“So we’re all going to die, no matter what,” Carolyn moaned.
Not if the Secret Service was warned, David thought. Maybe they could avert the disaster. But first they’d have to find the explosive device. Where would the terrorists place a bomb to implode the entire Pavilion? Not on the Pavilion itself. They’d probably plant it in the crawlspace between the ninth and tenth floors. And there might well be more than one bomb. Somehow they had to be disarmed. But how?
Aliev barked a string of orders to the balding terrorist, then shoved him over to David and Carolyn.
To David, Aliev said, “Fix your wound and be quick about it.”
They moved down the corridor, the balding terrorist one step in back of them and muttering to himself in Chechen. The smell of feces and vomit permeated the air. Someone close by was throwing up noisily. David ignored the odors and sounds, still concentrating on warning the Secret Service. If the detonators weren’t deactivated, they’d all die.
They came to the nurses’ station, where Jarrin Smith and the Russian security agent were being guarded by a terrorist standing near the elevator. David noticed the bloodstained towel on Jarrin’s upper arm. Then his gaze went to the large telephone on the desk in front of the ward clerk.
David wondered why the terrorists hadn’t ripped out the phone, as they’d done all the others. Because they wanted a secure landline in case their cell phones malfunctioned, he reasoned. The Chechen guard nudged him on with the barrel of his Uzi, but David held up a hand, as if to request a brief stop, then began rearranging the bandage on his thigh. But his peripheral vision stayed on the telephone. During his entire time in the crawlspace he hadn’t heard the phone ring. Not once. But there should have been an avalanche of incoming calls since the news was now out that the President was a patient on the Beaumont Pavilion. Why no calls?
Then the answer came to him. Hospital officials would have anticipated the deluge and had all the incoming patient-related calls diverted to an information officer. And what about outgoing calls? Every word would be monitored by the Secret Service! Every word!
David rapidly turned to Carolyn and said in a whisper, “When I tell you, go into the treatment room and get a roll of sterile gauze and some tape. And take your time getting them.”
Carolyn nervously licked her lips. “Okay.”
David turned to the balding terrorist and motioned to the wound, then to the treatment room.
The guard stared back quizzically, not understanding.
“Go,” David said to Carolyn, then knelt down to examine Jarrin’s wound. It was superficial and mostly clotted over. Moving even closer to Jarrin, he whispered, “When you see the chance, dislodge the receiver off its hook, but make sure it stays on the phone. Then, with your elbow, punch 0 for the hospital operator. Eventually she’ll answer. When you hear her voice, tell her there’s a bomb in the crawlspace between the ninth and tenth floors.”
Jarrin’s brow went up. “What!”
“Just do it,” David urged.
Carolyn returned with a roll of gauze and handed it to David. He carefully dressed Jarrin’s wound and repeated, “Bomb in the crawlspace between the ninth and tenth floors!” Then he turned to the Russian security agent, Yudenko, and asked quietly, “Do you speak English?”
The Russian agent nodded.
“And you heard what I just said?”
The agent nodded again.
“After I leave, do something to divert the guard’s attention so Jarrin can dislodge the phone.”
The balding terrorist yelled impatiently at David and gestured with his Uzi. “Move! And do it now!”
So the little bastard speaks good English after all, David thought to himself. “We’re almost done,” he said and quickly turned to Carolyn. “Tape the dressing in place and hurry it up.”
Carolyn tore off a strip of tape and applied it firmly to the edge of the bandage, then asked the ward clerk, “Is this causing you any pain?”
“No,” Jarrin replied before lowering his voice to a whisper so the terrorist couldn’t hear him. “They found the loosened metal spike in the elevator door and drove it back in.”
Carolyn swallowed anxiously and whispered back, “Did they see me pry it up?”
“I don’t know, but they sure discovered it real fast,” Jarrin answered.
“Oh, shit,” Carolyn muttered under her breath.
The balding terrorist poked her ribs with his Uzi. “Move now or I shoot!”
As they walked down the corridor, Carolyn was still wondering if the terrorists had seen her loosening the metal spike. Probably not, she reasoned. If they had, she’d now be dead. Carolyn took a deep breath and calmed her nerves. Be smart, she told herself. Don’t take risky chances.
They entered the treatment room and switched on the bright overhead lights. David sat on the side of the operating table and ripped his pants leg open, exposing the entire wound. It was a deep gash with ragged edges that had been torn away by the passing bullet. Much of the wound was located laterally, and was difficult for David to see.
“I’m going to have trouble putting the sutures in,” he said.
“I can do it,” Carolyn volunteered, grabbing a metal stool and pulling it over. “How would you like it cleaned?”
“Flush it with sterile saline, then pour some alcohol and peroxide into it,” David instructed.
The guard stood outside the door with his back to them, but David was sure the man had his ears pricked, listening to every word.
“This is going to sting,” Carolyn warned.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Carolyn poured a liter of saline into the wound, cleaning out the old blood and debris as well as the dirt on the margins. Then she began flooding the area with the mixture of alcohol and peroxide. “Here comes the sting.”
David looked over to the door, then dropped his head and lowered his voice, “Be careful what you say. The guard understands English and he’s listening.”
“I know,” Carolyn said quietly. “What was the purpose of telling me to be slow in getting the gauze from the treatment room?”
“I needed time to tell Jarrin to dislodge the receiver on the phone and attempt to reach the hospital operator,” David answered in a low voice. “And tell her about the bomb.”
“He’s not going to be able to do that with the guard watching him.”
“He might, if the Russian security agent can cause a diversion.”
“Do you really think they can do it?”
“Probably not. But it’s worth a try.”
The guard at the door turned to study them. David feigned a grimace at the fluid in his wound, then murmured to Carolyn, “Get busy with the wound. Our guard is watching us.”
Carolyn sponged away clotted blood and waited for the guard to look away before she spoke again. “My God, you had me worried! I thought you were dead.”
“I came pretty close,” David said, his voice very low. “Those bullets kept whizzing by my head. One was so near to my nose I swear I could smell it.”
Carolyn quickly peeked over to the guard, then came back to David. “Was all that blood dripping down from the ceiling yours?”
David shook his head. “The first batch came from the agent. I think he caught one in the neck.”
“Or head,” Carolyn added softly.
“Or in his head,” David agreed. “Whatever the source, he bled enough to give away his position and mine.”
Carolyn poured more peroxide into the wound. “Are they going to try another rescue?”
“Probably,” David said, hoping against hope that his message about the Mogadishu operation got through to the Secret Service. “And soon, I think.”
“What are our chances?”
“Not good.”
C
arolyn raised her voice intentionally and spoke in a professional tone. “There’s one area that’s bleeding fairly briskly.”
“Is the blood red or maroon?” David asked.
“Maroon.”
“Then it’s coming from a vein. See if you can put an absorbable suture around it.”
Carolyn opened up a suture kit and placed it on the bed. After donning a pair of surgical gloves, she spread the wound apart to better expose the bleeding site. “Do you want some Xylocaine?”
David shook his head. “Just do it.”
Carolyn expertly ran a suture around the bleeding vein and tied it off. The blood flow stopped immediately. “How would you like me to handle the rest of the wound?”
“Use absorbable sutures on the deeper layers and metal clips on the skin.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to inject some Xylocaine?”
David stared straight ahead without answering. He blanked out the discomfort by thinking about Somalia and the helicopter crash, the pain in his jaw so terrible he wanted to scream and cry and tear his hair out. But he bore the awful pain in silence as they fought their way back to the base. And later, aboard a destroyer, they wouldn’t let him look at himself in the mirror. The disfigurement was that bad. And that was only the beginning of the nightmare.
“All done,” Carolyn said, painting the area with an antiseptic before covering the wound with a thick gauze.
“You’re pretty good at this,” David complimented.
“Six years as an ER nurse does wonders for one’s ability to suture.”
“At University’s ER?”
“No. At L.A. County.”
“What made you come over here?”
“It was closer to home,” she said without going into details.
Carolyn used an alcohol sponge to clean off the blood and dirt high above the sutured wound. There she noticed another large wound at least two inches long, but this one was old and scarred over. She ran her finger along it and felt some nodularity deep within. “God! Where did this one come from?”
“From long ago,” David said vaguely.
“Big secret, eh?”
David hesitated before muttering, “I was in the military.”
Carolyn stared up at him. “Is that how you got the scar on your chin, too?”
David stood and stretched his leg. It hurt like hell, but no blood came through the dressing. He gave Carolyn a long look. He did not want to talk about his past. Moreover, he was raised with the dictum that real men didn’t discuss their pain. They just endured it. Yet he found himself talking about the events that he had hidden away almost twenty years ago.
“It was a helicopter crash in Somalia,” he was saying. “The enemy opened up just as we were taking off. The aircraft caught on fire and we had to jump. I hit the tarmac and shattered my anterior jaw, among other things.”
Carolyn studied his chin and the old scar that ran along it. “They did a pretty fair job of putting it back together.”
“It’s not my chin you see,” David told her. “It’s a plastic one. I had some good people looking after me.”
For a moment Carolyn saw sadness in David’s eyes, but it quickly vanished. “When did all this—?”
David raised a hand, stopping the questions. “Enough about me,” he said, walking around the treatment room and testing his leg. “Let’s talk about you. How did you get to be so good with your hands?”
“I learned to suture in the ER at—”
“No, no,” David interrupted. “Not the suturing. I was referring to the way you removed the clogged filter from the ceiling duct, and the way you repaired the wire that was giving off sparks in the crawlspace. How did you learn to do those things?”
“Out of necessity,” Carolyn answered quietly. “My dad died when I was a teenager, so my mom and I had to fend for ourselves. She was a schoolteacher and didn’t make much, so we had to learn how to fix things around the house. She was all thumbs, and I ended up doing most of the work.” Carolyn looked away and sighed sadly. “Now I have to do everything for her. My mother used to be so bright and active, but all that’s changed. Now she’s slowly withering away with Alzheimer’s. Sometimes she recognizes me and smiles. Other times, she just stares out into space.”
“A nightmare,” David remarked quietly.
“And it’ll be even more of a nightmare if I don’t make it out of here,” Carolyn went on. “Because I’m the only person left in the family to look after her.”
“We’ve all got people on the outside to worry about,” David said in a somber voice, thinking about Kit, his concern for her almost unbearable. What will my little girl do without me? he wondered miserably. Who will be there to protect her? David thought briefly about the safeguards he had provided for his daughter. There was a two-million-dollar life insurance policy, and Juanita had agreed to serve as her legal guardian. But Kit would still be parentless, all alone in many ways, and scarred for the rest of her life.
Carolyn tried to read his expression and thought she saw a hint of sadness. “Are your parents still alive?”
“Both gone,” David said, coming out of his reverie. “Both killed by terrorists.”
Carolyn’s brow went up. “What!”
David nodded slowly. “My father was a military attaché at the American embassy in Nairobi. My mother was the program director. They were out on a Sunday drive when terrorists blew up their car and killed them instantly. I was a junior in college at the time.”
“You must have been shattered.”
David nodded again. “And angry as hell. I applied for Special Forces the day after I was notified of their deaths.”
“Do you have any family at all?” Carolyn asked.
“A young daughter,” David replied. “And she has nobody in the world but me.”
“How old is she?”
“Eleven.”
Carolyn groaned sympathetically.
“Yeah,” David said, his face closing. Enough small talk, he told himself and tested his leg again. He was still limping, but not as much. And the pain seemed less severe.
“How’s the leg?”
“Good,” David said, glancing down and seeing no blood on the dressing. “Let’s hope your sutures hold.”
“They will,” Carolyn assured him. “But it still might be best to wrap an elastic bandage around the dressing.”
David walked over to the supply cabinet and opened the top drawer. On one side were elastic wraps, on the other sterile instruments wrapped in cellophane. There were neat stacks of forceps and hemostats and scalpels. David’s eyes focused in on the scalpels. He casually turned to Carolyn. “Could you step over here for a moment?”
Carolyn came to his side. “What?”
In a barely audible voice, David told her, “I want you to come in closer and block the guard’s line of vision.”
“No problem,” Carolyn said quietly, her body now touching his. She felt the electricity running through her, and knew he sensed it too. They stayed close together, neither wanting to move apart.
“Sometimes, David,” she murmured ever so softly, “you take my breath away.”
“You’ve been doing that to me for a long time,” David murmured back.
“Jesus! What a hell of a time for us to find out!”
“Some people never do.”
Carolyn sighed sadly and rested her head on his shoulder. “‘Better late than never’ sounds kind of empty right now.”
“Don’t give up yet,” David encouraged, touching her left hand. “Slowly drop this arm so the guard can’t see the drawer.” He waited for her to perform the maneuver and added, “Perfect! Hold it there.”
With a single motion, David reached for the scalpel and tried to slip it between the tongue blades a
nd pocket flashlight in the upper pocket of his white coat. But something was blocking its way.
The terrorist at the doorway was suddenly suspicious of what they were doing at the cabinet. He moved in for a closer look.
“Start talking about the patients,” David whispered out of the corner of his mouth. He turned away from the guard and let the scalpel fall into the side pocket of his coat.
“I see where you had to start bretylium in Dr. Warren.”
Carolyn nodded. “He began having a lot of PVCs again, despite the lidocaine.”
“But he still has a normal sinus rhythm. Right?”
Carolyn nodded once more. “Yeah, but I have the awful feeling he’s going to die on us. His color is really bad.”
The guard studied them briefly, then grunted to himself and went back into the doorway. But he stood sideways, so he could keep an eye on them.
“Warren couldn’t look any worse than Marci,” David said. “Her pericardial effusion is getting bigger and bigger, and it’ll soon reduce her cardiac output to zilch.”
“Is there any way to remove some of that fluid?” Carolyn asked.
“Not without a pericardiocentesis,” David replied. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pericardiocentesis tray on the Pavilion, would you?”
Carolyn shook her head. “We’ve had no need for one.”
“Until now.”
They abruptly jerked their heads around, both startled by the sounds of a loud commotion in the corridor. Someone was frantically crying out in Chechen. Then there were return shouts and yells. The terrorist at the door turned and pointed his Uzi at them.
“Stay!” he bellowed.
Carolyn moved in closer to David and whispered, “Do you think it’s a rescue?”
“I don’t know,” David whispered back. “But if you hear shots or an explosion, drop to the floor behind the operating table.”
Now they heard footsteps in the corridor, running toward them. And more yelling.
David took Carolyn’s hand and said, “Be ready to hit the deck.”
Suddenly Aliev appeared in the doorway and waved his weapon at them. “You had better come quickly. Your President is bleeding to death.”
Patient One: A Novel Page 20