“And you’re a former coma patient,” she retorted. “I recognize you. You suddenly checked out of the center. Dr. McGavin said you were delusional when you awoke. That you’d convinced yourself you were a neuroscientist who’d died in an accident.”
“Jake Greyland,” he said with a nod, “and I actually am him.”
“No, you’re not. I knew Greyland. Not well, but well enough to know that you’re not him.”
“When we first met, you asked me if I was a doctor at ABTC,” Jake told her. “I said I was too busy trying to get some actual work done to get my M.D. You said something like: ‘If M.D. stands for: Major Dipstick you’re already there.’”
She snorted. “I used a stronger word than dipstick, but I remember.”
“Ethan McGavin implanted my mind into the brain of this former patient. If we don’t get Chelsea Bothwell out of that place right now, she’s going to awaken as Jennifer McGavin.”
“That’s just . . . .” Lisa shook her head, looking terrified as she stepped toward the driver’s side of the car, no longer blocking their exit. “What if you’re wrong? You could kill Chelsea if you medically force her out of the coma.”
“He’s not wrong,” Ellie said. She slid over and rolled down the back window nearest to where Lisa Stein was standing. “The McGavins killed my entire family. All just so they could fool the police. All just so they could run an experiment on me and make sure the mind-transfer worked. I told Natalie that yesterday afternoon. The McGavins are evil. We have to stop them. Please, let us stop them.”
Lisa Stein opened the door to the back seat. Ellie slid as far away from the woman as she could, thinking she was going to attempt to drag her out of the car.
To Ellie’s surprise, Natalie’s mother got into the back seat. “You’re going to need a nurse to help you.” She fastened her seatbelt. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 38
Jake parked in a visitor’s parking space by the brain-trauma wing. Ellie was nauseated with fear. Feeling crazed, she thought: Good thing the car is parked legally during the major crimes we’re committing.
Daniel rotated in his seat. “Ready?” he asked, his gaze shifting from Ellie to Lisa Stein.
“You’re sure the gun’s safety will be on?” Ellie asked, unwilling to state the obvious—that she didn’t want any risk of Daniel’s gun going off. Now that Lisa had joined them, the new plan was that they would get past the security guard by faking a hostage situation—Daniel would brandish his actual weapon at the security guard in the lobby while Jake would grasp his cellphone in his jacket pocket as if he was holding Lisa and Ellie at gunpoint. To reinforce the illusion, he had an app on his phone that made a metallic sound similar to a gun being cocked.
Daniel rotated in his seat and showed them his gun, pointing it toward the ceiling of the car. “Here’s the safety,” he said. He clicked a latch behind the trigger. “This puts it off so it can be fired.” He clicked the latch a second time. “This activates the safety so the trigger can’t be pulled.”
“Okay.” Ellie throat was so dry that the word came out as a croak. She was terrified at the realization that Daniel was showing the three of them how to fire his gun in the event that one of them needed to actually shoot someone.
Lisa grunted. “At least your phony hostages don’t have to fake being scared out of our wits.”
“The guard will call nine-one-one, but that’s fine,” Jake said. “We just need to buy enough time to wake Chelsea from her coma. The paramedics can take her to a real hospital, where she’ll be safe.”
They emerged from Jake’s car, the four of them already in their respective roles for the sake of the security cameras in the parking lot. Ellie’s heart sank at the sight of the Mercedes near the coma-wing entrance. “Ethan’s car is here. How are we going to convince the paramedics to listen to us, not to him?”
“We’ll think of something,” Jake retorted. “I’ll sedate Ethan.” He grabbed the roll of duct tape they’d brought, in case they needed to subdue the security guard and block the camera lenses.
“Give me your gun, Daniel.”
“No way! That wasn’t our agreement!”
“I changed my mind about our plan,” Jake stated. “I’m making this look like all three of you are hostages.”
“That won’t work!” Daniel said.
“It will! I need to take the rap for this. I’m the one who’s supposedly delusional after the coma. I’ll get off.”
“No way, man,” Daniel said, gesturing a little toward the security camera. “It’s too late. We’re being recorded. Let’s move it.”
Ellie and Lisa walked ahead of them as if responding to Daniel motioning with his weapon. Ellie pulled open the door.
The young-looking guard’s attention seemed to be glued to a magazine as they entered the building. He looked up, then stared at them with wide eyes.
“Don’t signal any alarms,” Lisa said to him. “They’ll shoot us.”
Daniel pointed his gun at the guard. “Come out from behind the desk. And keep your hands where I can see them.”
The guard rose, all color drained from his face.
“Take the women through,” Daniel said to Jake. “I’ll deal with this guy.” Jake handed him the roll of duct tape.
Lisa used her pass key to open the lock. Lisa rushed Ellie and Jake through the door. They faced a second heavy door. Behind them Daniel said, “Nurse Stein, toss me your badge.”
She swiped her badge to open the second door, then sent her badge skittering behind them through the door into the lobby. The pair of heavy doors clanged shut behind them.
Ellie was hit by a wave of déjà vu as the ammonia-laden hospital scents assaulted her senses. She felt woozy. It dawned on her too late that seeing coma patients was too raw for her.
For a moment she had the sensation of being Alexis Bixby and had an out-of-body flashback of witnessing Alexis on a gurney being wheeled into the hospital.
“Elizabeth!” Jake cried. “Are you okay?”
She was startled by the genuine-looking concern in his eyes.
“Yeah. Fine.” She willed herself to snap back into the current moment—as dreadful as the current moment was.
“Hurry,” Jake said, that familiar disinterested tone back in his voice, as if he, too, had fallen back into his lot in life—detached and authoritative. “We’ve got to shut off the pentobarbital that the McGavins are pumping into Chelsea and give her an injection of epinephrine. That will get her awake and lucid as fast as possible.”
They strode past a pair of nurses or nurse assistants who stared at the three of them in surprise. Lisa gestured at Ellie and Jake and said, “These are friends of mine. It turns out they know a patient of ours.”
“But you can’t just—”
“I know. I’m breaking the rules. Don’t tell on me.”
With Jake and Ellie in tow, Lisa led them around a corner and into a patient’s room. The patient was lying flat on her back. Her features were slack, her skin pale and waxy-looking, an oxygen-tube in her nose and needles in her arm and hooked to various machines. Ellie could see that Chelsea Bothwell was a pretty girl with strawberry-blond hair.
“Check the base of her skull for a circle of abrasions,” Ellie said.
“I know,” Jake fired back. He rolled Chelsea onto her side and ran his fingertips over her scalp along the base of her head. “No abrasions. She’s fine,” Jake said. “We got here in time. McGavin hasn’t wiped out her memories yet. We’d better move her into an op room on the second floor as a precaution . . . in case she has a seizure. Nurse Stein, grab a crash cart. Ellie, watch the door.”
#
Daniel joined them by the time they were wheeling Chelsea into the elevator. “I barely secured the guard’s arms,” he said. “It’ll probably take him a minute to work free, sound the alarm, and call nine-one-one.”
“At least they haven’t shut off power to the elevators,” Jake said.
Chelsea still wasn’t s
tirring, although Lisa had disconnected her IV, shutting off the barbiturate. As the doors started to open to the second floor, Jake shifted to the other side of the gurney, bumping into Daniel in the process.
“Stay out of the way, Daniel,” Jake snapped. “You and Lisa push Chelsea. I’ll run ahead and get a room ready.”
“I should be the one to administer the injection,” Lisa said to Jake. “You’re not licensed.”
“Fine,” Jake said. “Though, when anyone asks, it’s me, not you, who’s responsible. I’m the one who gave the orders and insisted I was a doctor.”
Ellie trailed Jake, trotting to keep up with him and leading the way for the gurney. They entered a room. She decided that she, like Daniel, should stay out of the way. She stationed herself in a far corner.
Daniel and Jake moved Chelsea onto the operating table. Jake was giving Lisa instructions, seemingly completely knowledgeable of the procedure, despite his suboptimal training. Ellie couldn’t listen. She felt as if her chest was too constricted to breathe. Ellie sucked in a deep breath, watching as Lisa gave Chelsea’s an injection.
Almost instantly, Chelsea gasped and her eyes flew wide. Ellie, too, gasped at the sight. Chelsea was awake! They were going to be able to save her life!
Just then, an alarm went off in the hallway.
The doors burst open. Ethan McGavin charged into the room. “Stop what you’re doing!” he shouted.
A step behind Ethan, a second man entered and brushed past Ethan. It was John Deere. He was hatless, but Ellie could only focus on the gun in Deere’s hand.
He aimed the gun at Jake.
Chapter 39
Daniel tried to shove Ellie behind him as he reached into his jacket pocket. “Shit!”
“Ellie! Stein!” Jake cried. Get down!”
Jake aimed a gun at Deere and edged away from the operating table, toward an empty corner of the room.
Shocked, Ellie gasped. Jake had taken the gun from Daniel’s bomber’s jacket. Now he was trying to keep the line of fire away from the others.
Instead of getting down on the floor, Lisa Stein hoisted herself onto the operating table, straddling Chelsea so that her torso was shielding Chelsea’s.
Still trying to keep Ellie behind him, Daniel tried to push Ellie to the floor. Ellie fended off Daniel’s grasp. If this was the end, she wanted the first fatal bullet to hit her.
Deere kept his gun trained on Jake.
“Don’t be an idiot, Jake,” Ethan scoffed, his features contorted with anger. He had backed away, behind Deere, inching toward the door, ready to bolt out of the room. “You’re not a killer. Put the gun down.”
Jake continued to aim at Deere, but Ellie could see that Jake’s hands were shaking.
Deere hesitated for a moment, then said, “It’s all right, Jake. I’m on your side.”
Deere pivoted and shot Ethan McGavin in the center of his forehead. Ethan dropped to the floor.
Ellie screamed. The smell of gun smoke, of cordite. She flashed back to seeing her dad collapse. Why did Deere shoot Ethan?!
She heard an echo of her scream, probably Lisa’s.
Panic-stricken, Ellie looked at Jake. Jake had lowered his gun. He was staring at Ethan’s fallen body. He started to step toward Ethan.
Maybe Deere was Jennifer’s lone partner. In the corner of her vision, Ellie saw Deere pivot once again.
Deere was now aiming at Jake. Daniel leapt across the room, tackling Deere. Deere’s gun went off.
Jake doubled over and fell to the floor. Ellie froze in place—seeing the carnage, but unable to move or to believe this was real. Jake had been shot in the abdomen.
Daniel was wrestling with Deere.
Move, Ellie! Get the gun! Alexis’s voice.
Ellie lunged at Deere and grabbed his wrists, trying to help Daniel wrest the gun from his grasp.
Deere suddenly went limp. Ellie looked over her shoulder. Lisa was now kneeling on the floor beside them, an empty syringe in her hand. She must have injected the contents of the syringe into Deere’s thigh.
“A sedative,” Lisa said.
Ellie heard groaning and thought it was Jake. An instant later, she realized it was Chelsea. She was not only groaning, but starting to thrash on the operating table.
Jake, meanwhile, was gripping his side, in obvious, but silent pain.
“Jake!” Ellie cried.
“Use this as a compress,” Lisa said, thrusting a pair of folded towels at her. “Keep pressure on his entry wound. And check for an exit wound.” Lisa rose to tend to Chelsea.
Blood was pouring from Jake’s side, from the entry wound. “How do I keep pressure on his abdomen while I’m checking his back?!” Ellie cried.
Chelsea continued to moan. Ellie wanted to yell: Not now! Jake’s been shot! He needs a nurse more than you do!
“Chelsea?” Lisa said. “Can you hear me?”
Ellie shoved one towel directly underneath Jake’s wound and pressed the other to his wound in the front. She felt drops of water hit the back of her hand and realized they were her own tears.
“Where am I?” Chelsea asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Stay still,” Lisa instructed. “You’re going to be fine. An ambulance will be here momentarily.”
“He’s losing too much blood,” Ellie said, her vision blurring. “I’m trying to keep pressure on it, but—”
“Let me do that,” Lisa told her. She knelt beside Ellie. Within a fraction of a second she had taken over for Ellie, pushing down on the blood-soaked compress.
We need help! Ellie thought. We’re in a damned operating room, but God knows who we can trust in this horrid place! “We need to call nine-one-one.”
“No need,” Jake muttered. “SWAT comes when the alarms go off.” His head dropped as if his words had zapped the last of his strength.
“Grab the CELOX,” Lisa demanded, pointing with her chin at something on the tray. “The gauze. It’s a hemostatic. It’ll stop the bleeding.”
Daniel opened a packet of gauze, and Lisa quickly affixed it to Jake’s wound. Jake, however, appeared to be unconscious.
“Jake!” Ellie cried. “You can’t leave me! Do you hear me? You’re the only person in the entire world who understands how I feel!”
He opened his eyes again. “You stopped hating me?”
“A long time ago. I should have told you that. It doesn’t matter whose body I’m in; I’ve always been uncomfortable in my own skin.”
He shut his eyes again. “Your skin felt soft and warm,” he murmured. “I didn’t want to let go of your hand.”
He was talking about how he had shaken her hand after he’d cut short her interview. “I remember,” she said. She took his hand in hers, but he didn’t respond. “Please don’t die!”
Chapter 40
Ellie refused to leave Jake’s side as two paramedics wheeled him out of ABTC and toward the ambulance. Jake was breathing and seemed to be slipping in and out of consciousness. Lisa had told her that Jake was in shock, and that she had no way to assess the damage to his organs.
Help had arrived at some point in the immediate past. Ellie’s mind had entered some sort of altered state. She felt as though she were sleepwalking. She knew that John Deere had regained some semblance of consciousness and had been led—half stumbling, half carried—away in handcuffs. She knew that Ethan was dead. She remembered that Lisa Stein had insisted that both Jake and Chelsea be taken to a real hospital.
In her hazy state, Ellie had lost track of what happened to Chelsea; she only knew that the teams of paramedics had agreed that Jake’s condition was the more serious. All Ellie could think about now was Jake.
The building alarm system was still sounding; occupants of ABTC were undergoing some sort of emergency protocol—evacuating the building or something. It was beyond Ellie’s current scope to understand or to care.
Now, as the EMTs loaded Jake into the ambulance, a police officer said, “Miss? You’ll need to come with us.”
> She turned. Standing several feet behind her, two officers were side by side with Lisa and Daniel as if they were assigned one-on-one to keep tabs on them. A third officer—the one who’d spoken to her—had stepped forward. He tried to grab Ellie’s arm.
“No,” Ellie said, pulling away. “I’m riding in the ambulance with him.” She glanced at the two paramedics, hoping for support. The female EMT got into the ambulance with Jake and was focused solely on him.
“Are you a family member?” the male paramedic asked.
“She’s his sister. From Canada,” Daniel interjected.
“Go ahead,” the officer told Ellie, gesturing at the ambulance. She climbed into the ambulance and squeezed past Jake to take a backward-facing seat. As the male EMT shut the ambulance doors behind them, Ellie caught sight of Daniel, ashen with worry.
“You’re Jake’s sister?” the EMT asked, not looking up as she tended to Jake.
“No. The three of us . . . Jake, Daniel, and I . . . are just good friends. Jake was trying to save Chelsea Bothwell’s life.”
“Another friend?”
“No. Another victim.” Ellie didn’t elaborate.
#
At the hospital, a pair of young doctors—a man and a woman—met the ambulance. Ellie waited as the paramedics carried Jake out on the gurney, then climbed out herself. She was still in a complete daze.
While the male doctor ministered to Jake and got vital signs from the paramedics, a female doctor approached her. “Are you a family member?” she asked. She had red, wavy hair, pulled back into a pony tail.
“No, I’m Jake’s friend.”
“Jake, we’re going to take good care of you,” the male doctor told him. He was really handsome and looked like a Hollywood version of a doctor. Ellie wanted the world’s best doctor to take care of Jake, and she doubted this golden boy would qualify.
They entered the hospital, Ellie lagging back, wanting to get out of the doctors’ way, yet not wanting to lose sight of Jake.
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