“Don’t hold any of what I’m about to draw against me.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Okay, but you may be sorry,” I laughed. Taking the pen and pad, I roughed out a cross-section of the pediatric unit as I recalled it and handed it back to Blake, watching as he folded it and tucked it into his pocket.
We entered Hope Memorial, where we purposefully avoided making eye contact with those among us. Once in familiar territory, I directed Blake down the hall towards the elevators. “I guess this is where we split?”
“It would seem that way. Try not to miss me too much,” he said with a wink, pushing the up button on the elevator.
“I’ll try to contain myself.”
“Are you nervous?”
“A little…okay…a lot.”
“Just keep in contact with me through your ear bud.”
Ding, ding. The elevator door slid open, allowing Blake entry. Blocking the door open with his arm, he called out to me as I began making my way down the hall. “If it’s any consolation, there’s been a couple of times where the information they’ve gathered has been less than perfect.”
I nodded, giving him a half smile as he moved his arm back inside the elevator, leaving me alone in the hallway. Looking around, I felt as though a part of me was home. Sure, there had been changes in the décor; namely, the inclusion of an unfortunate flowery ambiance that bordered on gaudy. For the most part, though, it was still the same old Hope Memorial that I remembered from my childhood, complete with the same familiar odor of sterility and sickness.
Almost instinctively, I headed in the direction of the Intensive Care Unit, trying to avoid drawing suspicion while simultaneously looking for those whose actions warranted my suspicion. Not surprisingly, there was nothing out of the ordinary around me. Surely, The Man in Black wouldn’t make an impending attack too obvious as it would trim down the shock value, and, as such, I had a feeling that my investigation would prove to be fruitless. I wasn’t disappointed.
Everything appeared very business as usual. There were the contradictory feelings of hope intermingled with tremendous grief, flowing in unison throughout the halls. Visitors paced the linoleum wearing looks of relief, sadness, and anticipation, the only things on their minds being their loved ones either in surgery or recovering in the rooms by which they paced. The last thing in their thoughts was the idea that their own lives may be in jeopardy.
A visibly frazzled nurse nearly ran into me as she rushed out of one of the patient rooms. I glanced at her, immediately recognizing her as being one of the nurses who’d worked in close proximity to my father. Madison was her name. When I came to visit my father at the hospital as a child, she would take me by the hand and guide me to a secret stash of candy that she kept hidden in a desk drawer. As I grew older, she’d stop me in halls to chit-chat about current events and to ooh and ah over my having grown up so fast. After my father’s death, she would occasionally call Tasha to check up on me. When I moved back to Maryland, she couldn’t have been happier, and she was downright ecstatic when I began dating the new, premier pediatric surgeon in town.
Madison wore a look of uncertain recognition as she stopped dead in her tracks. And I quickly averted my eyes, hanging my head down towards the floor as I made a beeline out of the Intensive Care Unit, ignoring my name as she hesitatingly called it.
The jig was up. There was no way I was going to be able to adequately search the rest of the hospital without drawing additional looks of recognition from the staff and completely compromising the entire mission. It was time to head to the boiler room.
****
Using the hastily drawn map as his guide, Blake Cohen drew looks of admiration from the young nurses as he strolled down the halls. He was used to being stared at, and the stares he was receiving were the standard reaction he’d received from women his entire life. The flattery, however, bounced off him as though he were made of Teflon. He was on a mission and he was focused solely on that mission.
The Man in Black would make nothing obvious, for anything amiss in a hospital would most certainly draw attention and foil any prospective plan. If he were a betting man, he’d put his money on there being an outrageous attack, a taboo attack, even for the likes of him. An attack on the pediatric ward would inspire feelings of shock and outrage if it were struck while full to capacity. However, its inhabitants were sparse.
As throngs of people began removing themselves from the larger cities, many of the more populous locales had become virtual ghost towns, a fact which now screamed throughout the halls of the pediatric unit. Usually, he would have been happy to see so few sick children in need of hospitalization, but now he was confused. Why here? Surely, there were busier hospitals to attack. Perhaps the Intensive Care Unit was teaming with the injured and sick, putting Celaine right in the thick of it if anything were to unexpectedly occur.
He walked past the maternity ward. That, too, was more desolate than usual. At a viewing window, he stopped to watch a handful of newborns. So fragile and innocent, there was once a time in his life when he would have loved to have brought one of them into the world. However, now that the world was in utter chaos, introducing innocent life into it seemed cruel.
“Which one is yours?” A cute redheaded nurse asked him, pausing by his side.
“None of them,” he replied without throwing so much as a glance in her direction.
“Oh…well… is your wife about ready to give birth?”
“Don’t have one of those either,” he smiled. A glimpse at the young women’s reflection in the glass revealed a transparent look of interest reflected on her face. Rolling his eyes, he decided to put the young woman out of her misery.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said as he proceeded to walk back down the hall.
“Dr. Matthews,” another nurse called out.
Blake whirled around to see Chase Matthews do an about-face back to the triage near the entrance of the pediatric center.
What is he doing here now? Blake wondered. There was no way he was going to volunteer this information to Celaine. The knowledge of Chase’s presence would only add that much more weight onto her overly burdened shoulders. Just the thought alone of this Chase guy being in any kind of danger would throw her over the edge.
Blake studied Chase. Sure, he was a good looking guy if you liked that clean cut pretty-boy kind of look. Obviously, he also had to have some iota of intelligence to be a doctor and, to be with Celaine, more than likely he also had wit to boot. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder how much the yuk could bench press and what the heck she ever saw in him anyway. Chase looked up and the two men locked eyes for a moment until Chase finally broke their gaze with a half smile and nod of which Blake reluctantly reciprocated. Flustered, Blake had begun to make his way to the Intensive Care Unit when a frantic, middle-aged nurse blew through the double doors, barreling towards Chase.
“There you are,” she said, breathless to the point that Blake wondered if she was having a heart attack.
“Geez, Madison, what’s wrong?” Chase put his hands on her shoulders, trying to calm her down.
“She…she…”
What, is this chick having an asthma attack or something? She looks like she’s seen a ghost, Blake mused, attempting to be less than obvious about his eavesdropping.
“She’s here…in the ICU.”
“Who’s here?”
“Celaine. I just saw her,” she huffed. “She’s blonde, but she’s here.”
Oh, shit. Blake could feel a resurgence of adrenaline in his body
“What? Blonde? Madison, I can assure you that there’s no way you saw Celaine. Especially not a blonde Celaine.”
“Listen, I’ve known Celaine ever since she was barely able to walk; and as sure as I am standing here, that was her I saw just now in the ICU. Now, unless you want to let her walk away from you again, I would suggest that you—pardon my French—get your ass down there now.”
Chase had a v
isibly stunned look on his face as he turned back toward the paperwork he was blindly scribbling on at the triage center. Shaking his head, he tossed the pen aside and ran through the double doors at speeds that made even Blake’s head spin. Cupping his hand to his ear, Blake sped through the double doors and took off after Chase toward the Intensive Care Unit.
“Celaine…” There was no response from the ear bud. Blake sped up, jumping over obstacles, dodging all persons who crossed his path. Up ahead, Chase was waiting at the elevator to go down to the first floor. Blake ran past him in the hopes of finding a stairwell. Looking behind him, he briefly locked eyes with him again as he entered the elevator.
“Celaine, where are you?” Again, nothing but silence greeted him.
Success. A stairwell appeared before him as he rounded a corner. Instead of taking the stairs one by one, he leapt from the top step with his feet making contact on the landing separating the two stairwells. Looks of amazement followed him. He shrugged off the inquisitive stares.
“Celaine, if you can hear me, you need to leave the intensive care unit immediately. That’s a direct order.”
He made a flying leap from the landing, flipping through midair to the first floor. As he was about to take off running again, he was halted by a voice ringing from his ear bud.
“I’m one step ahead of you, boss.”
He smiled, feeling his body begin to relax again in time to look up and see a couple of children staring at him, mouths open wide in amazement.
“I’m healed,” he said, jumping up and down with a sly smile projecting towards them as he walked towards the Intensive Care Unit.
“What’s the emergency?” Celaine’s voice came through the ear bud again.
“False alarm. Where are you?”
“The vents, and I must say I have to thank you for giving me this absolutely wonderful assignment. I’ll have to return the favor someday.”
Of course, now it made sense why she wasn’t responding to him. The signal strength in the ventilation shaft was surely less than ideal. People were entering the hospital in clusters, in time for prime visiting hours. A thought stuck him as the groups of well wishers nonchalantly passed him by. It was just slightly after noon, and people were using their lunch hours to visit relatives and friends. In response to the time of day and the influx of people, the kitchen crew would all be present and accounted for to fulfill patient orders and maintain the snack booths for the visitors. If ever there was a time to strike, it was now. Blake scanned the crowd, still finding nothing amiss. Was the information headquarters’ outside sources gathered wrong?
“Blake…” Celaine’s concerned voice came through his ear bud once more.
“Yeah?”
****
It had been a long time since I’d used my feminine charm to my advantage. For the most part, I used to jeer those women who did what I had just done to the poor, unsuspecting maintenance man who just so happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when I entered the boiler room. After playing dumb, confusing the boiler room for the ladies’ room, something that was pretty much impossible to do, and complimenting “Pete” on his cute smile and abilities with a wrench, I was granted admission. Heck, if I’d wanted it, I probably could have had full access to almost anything I wished in the boiler room. Pete guided me through the massive room. “The heart of the hospital”, he’d called it. It supplied all the energy needed to run any and all pertinent equipment. During his spiel, it took all I had to act as if I were truly interested in everything he was telling me, including his rant on why his job was probably the most important one here, as he gave me a tour of the room. Smiling the entire time, I sifted through his bull. After all, I was only partially paying attention as my main focus was on locating an entry-way into the ventilation system.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I located what I was looking for in the far corner of the room. Trying to think of a diversion to allow me to gain entry into the vents, I asked Pete to give me an explanation of the inner workings of a boiler. A terrified look sprang across his face as, I was sure, he was hurriedly attempting to think of a way he could fudge through this one while still maintaining my interest. He turned his back to examine the boiler and started speaking again but I didn’t hear a word of what he said as I was already in the vent by the time he ended his first sentence.
For something that was supposed to supply air to a sterile facility, the ventilation system was by far one of the most unsanitary environments I’d ever been in. Dust covered my hands during my crawl through the tunnels of cold steel that also served as some kind of mortuary for bug carcasses and one lone rat…swell.
Blake’s voice blared through my ear bud, “Celaine, if you can hear me, you need to leave the intensive care unit immediately. That’s a direct order.”
A direct order? There had to be something going on since that was a very un-Blake-like thing for him to say. “I’m one step ahead of you boss,” I replied. I continued crawling through the vents, thinking about what Blake had just said. “What’s the emergency?”
“False alarm”. His tone was more relaxed now, which calmed me. “Where are you?”
“The vents and I must say, I have to thank you for giving me this absolutely wonderful assignment. I’ll have to return the favor someday.”
I came across a fork in the vents, deciding to take it to the left in the direction of what I believed to be angled towards the Intensive Care Unit. The vents clanged underneath my body while I navigated through them, trying to catch a hint of something sinister. One thing I knew for sure was that I was going to have some major difficulties finding my way back out of this thing. I wondered how The Man in Black had managed to traverse these metallic caves without raising suspicion. Surely, someone at the hospital had to notice something amiss. To my right, another potential pathway emerged. As I shifted my body to turn and continue yet another steely ascent, something caught my eye in the tunnel ahead of me.
The closer I came to it, the more I realized that what had caught my eye most definitely didn’t belong here. My stomach twisted into knots upon confirmation of my suspicions. It was the first time I had ever seen a bomb, but just as in many action movies I’d seen, making a positive identification was not difficult.
Oh, God, Chase, please, don’t be here, I thought to myself. Upon further inspection of the bomb, I could make out a slight ticking noise coupled with another barely audible electronic sound. Carefully, I angled my body around the apparatus, trying to get a better view of it as well as a possible idea as to when it was set to wreak its deadly vengeance. That’s when I saw it.
The green animatronics ticking away before my eyes revealed a sight that I was beyond unprepared for. 00:02:43. Does that say 2 minutes? If so, how many others were there set for the same time, if not sooner? Was there a way to dismantle it? My mind was swirling, clouding both my vision and thought processes at once, rendering me near useless. Please, Blake, be able to hear me now. I pressed my hand to my ear bud.
“Blake…”
“Yeah,” his voice sounded from the other end.
“We have a little problem here.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Encounter
“Get out of there now!” Blake commanded.
“Is there nothing that can be done to stop this…cutting a wire…anything?”
“Not in two minutes there’s not, and when there’s most likely more than one, there’s most definitely not. Celaine, just get out of there…please, get out of there…do anything and everything possible to do it. I need to start evacuating the hospital, although I fear there’s not much of an evacuation that can be done in two minutes.”
“All right, I’ll be joining you soon.”
“Okay.”
Un-cupping my hand from my ear, I pulled my sweatshirt and pants off, exposing my suit. Don’t fail me now, I thought to myself, unclasping my helmet from its holster, securing it into place on my head. I knew I wasn’t
going to be able to crawl through the vent back to the boiler room before the detonator went off. My only means of escape would come by breaking through the vents. Forcing my legs against the metal, I pushed as hard as I could until I felt it give a little. There wasn’t much time left; it was probably close to a minute now. My pulse increased, forcing a resurgence of adrenaline through my body. With this sudden burst of energy, I forced both of my feet down in a stomping motion. The vent groaned as it started breaking apart.
“Come on,” I groaned, thrusting my legs down harder against the metal. With a sharp creak, a portion of the ventilation shaft broke loose and swung down like a trap door, nearly taking down other sections of it in the process.
I peered down to see that I was atop the fluorescent lighting fixtures. Lowering myself down from the broken vent, I kicked the fixture, breaking it instantly, sending shards of glass, bits of metal and wire crashing to the floor below…way below. It struck the floor of the commons area that separated the hospital into its various wings. People were frantically strewn about, already in a panic. Thankfully, they’d scattered before the debris crashed down from above. Not surprisingly, the loud crash only exacerbated the utter mayhem that had taken control of the terrified masses.
“It’s now or never,” I say to myself.
Positioning my body, I jumped the nearly forty feet from the site of the broken fixture to the floor of the commons area. Bracing myself for a hard landing, I was pleasantly surprised when my feet landed gently and without incident on the linoleum. In front of me, hoards of people were streaming from the interior of the hospital, many skidding to an abrupt halt upon seeing me.
“Get out of here now!” I ordered. “There’s a bomb!” I rushed in the direction of the Intensive Care Unit, running upstream against the tide of terror. While pushing through the crowd, I couldn’t help but hear the surprised exclamations from the individuals within it.
“Is that another one?” a woman’s voice asked.
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