by Ilsa J. Bick
First, she went to check on Julian. It was the second time she’d been to the OR that day, but the first that she’d seen Julian since that morning. Julian was asleep atop green surgical sheets; another was draped over his body, and she saw by his bare shoulders that they’d removed his gown. There was a face mask over his nose and mouth to give him more oxygen, one of the things she wanted to make sure the anesthetist hadn’t forgotten. Very important.
They were just putting up the drapes to cover his torso and leave his head free. They’d prep his head with antiseptic soap while she scrubbed. When she returned, she’d have them position the remaining drapes in a tent over Julian’s face, leaving only the crown of his head exposed. Then she’d make her incision marks with a purple felt-tipped pen and then, well, she’d go to work.
She was sorry Julian was asleep. She didn’t want him to feel pain and he must’ve been worried, maybe frightened when she wasn’t there. But maybe it was better this way. He looked very strange without hair, and his scalp was much paler than his normal complexion. For some obscure reason, she cinched up the sheet to cover him just a little more. She didn’t know why. But he looked defenseless. Vulnerable.
Everything depends on me now. I’ll be as fast as I can, Julian, but I have to be careful, or this has all been for nothing.
The room was chilly. Her primary surgical nurse for this wing, not the hard-ass major, was laying out instruments. The anesthetist was there, checking over his syringes. He complained about the cooling blanket because it made the anesthesia trickier. But she was firm, and he gave up because, she figured, he knew it wasn’t his ass on the line.
As she turned to go, her gaze fixed on a glass-enclosed viewing room high on the near wall just behind Julian’s head and opposite the door that led from pre-op. There were four chairs in the viewing room, a vidcom on the wall for communications through this wing, and that was all. The room was dim and would stay that way. Like a performer on stage, Kahayn didn’t really want to see Blate and Nerrit, not too clearly. But they would have an excellent view. Maybe that’s why they called it a surgical theater.
In the adjacent scrub room, Arin was already lathering at a large, rectangular, metal basin. They wore identical garb: blue surgical scrubs, blue gauze cap and booties and a surgical mask that hung around their neck, the bottom ties already knotted. Arin’s gaze bounced on her and then away. “Filthy weather,” he said. He palmed a stiff-bristled brush and scoured his nails with a thick, rust-red antiseptic soap he’d dispensed with a foot pedal. “Surprised Nerrit made it at all.”
“Mmmm.” Kahayn operated the foot pedal, squirting soap from a dispenser onto her palms and working the scrub into foam. “Nerrit wouldn’t miss this.” The rules said five minutes for each hand and arm, a minute to every finger, and Kahayn followed this procedure scrupulously. They scrubbed, not talking, the only sound the fits and starts of water splashing against metal and the rasp of bristle brushes. Then Kahayn said, “Sorry you got dragged into this.”
Arin hunched his shoulders, let them fall. “Luck of the draw, I guess,” he said, passing his now-sterilized hands and arms through a steady stream of hot, gray, filtered water. He shook water from his hands, then crooked his elbows, holding his still-dripping hands and arms up and away from his body, palms turned in. Water dripped from his elbows. “Nothing to be done about it.”
“Mmmm,” Kahayn said again. “Promise me one thing. No matter what happens, Arin, do exactly what I tell you. Nothing more, nothing less. You understand?”
His eyes narrowed imperceptibly, and she saw the questions there. “All right.” He hesitated. “Idit, if you—”
“Don’t say any more, Arin. Don’t ask questions. Just do what I say, and everything will be fine.” She butted open the door. “By the way…nice glasses.”
“Thanks,” said Arin.
The two guards, a PFC and corporal on duty at the entrance into the research wing, didn’t like it. More to the point, the corporal hadn’t heard anything about it. He eyed the phalanx of dripping wet soldiers, seven in all. “I haven’t heard anything about any prisoner.”
“Not my problem.” The master sergeant, a strapping hulk of a man and obviously SC by the insignia, looked dour enough to eat bullets. “Think we’ve got nothing better to do than cover your collective asses? You people weren’t so sloppy, you’d’ve picked her up yourself. But now we got her, and we get the credit. General Nerrit’s going to want to see this one.”
The corporal ran his eyes up and down the prisoner. She was small with a head of limp wet curls plastered to her scalp and clothes that clung in interesting places. Not half bad. But she was also very pale, and what was with those pink lips? She looked scared to death. And cold.
He looked at the PFC. The PFC simply shrugged. “Just a minute,” the corporal said, and turned to a vidcom set to the left of the containment door just above a magnetic lock. “I got to check this out with Security Director Blate.”
“You do that,” said the sergeant. He grinned. “For a prize like this? We got time.”
“Describe her again?” Blate listened carefully as the corporal talked. “Just a moment.” He muted the audio and turned to Nerrit seated to his right in the surgical theater. “One of your men seems to have apprehended another one of those,” he nodded in the general direction of the operating theater where Kahayn was gloving up, “like Bashir there.” He described the prisoner, then added, “She was caught outside the complex by your rear guard.”
“Yes?” Nerrit was rail-thin and very severe with a hatchet face. His eyes were silver today instead of green. His whisper-thin lips disappeared in a half-moon of a smile. “Do they know how she got here?”
“No. Your sergeant wants to secure her down here.” Blate made a face, shrugged. “We could interrogate her together after Kahayn’s done.”
“Excellent idea.”
“Good,” said Blate, turning back to the vidcom. “I’ll have one of the guards escort her to a holding room.”
He’d gowned and just finished gloving when Arin saw the vidcom in the viewing room come to life as a pale blue, electric glow. His eyes flicked to a clock on the right wall and noted the time. Then he stood, patiently, as the nurse reached around and fitted his mask over his nose, pinched it down, and then knotted the upper ties firmly at his crown. He saw Nerrit and Blate lean together, and then Blate turned to the monitor. He couldn’t hear what Blate said because of the glass, but it didn’t matter.
Kahayn, he saw, was directing the nurses where to place the surgical drapes around the field. “Do me a favor,” he said to the nurse. “My glasses need adjusting again, damn things. Would you just give them a good jab, right on the bridge there…a little harder, don’t be shy…that’s got it. Thank you,” he said, straightening. He wrinkled his nose. “That’s so much better.”
He heard a sudden gasp and then an exclamation. Startled, he turned just in time to see Kahayn falling in a faint, taking a tray of instruments crashing to the floor with her.
“All right,” said the corporal, stepping back from a vidcom. “We’ll take it from here.”
One of the soldiers, a woman just behind the sergeant, glanced down at something on her wrist, then edged a bit closer to the sergeant. Murmured something. The sergeant half-turned and looked back at the corporal, displeased. “No can do.”
“Yeah, well,” said the corporal, turning away and tapping out the code that would unlock the door, “those are my orders.”
“But we have ours.” A shuffle of boots over concrete. “They take precedence.”
“Give it a rest.” The corporal ticked in the last number and just as the door sighed to one side, he heard the PFC say, “Hey, he…!” Then, just gurgling, choking noises.
The corporal spun around. He had time to see the PFC’s knees buckle and twin arcs of brown blood. But that was all.
In the next instant, the big sergeant had him in an embrace. He tried pulling back but couldn’t, and then he felt pain sta
b the center of his chest, just below the notch of his ribs. His eyes bulged, and he opened his mouth to scream but the sergeant clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Shh, shh, it’s all right,” and then the sergeant pulled him even closer into a bear hug. “It’s all right; shh, now.”
That was the last thing the corporal ever heard.
Chapter
10
He’d pushed her to one side and now Lense watched Saad step in closer, angling the point of his knife up and jamming its length the rest of the way into the guard’s heart. And then the guard just died.
The thing was, Lense wasn’t as upset as she thought she’d be. She’d seen a lot of gore the past two months. She watched Saad lower the body to the floor. Mara was wiping her knife clean on her trousers, but her soldier wasn’t dead. He gurgled and his fingers scrabbled at the concrete with a sound like mice.
She found her voice. “For God’s sake, bad enough you slit his throat. Don’t make him suffer.”
“Yeah?” Mara gave Lense a hard look, sheathed her knife, and then hunched behind the dying man. Reaching around, she hooked the man’s jaw in one hand, palmed the side of his head with her left and then twisted his head right and jerked down. There were crackles, and the mouse noise stopped. “There you go. Happy?”
Lense said nothing.
“The important thing is the door’s open and not a shot fired,” said Saad. “How’s the signal?”
Mara glanced down at her wrist, then back at Saad. “Still there. Damn lucky Arin still had the transponder.”
“All right,” Saad said again, then took Lense by her right arm. “We’ll get Bashir. Mara, you stay here, head off any reinforcements if they get out an alarm. We don’t have enough men to secure both this and the footpath. So this is our way out.”
“You’re not going in there without me.”
“I need you here.”
“You need me to watch your ass.” A jerk of her head at Lense. “She won’t be able to.”
“Mara’s right,” said Lense. “I can’t tend to Julian and cover you at the same time.”
Saad glowered, then gave a curt nod. “One more thing,” he said to the remaining men, “if soldiers come and we’re not back, you’ve got to seal this door. Smash the mechanism if you have to, but if you don’t hear from us,” he tapped the radio at his shoulder, “then nobody else goes in. You need to buy us time to destroy as much as we can.”
“I thought you said this wing was self-contained,” said Lense.
Saad had taken off the black eyeglasses and his expression was set. “I don’t put anything past Blate. He’d be prepared for any contingency even if all he needed to do was take a leak. I swear the man’s got eyes in the back of his head.”
“No,” said Mara, “just on either side.”
“Doctor?” Blate had toggled open an intercom. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” said Kahayn. Arin saw she was embarrassed; her neck was hectic with color. “Just got dizzy. That run-in with Bashir.”
“But you’ll be able to continue?”
“Of course.” She sighed, tugged down her mask. “But I’ll have to break scrub; I ripped my glove. Sorry.”
It took Arin a minute to let that sink in. If Kahayn broke scrub, that gave Saad more time. It was like some kind of gift.
Kahayn was talking to the anesthetist now, a puckered-looking fellow who didn’t look happy. Arin understood the feeling. Lower Bashir’s body temperature with a cooling blanket, then throw in anesthesia that would inhibit automatic responses to cold, like shivering, and there’d be hell to pay if things got out of hand. Resuscitating Bashir once was quite enough, thanks. Plus, it would take time to warm him back up.
Come to think of it, getting him alert enough to move will be almost impossible now….
But there was no more time to think about that because Kahayn was breaking scrub and the circulating nurse had scurried off to retrieve another anesthesia tray. “I’ll be right back,” Kahayn said.
“Take your time,” said Arin. His eyes slid to the clock and back. “We sure as hell aren’t going anywhere.”
Yet.
“How much longer?” Lense whispered. The corridors here seemed endless, and she was thoroughly lost. Worse, Saad had told her why the signal from Arin was coming from an operating room.
And what if they’ve started? What if they’ve already made their incisions, made burr holes and taken out bone?
She felt sick just thinking about it. Because it occurred to her that she might not be able to reverse what Kahayn had done quickly enough to get them out.
She was so busy thinking about all kinds of disasters that when Saad pulled up abruptly and ducked left into an adjacent corridor, she tripped over his legs. She would’ve gone sprawling if he hadn’t snagged her arm and reeled her in against him. Mara crowded in a second later.
“We’re there,” he whispered, then lifted his chin and jerked his head right. “Through that door at the end of the hall. Leads into a central bay for pre-op where they put in the IVs, give the pre-op sedative. The way into the operating room is to the left, through a set of double doors. Very small, just one room. No magnetic lock; they’re automatic, touch-plate activated.”
“No way to spring a surprise there,” Mara said. “Doors will open too slowly. And that still won’t take care of Blate and Nerrit.”
“Right. So here’s how we’re going to play it.”
“Better now?” asked Arin.
“Much. Thanks.” Kahayn turned to the anesthetist. “How’s he doing?”
“Pulse and blood pressure are good. A little cardiac irritability. That’s the cooling blanket.”
“Anything to worry about?”
“No.”
“Then push in the contrast dye, will you? I’m going to bring up the iMRI.”
“What’s happening now?” asked Nerrit. He was leaning forward, his eyes slitted with intense interest.
“Dr. Kahayn’s asked for a contrast dye in conjunction with the intraoperative MRI…that device there, you see it? She’s operating it via a foot pedal, bringing those two large discs up at the head of the table, one to either side of Bashir’s head.”
“And those are?”
“Magnets. It’s a compact MRI, relies on a magnetic field. She explained it once, compared the brain to watery gelatin and said that during procedures, the brain shifts and sloshes, so she likes to be sure she’s in the right place. I’ve only seen her do this when there’s some sort of tumor, but this man Bashir is quite unique as you know. She may merely wish to highlight those regions of his brain that are so different from ours.”
Nerrit gave him a narrow look. “You’re saying the MRI isn’t usual?”
“Oh,” said Blate, and he told his first lie of the afternoon. “No. Not at all.”
Dye and iMRI. What the hell was Kahayn doing?
It had been on the tip of Arin’s tongue to say something when she’d asked for the dye. The dye made no sense. They already knew what Bashir’s brain looked like, and it wasn’t as if they were getting ready to excise a tumor.
But then he remembered: Do nothing. Say nothing. No matter what happens. And had he imagined it, or had Kahayn shot him a brief glance just before? He couldn’t remember.
Hurry, Saad, hurry. Arin’s mouth was so dry, he couldn’t swallow.
“Looking good,” said Kahayn.
“Yeah,” Arin managed. “Great.”
“All right.” Kahayn depressed the foot pedal once more and the iMRI discs scrolled down with a mechanical whine. Standing at the head of the table, she held out her right hand, and the surgical nurse slapped a scalpel into Kahayn’s palm.
Arin went cold. Too late…
“Hold on!” It was the anesthetist, and when Arin looked over, the man’s color was just the near side of ash. “We’ve got a problem!”
Kahayn turned sharply. “What kind?”
But Arin could hear it: the beeps of Bashir’s
cardiac monitor, accelerating, going wild. Oh, dear God…
“Cardiac instability,” the anesthetist said. “All of a sudden, I don’t understand. I was getting bursts of tachycardia, but now his heart’s slowing down, pressure’s falling. Looks like heart block, and now there’s a PVC…there’s another! I’m picking up fibrillations…!” The anesthetist was standing now, fumbling at his syringes, swearing. “He’s crashing, he’s gonna crash!”
But Kahayn was already moving in a blur, tearing down the surgical drapes, shouting orders: “Break out the crash cart! Get these drapes off him now, go, go, go! I want an amp of dompenephrine, IV push now! Start cardiac compressions!”
Cursing, Arin ripped green drape from Bashir’s chest and started pumping with all his might. It was all going to hell, it was going to hell! He should have seen this coming; he should’ve stopped her!
Do nothing, do nothing? His brain was raging. So you could kill him? “Idit, what about the cooling blanket?”
But Kahayn didn’t answer. The anesthetist was already jabbing a needle into Bashir’s IV port, depressing the plunger, sending a drug coursing into Bashir’s veins. An instant later: “I don’t get it; it’s having no effect at all. Worse, it’s like the opposite of what…Dr. Kahayn, his pressure’s gone! We’re flat-line!”
“What? How can that be?” Kahayn had torn her mask off, and her eyes were wild. “Are you sure you gave him the right drug?”
“Idit!” Arin shouted. “The blanket!”
She rounded on him with a snarl. “Quiet, Arin. Do exactly what I say and not a scrap more, do you understand me?” She whirled back to the anesthetist. “What about my dompenephrine?”
“I’m positive! I labeled these syringes myself!”
“Give him another one!”
“But it only had the opposite…!”
“Damn you!” Kahayn snatched the syringe from the anesthetist and pushed in the drug herself. “Do what I say!”