Bloodstream

by Tess Gerritsen

  Though Claire was in the middle of reviewing Scotty Braxton’s chart, she set it aside and turned to face Eileen. “I haven’t seen Scotty yet this morning,” she said. “Have there been more problems?”

  “Even after you ordered that extra sedation at midnight, he didn’t sleep. He’s quiet now, but last night, he was awake the entire shift, screaming at the guard to unlock his handcuffs. Disturbing all the other patients. Dr. Elliot, that boy needs to be in juvenile lockup, or a psychiatric unit. Not a medical ward.”

  “I haven’t finished the evaluation. There are labs still pending.”

  “If he’s stable, couldn’t you move him? The nurses are afraid to go in the room. They can’t even change his sheets without three people restraining him. We’d like him moved, the sooner the better.”

  Time to make a decision, thought Claire as she walked down the hall to Scotty’s room. Unless she could diagnose a life-threatening illness, she couldn’t keep him in the hosital any longer.

  The state trooper stationed outside Scotty Braxton’s hospital room gave Claire a nod of greeting. “Morning, doc.”

  “Good morning. I understand he’s been quite a handful.”

  “He’s been better the last hour. Not a peep out of him.”

  “I need to examine him again. Could you stand by, just in case?”

  “Sure thing.” He pushed open the door and managed to take one step into the room before he froze. “Jesus Christ.”

  At first all Claire registered was the horror in his voice. Then she pushed past him, into the room. She felt the rush of cold air coming through the open window, and saw the blood. It was spattered across the empty bed, a shocking spray of it staining the pillow and the sheets, thickly smearing the empty handcuff dangling from the side rail. On the floor just below the handcuff, a pool of red had gathered. The human tissue lying at the edge of that pool would have been unrecognizable, save for the fingernail and the white nubbin of bone protruding from one end of the torn flesh. It was the boy’s thumb; he had chewed it off.

  Groaning, the trooper sank to the floor and dropped his head into his lap. “Jesus,” he kept murmuring. “Jesus …”

  Claire saw the prints of bare feet tracking across the room. She ran to the open window and stared down at the ground one story below.

  There was blood mixed with the churned-up snow. Footprints, and more blood, trailed away from the building, toward the forested perimeter of the hospital grounds.

  “He’s gone into the woods!” she said, and ran out of the room to the stairwell.

  She dashed down to the first floor, and pushed out through the fire exit, sinking at once into ankle-deep wet snow. By the time she’d circled around the building to Scotty’s window, icy water had seeped into her shoes. She picked up the trail of Scotty’s blood and followed it across the wide expanse of snow.

  At the edge of the woods she halted, trying to see what lay in the shadow of the evergreens. She could make out the boy’s footprints, trailing into the underbrush, and here and there a bright splash of blood.

  Heart thudding, she eased into the woods. The most dangerous animal is the one in pain.

  Her ungloved hands were numb from cold, from fear, as she moved aside a branch and peered deeper into the woods. Behind her, a twig snapped sharply. She spun around and almost cried out with relief when she saw it was the trooper, who’d followed her out of the building.

  “Did you see him?” he asked.

  “No. His footprints lead into the woods.”

  He waded toward her through the snow. “Security’s on the way. So’s the emergency room staff.”

  She turned to face the trees. “Do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Water. I hear water.” She began to run, ducking under low branches, stumbling through underbrush. The boy’s footprints were weaving back and forth now, as though he had been staggering. Here was churned-up snow, where he’d fallen. Too much blood loss, she thought. He’s stumbling and on the verge of collapse.

  The sound of rushing water grew louder.

  She broke through a tangle of evergreens and emerged on the bank of a creek. Rain and melting snow had swollen it to a torrent. Frantically she scanned the snow for the boy’s prints and spotted them moving parallel to the creek for several yards.

  Then, at the water’s edge, the footprints abruptly vanished.

  “You see him?” the guard yelled.

  “He’s gone into the water!” She splashed kneedeep into the creek. Reaching underwater, she blindly grabbed whatever her hands encountered. She came up with branches, beer bottles. An old boot. She waded in deeper, up to her thighs, but the water was moving too fast and she felt the torrent pulling her downstream.

  Stubbornly she braced her foot against a rock. Once again, she plunged her arms deep into the icy water.

  And found an arm.

  At her scream, the trooper came splashing to her side. The boy’s hospital gown had snagged on a branch; they had to rip the fabric free. Together they lifted him from the creek and dragged him up the bank, onto the snow. His face was blue. He was not breathing, nor did he have a pulse.

  She began CPR. Three breaths, filling his lungs, then cardiac compressions. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, the sequence automatic and well rehearsed. As she pumped on his chest, blood gushed from his nostril and spilled to the snow. Reestablish circulation, and blood flows to the brain, to the vital organs, but it also means the body bleeds again. She saw a fresh stream of dark red trickle from his torn hand.

  Voices drew near, and then footsteps were running toward them. Claire stepped back, wet and shivering, as the ER personnel lifted Scotty onto a stretcher.

  She followed them back to the building, and into a trauma room exploding with noise and chaos. On the monitor, the cardiac tracing showed a pattern of ventricular fibrillation.

  A nurse hit the defibrillator charge button and slapped paddles on the boy’s chest. Scotty jerked as the electrical current shot through his body.

  “Still in V. fib,” said Dr. McNally. “Resume compressions. Did you get the bretylium in?”

  “Going in now,” a nurse said.

  “Everyone back!” Another shock to the heart.

  “Still in V. fib,” said McNally. He glanced at Claire. “How long was he underwater?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly up to an hour. But he’s young, and that water’s close to freezing.” Even an apparently dead child could sometimes be revived after cold-water immersion. They couldn’t give up yet.

  “Core body temp’s up to thirty-two degrees centigrade,” a nurse said.

  “Maintain CPR and get him warmed up. We might have a chance.”

  “What’s all this blood from the nose?” a nurse asked. “Did he hit his head?”

  A trickle of bright red slid down the boy’s cheek and splattered to the floor.

  “He was bleeding when we pulled him out,” said Claire. “He could have fallen on the rocks.”

  “There’s no scalp or facial trauma.”

  McNally reached for the paddles. “Stand back. Let’s shock him again.”

  Lincoln found her in the doctors’ lounge. She had changed into hospital scrubs, and was huddled on the couch, numbly sipping coffee, when she heard the door swing shut. He moved so quietly she did not realize it was him until he sat down beside her and said, “You should go home, Claire. There’s no reason for you to stay. Please, go home.”

  She blinked and dropped her head in her hands, fighting not to cry. To weep in public over a patient’s death was to show loss of control. A breach of professional facade. Her body went rigid with the struggle to hold back tears.

  “I have to warn you,” he said. “When you leave the building, you’ll find a mob scene downstairs. The TV crews have parked their vans right outside the exit. You can’t walk to the parking lot without running their gauntlet.”

  “I have nothing to say to them.”

  “Then don’t say anything. I’l
l help you get through it, if you want me to.” She felt Lincoln’s hand settle on her arm. A gentle reminder that it was time to leave.

  “I called Scotty’s next of kin,” she said, wiping a hand across her eyes. “There’s only his mother’s cousin. She just came up from Florida, to be with Kitty while she recovers. I told her Scotty was dead, and you know what she said? She said, ‘It’s a blessing.’” She looked at Lincoln and saw disbelief in his eyes. “That’s what she called it, a blessing. Divine punishment.”

  He slipped his arm around her, and she pressed her face to his shoulder. He was silently granting her permission to cry, but she didn’t allow herself that luxury. There was still that gauntlet of reporters to confront, and she would not show them a face swollen with tears.

  He was right beside her as they walked out of the hospital. As soon as the cold air hit them, so did the barrage of questions.

  “Dr. Elliot! Is it true Scotty Braxton was abusing drugs?”

  “—rumors of a teenage murder ring?”

  “Did he really chew off his own thumb?”

  Dazed by the assault of shouts, Claire waded blindly into the gathering, not seeing any of the faces as she pushed through. A cassette recorder was thrust into her face, and she found herself staring at a woman with a lion’s mane of blond hair.

  “Isn’t it true this town has a history of murder going back hundreds of years?”

  “What?”

  “Those old bones they found by the lake. It was a mass murder. And a century before that—”

  Swiftly Lincoln stepped between them. “Get out of here, Damaris.”

  The woman gave a sheepish laugh. “Hey, I’m just doing my job, Chief.”

  “Then go write about alien babies! Leave her alone.”

  A new voice called out: “Dr. Elliot?”

  Claire turned to focus on the man’s face, and she recognized Mitchell Groome. The reporter stepped toward her, his gaze searching hers. “Flanders, Iowa,” he said quietly. “Is it happening here?”

  She shook her head. And said, softly: “I don’t know.”

  13

  Warren Emerson’s lungs hurt from the cold. His outdoor thermometer had registered nine degrees this morning, so he had dressed warmly. He was wearing two shirts and a sweater under his jacket, had pulled on a hat and mittens and wound a scarf around and around his neck, but you could not protect against the cold air you breathed in. It seared his throat and made his chest ache, his lungs spasm. He sounded like a locomotive chugging down the road. Wheeze-cough, wheeze-cough. Not even winter yet, he thought, and already the world has turned to ice. The bare trees were encased in it, their branches glittering and crystalline. He had to walk with care on the slick road, deliberately planting each footstep on the speckled ice, where the county trucks had left their spray of sand. It took twice the effort just to stay on his feet, and by the time he reached the edge of town, the muscles in his legs were trembling.

  The check-out lady at Cobb and Morong’s General Store raised her head as Warren walked into the store. He smiled at her, as he did each week, always in hope that she would return the greeting. He saw her lips start to tilt up in an automatic welcome, then her eyes focused on Warren’s face and her smile froze, not quite formed. She looked away.

  In silent defeat, Warren turned and reached for a shopping cart.

  He followed the same tired routine he always did, his boots shuffling across the creaky floorboards. He stopped in the aisle of canned vegetables and stared at the array of creamed corn and green beans and beets, at the labels with their bright illustrations of summer succulence. Labels lie, he thought. There is no comparison between that can of orange cubes and a carrot pulled fresh and sweet from warm soil. He stood there without reaching for a single item, his thoughts drifting instead to the summer vegetables he had grown and now missed so much. He counted the months until spring, added on the months needed for a new crop to mature. His whole life, it seemed, was spent waiting for winter to pass, or preparing for winter to come. He thought: Enough is enough. I’ve lived too many winters already. I cannot bear to live through another one.

  He left his cart where it was standing, and he walked past the eternally unsmiling cashier and out the door.

  He stood on the sidewalk outside Cobb and Morong’s and gazed across the road, at the newly frozen lake. Its surface was as bright as a polished mirror, flawlessly silvered, unmarred by even a wisp of snow. Skating ice, he thought, remembering the winters of his childhood, his feet gliding, the delicious scrape, scrape of his blades. Soon there would be children skating out there with their hockey sticks and their bright winter jackets, like confetti blowing across the ice.

  But I have had enough of winter. I want no more of it.

  He breathed in and felt, deep in his lungs, the sting of cold air. Sharp. Punishing.

  The cat was back in the window of the five-and-dime on Elm Street. He was cleaning himself, his fur glossy and raven-black in the sunshine. As Claire walked past, he paused from his self-administered bath and stared at her in disdain.

  She glanced up at the sky. It was a hard blue, the kind of sky that precedes a wretchedly cold night. Since Scotty Braxton’s death four days ago, winter had asserted itself with cruel finality. A dull sheen of ice now covered the entire lake, and in the newspaper obituaries this morning, the announcements of funeral arrangements had all concluded with the same phrase: “Burial will be in the spring.” When the ground has thawed. When the earth reawakens.

  Will I still be here in the spring?

  She turned into Tannery Alley. Over a doorway hung a sign, swaying like a tavern placard in the wind:

  Police, Town of Tranquility

  She walked straight into Lincoln’s office, and placed the latest issue of the Weekly Informer on his desk.

  He looked over his glasses at her. “Problem, Claire?”

  “I just came from Monaghan’s Diner, where everyone was talking about that. Damaris Horne’s latest piece of trash.”

  He glanced down at the headline: SMALL TOWN GRIPPED BY EVIL. “It’s just a Boston tabloid,” he said. “No one takes that stuff seriously.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “No.”

  “Everyone at Monaghan’s has. And they’re so scared, they’re talking about keeping loaded guns handy, just in case some devil-possessed teenager tries to steal their precious truck or something.”

  Lincoln groaned and pulled off his glasses. “Oh, hell. This is the last thing I need.”

  “I sewed up three patients with lacerations yesterday. One of them was a nine-year-old who punched his fist through a window. We’re having enough trouble with the kids in this town. Now the adults have gone crazy, too.” She planted both hands on his desk. “Lincoln, you can’t wait until the town meeting to talk to these people. You have to head off the hysteria now. Those Dinosaurs have declared open season on children.”

  “Even imbeciles have a right to free speech.”

  “Then at least gag your own men! Who’s this cop Damaris quotes from your department?” She pointed to the tabloid. “Read it.”

  He looked down at the section she’d indicated.

  What is behind this small town’s epidemic of violence?

  Many here think they know the reason for it, but their explanations are so disturbing to local authorities that few will speak on the record. One local policeman (who wishes to remain unidentified) privately confirmed the harrowing claims made by local citizens: that Satanists have taken hold of Tranquility.

  “We’re well aware there are witches living here,” he said. “Sure, they call themselves ‘wiccans’ and claim they’re innocently worshiping earth spirits or some such. But witchcraft has been linked to devil worship through the ages, and you can’t help but wonder what these so-called earth worshipers are really doing out there in the woods at night.” When asked to elaborate, he said, “We’ve had a number of complaints from citizens who’ve heard drumming in the woods. Some people ha
ve seen lights flickering up on Beech Hill, which is uninhabited forest.”

  Late-night drumming and weird lights in the woods aren’t the only alarming signs that something is amiss in this isolated village. Rumors of Satanic rituals have long been part of local lore. One woman recalls hearing whispered stories from her childhood of secret ceremonies and infants vanishing soon after birth. Others in town recount horrifying childhood tales of ceremonies in which small animals or even children have been offered up in the name of Satan …

  “Which one of your officers is talking to this reporter?” Claire demanded.

  His face suddenly dark with anger, Lincoln shot to his feet and stalked to the doorway. “Floyd! Floyd! Who the hell talked to that Damaris Horne woman?”

  Floyd’s response was slightly tremulous. “Uh … you did, Lincoln. Last week.”

  “Someone else in this department has too. Who was it?”

  “It wasn’t me.” Floyd paused, and added confidentially, “She kinda scares me, that Damaris lady. Gives you the impression she’d like to eat y’up alive.”

  Lincoln returned to his desk and sat down, his anger still evident. “We’ve got six men in this department,” he said to Claire. “I’ll do my best to track it down. But anonymous leaks are next to impossible to trace.”

  “Could she have made up the quotes?”

  “She might. Knowing Damaris.”

  “How well do you know her?”

  “Better than I care to.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, we’re not running off to Rio together,” he snapped back. “She’s a goddamn persistent woman, and she seems to get whatever she goes after.”

  “Including the local police.”

  She saw fresh anger flare up in his eyes. Their gazes held for a moment, and she felt an unexpected spark of attraction. It surprised her, coming as it did at that instant. This morning he was not looking his best. His hair was ruffled, as though he’d been running his hands through it in frustration, and he was more rumpled than usual, his shirt wrinkled, his eyes bleary from lack of sleep. All the stress of his job, of his personal life, was written right there on his face.