something, because, yes, I had seen Bible verses burned into her skin, and yes, I had inserted a tube in her lungs, and yes, I had seen her chest x-ray, but at some level, my mind was still screaming What the hell is going on?
And it wasn’t until much later, when out of curiosity, I finally read the Bible—admittedly for the first time—when I really got the chills. It was like someone was running ice water directly into my spine. But it all started that night with her—Mary Elizabeth Sorrow. What an apt name. And I couldn’t save her, but I could try to make things right. Which is never really possible, but that was a lesson I had yet to learn.
Chapter 2
“Hawk Claw County Sheriff’s office, Deputy Holland,” the voice on the other end of the line said.
“Hello. This is Stephen O’Neill… Dr. O’Neill, one of the Emergency docs at Hawk Claw. I’ve got… I need to report something… that happened to a patient here.”
“OK, Dr. O’Neill… is this regarding a patient of yours?”
“Yes.”
“And have they given consent for you to release information about them?”
“What? Ahhh… no. No, she can’t give consent. She’s on a ventilator.”
“I see. You mean she can’t talk?”
“That’s correct. She’s in the ICU.”
“I see. And I take it that she is the victim of domestic abuse or some kind of violence?”
“Yes… Some kind of violence.”
“Dr. O’Neill, as I’m sure you know, despite the fact that the victim has been badly injured, I probably shouldn’t take a report on her injuries unless she consents to it. She may wake up and say that she fell down the stairs, even though we all know her boyfriend or husband is responsible. I had a case once where the victim threatened to sue—”
“Ahhh… no, you don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The nature of her injuries… This couldn’t possibly be accidental.”
“I see. And how do you know that?”
“Look… Deputy… Maybe you’d better just come down here.”
She agreed to come to the hospital. It was only a couple of miles away from the Sheriff’s office. We met outside the ambulance entrance. Deputy Emily Holland had straight black hair, blue eyes, a sharp chin and long neck. She gave me an impression of beauty infused with gravity, of a person who doesn’t compromise or settle. I also had the sense that she would save me from the mess I had somehow gotten myself into. Maybe I am coloring the memory to fit with what I have since learned about her—a lot has happened since then. In reality, I think I was so attracted to her that I was thrown off-balance, like a sudden case of vertigo that knocked me for a loop.
I realized immediately that I knew her, or at least knew of her, because it was a small town, and I was a single man of 31 years of age. I had seen Deputy Holland around town before and wondered how I could get an introduction without being arrested. Not for the last time, I wondered what I was doing in a town that had one stoplight.
Maybe now is a good time to back up. I haven’t really had a chance to introduce myself. I’m Stephen O’Neill, MD. I’m a board-certified Emergency Physician which means that, from a medical perspective, I’m a jack of all trades and master of none. I’m six feet tall with brown hair and I hate to admit that in many ways I’m your average white guy. I’m a little overweight but I’m in decent shape from running and spending a lot of time outdoors. I moved to Hawk Claw two years before all this happened, after graduating from residency and having an early mid-life crisis which led me to relocate from New York City to Northern Colorado where the cows outnumber the people. I had, until recently, been vaguely considering moving to a city—Denver or Grand Junction or Fort Collins—but then Mary Elizabeth Sorrow showed up and changed my life forever.
“What is it that makes you so sure these injuries aren’t accidental?” Deputy Holland asked me as we sat at the circular table in the break room of the Emergency Department. My shift was over, and I was off duty. It was tight quarters but at that moment no one else was on break. We were alone.
“She was branded. There were words burned into her skin.”
“She may claim that she did it to herself.”
“That wouldn’t be physically possible. She was branded from head to toe… her chest and abdomen… front and back… w
ith what appear to be Bible verses or some kind of holy scripture.
Now I had her attention.
“And she has extensive lung injuries,” I continued, “Consistent with extreme smoke inhalation, like from a house fire. But there were no other burn marks on her—no other signs of injury. She wandered into the Sleepy Hawk Motel, gasping for air, and the kid behind the desk called 911. The patient never actually said a word, as far as I know. She didn’t talk at all—she couldn’t, because her vocal cords were burned, and she was struggling just to breathe. So, they brought her here, and I put her on a ventilator. She’s an 18-year-old kid—I’m guessing at her age, because there’s no I.D.—and she’s going to die. I’d say she has maybe 24 hours to live, at most. So… no, it’s not an accident. And it’s going to be murder, when she dies. The ICU doc and I agree—she won’t live much longer no matter what we do—and this couldn’t possibly be accidental.”
Holland’s eyebrows were raised in an expression of surprise. She sighed. I don’t think she had been expecting to have to do any work at that hour of the morning. It was a little past seven now. I realized that, assuming she had been working the overnight shift like me, she was probably exhausted and ready to go home. I sure was. But now I had just dropped a bomb in her lap. She had probably not been expecting much—after all, it was Hawk Claw—but now she reached into her pocket and took out a small electronic device. I didn’t recognize it at first. Then she hit a button on it and a red light started blinking.
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