Harvest

by Tess Gerritsen

  For once, someone else could answer the damn phone.

  The vampire was back, carrying her tray of blood tubes and lab slips and needles. “I’m sorry, Dr. DiMatteo. But I need to stick you again.”

  Abby, standing at the window, merely glanced at the phlebotomist. Then she turned back to the view. “This hospital’s sucked all the blood I have to give,” she said, and stared at the dreary view beyond the window. In the parking lot below, nurses scurried for the hospital doors, hair flying, raincoats flapping in the wind. In the east, clouds had gathered, black and threatening. Will the skies never clear? wondered Abby.

  Behind her came the clatter of glass tubes. “Doctor, I really do have to get this blood.”

  “I don’t need any more tests.”

  “But Dr. Wettig ordered it.” The phlebotomist added, with a quiet note of desperation, “Please don’t make things hard for me.”

  Abby turned and looked at the woman. She seemed very young. Abby was reminded of herself at some long-ago time. A time when she, too, was terrified of Wettig, of doing the wrong thing, of losing all she’d worked for. She was afraid of none of these things now. But this woman was.

  Sighing, Abby went to the bed and sat down.

  The phlebotomist set her blood tray on the bedside table and began opening sterile packets containing gauze, a disposable needle, and a Vacutainer syringe. Judging by the number of filled blood tubes in her tray, she had already gone through the motions dozens of times today. There were only a few empty slots remaining.

  “Okay, which arm would you prefer?”

  Abby held out her left arm and watched impassively as the rubber tourniquet was tucked into place with a snap. She made a fist. The antecubital vein swelled into view, bruised by all the earlier venipunctures. As the needle pierced her skin, Abby turned away. She looked, instead, at the phlebotomist’s tray, at all the neatly labeled tubes of blood. A vampire’s candy box.

  Suddenly she focused on one specimen in particular, a purple-topped tube with the label facing toward her. She stared at the name.

  VOSS, NINA SICU BED 8

  “There we go,” said the vampire, withdrawing the needle. “Can you hold that gauze in place?”

  Abby looked up. “What?”

  “Hold the gauze while I get you a Band-Aid.”

  Automatically Abby pressed the gauze to her arm. She looked back at the tube containing Nina Voss’s blood. The attending physician’s name was just visible, at the corner of the label. Dr. Archer.

  Nina Voss is back in the hospital, thought Abby. Back on cardiothoracic service.

  The phlebotomist left.

  Abby paced over to the window and stared out at the darkening clouds. Scraps of paper were flying around the parking lot. The window rattled, buffeted by a fresh gust of wind.

  Something has gone wrong with the new heart.

  She should have realized that days ago, when they’d met in the limousine. She remembered Nina’s appearance in the gloom of the car. The pale face, the bluish tinge of her lips. Even then, her transplant was already failing.

  Abby went to the closet. There she found a bulging plastic bag labeled PATIENT BELONGINGS. It contained her shoes, her blood-stained slacks, and her purse. Her wallet was missing; it was probably locked up in the hospital safe. A thorough search of the purse turned up a few loose nickels and dimes in the bottom. She would need every last one.

  She zipped on the slacks, tucked in her hospital gown top, and stepped into the shoes. Then she went to the door and peeked out.

  Nurse Soriano wasn’t at the desk. However, two other nurses were in the station, one talking on the phone, another bent over paperwork. Neither was looking in Abby’s direction.

  She glanced down the hall and saw the cart with the evening meal trays come rattling into the ward, pushed by an elderly volunteer in pink. The cart came to a stop in front of the nurses’ desk. The volunteer pulled out two meal trays and carried them into a nearby patient room.

  That’s when Abby slipped out into the hall. The meal cart blocked the nurses’ view as Abby walked calmly past their desk and out of the ward.

  She couldn’t risk being spotted on the elevators; she headed straight for the stairwell.

  Six flights up she emerged on the twelfth floor. Straight ahead was the OR wing; around the corner was the SICU. From the linen cart in the OR hallway, she picked up a surgical gown, a flowered cap, and shoe covers. Completely garbed in blue like everyone else, she just might pass unnoticed.

  She turned the corner and walked into the SICU.

  Inside she found chaos. The patient in Bed 2 was coding. Judging by the tensely staccato voices and by all the personnel frantically pressing into the cubicle, the resuscitation was not going well. No one even glanced in Abby’s direction as she walked past the monitor station and crossed to Cubicle 8.

  She paused outside the viewing window just long enough to confirm that it was, indeed, Nina Voss in the bed. Then she pushed into the cubicle. The door swung shut behind her, muffling the voices of the code team. She pulled the curtains over the window, to shut off all view of the room, and turned to the bed.

  Nina was sleeping, serenely unaware of the frantic activity going on beyond her closed door. She seemed to have shrunk since Abby had last seen her, like a candle slowly being consumed by the flame of her illness. The body beneath those sheets looked as small as a child’s.

  Abby picked up the nurses’ clipboard hanging at the foot of the bed. In a glance she took in all the parameters recorded there. The rising pulmonary wedge pressure. The slowly falling cardiac output. The upward titration of dobutamine in a futile attempt to boost cardiac performance.

  Abby hung the clipboard back on the hook. As she straightened, she saw that Nina’s eyes were open and staring at her.

  “Hello, Mrs. Voss,” said Abby.

  Nina smiled and murmured, “It’s the doctor who always tells the truth.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Content.” Nina sighed. “I am content.”

  Abby moved to her bedside. They looked at each other, neither one speaking.

  Then Nina said, “You don’t have to tell me. I already know.”

  “Know what, Mrs. Voss?”

  “That it’s almost over.” Nina closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  Abby took the other woman’s hand. “I never got the chance to thank you. For trying to help me.”

  “It was Victor I was trying to help.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He’s like that man in the Greek myth. The one who went into Hades to bring back his wife.”

  “Orpheus.”

  “Yes. Victor is like Orpheus. He wants to bring me back. He doesn’t care what it takes. What it costs.” She opened her eyes and her gaze was startlingly clear. “In the end,” she whispered, “it will cost him too much.”

  They were not speaking of money. Abby understood that at once. They were speaking of souls.

  The cubicle door suddenly opened. Abby turned to see a nurse staring at her in surprise.

  “Oh! Dr. DiMatteo, what are you . . .” She glanced at the closed curtains, then her gaze swiftly assessed all the monitors and IV lines. Checking for signs of sabotage.

  “I haven’t touched anything,” said Abby.

  “Would you please leave?”

  “I was only visiting. I heard she was back in SICU and—”

  “Mrs. Voss needs her rest.” The nurse opened the door and swiftly ushered Abby out of the cubicle. “Didn’t you see the NO VISITORS sign? She’s scheduled for surgery tonight. She can’t be disturbed.”

  “What surgery?”

  “The retransplant. They found a donor.”

  Abby stared at the closed door to Cubicle 8. She asked, softly, “Does Mrs. Voss know?”

  “What?”

  “Did she sign the consent form for surgery?”

  “Her husband’s already signed it for her. Now please leave immediately.”
<
br />   Without another word, Abby turned and walked out of the unit. She didn’t know if anyone noticed her departure; she just kept walking down the hall until she’d reached the elevators. The door opened; the car was filled with people. She stepped inside and quickly turned her back to the other passengers and faced the door.

  They found a donor, she thought, as the elevator descended. Somehow they found a donor. Tonight, Nina Voss will have a new heart.

  By the time the car reached the lobby, she had already worked out the sequence of events that would be taking place tonight. She had read the records of other Bayside transplants; she knew what was going to happen. Sometime around midnight, they would wheel Nina into the OR, where Archer’s team would prep and drape her. There they would wait for the call. And at that precise moment, a different surgical team in a different OR would already be gathered around another patient. They would reach for scalpels and begin to slice skin and muscle. Bone saws would grind. Ribs would be lifted, exposing the treasure within. A living, beating heart.

  The harvest would be swift and clean.

  Tonight, she thought, it will happen just the way it has before.

  The elevator door opened. She stepped out, head bowed, eyes focused on the floor. She walked out the front doors and into a driving wind.

  Two blocks away, cold and shaking, she ducked into a phone booth. Using her precious cache of nickels and dimes, she called Katzka’s number.

  He wasn’t at his desk. The policeman who answered the extension offered to take a message.

  “This is Abby DiMatteo,” she said. “I have to talk to him now! Doesn’t he have a pager or something?”

  “Let me transfer you to the operator.”

  She heard two transfer clicks, then the operator came on. “I’ll have Dispatch radio his car now,” she said.

  A moment later, the operator came back on. “I’m sorry, we’re still waiting for Detective Katzka to respond. Can he reach you at your current number?”

  “Yes. I mean, I don’t know. I’ll try calling him later.” Abby hung up. She was out of coins, out of phone calls.

  She turned and looked out the phone booth, and saw scraps of newspapers tumbling by. She didn’t want to step out into that wind again, but she didn’t know what else to do.

  There was one more person she could call.

  Half the phone book had been torn away. With a sense of futility, she flipped through the white pages anyway. She was startled to actually find the listing: I. Tarasoff.

  Her hands were shaking as she dialed collect. Please talk to me. Please take my call.

  After four rings she heard his gentle “Hello?” She could hear chinaware clattering, the sounds of a dinner table being set, the sweet strains of classical music. Then: “Yes, I’ll accept the charges.”

  She was so relieved, her words spilled out in a rush. “I didn’t know who else to call! I can’t reach Vivian. And no one else will listen to me. You have to go to the police. Make them listen!”

  “Now slow down, Abby. Tell me what’s happening.”

  She took a deep breath. Felt her heart thudding with the need to share her burden. “Nina Voss is getting a second transplant tonight,” she said. “Dr. Tarasoff, I think I know how it works. They don’t fly the hearts in from somewhere else. The harvests are done right here. In Boston.”

  “Where? Which hospital?”

  Her gaze suddenly focused on a car moving slowly up the street. She held her breath until the car continued around the corner and vanished.

  “Abby?”

  “Yes. I’m still here.”

  “Now Abby, I understand from Mr. Parr that you’ve been under a great strain lately. Isn’t it possible this is—”

  “Listen. Please listen to me!” She closed her eyes, forcing herself to stay calm. To sound rational. He must not have any doubts at all about her sanity. “Vivian called me today from Burlington. She found out there weren’t any harvests done there. The organs didn’t come from Vermont.”

  “Then where are the harvests done?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. But I’m guessing they’re done in a building in Roxbury. Amity Medical Supplies. The police have to get there before midnight. Before the harvest can be done.”

  “I don’t know if I can convince them.”

  “You have to! There’s a Detective Katzka, in Homicide. If we can reach him, I think he’ll listen to us. Dr. Tarasoff, this isn’t just an organ matchmaking service. They’re generating donors. They’re killing people.”

  In the background, Abby heard a woman call out: “Ivan, aren’t you going to eat your dinner? It’s getting cold.”

  “I’ll have to skip it, dear,” said Tarasoff. “There’s been an emergency . . .” His voice came back on the line, soft and urgent. “I don’t think I need to tell you that this whole thing scares me, Abby.”

  “It scares the hell out of me, too.”

  “Then let’s just drive straight to the police. Drop it in their laps. It’s too dangerous for us to handle.”

  “Agreed. One hundred percent.”

  “We’ll do it together. The bigger the chorus, the more convincing our message.”

  She hesitated. “I’m afraid that having me along may hurt the cause.”

  “I don’t know all the details, Abby. You do.”

  “Okay,” she said, after a pause. “Okay. We’ll go together. Could you come and get me? I’m freezing. And I’m scared.”

  “Where are you?”

  She glanced out the phone booth window. Two blocks away, the lights of the hospital towers seemed to pulsate in the blowing darkness. “I’m in a phone booth. I don’t know which street it’s on. I’m a few blocks west of Bayside.”

  “I’ll find you.”

  “Dr. Tarasoff?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please,” she whispered. “Hurry.”

  24

  As Vivian Chao’s plane touched down at Logan International, she felt her anxiety tighten another notch. It wasn’t the flight that had rattled her. Vivian was a fearless flyer, able to sleep soundly through even the worst turbulence. No, what was worrying her now, as the plane pulled up at the gate and as she gathered her carry-on from the overhead bin, was that last phone conversation with Abby. The abrupt disconnection. The fact that Abby had never called back.

  Vivian had tried calling Abby at home, but there’d been no answer. Thinking about it during the flight, she’d realized that she didn’t know where Abby had been calling from. Their connection had been severed too quickly for her to find out.

  Lugging her carry-on, she walked off the plane and into the terminal. She was startled to find a huge crowd waiting at the gate. There was a forest of bright balloons and mobs of teenagers holding up signs that read Welcome home, Dave! and Atta Boy and Local Hero! Whoever Dave was, he had an adoring public. She heard cheers, and glancing back, she saw a grinning young man stride out of the elevated walkway right behind her. The crowd surged forward, practically swallowing up Vivian in their eagerness to greet Dave, the local hero. Vivian had to navigate through a crush of squealing kids.

  Kids, hell. They all towered over her by at least a head.

  It took good old quarterback drive to shove her way through. By the time she emerged from the mob, she was pushing ahead with so much momentum, she practically bowled over a man standing on the periphery. She muttered a quick apology and kept walking. It took her a few paces to realize he hadn’t said a word in exchange.

  Her first stop was the restroom. All this anxiety was putting the squeeze on her bladder. She ducked inside to use the toilet and came back out.

  That’s when she saw the man again—the one she’d bumped into only moments ago. He was standing by the gift shop across from the women’s restroom. He appeared to be reading a newspaper. She knew it was him because the collar of his raincoat was turned under. When she’d collided with him earlier, that inside-out flap was what her eyes had focused on.

  She continued walking,
toward baggage claim.

  It was during that long hike past an endless succession of airline gates that her brain finally clicked on. Why was the man waiting at her gate unless he was there to meet someone? And if he had met a passenger, why was he now by himself?

  She stopped at a newsstand, randomly picked up a magazine, and took it to the cashier. As the woman rang up the purchase, Vivian shifted just enough to cast a furtive glance around her.

  The man was standing by a do-it yourself flight insurance counter. He seemed to be reading the instructions.

  Okay, Chao, so he’s following you. Maybe it’s a case of love at first sight. Maybe he took one look at you and decided he couldn’t let you walk out of his life.

  As she paid for the magazine, she could feel her heart hammering. Think. Why is he following you?

  That one was easy. The phone call from Abby. If anyone had been listening in, they’d know that Vivian was arriving at Logan on a six P.M. flight from Burlington. Just before the call was disconnected, she’d heard clicks on the line.

  She decided to hang around the newsstand shop for a while. She browsed among the paperbacks, her eyes scanning the covers, her mind racing. The man probably didn’t have a weapon on him; he would have had to bring it through the security check. As long as she didn’t leave the airport’s secured area, she should be safe.

  Cautiously she peered over the paperback shelf.

  The man wasn’t there.

  She came out of the shop and glanced around. There was no sign of him anywhere.

  You are such an idiot. No one’s following you.

  She continued walking, past the security check and down the steps to baggage claim.

  The suitcases from the Burlington flight were just rolling onto the carousel. She spotted her red Samsonite sliding down the ramp. She was about to push closer when she spotted the man in the raincoat. He was standing near the terminal exit, reading his newspaper.

  At once she looked away, her pulse battering her throat. He was waiting for her to pick up her luggage. To walk past him out that exit, into the night.

  Her red Samsonite made another revolution.

  She took a deep breath and edged into the crowd of passengers waiting for their baggage. Her Samsonite was coming past again. She didn’t pick it up but casually followed it around as it made its slow circle. When she was standing on the other side of the carousel, the crowd blocked her view of the man in the raincoat.