by Alton Gansky
“Who would betray this hospital?” Morgan asked.
Rachel wondered at the word betray. She had previously noticed that Morgan often referred to the hospital as his hospital, but had always written it off as a convention of speech. Could he really view the hospital as his personal kingdom?
“Anyone,” Fuller said matter-of-factly, “doctors, nurses, orderlies. You see, many people view these reporters as stars. Just talking to them gives them a thrill. You know, they have a few friends to the house and then they say, ‘Oh, I know what you mean. When I was talking to Priscilla Simms—you know, of the Evening News—well, she and I were talking and . . .’ You get the idea.”
“Still, it could be more than one person.” Morgan turned back to the window. “So how do we locate the source or sources?”
“Let me see if I can run that one down,” Sanchez replied.
“Okay,” Morgan said, “but do it quickly. I don’t want any more leaks. I want the pipeline to Simms shut down.” Turning from the window, he asked Rachel, “Did your interview with the Loraynes’ minister help us any?”
“Not really,” Rachel said. “He assumed that Lorayne had only come out of the coma. He didn’t know about the . . .” Rachel struggled for an acceptable term. “About the physical alteration.”
Morgan turned back to the window. “Where was he when the event happened?”
“In the cafeteria with the family.”
“He just left them there to go up to the ICU?”
“They were struggling with whether to sign the heroic efforts release papers. He left to give them some privacy.”
“And when he walked into Lorayne’s cubicle, what did he see?”
“The patient sitting up in bed.”
Even with Morgan’s back turned to her, she could tell he was puffing on his pipe more. A stream of smoke rose to the ceiling. “I wonder,” he said quietly.
“Excuse me,” Rachel said, unsure of what she heard.
“I was just wondering if he could be our man.” Morgan turned and walked to the conference table. “After all, no one saw him come in. He knows the family. The nurses were tied up with other patients.” Turning to Sanchez he asked, “Bill, what kind of evidence do the police look for at a crime? I mean if you already have a suspect.”
“Just like what you see on television.” Sanchez sat up as he spoke. “We look for evidence that shows motive, means, and opportunity.”
Morgan paused thoughtfully. “Well, this preacher had motive, he’s a friend of the family; he had opportunity when he was in Lorayne’s room alone. The only thing we don’t know is if he has the means.” Turning to Rachel he asked, “What do you think? Could he be our man?”
Rachel thought for a moment. “What about the other events?”
“He was a patient of yours, wasn’t he?”
“He has his own physician, but I performed the emergency appendectomy.”
“When was he admitted?” Sanchez asked.
“Sunday, a few weeks ago,” Rachel said then paused to mentally calculate the date. “That would be March 1st. He came in a little before noon. We operated soon after that.”
Sanchez rolled the cigarette back and forth between his fingers. “That’s the day of the first heal . . . occurrence. The second event happened the next day.”
“Interesting,” Morgan said.
“Wait a minute,” Rachel remarked. “The first healing took place in the predawn hours of March 1st, Bridger wasn’t admitted until hours later.”
“Does Bridger live in the city?” Sanchez asked.
“Yes.”
“Then what’s to stop him from taking a little late-night drive down here?”
“This doesn’t make sense to me.” Rachel shook her head. “Why would a person who can heal others need to be admitted to the hospital for surgery?”
“Maybe things aren’t what they seem.” Sanchez looked up.
“His appendix was real,” Rachel said. “I held it in my hands, and I cleaned up the mess it left. His attack was real. It still doesn’t make sense.”
“And what, Dr. Tremaine,” Sanchez said calmly, “does make sense about any of this? A terminal cancer patient with no cancer, a burn victim with no burns, and a surgery patient with no scar. This makes as much sense as anything I’ve seen so far.”
Rachel sat quietly. Sanchez was right; nothing made sense anymore.
“Perhaps,” Morgan said, taking his seat for the first time since the meeting began, “just perhaps this deserves a little more scrutiny.”
FOURTEEN
Monday, March 23, 1992; 12:30 P.M.
AN INTERIOR DECORATOR WOULD have considered the office uninspired. The large room was filled with a hodgepodge of furniture and memorabilia scattered throughout the room. On the walls were photos of the famous and influential shaking hands with a short, stout man with deep-set, piercing gray eyes.
It was the same short, stout man who leaned back in his executive chair and punched a button on the TV remote that turned off the set in a floor-to-ceiling bookcase opposite his desk. Then he drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, lost in thought.
A moment later he punched the telephone’s intercom button.
“Yes, Reverend?” A sweet, high-pitched voice came over the speaker. It instantly brought its owner’s face to mind. Of his 230 employees, Christie Harper was the prettiest. Beauty was a job requirement for each of his personal secretaries.
“Christie, honey,” he said smoothly, “call R.G. for me and tell him that I need to see him in my office as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man with the piercing eyes smiled as he enjoyed the thrill of a new idea. Within the next few weeks, the name of Reverend Paul Isaiah would be on the lips of every person in the nation, maybe even the world.
ADAM HAD NOT DRIVEN straight home. Instead, he spent several hours sitting alone on a park bench overlooking the azure waters of La Jolla Cove. It was one of his favorite places in the city. Although towers of expensive condominiums had sprung up around the beach area, he could still come here and lose himself watching people snorkeling in the legally-protected underwater park or the children playing in the sand. He felt a strong compulsion to swim with the skin divers and swimmers, with their faces under the cool March water and their fins slapping the surface. Unfortunately his swimsuit was at home.
This was the place he came when troubled; its serene setting freed his cluttered mind. He often prayed as he strolled the winding concrete walk that paralleled the shore. Other times he simply sat, letting his mind roam. Today he was sorting the many questions that plagued him. What had happened to David Lorayne? It was one thing to “wake up” from a coma, but it was another thing to have an incision completely disappear. Theologically this didn’t bother him, but experientially it did. Why? He had always taught that miracles were a present-day possibility. There was no biblical reason to discount them. But on the other hand, he had never truly seen a miracle, certainly not one of this nature.
Other questions swirled in his mind. Why did those people in the hospital lobby make him so uncomfortable? Could there really be a person with the power not only to make people well, but also to reverse the effects of their illness, removing even scars? There were plenty of biblical examples: the lame walking, lepers given healthy skin, the paralyzed made mobile, and even the blind being made to see. Still it was almost too much to believe.
Adam walked along the cove past Alligator Point and continued on to the Children’s Cove. He stopped and leaned against the rusting metal rail that separated the sidewalk from the cliffs that bordered the shore. He gazed down the thirty-foot drop and watched as the white-laced waves crashed on shore. He listened to the gulls overhead and took a deep breath of salt air. It was then that Adam learned something about himself—that he was a skeptic, hesitant to believe that a man or woman could walk into a hospital and facilitate a dramatic healing. Yet, if anyone should believe such things, it should be he. After
all, he was a man of faith, one who preached faith.
Suddenly the matter took on new and greater dimensions. It was no longer about the good news of David’s remarkable recovery but about Adam’s faith. Not his salvation—that was secure, and not about his belief in God—of that he had no doubt. What he now realized was he didn’t know if he believed in the miraculous or, at least, in contemporary miracles. This was something he needed to know. And to know, he needed knowledge; information about the previous healings and more facts about David.
Adam decided a trip to the library was in order.
Monday, March 23, 1992; 12:45 P.M.
R.G. WAS TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS old and considered a genius by those who worked with him. A rail-thin man with dark, curly hair and a distinctive Southern drawl, he had made a name for himself as a master statistician. He held a Ph.D. in statistical analysis from MIT, but being bored with the world of academia he chose a different career and spent three years working for network television in New York, formulating and analyzing viewers’ polls. It was in New York that he had met the Reverend Paul Isaiah.
Isaiah was a third-year student at Union Theological Seminary, only then his name was Barry Barrows. The two men had met through a common friend, Sara Oden. She had left her secretarial position with the same television network where R.G. had worked to take a position in the finance department of the seminary. She introduced the two at a birthday party held in her apartment. R.G. was immediately taken with the charismatic divinity student. They became fast friends, each admiring qualities in the other that they missed in themselves.
While both brilliant and confident, R.G. lacked charm. He was uncomfortable around most people, preferring to be alone. When he did seek company, he was awkward and ill at ease. He didn’t know how to make small talk or ask questions that would lead people to open up. At parties he stood in the corner and watched others mingle and laugh. When he was forced into conversation, he tended to be staid and formal. These unfortunate habits led others to assume that he was aloof and arrogant. This had been true all his life and slowly became a self-fulfilling prophecy: R.G. could be arrogant and self-centered. He was, after all, brighter than everyone he knew. He could accumulate, store, and use information that others thought useless or obscure.
Isaiah was the opposite: outgoing, gregarious, and garrulous. He was not an attractive man physically; his gray eyes made him look ominous, and his short, squat body made him unimpressive—until he opened his mouth. When he spoke, his cadence, inflection, timbre, and delivery could be spellbinding. When he told a story or even a joke, others stopped speaking. He could bring men to tears with a sad tale, or make a prude laugh at a bawdy joke. He oozed a passion for life that trapped all who knew him in its sticky sweetness. Yet, despite his profound people skills, he lacked the rudiments of organization. His life was cluttered and his thoughts often in disarray.
They were as much a match intellectually as they were a mismatch physically, fitting together like the two center pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Their friendship was sown at that party and blossomed in the years that followed. R.G. was Isaiah’s best friend and Isaiah was R.G.’s only friend. Jointly they strengthened each other’s weaknesses and, sadly, misdirected each other’s characters.
“You been watching the news of late, R.G.?” Every word spoke of Isaiah’s North Carolina upbringing.
“Sure. I bet you’re interested in all that hospital stuff.” R.G.’s voice had a nasal quality that most found annoying; Isaiah, however, had learned to overlook it.
“You sound skeptical.”
“You’re the religious man. I’m just a simple administrator.”
“There’s nothing simple about you, R.G.” Isaiah smiled. “If it weren’t for you, this organization wouldn’t exist and neither would its ministries. No, there’s nothing simple about you, sir. If there were, you wouldn’t be earning six figures.”
R.G. grinned. “I never was very good at humility.”
“Perhaps. But no one can hold a candle to you when it comes to marketing. That’s what I want to talk to you about. I think I know how we can increase revenues.”
R.G. opened the notebook he had brought with him. “I’m for anything that makes money.”
Isaiah punched the intercom button. “Christie, honey, would you bring in some coffee and see if you can scrape up some lunch for R.G. and me? Oh, yeah, hold all the calls.”
“For how long, sir?”
“For the rest of the afternoon. I’m going to be very busy.”
Monday, March 23, 1992; 4:00 P.M.
ADAM WAS NO STRANGER to libraries. He often described himself as a bibliophile. He found books a comfort to be around. His love for books had begun as a child. Smaller than most of the neighborhood children, and possessing no innate talent for sports, he was often teased. With few friends, Adam made friends with books; he had found them far more faithful. As Adam grew older, he learned to deal with people and his own poor self-image. He developed both a keen mind and great personal confidence. He no longer needed books for his friends, but he kept them his friends anyway.
The elevator took him to the third floor of the downtown library. Down the hall was a room with a sign over the door that read NEWSPAPERS. At the information desk he asked for copies of the San Diego Union for the last three weeks. The librarian brought a stack of papers on a cart and pushed them toward Adam. Taking the stack to an empty table, Adam began a systematic perusal, confining himself to the national and local sections. The headlines reminded him of just how much he had missed recently. There had been another near miss of a commercial airliner and a private plane over Lindberg Field. A new glitch had developed in U.S./China relations. Adam resisted the urge to read all the articles and forced himself to concentrate on his search.
It hadn’t been long before Adam found what he was looking for. There had been two other healings during the time Adam was in for treatment. He made a copy of the article and returned the papers. Then on a whim he asked, “Is there a way to find articles that have been written on similar subjects, but in different newspapers?”
“Yes,” replied the librarian. “You simply use the Subject Index.” She pointed to a computer screen at the end of the counter. “What’s your subject?” she asked as she walked to the computer.
Adam felt a sense of embarrassment. “Well, I’m trying to find more information on healings that have taken place at Kingston Memorial Hospital. I was wondering if similar reports had been made elsewhere.”
“You’re the second person to ask for that information.”
“Second?”
“Yes. Another man came in earlier this afternoon, worked for a couple of hours at the microfiche machine, and then left. In fact, he left this piece of scratch paper with references to articles.” Adam took the paper and looked at it. “May I have this?”
“I don’t see any harm in it. The microfiche machines are over there. Articles less than a month old won’t be in there. You’ll have to look through our back issues. We have most of the major papers.”
Adam spent the next hour and a half feeding the microfiche film into the machine which projected the image onto a screen to be read. With a punch of a button Adam could have photostat copies of whatever appeared on the screen. What he found amazed him and, to his surprise, frightened him too. Gathering his notes and copies, he returned the boxes of film and walked quickly from the room. His mind struggled with the newfound information.
“It can’t be,” he said quietly to himself. “It simply cannot be.”
FIFTEEN
Monday, March 23, 1992; 6:00 P.M.
ADAM’S PRIVATE SANCTUARY WAS a bedroom that he had converted to a home office. It was an unusual blend of the old and the contemporary. Books, their jackets worn from use and the passage of time, lined the shelves that covered three of his walls. In a corner an acrylic stand held a tattered edition of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.
Spread before him on an old, scarred desk were the copies he
had made of the newspaper articles. He had read each of them three times. Only one of them was of substantial length. The rest were short, pithy articles sequestered in the back sections of the papers. Short as the articles were, their substance bothered him. He had considered calling Rachel Tremaine, but decided against it Since they were meeting in a couple of hours, he could tell her in person.
Leaning back in his chair, he rubbed his tired eyes. He wondered why he had pushed getting together. He could have asked his questions over the phone. Was it the act of a single man on the prowl? Adam was single, but he didn’t consider himself on the prowl. In fact, he hadn’t had a date since his engagement broke up three years before. Adam considered himself unlucky with women. He had been engaged twice. The first engagement began and ended in college. He thought he had found his true love. She was a bright history major he met in class. They shared many of the same interests: old movies, baseball, and education. They spent every day together, studying, eating in the school cafeteria, and walking around campus. They were the perfect couple—everyone said so and Adam agreed. They became engaged at the beginning of their junior year. Six months later, she transferred to a school in the East and left behind her memories and her affection for Adam. He never heard from her again.
The second engagement was to a woman in the church. She was gregarious and captivating in manner and appearance. Her long blond hair and fine features turned the heads of many men; Adam had been no different. Much to the delight of the congregation, they started dating; six months later they were engaged; four months after that Adam discovered her infidelity. He was broken and she unrepentant. Adam explained the breakup and her absence by simply saying, “Things didn’t work out.” Twice rejected, Adam focused on his work and doubted that he would ever marry.
His meeting with Rachel certainly wasn’t a date, and yet he had to admit that she was attractive. True, she was caustic and remote, with little in her personality to commend her to anyone. She was unlike any woman Adam had ever known. And yet, he found himself looking forward to their meeting.