Embryo 2: Crosshairs

by JA Schneider

  “Since hospitals became corporations.”

  Jill rose, and got as far as the door. “By the way,” she turned and asked. “Where’s Dr. Stryker? I haven’t seen him.”

  Simpson was back to unhappily turning his pen. “He’s been unwell. His blood pressure, his heart. I’m filling in as head of research. Temporarily, I hope.” The pen stilled. “He is missed.”

  “Oh…” Sadness welled. Compassion.

  A moment passed, then something else hit. Something Jill realized she’d had in the back of her mind all along. “Exorcise demons by returning to where it happened, David had said. It seemed right. She was suddenly feeling more confident about facing demons.

  “What’s going to happen to the museum attic?” she asked. “I heard the hospital and museum both want it.”

  “No, the museum’s keeping it.” Simpson’s phone rang. “They’re done repairing and the door’s open. Have a look,” he said, lifting his receiver.

  31

  Past liquid nitrogen tanks, past the long white counter crowded with lab glassware, microscopes, test tube racks… It was as if Arnett had never left his lab, and would be back any second. How eerie this felt. Awful, actually. His large, square incubator still sat on its mount, holding Arnett’s IVF embryos of higher vertebrates…rabbits, mice, and one chimp, he’d said.

  A few goose pimples rose on her arms, and Jill rubbed them. She could still hear Arnett bragging about snipping out inherited disease from these vertebrates’ DNA, just a teeny segment gone from here or here, and the rabbit wouldn’t inherit its parent’s cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, celiac disease...

  The incubator. Jill couldn’t restrain herself. She opened its square door. Inside, warm Petri dishes still sat, their embryos still… growing? Was anyone tending them since Arnett took his screaming slide down the roof?

  Duh, she told herself. They had to be dead, forgotten…though for an instant she hallucinated mice swarming out and a Frankenstein chimp lunging at her.

  She slammed the door with a bang. The sound echoed in the empty lab. Dim afternoon sun angled in, leaving shadows. Damn, she should have turned on the lights.

  “Exorcise demons by returning to where it happened.” But hey, she was doing it! Handling it pretty well so far, she thought. Amazing, this once-creepy, long room was just an empty lab now.

  On impulse she headed into a side hall, turned on that light, and opened the first door on the right. Inside, soft pastel walls and a patient’s pillowed bed with upraised bedrails. Like any hospital bed, but for patients who’d just had IVF to rest for several hours.

  Jill closed the door, and looked down the hall. There were four more doors, all leading to identical patient rooms.

  She remembered the woman she’d seen leaving Simpson’s office: “Just heard I’m pregnant! Finally, finally!” Realized that with Arnett dead and Stryker’s health weakened, Simpson’s patient rooms must be full.

  Turning off the light, she returned to Arnett’s lab and what remained of his far wall of bookcases. The gaping hole David had crashed through wood and old brick was now replaced with a door. Nice-looking, painted white with molding and a turn lock. From the other side, men’s voices could be heard; tools clunking.

  The workmen in the museum attic.

  Jill switched her Mace from her ankle to the inside of her left wrist, with the hand strap - beige and beaded - looking like a bracelet. She turned the lock and opened the door.

  “Hey, look who’s here,” the one named Ray greeted her, handing a power saw to the second workman. “Come for another go at the roof?”

  She greeted them both, looking around. “Just wanted to see how it’s going. Hey, what a difference.”

  The tall French doors were repaired, and the rest of the long, big space was empty. Swept clean of everything including the musty hominids. Above where the fetus and his bypass-looking machines had been, a window shaped like an open fan admitted a down shaft of sun like an amber spotlight. Motes of dust floated in it. The men behind it seemed dim, blurry.

  They were noisily loading up their tools. “Done for the day,” Ray said. “Can’t say I like this place, and I’ve been in some weird ones.”

  The other one asked, “How’s your friend? The doc on the roof?”

  Jill smiled. “He’s fine, thanks.” And then added nervously, “He’ll be here any minute.”

  “Well, say hi for us, we’re outta here,” Ray said, carrying power tools across to their staging area by an old door, halfway down the long wall. It was the door through which Sonny Sears had entered that night, up from the museum basement, summoned by Arnett.

  Of course. She’d never thought of it, but the workmen would have to have accessed the attic through the museum. They couldn’t have brought their oiled, gritty gear through the hospital, the sterile labs…

  The second man hauled his black tool case to the door, and said bye. Jill answered pleasantly, having no idea what she said. She was still absorbing the fact that she was here. Again. Alone.

  Ray stuck his head out before closing the door.

  “Take care,” he said. “Hey, it’s getting dark in here. Better turn on the light.”

  “Right!” Jill said, a bit too loudly.

  But she didn’t. The old door closed, and the sound of their clomping disappeared down the museum stairs.

  She turned. The light from the fan window was dimmer. The attic had sunk into shadow.

  This was how she had wanted it…with the same light as that awful five a.m. dawn. She bit her lip, determined to do this. It wasn’t just because of what David had said…it was something else. Another thought that had started to glimmer in Simpson’s office was pulling harder now, trying to surface.

  Something she had to remember…

  Something Arnett had said. She frowned, trying to concentrate. Or maybe it was something Sears had said? Words and images were coming at her too fast, colliding.

  In the dimness she saw Arnett again, raving, standing before the partially lit fetus in his cylinder. “In fifty years humans will be living in misery. The world’s resources will have been used up. They’ll be dying of famine or in warfare over the last crumb or the last drop of oil. For millennia man has survived by one thing only – his ability to adapt. But now he’s fallen behind. Evolution takes thousands of years. There isn’t time!”

  She had pretended interest, taking subtle, terrified steps backward, hoping to escape.

  “Certainly a person of your intelligence can see that we are living at the end of an era. That the old way of reproduction is finished, destructive even!”

  She had glanced furtively at the old door, calculating her chances for escape. Was it locked? Too far to make a run for it? Arnett had turned his back to her, was gazing at the fetus, rapt and raving like a lunatic.

  She remembered moving faster. Half-turned, trembling violently, her eyes staring so fearfully at the ranting, white-coated back – “Immunities! Anti-aging genes!” – that she didn’t hear the soft, metallic sound of that old doorknob turn, the rubber-soled shoes stealthily crossing the dimness until they stepped on a floorboard behind her. She had whirled to see, but the rough hands were already clamping her neck and wrist.

  “Damn you!” Arnett exploded at Sonny Sears. “I buzzed you ten minutes ago! What took so long?”

  She had flailed, terrified, recognizing the newcomer. That gaunt, malicious face…

  The dour-faced assistant sweeping scraps in the museum’s basement hominid construction room.

  Arnett, astonishingly, told him to let go of Jill. Go back and clean up the mess she’d made down there, when she’d stumbled onto the place…and freaked.

  Sears had yelled, “Not when I got her, I’m not going!”

  Then had given in and left, too easily.

  Why?

  Jill paced in the darkening attic. “Something Arnett said,” she mumbled, pacing faster. “Think!” That night, she’d been out of her mind with fear. Absorbing nothing,
taking in nothing…now remembering nothing except that…

  …in eerily pleasant tones Arnett had threatened Sears with…something.

  What?

  She stopped by the tall French windows, their daylight fading. Remembered looking out at that night’s first, faint, gray streak of dawn…and hearing them.

  Finally hearing them.

  “I DON’T TAKE ORDERS FROM NOBODY.”

  “THEN YOU SHALL GET MORPHINE FROM NOBODY.”

  Her breath caught. She stared out, blinking, realizing that was it. Morphine. She remembered steeling herself after Sears left, daring to confront Arnett.

  “You…give him morphine?”

  “I also pay him. He does other things for me.”

  Like kidnapping, murder…

  Jill’s phone beeped, and she jumped. “Oh!” She scrabbled in her pocket for it, saw it fly from her hand and skitter across floorboards. She went for it on all fours, grabbed it, checked the readout.

  Answered, out of breath.

  “Where are you?” David asked, worried.

  “Museum attic, on the floor.”

  “On the – “ Stunned. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” She gulped air.

  “Why’d you go there alone?”

  “I was in the neighborhood.” Another gulp of air. “Plus you said revisiting where it happened is the best way to exorcise demons, so I did. Alone was better. I had a breakthrough.”

  “Tell me when you get back. How’d you get there?”

  “Usual way.”

  “Okay, come back via First. Meet me in the on call room. And keep your phone on the whole way back. Keep talking to me.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  She ran.

  Out the attic, through Arnett’s lab, down the elevator, and out Sturdevandt’s fancy front entrance to First Avenue. It was teeming. Crowds going home, sidewalks jammed, horns blaring. This was actually the faster way to get to Sturdevandt, but hardly antiseptic. The hospital frowned on staff moving via the streets from building to building.

  She had her phone to her ear.

  “I hear traffic.” David, listening.

  “I’m on First now.” She wove fast through slow movers exhausted from the day, the heat. DON’T WALK, said the sign across a side street. Jill ran. A taxi screeched to a halt, the driver yelled at her.

  “Ha ha,” she said into the phone on the other side. “I just almost got run over.”

  “Very funny.”

  “And I just inhaled a deep, glorious breath of choking exhaust fumes. Forgot how good it feels to be out.”

  “Good, because we’re going out. For dinner. We need a break.”

  She thought she’d heard wrong. Too much noise.

  She crossed one more side street, ran a half block, and - checking over her shoulder - went in the hospital’s front entrance. Nobody seemed to take notice of her.

  “I’m in,” she said into the phone. “Coming through the front.”

  “Take the staff elevator, not the visitors. Keep your phone open.”

  32

  David was in jeans and a chambray shirt. He admired where she’d put her Mace.

  “It’s a new fashion statement,” she said, holding up her Mace-braceleted wrist. “You say something about dinner out?”

  “Yep. I told Tricia we needed it bad, so looky here.”

  On the bed, clean and neatly folded, were two old-looking hoodies and a smallish pair of men’s jeans.

  “She ran to some consignment place on 39th, got these, washed and dried them. Said they cost all of twelve bucks, which is worth it to keep you safe. ”

  “Oh Trish, what a friend!”

  “I hugged her for both of us. She’s in a delivery now.” David pulled on the larger hoodie, a gray one, and tugged the hood low over his brow. “Howzat?”

  “Scary.” She pulled on hers before the mirror. “Oh look, a faded orange hoodie. I’ve always dreamed of a faded orange hoodie.”

  “It’s you.”

  “Another fashion statement.”

  “It hides our faces and we’re goin’ out! Takin’ a freakin’ break!” David was adjusting his belt. “There’s a nice little Italian restaurant on 40th.”

  “I should shower.”

  “You look fine. No blood.”

  Jill glanced at the bed. “Those men’s jeans look baggy.”

  “Yours are tight and sexy.”

  “So? In the hoodie I can be any woman, can’t I?”

  “Okay, I guess. By the way, I borrowed Len Akers’ gun.” He showed her the gun strapped to his ankle.

  “Coincidence!” She pulled off her scrub bottoms and showed him the scalpel she’d taped to her ankle.

  He was impressed again. “Cool. All we need now is an armored tank to go four blocks.”

  In their jeans and hoodies, they descended in the visitors’ elevator. Slouched with their heads down through the hospital entrance and the side streets. Pulled their hoodies back before entering the restaurant.

  Underneath, Jill was wearing a breast-hugging crimson tank top. David grinned at her.

  “Nice.”

  “It shrank in the laundry.”

  He asked for the table in the far corner. They sat, facing the whole place and the entrance, feeling high just being out and there: the smell of garlic, the red and white tablecloths, the glowing candles.

  Garlic bread was whisked to them fast, like magic. David ordered wine and they dove into the bread.

  “So what was your breakthrough?” David asked with his mouth full.

  Jill leaned closer, swallowed and said low, “Arnett controlled Sonny Sears by supplying him with morphine. It’s been nagging, and finally came to me in the attic. Like something you try and try to remember but can’t, because at the moment your head was exploding?”

  The wine came with the word “exploding,” and it was Whoa, hold that thought as they clinked and drank. A good long swig for each. Man, it felt so good.

  Jill moved her chair closer and put her arms around David, squeezed him. “What a lovely, fabulous idea,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He kissed her. Then looked into his wine glass, thinking, frowning a little.

  “Morphine, huh?” he said.

  She nodded. “Arnett paid Sears too, but the morphine was worth more on the street.”

  “Way, way more,” David said, raising a brow. “Now, are you ready for this? Kassie Doyle worked for Arnett too. Briefly. Tending his IVF patients.”

  Jill blinked at him. “When?”

  “Late last winter, roughly. I remember because we were short night nurses and I wanted her back.”

  Their eyes locked as something dawned.

  Jill breathed, “The cops guessed it was Kassie’s ex who got her on drugs. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was Arnett.”

  “It fits. She took sick leave citing back pain. Came back, said she felt better, then she’d be out on sick leave again. I prescribed Percocet to her once.”

  “Which is like morphine.”

  “Yep. Same pain-killing, euphoric effect. Ditto Dilaudid, Demerol, all of ‘em. Oxy and heroin have faster rushes, but they’re…street. People worry about contamination. Best score is regulated opiates from a hospital.”

  David paused. “Sonny Sears must have been running one heck of a drug ring.”

  “What could he have done with the cash?”

  “Probably stashed it someplace. That’s what amateurs do while they look for money laundering operations. Which can be dicey. I doubt if he had the brains or connections, or he wouldn’t have still been working for Arnett.”

  The waitress returned and David ordered...two somethings. Jill barely heard; her mind was racing, trying to understand. Oh - it was one thing to sell drugs, another to convert your cash. She’d never given any of that any thought.

  When the waitress left, she said low, “Another reason Sears never got the chance to launder his money is because he’s dead. So somewhere is a whole pile of cash.
”

  “I’ll say.”

  Jill thought of something else. “Could Kassie have known Sonny Sears?” she wondered out loud. “He did jobs for Arnett. Dressed nice for some of them. I mean, they could have crossed paths…”

  She hesitated, feeling guilty and remembering something more important. “Is Kassie doing any better?”

  “For now.” David stared at the candle flame, and inhaled. “Still sedated, but her fever’s down to 101. Mackey tried lowering her sedation, but she’s still in a lot of pain.”

  “But the cefepime’s working!”

  David still looked worried, uncertain. “Those Pseudomonas bacteria are the new enemy. They multiply fast. With each multiplication they can mutate, develop resistance.”

  Ziti and penne in tomato sauce arrived, too steaming to start. They forked the crowded little cylinders, hesitating and worrying.

  “Pseudomonas under the microscope,” Jill said quietly. “Same shape, huh?”

  “Yeah.” David’s face twitched, and he gave a stiff sigh. “Pass the bread.”

  Go to Kassie’s apartment? It was Jill’s idea. Why not? It’s near! They argued over their spumoni desserts.

  “It’s locked,” David said. “Door’s probably still yellow-taped.”

  “The tape must be cut by now. Cops have searched, dusted, done all their forensic stuff.”

  “There’s still the lock.”

  “We can ask the super to let us in.” Jill spooned a too-red cherry.

  “Great. At night, in our jeans and hoodies, the super’s going to let us in.”

  “Show our hospital I.D.s?”

  “They could have been stolen. And, think Arnett. There are bad guy doctors too.” David shook his head. “Count out the super.”

  Jill looked disappointed, determined. Her brow creased, and the corners of her mouth went down. Once she got a bee in her bonnet…

  David toyed with the dessert menu. Looked thoughtful.

  She peeked at his features. Good, he was trying not to get intrigued.