Isolation

by CJ Lyons

  “Sounds like we might be finished here sooner than we thought,” the South African said.

  Pocketing the bullet, he walked away, leaving Nora alone with Jim’s corpse.

  She climbed to her feet and headed over to the food cart. Taking a bottle of water, she walked to the rear of the auditorium, the area all the others gave a wide berth to, except the men with guns who stood guard. There were no lights here, so she could stand in the darkness, hidden from sight as she washed Jim’s blood from her hands, letting it drip onto the carpet. Tillman would probably bill her for the cleaning.

  Harris stood talking with Tillman and the South African. The CEO was shaking his head, not arguing, more like a prisoner pleading his case. She edged through the shadows until she was close enough to hear.

  “You have to believe me,” Tillman said, “the woman on the radio is not Lydia Fiore. It was an ER resident, a friend of hers, Gina Freeman.”

  “Maybe this is another wild-goose chase,” the South African said.

  Harris tilted his head, assessing Tillman. “He’s right, why should I believe you?”

  Tillman drew himself up straight, glowering at the idea that anyone would not take the CEO of Angels seriously. “It’s my job to protect everyone in this hospital. I don’t want Dr. Freeman’s poor judgment or half-baked attempt at playing a hero to jeopardize the rest of us.”

  Harris frowned and raised his radio. “Wendell, what’s the name of the lady you found in the elevator?”

  “LaRose Freeman. I’ve got her and the doc cooling their heels down here in the morgue.”

  “That’s her mother,” Tillman said excitedly. “Gina Freeman’s mother. See, I was telling the truth.”

  The South African ignored him. “Want me to send a man to finish them all?”

  “No,” Harris said. “Gina Freeman knew about the evidence before I said anything—she might know something valuable.” He looked down at his radio. “Tell Marcus to join Wendell and bring the mother to me as soon as he’s finished with the generator. And pass the word on to everyone to switch to channel two for all future communications.”

  “Will do.” The South African vanished through the door.

  Nora shook her head, too weary to even feel anger at Tillman for betraying Gina. Clearly, Gina had had a plan, but he’d never given it a chance to work. So typical of the CEO who didn’t trust anyone—except himself--especially if they had two X chromosomes. The worst thing was that there was nothing Nora could do to help Gina or LaRose or anyone.

  She sidled back to the food carts, tossing her empty, bloody water bottle into the garbage can. Every step seemed to require all her energy and concentration. Prioritize, Nora thought as she tried to block out the sounds of people sobbing. She needed to focus, to see this as a mass-casualty response, a disaster drill. Follow the rules of triage.

  Red tag: patients with life-threatening conditions. But other than the imminent death facing them all from the men with machine guns, her patients were taken care of.

  Okay, yellow tag: less severe injuries with potential to become life-threatening. That would be everyone—how long before someone broke and did something that angered the guards or provoked them into shooting randomly into the crowd? After witnessing Jim’s murder, surely most people here realized that there was no way the hostage takers were going to release them. Nora had to find a way to both keep them calm and find a way out.

  Emma Grey approached, her great-grandson Deon gripping her hand. “I’m so very sorry about your colleague. What can we do?”

  Under different circumstances, Nora would have kissed the woman. “We need to keep everyone calm. How about if you and Deon gather the children and their parents together back in that far corner?” Nora pointed to the safest area in the auditorium, the corner in front of the stage farthest away from the main doors. “Maybe you could tell them a story?”

  “I’ve got my books,” Deon chimed in, eager to help.

  “You’re my hero, Deon.” Nora tried to hug him, but he squirmed away—not even the threat of armed men would allow a ten-year-old to be hugged in front of all these strangers.

  Emma began to walk between the rows of patients and visitors, earnestly talking to the ones with children. Deon broke away from her and came jogging back to Nora.

  “Maybe this can help catch the bad guys,” he whispered to her, pulling a small camera from his pocket. “We could sneak up and take their pictures?”

  Nora knelt down in front of him. “Great idea, Deon. I want you to keep this handy but don’t use it until I tell you to, okay?” Last thing she wanted was for him to try to play cops and robbers.

  He nodded gravely, squaring his shoulders under his new responsibility. “Yes, Miss Nora.”

  “Go on, help your Gram, now.” Deon ran back to Emma and helped her herd a group of kids and their parents over to the far corner. One of the nursing techs set up a battery-run work light for them. Slowly, even the adults who didn’t have kids drifted over to join them.

  Nora watched Harris. He had shifted position to watch the group but only smiled and nodded when Deon pulled out one of his books. Two other men remained at the doors but didn’t seem on alert. In fact, they appeared bored, chatting together.

  Obviously a bunch of patients and their caretakers didn’t pose a significant threat to the armed men. Good, that was exactly how Nora wanted them to feel.

  Because as Deon began reading, a glimmer of an escape plan had started to form in her mind. Tricky, but it might work.

  She trudged up the steps to the stage and drew up a dose of morphine for Mark. He was slumped against the mattress, head turned away from the rest of the auditorium. Melissa had given him a sponge bath, washing away most of the blood, and had found a clean scrub top for him.

  “It’s my fault,” he muttered. “I should have done something—”

  She gave him the morphine. “Nonsense. What could you have done?”

  “Something. Anything. It’s my ER, my people, my responsibility . . .” His voice slurred into silence as he fell asleep.

  She handed Melissa the syringe. “Make sure he stays comfortable.”

  Melissa nodded, eyes downcast, too frightened or tired to even look up. She’d given up.

  Nora wanted to give up as well. It would be so easy, so effortless. But she couldn’t. Not when everyone else depended on her. Not while Seth was waiting for her to come home to him. She was glad he wasn’t here—at least she didn’t have to worry about him. But she couldn’t help but see the warped karma in this happening now, on New Year’s Eve—three years ago on another New Year’s Eve, she’d been kidnapped and raped, almost killed. Now here she was again, facing more killers.

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Felt most like crying, especially at the image of Seth’s face as she imagined them telling him she was dead. She cursed every wasted second that they could have been together and hadn’t. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.

  Laughter came from the area where Deon was reading to the kids. God, she would have loved to have kids of her own one day. Seth would have made a wonderful father. Sucking in her breath, she gave herself a mental shake. She’d seen it too many times in the ER—give up too soon on a patient and they were as good as dead.

  And she sure as hell wasn’t dead yet. There had to be a way out of this. Seth’s face filled her mind. There just had to be.

  She thought hard. She had an idea; it was risky, but better than nothing.

  “Do we have any ketamine?”

  “I think so, why?”

  “Draw me up as much ketamine and Versed as you can find into a syringe. Try to look casual.”

  Melissa hesitated, glancing past Nora toward the front of the auditorium where the guards paced.

  “I’ll cover you,” Nora assured her. She stood and moved to grab an IV pump and bag of fluid to set up, hooking it up to Mark’s IV. While Nora drew the guards’ attention, Melissa filled a syringe at the medication cart. “Got th
at Ancef ready yet?” Nora called to her, as if impatient. “You know he should have gotten it an hour ago.”

  “I’m coming.” Melissa almost dropped the syringe as she recapped it, but thankfully her back was to the guards. “Here you go.” More quietly she asked, “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I figured our friends might be thirsty, so I thought maybe I’d fix them a little Special K–Vitamin V cocktail.” Nora pretended to inject the syringe into Mark’s IV bag. “How much is there?”

  “Enough to put a horse to sleep. Should be more than enough for two guards. But be careful,” Melissa urged.

  Nora pocketed the syringe and climbed back down the steps. At the base of the stage, gathered in front of the black velvet curtains, the children were whining, fussy with exhaustion and fear, and their families weren’t much better.

  She had to keep them safe. If she’d only kept Jim away from Harris—

  No room for guilt, not now. Not now that she was the one in charge, eighty-six—no, now it was down to eighty-five—lives depending on her.

  31

  “Join us in the auditorium, Dr. Freeman,” Harris’s voice replaced Tillman’s. “Or I’ll bring your mother here instead and have an extremely unpleasant conversation with her.” The radio went dead before she had a chance to answer.

  Not that Gina had an answer.

  Fear froze her in place. She squeezed her eyes shut, reverting to a childhood habit of making a wish and hoping the world would be changed by the time she opened them.

  She opened them. Shit out of luck. As always.

  The only question was, should she give herself up to Harris in the auditorium or try to help LaRose and Ken down here? Could she negotiate for LaRose’s treatment in exchange?

  Shaking herself—she was wasting precious time—she opened the hatch again. No matter what, she couldn’t stay up here hiding. She had to do something.

  She turned the Maglite off, pocketed it and the radio, and began to climb down through the hatch. There wasn’t really anything to hang on to for leverage, not without risking catching her fingers in the housing surrounding the cables, so she lay down on her belly and hung her legs through the opening, letting gravity do the work. She tried her best to control her fall but ended up flailing for a handhold, then hurtling through the hatch, landing on her butt and back.

  The landing made a thud but it wasn’t very loud. Hurt like hell though. It took her a second to catch her breath—it felt like she’d left it somewhere up in the elevator shaft—before she could roll over and climb up to her knees.

  “I’m waiting.” Harris’s voice came over the radio in a singsong tone that made Gina want to stick out her tongue. She grabbed hold of the elevator’s railing and hauled herself to her feet. There was no way she’d make it to the auditorium in time.

  She raised the radio, wondering what to say that could stall him. She’d already played all her cards. So she settled on silence. Let him be the one watching and waiting and wondering.

  She staggered out of the elevator. The basement level was a labyrinth of tunnels containing the hospital’s infrastructure. Even in the best of times they were dark and dingy, cement-block walls echoing, low ceilings making anyone lost in them feel like a lab rat trapped in a maze. But she knew her way around, despite the dark—that might be her one advantage.

  Which way? All she’d accomplish by going to the auditorium would be to get herself killed, and maybe the others as well if Harris was angry at her deception. Who was she kidding, he was livid. A furious sociopath armed with machine guns in a crowd of people? Recipe for disaster.

  And what if Harris made good on his threat to burn the hospital down? The thought brought Gina up short. She pressed one palm against the wall. It felt cold to the touch. Helped clear her muddled thoughts. A cigarette would have done the job better.

  No, the best thing she could do was try to save LaRose and Ken. They could escape through the tunnels to the research tower, find a place to hide, maybe figure out a way to find Jerry.

  She turned toward the morgue, where the man on the radio had said he was holding LaRose and Ken. It felt good to have a plan, however vague it might be. She slowly moved a few steps, pressing her body against the wall so she wouldn’t get disoriented and could count the intersections. She couldn’t risk using the light.

  One thing at a time. She had no clue what Harris was planning or how to stop him; her fiasco pretending to be Lydia had proved that. Stick to what you’re good at, she decided. Running and hiding.

  Once they had the guard tied up and locked inside the pantry, Amanda had waited with Jerry while Lucas used his portable otoscope as illumination while he searched for another light source. The high-intensity beam danced around the kitchen, accompanied by the muffled sounds of cabinets and drawers opening and closing.

  Jerry sat on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest, body sagged forward. He looked haggard, eyes hollowed out, but his gaze never wavered, drilling through the wall to the auditorium. After hearing Gina’s attempt to impersonate Lydia and Tillman’s betrayal of her, he was convinced she was in there with the others.

  “Gina,” he said when Amanda joined him, mirroring his posture—it was the best way to stay warm on the cold linoleum. “All my fault.”

  “No, Jerry. You can’t think like that.”

  The more exhausted he was, the more muddled his thoughts and speech became. “Yes. My fault. Shooter was after me. And now.” Finally his gaze dropped. Defeated. He slid the Beretta from his pocket. “Useless. Worse than useless.”

  Amanda gripped his arm. “Never. Gina would have died then if it weren’t for you. Think of all the lives you’ve saved.”

  He dropped the gun to the floor. Amanda jumped in alarm at the clatter. She smacked her hand down over the gun and returned it to Jerry’s hand, folding it in his palm. “You keep this.”

  “Not a cop.” He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his free hand. “Not anymore.” Jerry’s voice was ragged, torn with misery. “Head hurts. Everything hurts.”

  “Hang on, Jerry. We’ll get Gina back, just you hang on, okay?” Tears closed in on Amanda, stinging her eyes. If Jerry, the strongest man she knew, couldn’t handle this, how the hell was she going to?

  She knew he’d changed—a bullet rattling around your frontal cortex would do that; he’d never be the same again—but he’d showed such strength the last few weeks, such passion for life, as if sheer determination could help him recover . . . “Don’t give up on me, not now.”

  Her words were so low she barely heard them herself—less than a whisper, a breath of prayer.

  Jerry heard her, though, raising his head from where he’d laid it on his knees and turning to look at her. “I’ll try.”

  What more could she ask of any of them?

  “Any advice?” she asked, nodding at the pantry door behind which the guard waited. “On how to get him talking?”

  Jerry rested his chin on his knees, thinking. “Stay off balance.”

  Off balance? Yeah, that shouldn’t be hard—just look at her. Raggedy Ann in a ball gown; the man would laugh so hard, he’d never be able to tell them anything. Then Amanda remembered the look on their prisoner’s face when she’d tackled him and held him at knifepoint—startled, stunned, but more than surprised, he’d been scared. Of her. Of what she’d done. Of what she was capable of.

  She nodded. “Good advice. I can do that.”

  “Got it,” Lucas called out from the corner. He returned to them and squatted down. “Cans of fuel for chafing dishes.” He pulled the top off one of the cans, used an electric match to light it, and a blue flame crinkled across the surface of the gel.

  “Perfect.” Amanda handed her gun to Jerry. No sense risking the prisoner taking it. She stood, holding her fillet knife in one hand. “Lucas, you go in, remove the tape from his mouth, and set the Sterno down on the floor. Then I’ll make my entrance.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Lucas asked. “Maybe I
should—”

  The thought of gentle Lucas intimidating anyone made Amanda smile. She couldn’t help herself. The man literally wouldn’t hurt a fly—he’d sit and freeze in the cold, leaving a window open until a stray fly or moth made its escape.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  The blue glow from the Sterno edged his scowl, turning it murderous. Without a word, Lucas wrenched open the door to the pantry and stalked inside. Amanda watched from the doorway. He set the light down near the door, the shadows dancing around the large room, reflecting from the rows of stainless steel shelves. Then he took two steps over to where the man sat, bound with tape to one of the vertical shelf supports.

  Lucas stood there for a long moment, staring down at the man, whose eyes grew wide. Lucas abruptly scissored a hand down, ripping off the tape around the man’s mouth. The man made a small sound of pain.

  “Quiet!” Lucas commanded in a low and deadly voice that made the hairs on the back of Amanda’s neck rise in alarm. She’d never seen him like this. “You will answer her questions. If not—” His pause hung in the air like a guillotine. “I can’t be held responsible for what she does.”

  He pivoted on his heel and walked away, giving Amanda a wink as he passed. It took everything she had to swallow her laughter—which played in her favor since the effort twisted her face into a grimace that made the man on the floor flinch. She stood above him, light at her side, just close enough that he could easily read her expression. And see the blue flames reflected in the oh-so-shiny-and-sharp blade of her fillet knife.

  “We need to talk,” she said in a low, conversational tone. “I’ll go first.”

  He nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed again and again.

  “You might have figured it out already,” she began, amping up her Lowcountry accent, “but I’m not from around these parts. See, I come from a little town on the coast of South Carolina. And you know how my family makes their living?”