Harvest

by Tess Gerritsen

  Tarasoff relaxed. Hodell was not going to be a problem after all. He had, in fact, passed the point of no return years ago, as a surgical fellow. A night of heavy drinking, a few snorts of cocaine. The next morning, a strange bed, and a pretty nursing student strangled to death on the pillow beside him. And Hodell with no memory of what had really happened. It was all very persuasive.

  And there’d been the money to cement the recruitment.

  The carrot and the stick. It worked almost every time. It had worked with Archer and Zwick and Mohandas. And with Aaron Levi too—for a while. Theirs had been a closed society, meticulous about guarding their secrets. And their profits. No one else at Bayside, not Colin Wettig, not even Jeremiah Parr, could even begin to guess how much money had changed hands. It was enough money to buy the very best doctors, the very best team—a team Tarasoff had created. The Russians merely supplied the parts and, when necessary, the brute force. In the OR, it was the team that performed the miracles.

  Money alone had not been enough to keep Aaron Levi in their fold. But Hodell was still theirs. He was proving it now with every slice of his scalpel.

  Tarasoff assisted, positioning retractors, clamping bleeders. It was a pleasure to work with such young and healthy tissue. The woman was in excellent condition. She had a minimum of subcutaneous fat and her abdominal muscles were flat and tight—so tight that their assistant, standing at the head of the table, had to infuse more succinylcholine to relax them for easier retraction.

  The scalpel blade penetrated the muscle layer. They were in the abdominal cavity now. Tarasoff widened the retractors. Beneath a thin veil of peritoneal tissue glistened the liver and loops of small intestine. All of it healthy, so healthy! The human organism was a beautiful sight to behold.

  The lights flickered and almost went off altogether.

  “What’s going on?” said Hodell.

  They both looked up at the lamps. The lights brightened again to full intensity.

  “Just a glitch,” said Tarasoff. “I can still hear the generator.”

  “This is not an optimal setup. A rocking ship. The power going off—”

  “It’s a temporary arrangement. Until we find a replacement for the Amity building.” He nodded at the surgical site. “Proceed.”

  Hodell raised his scalpel and paused. He’d been trained as a thoracic surgeon; a liver resection was a procedure he’d performed only a few times before. Perhaps he needed extra guidance.

  Or perhaps the reality of what he was doing was starting to sink in.

  “Is there a problem?” Tarasoff asked.

  “No.” Mark swallowed. Once again he began to cut, but his hand was shaking. He lifted the scalpel and took a few deep breaths.

  “We haven’t a lot of time, Dr. Hodell. There’s another donor to harvest.”

  “It’s just . . . isn’t it hot in here?”

  “I hadn’t noticed. Proceed.”

  Hodell nodded. Gripping the scalpel, he was about to make another incision when he suddenly froze.

  Tarasoff heard a sound behind him—the sigh of the door as it whished shut.

  Mark, staring straight ahead, lifted his scalpel.

  The explosion seemed to punch him in the face. Hodell’s head snapped backward. Blood and bone fragments sprayed across the table.

  Tarasoff spun around to look at the door, and he caught a glimpse of blond hair and the boy’s white face.

  The gun fired a second time.

  The shot went wild, the bullet shattering a glass door in the supply cabinet. Shards rained onto the floor.

  The anesthetist ducked for cover behind the ventilator.

  Tarasoff backed away, his gaze never leaving the gun. It was Gregor’s gun, compact enough, light enough, for even a child to hold. But the hand clutching that gun was shaking too hard now to shoot straight. He’s only a boy, thought Tarasoff. A frightened boy whose aim kept wavering indecisively between the anesthetist and Tarasoff.

  Tarasoff glanced sideways at the instrument tray, and he spotted the syringe of succinylcholine. It still contained more than enough to subdue the child. Slowly he edged sideways, stepping over Hodell’s body and through the spreading pool of blood. Then the gun swung back toward him, and he froze.

  The boy was crying now, his breath coming in quick, tearful gasps.

  “It’s all right,” soothed Tarasoff. And he smiled. “Don’t be afraid. I’m only helping your friend. Making her well again. She’s very sick. Don’t you know that? She needs a doctor.”

  The boy’s gaze focused on the table. On the woman. He took a step forward, then another. His breath suddenly escaped in a high, keening wail. He did not hear the anesthetist slip past him and flee from the room. Nor did he seem to hear the faint rumble of the helicopter. It was approaching, preparing to land for the pickup.

  Tarasoff took the syringe from the tray. Quietly he moved closer to the table.

  The boy lifted his head and his cry rose to a despairing shriek.

  Tarasoff raised the syringe.

  At that instant the boy looked up at him. And it was no longer fear, but rage that shone in the boy’s eyes as he aimed Gregor’s gun.

  And fired one last time.

  26

  The boy would not leave her bedside. From the moment the nurses had wheeled her out of Recovery and into the SICU, he had stayed right beside her, a pale little ghost haunting her bed. Twice the nurses had taken him by the hand and led him out of the cubicle. Twice the boy had found his way back in again. Now he stood gripping the siderail, his gaze silently pleading with her to wake up. At least he was no longer hysterical, the way he’d been when Katzka had come across him on the ship. He’d found the boy leaning over Abby’s butchered body, sobbing, imploring her to live. Katzka had not understood a word of what the boy was saying. But he’d understood perfectly his panic. His despair.

  There was a tapping on the cubicle window. Turning, Katzka saw Vivian Chao motioning to him. He opened the door and joined her outside the cubicle.

  “That kid can’t stay here all night,” she said. “He’s getting in their way. Plus, he doesn’t look very clean.”

  “Every time they try to take him away, he starts screaming.”

  “Can’t you talk to him?”

  “I don’t know any Russian. Do you?”

  “We’re still waiting for the hospital translator. Why don’t you exert some male authority? Just pull him out.”

  “Give the boy some time with her, okay?” Katzka turned and gazed through the window at the bed. And he found himself struggling to shake off the superimposed image that would haunt him for the rest of his days: Abby lying on the table, her abdomen slit open, her intestines glistening under the OR lights. The boy whimpering, cradling her face. And on the floor, lying in a lake of their own blood, the two men—Hodell already dead, Tarasoff unconscious and bleeding but still alive. Like everyone else aboard that freighter, Tarasoff had been taken into custody.

  Soon there would be more arrests. The investigation was just beginning. Even now, federal authorities were closing in on the Sigayev Company. Based on what the freighter’s crew had already told them, the scope of the organ-selling operation was wider—and far more horrifying—than Katzka could have imagined.

  He blinked and refocused on the here and now: Abby, lying on the other side of that window, her abdomen swathed in bandages. Her chest rising and falling. The monitor tracing the steady rhythm of her heart. Just for an instant, he felt the same flash of panic he’d experienced on the ship, when Abby’s heartbeat had started skipping wildly across the monitor. When he’d thought he was about to lose her, and the chopper bringing Vivian and Wettig to the ship had still been miles away. He touched the glass and found himself blinking again. And again.

  Behind him, Vivian said softly, “Katzka, she’ll be okay. The General and I do good work.”

  Katzka nodded. Without a word, he slipped back into the cubicle.

  The boy looked up at him, his gaze as mo
ist as Katzka’s. “Ah-bee,” he whispered.

  “Yeah, kid. That’s her name.” Katzka smiled.

  They both looked at the bed. A long time seemed to pass. The silence was broken only by the soft and steady beep of the cardiac monitor. They stood side by side, sharing a vigil over this woman whom neither of them knew well, but about whom they already cared so deeply.

  At last Katzka held out his hand. “Come on. You need your sleep, son. And so does she.”

  The boy hesitated. For a moment he studied Katzka. Then, reluctantly, he took the offered hand.

  They walked together through the SICU, the boy’s plastic shoes scuffling across the linoleum. Without warning, the boy slowed down.

  “What is it?” said Katzka.

  The boy had paused outside another cubicle. Katzka, too, looked through the glass.

  Beyond the window, a silver-haired man sat in a chair by the patient’s bed. His head was bowed in his hands, his whole body was quaking with silent sobs. There are things even Victor Voss cannot buy, thought Katzka. Now he’s about to lose everything. His wife. His freedom. Katzka looked at the woman lying in the bed. Her face was as white and fragile-looking as porcelain. Her eyes, half-opened, had the dull sheen of impending death.

  The boy pressed closer to the glass.

  In that instant, as he leaned forward, the woman’s eyes seemed to register one last flicker of life. She focused on the boy. Slowly her lips curved into a silent smile. And then she closed her eyes.

  Katzka murmured, “It’s time to go.”

  The boy looked up. Firmly, he shook his head. As Katzka watched in helpless silence, the boy turned and walked back into Abby’s cubicle.

  Suddenly Katzka felt weary beyond belief. He looked at Victor Voss, a ruined man who now sat with his body crumpled forward in despair. He looked at the woman in the bed, her soul slipping away even as he watched. And he thought: So little time. We have so little time on this earth with the people we love.

  He sighed. Then he, too, turned and walked into Abby’s cubicle.

  And took his place beside the boy.

  POCKET BOOKS

  PROUDLY PRESENTS

  LIFE

  SUPPORT

  TESS GERRITSEN

  The following is a preview of

  Life Support . . .

  A scalpel is a beautiful thing.

  Dr. Stanley Mackie had never noticed this before, but as he stood with head bowed beneath the OR lamps, he suddenly found himself marveling at how the light reflected with diamondlike brilliance off the blade. It was a work of art, that razor-sharp lunula of stainless steel. So beautiful, in fact, that he scarcely dared to pick it up for fear he would somehow tarnish its magic. In its surface he saw a rainbow of colors, light fractured to its purest elements.

  “Dr. Mackie? Is something wrong?”

  He looked up and saw the scrub nurse frowning at him over her surgical mask. He had never before noticed how green her eyes were. He seemed to be seeing, really seeing, so many things for the very first time. The creamy texture of the nurse’s skin. The vein coursing along her temple. The mole just above her eyebrow.

  Or was it a mole? He stared. It was moving, crawling like a many-legged insect toward the corner of her eye. . . .

  “Stan?” Dr. Rudman, the anesthesiologist, was speaking now, his voice slicing through Mackie’s dismay. “Are you all right?”

  Mackie gave his head a shake. The insect vanished. It was a mole again, just a tiny fleck of black pigment on the nurse’s pale skin. He took a deep breath and picked up the scalpel from the instrument tray. He looked down at the woman lying on the table.

  The overhead light had already been focused on the patient’s lower abdomen. Blue surgical drapes were clamped in place, framing a rectangle of exposed skin. It was a nice flat belly with a bikini line connecting the twin flares of the hip bones—a surprising sight to behold in this season of snowstorms and winter white faces. What a shame he would have to cut into it. An appendectomy scar would certainly mar any future Caribbean tans.

  He placed the tip of the blade on the skin, centering his incision on McBurney’s point, halfway between the navel and the protrusion of the right hip bone. The approximate location of the appendix. With scalpel poised to cut, he suddenly paused.

  His hand was shaking.

  He didn’t understand it. This had never happened before. Stanley Mackie had always possessed rock steady hands. Now it took enormous effort just to maintain his grip on the handle. He swallowed and lifted the blade from the skin. Easy. Take a few deep breaths. This will pass.

  “Stan?”

  Mackie looked up and saw that Dr. Rudman was frowning. So were the two nurses. Mackie could read the questions in their eyes, the same questions that people had been whispering about him for weeks. Is old Dr. Mackie competent? At the age of seventy-four, should he still be allowed to operate? He ignored their looks. He had already defended himself before the Quality Assurance Committee, had explained, to their satisfaction, the circumstances of his last patient’s death. Surgery, after all, was not a risk-free proposition. When too much blood pools in the abdomen, it’s easy to confuse one’s landmarks, to make the wrong slice.

  The committee, in their wisdom, had absolved him of blame.

  Nevertheless, doubts had seeped into the minds of the hospital staff. He could see it in the nurses’ expressions, in Dr. Rudman’s frown. All those eyes watching him. Suddenly he sensed other eyes as well. He caught a fleeting glimpse of dozens of eyeballs floating in the air, all of them staring at him.

  He blinked, and the terrible vision was gone.

  My glasses, he thought. I will have to get my glasses checked.

  A drop of sweat slid down his cheek. He tightened his grip on the scalpel handle. This was just a simple appendectomy, a procedure a lowly surgical intern could pull off. Surely he could manage this, even with shaking hands.

  He focused on the patient’s abdomen, on that flat belly with its golden tan. Jennifer Halsey, age thirty-six. A visitor from out of state, she had awakened this morning in her Boston motel room suffering from right lower quadrant pain. With the pain growing worse, she had driven through a blinding snowstorm to the ER at Wicklin Hospital, and had been referred to the surgeon on call for the day: Mackie. She knew nothing about the rumors concerning his competence, nothing about the lies and whispers that were slowly destroying his practice. She was merely a woman in pain who needed her inflamed appendix removed.

  He pressed the blade to Jennifer’s skin. His hand had steadied. He could do it. Of course he could do it. He made the incision, a smooth, clean slice. The scrub nurse assisted, sponging up blood, handing him hemostats. He cut deeper, through the yellow subcutaneous fat, pausing every so often to cauterize a bleeder. No problem. Everything’s going to be fine. He would get in, remove the appendix, and get out again. Then he would go home for the afternoon. Maybe a little rest was all he needed to clear his head.

  He slit through the glistening peritoneum, into the abdominal cavity. “Retract,” he said.

  The scrub nurse took hold of the stainless-steel retractors and gently tugged open the wound.

  Mackie reached into the gap and felt the intestines, warm and slippery, squirm around his gloved hand. What a wondrous sensation, to be cradled in the heat of the human body. It was like being welcomed back into the womb. He exposed the appendix. One glance at the swollen red tissue told him his diagnosis had been correct; the appendix would have to come out. He reached for the scalpel.

  Only as he focused once again on the incision did he realize that something was not quite right.

  There was far too much intestine crowded into the abdomen, twice as much as there should be. Far more than the woman needed. This wouldn’t do. He tugged on a loop of small bowel, felt it glide, warm and slick, across his gloved hands. With the scalpel, he sliced off the excess length and set the dripping coil on the tray. There, he thought. That was much neater.

  The scrub nurse was s
taring at him, her eyes wide over the surgical mask. “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “Too much intestine,” he answered calmly. “Can’t have that.” He reached into the abdomen and grasped another loop of bowel. No need for all this excess tissue. It only obscured his view of things.

  “Dr. Mackie, no!”

  He sliced. Blood pulsed out in a hot, arcing spray from the severed coil.

  The nurse grabbed his gloved hand. He shook it off, outraged that a mere nurse would dare interrupt the procedure.

  “Get me another scrub nurse,” he commanded. “I need suction. Have to clear away all this blood.”

  “Stop him! Help me stop him—”

  With his free hand, Mackie reached for the suction catheter and plunged the tip into the abdomen. Blood gurgled up the tube and poured into the reservoir.

  Another hand grasped his gown and pulled him away from the table. It was Dr. Rudman. Mackie tried to shake him off, but Rudman wouldn’t let go.

  “Put down the scalpel, Stan.”

  “She has to be cleaned out. There’s too much intestine.”

  “Put it down!”

  Struggling free, Mackie swung around to confront Rudman. He’d forgotten he was still holding the scalpel. The blade slashed across the other man’s neck.

  Rudman screamed and clapped his hand to his throat.

  Mackie backed away, staring at the blood seeping out between Rudman’s fingers. “Not my fault,” he said.” It’s not my fault!”

  A nurse yelled into the intercom: “Send Security! He’s going crazy in here! We need Security STAT!”

  Mackie stumbled backward, through slippery pools of blood. Rudman’s blood. Jennifer Halsey’s blood. A spreading lake of it. He turned and bolted from the room.

  They were chasing him.

  He fled down the hallway, running in blind panic, lost in a maze of corridors. Where was he? Why did nothing seem familiar? Then, straight ahead, he saw the window, and beyond it, the swirling snow. Snow. That cold, white lace would purify him, would cleanse this blood from his hands.