Embryo 2: Crosshairs

by JA Schneider

  She fought feeling frantic, finished suturing as the nurse readied an ice pack.

  Holding her breath, she pulled her mask down. “Do you recognize me?”

  Astonishingly: “No.” Kim’s swollen eyes grazed her dimly.

  “We met once. That P.R. meeting in Graham’s office?”

  “Which P.R. meeting in Graham’s office?”

  Forget it. Jill checked her watch. Hurry, she thought, fighting a rising wave of fear.

  “Does Trey own a gun?”

  “Yes. An automatic.”

  “Did he take it with him?”

  “Maybe. I was on the floor crying.”

  Fifteen minutes Jill had been in this cubicle; Raphael could already be in the building. She eyed the scalpel she’d taped to her ankle, feeling helpless.

  What good would it be against a gun?

  And, oh God, had David already given Akers back his gun?

  A question came roaring to the surface. Jill realized it had been there all along.

  She leaned closer to Kim Dean. “Pink feathers?” she said quietly, breathing faster. “Puppets?”

  A hesitation. Then a confused frown in Jill’s direction. “You know about that?”

  “Yes.” As of this second.

  The bigger surprise was Kim’s smile. Sad, reminiscing about something sweet. “The puppets came from online, but I sewed on prettier feathers Trey had. They were a hit at kids’ parties. Trey hired different amateur ventriloquists...but dads volunteered too.” Another sad smile. “I love to sew...”

  A big piece of the puzzle had just fallen into place. Jill’s heart pounded. “Were they celebrations for kids of…rich guys? Bankers, hedge funders…?”

  “Yes.” Kim’s face crumpled again; the eyes filled with horror. “Later I learned the puppets were to…deliver drugs to the dads. I didn’t know.” Her gaze shifted worriedly. “How do you know?”

  Jill smiled as if nothing. “Lots of people know. Don’t blame yourself.”

  The nurse bustled in with more ice. Jill motioned her to step back out for a second.

  “Her violent boyfriend threatened her and may be armed,” she said. “Name’s Trey Raphael. Get extra security to guard her.”

  “Will do,” the nurse said urgently, squaring her shoulders.

  37

  It was 11:55. Outside the cubicle, Jill paced and called around fast. Anyone need her? Deliveries? The pregnant gunshot wound? The crushed pelvis?

  No, came the answers. The deliveries were going smoothly. The gunshot had stabilized, fetus looked okay. The crushed pelvis, they’re still at it: Levine, MacIntyre, OB interns, a surgical resident, surgical interns. They had enough.

  Hanging up, Jill frowned, replaying what she’d just heard from Kim Dean.

  “Who did he want to kill?”

  “Just…them. He kept saying them.”

  “Which ‘them?’”

  Kim didn’t know, but the horrid voice in Jill’s mind was now louder, closer. “You both and that freakazoid floating kid!”

  With her hands like ice, Jill next called Brand, left a message: “Trey Raphael might be headed for the hospital. Might already be here, in the building. He beat up his girlfriend, may be armed, dangerous, and after others too.”

  She hung up, finding it hard to breathe. Looked frantically around. Now what?

  Shaking, she called hospital security. “More protection needed quick in two places,” she said. “Outside the OB newborn room, and outside Gyn Surgery, O.R. room number 3. Gunman may be headed for both destinations.”

  A male voice said, “We’re on it.”

  Reassuring? A little. But the thought of guns going off in a hospital was too horrible. How to stop it? How to stop him?

  Laser printers at One Police Plaza spewed at top speed. Patrol cars sped, lights and sirens flaring. Trey Raphael’s description was quickly in the hands of every staff member in the hospital.

  A nurse in the outpatient waiting area said, “I’ve seen him! Yesterday, I think.” The cop handing her the flyer looked frustrated, rushed to join other cops handing out flyers.

  Surgery interns had seen Raphael; couldn’t remember when but would keep an eye out. “We just heard the Code Silver,” they said nervously. It was a warning: armed person is in the hospital.

  Everyone in the E.R. had also heard the Code Silver. “Oh jeez,” an orderly told a cop as he helped lift a patient. “I thought he was just a pain, taping us all the time.”

  The OB floor swarmed with cops. “He’s dangerous?” Evan Blair told another cop as he scanned the flyer, one-armed since he was carrying a test tube rack.

  Extra protection had been put outside Kim Dean’s and Kassie Doyle’s rooms.

  Everyone was looking for Trey Raphael. From entrances to stairways to supply closets.

  No sign of him.

  The elevators were too slow.

  Jill flew up six flights of stairs to Ob/Gyn, passed cops in the hall, and ran down to the glass-walled newborn nursery. Two patrolmen and one security guy now stood just outside. One of the cops nodded reassuringly, his hand on his holster. “No getting past us,” he said.

  Jill thanked him, out of breath, and entered the nursery.

  A nurse just leaving smiled nervously at her. “Isn’t this something?” she said.

  Jill nodded. “All’s well in here?”

  “Yes, thank goodness,” the nurse said as she left.

  Jill turned off her cell phone ringer, switched it to vibrate only, then hurried past the grid of roly-poly newborns through to the preemie nursery.

  This room, as always, was dimly lit, peaceful. Ventilators sounded softly. Swoosh…swoosh. Tiny, tiny people slept safely under their Lucite protective domes, many with their thumbs in their mouths. A preemie nurse just leaving smiled above her mask. Another nurse bent to check an IV line.

  The fetus – Jessie – floated in his tall, pinkly lit cylinder. He was asleep too, knees tucked, also sucking his thumb.

  Everything seemed okay.

  Breathing a little easier, Jill walked past some preemies, three of them in the front row seeming almost lost under their IVs, ventilator and nasal oxygen tubes. One little girl’s head was the size of a baseball. “Chloe” read her teeny pink hat, hand crocheted, it looked like. It did Jill good to bend and look at the stitches. Definitely hand made. She inhaled deeply; thought of a mom and dad at home, fretting, crying, losing sleep. Every preemie in this room represented a frantic family.

  Jill pictured them all, tears welling.

  Your babies will be safe, she thought fiercely.

  He was in! Wearing a torn, dark green jacket, and limping convincingly. Kept his head down, limped even more painfully past busy-eyed cops, and got into line before the E.R. nurses’ intake desk. Nobody of police interest in this line; they were all nothings, invisible. In front and behind him, walking injured and their relatives wailed, pushed, and clamored. Some of them smelled bad too, but he stood there, trying to look downcast, not jittery. He couldn’t control his sweating, though. Or his rage…

  The straggly line moved forward. Up front a new nurse came to the long desk and called, “We’ve opened a new intake line here.”

  Pure luck. The line broke haphazardly and people limped and pushed to the new line. He crept out of the messy crowd. Headed, limping with his head down, for the E.R. Start looking for her there, then he knew where to go next…

  Just past the gray arch, he saw a guy in scrubs spot him. He tried ducking his face but the weasel eyed him harder, then looked away fast. Turning, he saw the guy spewing to a cop who got his phone up fast. Paranoia seized and he ran, limp forgotten, knocking down staff and IV poles. In seconds, cops had him wrestled and down on the floor, arms pinned behind him, pawing through his pockets and finding his coke, his gun.

  He fought them, yelled, fought the cuffs they slapped on him. In a minute he was in some office, with plainclothesmen questioning him.

  “Where’d you get your knuckles bloodi
ed?” “That’s a lot of coke you got there.” “What’s with the gun? Planning to shoot someone?”

  They’d shoved him into a chair, his hands cuffed behind him. He was sweating like crazy now, his fury exploding like a mortar going off. With all his might he heaved his chair backward: kicked the cop’s face who’d been questioning him.

  They were on him on the floor now, yelling, breaking his arms, practically, as they got him back up in his chair. The shouting and questioning resumed. Staff members appeared and then disappeared in a crazed blur to say they recognized him. The cops wore disgusted looks on their ugly mugs. They were going to ruin his life too.

  They had power over him, and he screamed in fury.

  He was done. He was done…

  “Code Silver, Code Silver,” again announced a controlled, female voice over the hospital’s public address system.

  Staff, many just being handed police flyers, heard it in the wards, the labs, the halls, and in the operating rooms. It was also messaged to every cell phone in the hospital database.

  In Gyn Surgery, O.R. number 3, Levine and the others heard it from the overhead speaker. It was a confirmation, not a surprise. They had heard the commotion, had barely glanced up to see cops in black flak jackets converging outside their glass window.

  They’d been working for two hours on the crushed pelvis victim, and were almost done.

  Jill, where are you? David thought frantically, breathing too fast. The Code Silver did not calm him, but he tried to keep it together. He had to.

  He had cut through the abdomen and uterus, and done the Caesarean. A nurse cleaned the six-months preemie while a neonatologist checked the heart, respiration rate, and the baby’s arm and leg movements. It flailed, even emitted a tiny cry.

  Behind their masks, everyone grinned. The preemie hadn’t been injured in the crash.

  “Your turn,” David stepped back for Len Akers, who checked a last look at the X-ray they’d taken, right there in the O.R. At six months, one X-ray wouldn’t have caused any injury to the unborn child.

  Akers looked back to the opened uterus of the heavily sedated mother.

  “God,” he said, “What did they do before X-rays?”

  “People died,” MacIntyre said heavily, eyeing a monitor.

  The fractures had never seriously impinged on the uterus, but one bone fragment had been in the way of repairing the pelvis. Akers now went in after it, and moved the bone fragment manually.

  “Your turn,” he told David, who stepped back in and started to suture up the uterus.

  His cell phone beeped and his heart lurched. Jill? He’d never turned his phone off.

  “Ruthie,” he called to the circulating nurse as his hands kept suturing. “Reach in my pocket and answer for me?”

  Ruthie did, and listened, her frown deepening. She looked up from the phone. “It’s a Detective Pappas. He says they’ve got him.”

  This was it, oh God... “Hold the phone to my ear,” David said, his gloved hand holding the suture needle stopping for an instant.

  Then he resumed, his hand steady, his mind hearing Pappas say, “We’ve got Raphael. An orderly spotted him. Coked, crazed, and carrying. We’ve got him in the hospital Security Office.”

  “Have him take a deep breath,” David said as MacIntyre handed him a freshly threaded needle. “Tell him to hold it, then exhale slowly.”

  “Wait a sec.”

  At the other end, the sound of scuffling and agitated voices. One male was screaming obscenities.

  David made more sutures. Ruthie switched hands, still holding his phone to his ear.

  Pappas finally came back. “Okay, we got him to do it.”

  “Took a breath and exhaled slowly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he cough?”

  “No.”

  Behind his mask, David’s jaw stiffened. He closed his eyes for a second. “He’s not the guy,” he said quietly.

  Silence at the other end.

  “He’s not the guy! If he’s not coughing he’s not the guy!”

  “I was afraid of that. So all we’ve got is a coked-up mess who beat up his girlfriend and wants to kill some people he won’t name who got him fired?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  Pappas hesitated. “Anyone seen Doctor Raney?”

  “Don’t think so,” David said tightly. “I’m going to have her paged.”

  “We’ll find her. Find him too. The real Psycho.”

  “Hurry.”

  38

  It suddenly seemed too quiet in the nursery. Jill straightened from admiring tiny Chloe’s pink crocheted hat, and blinked a confused look around. Oh, the second nurse had left.

  It was a strange kind of silence, except for the soft-swooshing ventilators. This room, if you were alone in it, always did feel like an alien world. Well, call it Preemie Patrol in here, Jill thought, that’s what I’m doing. Extra cops were outside.

  Outside David’s surgery, too.

  Breathing easier, she glanced over at the fetus again. “Hi Jessie,” she called softly, even though he was asleep. She just liked the sound of the name.

  “Jessie’s the wrong name!” scolded a high, taunting voice. She froze. Her eyes darted wildly to where it came from.

  No one.

  “Over heeere!” cried the voice.

  Jill gaped, her heart rocketing. A few isolettes away was a cardiopulmonary monitor against the wall. And sitting atop the monitor was a monkey puppet.

  “You should have named him Frank, for Frankenstein,” sneered Monkey. “Or Freak, for Freakazoid, ha ha!”

  Breath tore from her lungs. She stared at the thing with swooning horror.

  “Freaky, freaky freakazoid! Hilaaarious!” The voice got screechier. The baby below the monitor squirmed, whimpering.

  That broke a little through Jill’s paralysis. Enough to notice that…Monkey’s features weren’t moving; to remember David turning the chicken at Kassie’s: It’s got levers to control the eyes and mouth.

  Which meant that the operator was elsewhere.

  On knees of jelly, she turned. “Where are you?” she whispered hoarsely.

  “Over heeere! Heeere!”

  She spun in the direction of the voice; saw a pink chicken propped on another monitor. The fourth one, she realized, trembling uncontrollably. The glass eyes glowered at her. She couldn’t breathe. “Like my pretty feathers?” taunted Chicken’s scratchy voice.

  But the beak hadn’t opened and closed.

  “No, stupid, over heeeere!” Now the voice came from somewhere else, and she wheeled to where a leering clown puppet was propped in an open isolette. Hadn’t been there before.

  “Clever of me to sneak in, huh? Don’t you think I’m clever?” Clown’s voice was lower, raspy. His eyes and mouth weren’t moving either. No hand inside…

  Jill stared, her heart whamming. Clown was…Chubbs! Mr. Chubbs the farmer in a wild red wig and striped orange overalls! Same dummy grinning more widely, grotesquely, his cheeks and lips painted garish red!

  She touched it gingerly, yanked her hand back in terror.

  “Ah, don’t be shy,” sneered Clown Chubb’s voice. “Touch me again, I’ll show you where, ha.”

  No features moving… The voice had come from it but there was no one operating it.

  She was ice all over, sure that she was done for. Somehow, knowing that sent a surging, hot new feeling of fury through her: NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT, SICKO!

  Her jaw clenched as she grabbed Clown’s wiry red hair and yanked him out until he draped, face down, over the side of the isolette. No recorder underneath, no wires...

  The heaviness of his wooden head pulled at the rest of his cloth body. He slid and crashed to the floor on his back. His face, looking up at her, was split nearly in half.

  “Oww!” cried the split-clown face. “She broke me! She broke meee!”

  Jill stepped backward, her gaping eyes fixed on the grotesque, split face.

  She was numb
, in shock. Images in the room whirled. Through the pounding in her ears she heard something else. She was being…paged? The voice came softly from an overhead speaker.

  “Doctor Raney, Doctor Jill Raney, call Extension 246, urgent.”

  Oh God… She tried fumbling for her phone when something else caught her attention. Hairs rose on the back of her neck as she felt a presence behind her.

  “Okay, party’s over,” came a deep, masculine voice.

  She spun around.

  Jessie’s cylinder had been rolled forward a bit. Behind it, seeming broad and distorted through the cylinder’s rounded surface, a torso in green scrubs.

  The nurse? The one she thought had left?

  Above the cylinder, where the torso’s face should have been, was a mask. Black, with three white-painted circles for the eyes and mouth; grass and feathers instead of hair.

  “Thought you were safe?” the voice sneered. “You and Freakie and all these poor little darlings?”

  Ramu Chitkara glanced up at the clock. “1:07,” he announced, knowing that they wanted the patient out of anesthesia as soon as possible.

  David, not speaking, was now grimly suturing the patient’s abdomen.

  From the overhead speaker they heard, “Doctor Raney, Doctor Jill Raney, call Extension 246, urgent.”

  “You’re almost done,” Len Akers said, tightly watching him.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, the cops thought they had him, but they don’t?”

  “No. And I don’t know where Jill is.”

  “You need my gun back.” Akers glanced nervously at an X-ray tech taking a new picture of the pelvis.

  David made no reply. Akers saw the expression in his eyes, how fast he was breathing. He stepped closer. “Hope you’re not depending on the cops,” he pleaded. “Cops can’t depend on cops!”

  MacIntyre told David, “Len’s right. Lemme finish the sutures. Go find Jill.”

  “Yeah, find her,” Tricia implored, starting to cry.

  Again they heard, “Doctor Raney, Doctor Jill Raney, call Extension 246, urgent.”

  The idea hit, broke through the stress of this two-lives surgery and his frantic worry. David raised his gloved hands and called over the circulating nurse. “Get my phone out again?” he asked her. “Call Dr. Raney.”