Code White

by Scott Britz-Cunningham

  The floor nurse at the station was having a lively chat with a mustachioed young man who looked like a medical student, but Harry cut the conversation short with a brusque display of his ID. “Where is the woman in 18C-7?”

  “She went to CT but hasn’t come back.”

  “CT? What for?”

  “You’d have to ask Dr. Weiss.”

  “And where is Dr. Weiss?”

  “I don’t know. Usually he does rounds with the residents in the mornings. He has patients on four different floors in Towers B and C. He could be anywhere.”

  “Send an overhead page. I need to talk to him ASAP.”

  Grudgingly, the nurse picked up the phone. Meanwhile, Harry dialed patient transport on another line. “This is Harry Lewton, chief of security. Did you get my order to transfer a patient named Viola Lewton to Stroger Hospital?”

  “Yes,” came a man’s voice. “An ambulance is standing by. We sent a team up but they couldn’t find her.”

  “They didn’t look. She just went for a CT scan, that’s all. Get them back up here on the double!”

  “I’m sorry,” said the dispatcher, bowing to the peremptory tone of Harry’s voice. “They did ask around, but they say no one knew where she was.”

  “Save the excuses. Tell them to meet me at station 18C. I’ll take them to get her myself.”

  The floor nurse motioned to Harry. “Mr. Lewton, you have a call on line two.”

  Harry hung up on the dispatcher and hit the line selector on the phone.

  “Lewton here.”

  “Harry?”

  He was astonished to hear the voice of his sister, Luanne. He had spoken to her a week ago and it had gotten pretty ugly. “I’m kind of busy right now, Luanne.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Momma was in the hospital? What’s wrong with her?”

  “A touch of pneumonia, that’s all.”

  “A doctor called me. Dr. Weiss. He said you wanted to take her out of the hospital. He said it was a real bad idea.”

  “Well, he doesn’t know the whole picture. I’m just moving her to a different hospital, that’s all. They can care for her as well over there.”

  “Harry, I told you it was wrong to take her away from that nursing home.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “But you didn’t listen. You’re not listening to the doctors now, either. You always have to do things your own way.”

  “It’s the only way I know.”

  “What does Momma say?”

  “It’s my decision, Luanne. Momma’s not in a position to judge.”

  “I wanna talk to her.”

  “She’s not here. They took her away for a CT scan.”

  “Do I have to get on an airplane to come there myself? ’Cause, by God, that’s what I’ll do. Just ’cause you’re the eldest, it doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have no rights.”

  “Settle down. You can talk to her when she gets back to her room.”

  “I forbid you to move her. You’ve already done her enough harm. I forbid it.”

  “Jesus, Luanne! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t put me down, Harry. I’m not your kid sister anymore. It was grand what you did for us all back in them days when Daddy got sick. We all looked up to you, Harry—me, Martha, Kyle, and Josie. We’re grateful for that. But we’re all growed up now, with kids and houses and jobs of our own, and we don’t need you makin’ decisions for us. We have a say, too. You’re gonna have to accept that.”

  “Can we talk about this later?”

  “Later means never with you, Harry.”

  Harry saw Dr. Weiss coming through the doorway of the ward. “Please, Luanne, I’ve got a lot to deal with right now. I’ll call you tonight. I promise.”

  “That’s not good enough, Harry. I’m gonna hop on that airplane and come see for myself.”

  Harry did a quick calculation in his head. Even with a nonstop flight out of Houston, there was no way she could get to Fletcher Memorial before 6:00 or 7:00 P.M. The crisis would be over by then, one way or the other. “All right, you do that. It will probably do Momma good to see you. You can stay at my place while you’re here.”

  “Okay.” Luanne’s voice suddenly sounded more tractable. “I’ll call you from O’Hare.”

  “Bye now.” Harry put down the receiver and turned toward Weiss. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Weiss gave Harry an indignant look. “Taking care of your mother, actually. I had to intubate her and put her on a ventilator. Her blood gases dropped and we had to get a high-resolution chest CT. Her pneumonia’s worse and it looks like she could have early signs of ARDS. That’s acute respiratory distress syndrome. It has a mortality rate of nearly fifty percent.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I just moved her to the ICU.”

  “ICU? I told you I wanted her out of here.”

  Weiss threw up his hands. “You don’t trust me? Get another doctor. But she’s not leaving this hospital. Not unless you want to kill her.”

  “It’s not about you or about her goddamn pneumonia. It’s a security matter.”

  “Put a guard outside the ICU, then. Whatever. But security right now is the least of her problems. Do you understand me? The issue is whether she will live through the night.”

  No, Harry thought, you have it wrong. It’s whether she’ll live through the next six hours. But he didn’t dare explain himself. If he let out how badly things stood, the whole hospital could wind up in a panic.

  Just then, the transport team came rolling up with a light ambulance-type gurney.

  “You Lewton?” said a tall, slim orderly in an oversized, coffee-stained scrub top. “Sorry, but we were up here an hour ago, and she weren’t nowhere we could find.” He pointed to the empty bed. “See? She still ain’t here.”

  The orderly slouched and rocked on his heels, avoiding eye contact. Harry felt an urge to ream him out. I’ll bet you looked real hard for her. Five-to-one you’ve been on a cigarette break ever since. But he had bigger problems than the orderlies. “Dr. Weiss,” he said, turning back to the doctor with a more conciliatory tone, “is there somewhere else we can put her? Somewhere outside the towers? Like the Pine Building, or Children’s Hospital.”

  “Are you out of your mind? There’s nothing but a maternity unit in Pine. And Children’s … that’s just absurd. She needs to be in the ICU, here in Tower C. That’s the only chance she has.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Not my specialty. See urology,” snapped Weiss. “Anything else, Mr. Lewton?”

  Harry took a long, deep breath. “Can I go in to her?”

  Weiss pointedly nodded toward the stretcher-bearers. “What about them?”

  “You two can split,” said Harry, with a wave of his hand. “The transfer’s off for now.”

  Weiss remained stubbornly silent until the orderlies had left the unit. “Yes, you can see her,” he said. “She’s heavily sedated, and she can’t speak because of the ventilation tube. But she’ll know you’re in the room, and it’ll probably do her some good.”

  * * *

  Harry pushed his way through the door of the Intensive Care Unit. The lights were so low inside that it took his eyes a minute to adjust enough to make out his mother in the far corner bed. The room was filled with mechanical noises—hums of respirators, beeping of monitors and IV pumps—but strangely devoid of human speech. Doctors and nurses went about their work in silence. Patients, too, lay fighting for their lives without uttering a word. To Harry it felt like a sacrilege to open his mouth.

  “Momma, it’s me,” he said in a near whisper. His mother’s constant tremor disappeared for a moment as Harry took her hand and she squeezed back at him. “I just spoke with Dr. Weiss. The pneumonia’s gotten a tad worse, so they need to keep you here a spell. There’s nothin’ to it. Don’t be scared, Momma. Luanne’s coming. She’ll be here tonight.”

  Viola released Harry’s hand. As soon as she did,
her tremor started up again, making her look like she was playing with an invisible ball bearing between her thumb and fingers. Harry heard a sucking sound as she moved her lips and tongue.

  “Don’t try to talk, Momma. They put a tube in you to help you breathe. Just relax, okay? Don’t you worry about Luanne and me. We’re not on the outs. Just get your rest.”

  Harry stroked Viola’s forehead, rearranging the silver curls where the doctors had mussed her hair. His touch calmed her immediately. “Listen to me, Momma. Thing’s have gotten kind of dicey in the hospital right now. I tried to keep you out of it, but I just couldn’t. I’m real sorry about that. It’s hard to know the right thing to do. Dr. Weiss … well, he says one thing, my heart says another, but in this case I think I’m gonna have to listen to him.”

  Harry looked at his watch. Almost a quarter to twelve. The Feds would be expecting him back.

  He picked up his mother’s hand. “I have to go. It’s possible, Momma, that we won’t get a chance to speak again. If it comes to that—” He fell silent for a moment, struck by the enormity of that. “If it comes to … comes to … I want you to know that I love you.”

  He felt her hand squeeze back again at his, this time very hard. Then her fingers resumed their tremor once more, and slipped out of his grip. She closed her eyes. All was quiet except for the soft whoosh as the ventilator cycled in and out.

  “Bye, Momma. Go to sleep, now.”

  * * *

  Kevin had his eye on the clock. With less than fifteen minutes to go before the payment of the ransom, he knew that this was the most critical juncture of Project Vesuvius—the only part of the operation whose success depended on other people.

  “Are you sure the instructions were explicit?” he asked Odin. “Could there be any room for misunderstanding?”

  “I HAVE SUPPLIED ACCOUNT NUMBERS TO ALL PAYERS, WITH EXACT AMOUNTS AND TIMES OF DEPOSIT. THE PENALTY FOR NONCOMPLIANCE HAS BEEN STATED UNAMBIGUOUSLY. IT WOULD RESULT IN THE IRREVOCABLE AND INSTANTANEOUS DESTRUCTION OF FLETCHER MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER.”

  “And if they fuck up, what then? What if they’re late?”

  “THE OPTIMAL WINDOW BETWEEN PAYMENTS MUST BE BETWEEN FOUR AND SIX MINUTES. DEPENDING UPON THE SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH PAYER’S SECURITY FIREWALL, ANY OTHER INTERVAL RISKS SIGNIFICANT FALL-OFF OR ABORTION OF ONE OR MORE REVENUE STREAMS.”

  “Well, we’ll have to just pray that we’re not dealing with any retards today.” Kevin leaned down to desktop level to look at Loki. The monkey was pacing back and forth along the edge of the desk, stopping only to scratch his ear with his hind leg, like a dog. “We don’t want to have to blow up the hospital, Loki. Big pile of monkey shit. Ka-Boom!” He wriggled his fingers in the air, to which Loki responded with a screech and a leap to the safe distance of the sink countertop.

  “KEVIN, MAY I DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT THE HOSPITAL PATIENT CENSUS NOW STANDS AT 1,727. THIS IS A 12 PERCENT DECREASE SINCE 08:00 THIS MORNING.”

  “Can that be accounted for by routine morning discharges?”

  “NEGATIVE. AT THIS TIME OF DAY, THE POPULATION HAS AVERAGED 1,855 PLUS OR MINUS FORTY-THREE OVER THE PAST MONTH. THE PROBABILITY THAT THIS IS A RANDOM OCCURRENCE IS LESS THAN 0.05 PERCENT.”

  “Are they evacuating?”

  “NOT ON A FULL SCALE. HOWEVER, SINCE 10:15 THERE HAVE BEEN NO NEW ADMISSIONS FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM.”

  “Harry Lewton! It’s gotta be his doing. He’s diverting the ambulances. He’s a smart little fucker, I give him that.”

  “THIS IS A VIOLATION OF THE TERMS OF THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE FBI. SHALL I DETONATE THE PRIMARY BOMB IN RESPONSE?”

  “No, for God’s sake, Odin! No! This is just … just mischief. I expected them to try something like this. Let’s not overreact. Just send them a warning and tell them to cut it out. If I know Harry Lewton, he’ll back off.”

  Kevin did know Harry Lewton. Although the two had never met, Kevin had studied Harry’s personnel file and eavesdropped on quite a few conversations in his office. He had learned not to underestimate him. Lewton only looked like a dumb shit-kicker. He had grown up in Southwest Houston, a gang-infested neighborhood where smarts were something you kept in reserve, like a switchblade in your boot.

  Three months ago, Harry had been running security for an oil terminal down South that had been a showcase for a prototype of the Cerberus system. When Fletcher Memorial decided to invest big-time in their own security upgrade, he was brought in on the recommendation of the Cerberus CEO. This was welcome news to Kevin at the time. Harry and Cerberus were linked by an umbilical cord, which meant that Harry could be trusted to depend on its fancy automated protocols instead of his own resources. By the time he realized that Odin had co-opted Cerberus, the game would be over.

  As for the new arrivals—the FBI and the cops—Kevin didn’t worry about them at all. Odin had identified each one by name or facial match upon arrival, and dutifully provided Kevin with background files hacked from the personnel databases at the FBI and Chicago Police Department. They were a conventional lot. Avery had commendations for bravery, but none for brains. Scopes was good at investigating craters and burned-out vans, but he had little experience with live bombs. Lee was too smart for his own britches and, like all self-important people, could be easily manipulated.

  Ali was Kevin’s Achilles’ heel. She was smart and he had taught her to think outside the box. She knew a hell of a lot about Odin. And once she set her mind on something, she would swim through fire and ice to see it through. Kevin’s insurance was the fact that this was SIPNI day. Ali would be so focused on the Winslow kid that she would shut out everything else. Not even a bomb threat would sway her from her patient.

  Which made it troubling that the FBI had pulled her in so quickly. Kevin knew that Homeland Security had a file on her. Somehow it must have gotten flagged. Kevin had listened in on her interrogation through a microphone embedded in the monitor of Harry Lewton’s computer. He was relieved, of course, that his name failed to come up. But from the audio alone he couldn’t really get a fix on what was happening inside Ali’s head. Had the Feds scared her enough to knock her off the safe and reliable SIPNI rails? Only seeing her face and body language would tell him that. And, ironically, Harry’s office, the receiving end of over a hundred cameras throughout the hospital, had not a single security camera inside itself.

  Kevin turned to the big wall monitor. “Odin, have you come up with any more video of Ali’s interrogation?”

  “NO. THE ONLY ACTIVE VIDEO SOURCE IS FROM THE MINI-CAMERA ON HARRY LEWTON’S COMPUTER MONITOR. THIS HAS A VIEW ONLY OF THE SECURITY DIRECTOR’S CHAIR AND OF THE WALL BEHIND IT. I HAVE TRIED RE-PROCESSING A REFLECTION OF ALI’S IMAGE ON ONE OF THE MONITORS ALONG THE WALL, HOWEVER EVEN WITH 144 ITERATIONS OF EDGE ENHANCEMENT IT IS TOO PIXELATED FOR INTERPRETATION.”

  “I wish to God I could see her face.”

  “I WILL CONTINUE WORKING ON THE PROBLEM. IT MAY BE POSSIBLE TO RECONSTRUCT THE IMAGE USING A HIDDEN MARKOV MODEL WITH A NON-GAUSSIAN DATA DISTRIBUTION.”

  “Okay, try it. In the meantime, use Cerberus to track her in the hospital. I want to know where she is at all times.”

  In the end, Kevin thought, it probably won’t matter. By the time they put the pieces together, I’ll be long gone. They can sift through the rubble ten times over and still never know if I am dead or alive.

  * * *

  Back in the Neuro ICU, Ali set about performing Jamie’s spinal tap, drawing out a sample of the fluid that bathed the spinal cord and brain. Ali had done so many of these taps that she did not have to think about how to do it. With Jamie lying in a fetal position on his side, and with his knees drawn up, Ali painted the skin of the small of his back with reddish-brown Betadine antiseptic, then positioned a sterile blue drape over his spine. A small cutout window exposed the Betadine-stained skin.

  After switching to a new pair of sterile gloves, Ali felt the small bumps that projected from Jamie’s spine, and counted u
p from the bottom, until the index and middle finger of her left hand straddled the space between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae. In her right hand, Ali held a four-inch-long needle, which she inserted into this space, exactly in the midline. At this level, she knew, the spinal cord had ended in a plume of small nerves called the cauda equina, or mare’s tail, where the needle would be unlikely to cause any damage. She inserted the needle slowly through the tough straplike ligaments that held the spine together. It felt like pushing the needle through leather. When she had gone in about two inches, she felt a sudden give, or “pop,” and knew that she had broken through into the intrathecal space, the fluid-filled area immediately surrounding the spinal cord.

  Ali pulled out the fine stylet that plugged the shaft of the needle, and watched a drop of clear fluid emerge. She was relieved to see that the fluid wasn’t bloody. She quickly attached a manometer, a graduated clear plastic tube, to the stopcock on the needle, and watched the fluid slowly rise into the tube. When it stopped, she read an opening pressure of fourteen millimeters of mercury, close to what the ICP monitor had shown. She then removed the manometer, and let the needle drip into four vials, ten drops to a vial. These would go to the lab for analysis.

  While Ali was capping the last of the tubes, Jamie suddenly jerked his legs.

  “Hold still, Jamie,” said Ali. “Let me take the needle out.” She reached for the needle, but as she touched his skin, she felt his body vibrating. It was not a natural movement. His feet were rubbing against each other, with a rapid, polishing kind of motion.

  “Stephen!” she called out to the intensivist. “He’s having a seizure.” While Brower and one of the nurses rushed to the bedside, Ali pulled out the needle and slapped a small sterile Band-Aid over its entry point into the skin. She then turned Jamie onto his back, just as Brower began hooking up an infusion pump to the IV. Jamie’s legs immediately straightened, but his hands remained suspended over his chest, shaking with a fine tremor. His eyes were darting about crazily under his eyelids.