Lethal Cure

by S A Gardner

  She’d searched for us for a long time. We’d found her, taken her in. Poor kid was still in over her head.

  Kid? Sure. At thirty-two, she was more than two years my senior. But she still seemed so much younger. Or I felt way older. Had to be my insane life, the weight of experience accelerating my psychological aging.

  Savannah nodded now, past the first jolt, and joined Al, who’d made his assessment and was barking his preparatory measures. They started their surgery.

  I couldn’t move so fast with Juan. A head injury was a totally different animal. No use opening his skull up to relieve building pressure, if his cerebral perfusion pressure wasn’t under control. He’d only end up brain dead, even if I got him picture-perfect surgically. I had to give him the chance to stabilize before I resorted to the most hazardous procedure.

  Doug rushed in with CT printouts and 3-D reconstructions. I pounced on him at the door, snatched them from his hands, calling out to Megumi at the same time. As the only anesthetist we could round up tonight, she’d handle both cases.

  “How’s Juan?”

  Megumi raised her head from finishing Mercedes’s anesthesia, tossed me the relevant stuff. “BP eighty over fifty.”

  Not good. I needed his BP over ninety to keep his cerebral perfusion pressure up, the real factor in keeping the brain oxygenated. Time to play hardball.

  I snapped the CT films on the backlit screen, called out measures. “Lucia, rapid norepinephrine infusion, 4 mg in 250 mL saline. Repeat until Juan’s pressure stabilizes at a 100 mean arterial. Megumi, hyperventilate, mannitol 1 mg per kg bolus, and raise his head to get his intracranial pressure down. Get me a jugular oximeter for O2 sats. Ayesha—get me a transcranial Doppler and let’s place an intracranial pressure monitor. We’ll drain cerebrospinal fluid through it if needed. Be ready to initiate barbiturate coma, too. And for God’s sake—where’s Matt?”

  I needed him with me on this. I needed him to do this, if we operated. Intracranial procedures weren’t my forte. They were definitely his. I hoped he’d calmed down by now.

  “I’m here. I’ll take care of it.”

  Matt, his voice a shower of gravel pelting my bruised back.

  Wincing, I turned around. Winced again.

  Matt was gowned but with no mask or safety glasses, his rugged, handsome face sallow, pinched. But it was his eyes that worried me. The sea-green, perpetually alert probes were turbid, spaced out.

  Nope. He hadn’t calmed down. Man. Like I needed this. My best surgeon tripping on stress hormones. Riding the adrenaline breakers while extracting our casualties had been one thing, hadn’t been bad. Had been good even. His berserker violence had gotten us out in one piece.

  Yeah, then he’d almost smashed us to pieces. Behind the wheel, he’d sure put a new spin on the phrase narrow escape. I still couldn’t believe we weren’t all lying here battered and comatose on the OR tables beside Juan and Mercedes.

  But the adrenaline theory was fast losing favor. This looked like a harder trip—a real drug? Matt? Nah. Never.

  Maybe he’d been taking antihistamines again for his rhinitis. I’d seen them make people go from agitated to depressed to disoriented. No wonder the drugs came with dire warnings not to drive or operate machinery while under their influence. Last time I popped a tablet I was almost suicidal.

  But Matt was a hay fever and antihistamines veteran. He’d never had adverse reactions to them. So—maybe he was trying out a new generation, or a combination that was knocking him for six?

  Whatever. Didn’t matter. Time to count our blessings and our in-one-piece bones, and tell him to sit this one out. No way was he performing brain surgery in this shape. I hated to do it, but better me than him handling this operation right now.

  I sighed as he passed behind me. “We’re fine here. Juan’s BP’s going up, and so’s his cerebral perfusion pressure. We’ll get him stabilized, then we’ll review his CTs, decide how to proceed….”

  Had he just ignored me? Yep. Still upset over my criticism of his demolition-derby driving? Really? Matt was never petty or petulant. Another drug side-effect? Goody.

  He picked up a pin, ran it on the insides of Juan’s arms. Conducting another neuro exam would be a good idea—if he wasn’t scraping Juan’s skin. Even from here, I saw livid scratches forming. On the last sweep across Juan’s inner thigh, he drew blood. The hairs on my nape stood on end.

  Matt didn’t make mistakes like that!

  It took the others swinging what-the-hell gazes from him to me to make me believe he just had.

  His pin was going deeper when I swooped down and snatched it away. “What are you doing?”

  He just murmured, to himself it seemed, “Abnormal flexion, unilateral posturing. Must drill him open.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, sure. Why stabilize him and consult CTs when we can just drill him blind and finish him off right away? Okay, Matt, you’ve had it for tonight. Go sleep it off.”

  That came out harsher than I had intended. Guess I’d reached my limit for the night, too.

  Matt did more than ignore me this time. His green gaze swung up, slammed into me. Everything inside me cringed. I never imagined I’d be on the receiving end of his wrath. I opened my lips, something confused and concerned forming there.

  He rammed it down my throat.

  The shock hit first. Then, like a hurtling missile, the bone-cracking force of his blow registered.

  My brain knocked against my skull. Reality wavered. Jagged pain burst, more behind my ribs than in my jaw. I clung to his arm instinctively, my mind crashing, refusing to process the situation, his actions. Not Matt.

  He shook me off, his massive body seeming to expand, an appalling sound spilling from him. I staggered back and he charged after me, snatched me up by the arms and hurled me away. I sailed back in the air, too enervated to twist into a safe landing. I slammed to the polished OR floor, right hipbone first, skidded, a headfirst collision aborting my momentum.

  My consciousness flickered on images of Fadel and Ishmael jumping Matt. A wheeze wouldn’t make it past my lips. Not this way, you fools! He’ll pulverize you!

  He did. The sickening sound of colliding flesh and bone reverberated in mine. Fadel was launched back with the force of the blow, already unconscious. Ishmael was flung into the horrified team deep in the middle of Mercedes’s cardiothoracic surgery. The chain reaction took them down like dominos. Along with the anesthesia station—and Mercedes.

  Time stuttered as she slumped off the table, slammed to the floor, disconnected from the heart-lung and anesthesia machines, her chest gaping wide, her heart exposed, her blood everywhere.

  Okay, Calista St. James. You’ve cracked up.

  This had to be all in my mind. It made sense. Nightmares crowded my waking and sleeping existence. Could I no longer turn them off, differentiate them from reality?

  And here was my ultimate phobia—another of my loved ones, turning into a madman I had to stop. At any cost.

  But the pain, all over my body, in my heart, was too real. This was real. Matt had lost it. But his blind rage and aggression were nothing like Jake’s long-calculated genocidal intentions. I’d contain Matt—defuse him….

  Somebody else do it this time—please!

  But there was nobody else. The others were struggling to restore Mercedes to the table, to straighten the upturned machines and replace the destroyed ones. Leaving Matt to me.

  Matt, and the burr-hole perforator he’d reached for.

  It was plugged in. He turned it on and headed for Juan.

  No.

  Denial, suffocating, paralyzing—couldn’t rationalize, couldn’t process… What was going on?

  Doesn’t matter. Go to pieces later. Stop him—now!

  A scenario played in my mind. Skirting him, knocking the perforator away and… No. In his condition, engaging him would only earn us more injuries—or worse. I knew how powerful he was. There was no way I could subdue him without inflicting serious damage on him.
Without maximum force…

  No—no way. Never. Had to find another way. Had to.

  I staggered to my feet, injecting every scorching move with ease, raising my voice over the burr’s marrow-drilling whine. “C’mon, Matt, don’t be so angry at me. I’m sorry I snapped.”

  “I’m in charge,” he rasped. Was that directed at me?

  I didn’t think so. I hoped not.

  I ventured another step toward him as he stared at the perforator wobbling furiously in his hand. “Sure, Matt. I was waiting for you to decide to take over.”

  He looked up, looked through me, his words a deluge of passion. “I’ll never let you out of my sight. No one will ever touch you.” He suddenly roared a hair-raising laugh. “I ripped them apart alive, made them watch as I did it, made them shit themselves waiting their turns. I do it again, every single minute of every day. I dance over their severed parts.”

  God. This was definitely not directed at me. He was hallucinating. About his wife? And the vermin who’d kidnapped and raped her to death? He’d caught up with them, gotten—even. I hadn’t asked how. So that was how.

  Was this why he’d snapped now? Under the sheer horror of having lived that atrocity, and reciprocating it in kind?

  But why now? I’d been there with him all through. He’d never lost control. He’d never turn on his friends. On me. Going psychotic wasn’t in his makeup.

  Like it hadn’t been in Jake’s?

  No. Matt was different. This wasn’t a breakdown. His pupils were dilated; he was pale and sweating rivers. He was under the influence. Of what, I had to restrain him to find out, to counteract it.

  One other thing I was sure of. He hadn’t done this to himself. No freaking way. He’d been poisoned. How, who and what, I’d find out later.

  Now I had to try to reach him again. “Let me help, please.”

  He shook his head, his voice a bleeding keen. “None of it matters. I can’t kill enough of them to bring you back, to say I’m sorry. To make your screams stop.”

  Oh God. Oh, Matt…

  He raised the perforator. “But I’ve found the way. I have to drill it out of my brain.” He turned to Juan’s limp, tube-infested body. “See how sick I look? Once it’s drilled out of my brain, I’ll be whole again.”

  He nodded to himself, approached Juan with slow, determined steps.

  A collective cry echoed. Lucia screamed. My hand chopped a silencing motion. Don’t antagonize him.

  I took three careful steps closer. “Let me help you, Matt. Give me the burr, and I’ll remove all your pain.”

  He kept on going. Lucia screamed again, begged. I shouted, too, a desperate last resort.

  “Matt! Turn that burr off. And step away from Juan. Now, Matt!”

  He touched the perforator to Juan’s head. We all exploded.

  I reached him first, got folded over his foot, and almost broke in two, slammed to the floor again. Lucia threw herself at the electric cord, got a vicious kick to her head and crumpled, blood seeping from her mouth. Ishmael fell, bellowing, the drill in Matt’s hand spattering tissue gouged out of his shoulder.

  It was happening all over again.

  Like Jake. My first lover. He’d forced me to execute him.

  Now Matt.

  Something corrosive scorched down my middle, my cheeks.

  “Take him down.” Ayesha’s voice, coming from another dimension. Frantic. The tug of her cold hand opening my spastic fist, pressing colder steel there. One of my special dart guns, loaded with enough tranquilizer to fell two men.

  But I’d already struck drugs off my list of options to subdue him. With whatever was tampering with his physiology, the chemical blow could do him irreversible damage. Or kill him.

  Matt’s foot rammed into Doug’s face. He’d disposed of everyone now. Then he bellowed and advanced on Juan again.

  I had no choice. No choice.

  I raised the dart gun, pointed it straight at his carotid.

  Three

  All I had to do was shoot Matt.

  He’d go down in seconds.

  I tried. I couldn’t. I’d die before I hurt him, and I could do far more than hurt him now. I had to find another way.

  “Taser,” I hissed for Ayesha’s ears only. “I distract him, you shoot him. Set on minimum. His synapses are already fried.”

  She streaked out of OR, and I shouted at Matt, trying to drag his focus away from Juan. Didn’t work. Then the perforator snagged in Juan’s hair.

  Had to do this the hardest way.

  My throat splitting on a curdling scream of Matt’s name, I exploded into a desperate run, launched into a yoko tobi geri.

  The force of the flying side kick impacted the hand holding the perforator. Matt staggered back but didn’t drop it. Damn. He crouched on the floor, preparing to heave himself up. Now. Your only chance. I swiveled into a minor mawashi geri, a roundhouse kick targeting his screeching weapon, connected again. Nothing. Was it welded to his hand or what?

  On expending my momentum, I found my other leg in his large hand. He snatched at it. I yelled as my leg disappeared from under me, the other still not on the ground. I slammed on my back, new pain accumulating on old, deluging me.

  The others tried to jump him then, to disconnect the perforator. Got slammed back one after another. Then I was looking the drilling end of the madly rotating perforator right in the eye.

  I gripped his forearm, pushed it away with both of mine, with all I had. That was nothing compared to his strength. I’d lose this arm-wrestling contest in seconds.

  Where is Ayesha?

  Matt suddenly stiffened, convulsed.

  Bless you. The Taser.

  Bad news was, I got a secondary taste of the electro-muscular disruption. The current shrieked up my nervous pathways with jolting pain and loss of control. And the perforator was falling out of Matt’s enervated hand, heading for my belly, like a malevolent sentient machine, bent on puncturing me.

  I used the last of my volition, caught it and groped for the off switch. It jerked and bucked in my spastic hands, grazing me across the abdomen through my scrubs. Then it went dead.

  Ayesha had yanked out the power cord.

  But it wasn’t over.

  Like an unstoppable monster in an urban legend, Matt had overcome the jolt’s effects, was pushing to his legs. I was, too. Nerves still discharging, I threw myself at his legs in a pincer tackle. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  The massive force of his violent kick would have pulverized my face had it connected. It didn’t. I twisted out of range and his foot connected with my breast. I went blind, buried under an avalanche of agony.

  I fought my way out just in time to see Ayesha going after him with another stun gun, a close-range one, the first one’s hooks still deep in his skin. He tore them out, punched her in the jaw. Blood spattered from her lip in a wide arc, hit my cheek. Then she fell on me.

  He stood in the middle of the carnage for a second, bellowing like an enraged, wounded lion. Then he burst out of OR.

  I struggled from beneath the moaning Ayesha, got to my feet after him, horror and anguish almost eating through me.

  Couldn’t stop. Couldn’t let him out of my sight.

  He ran outside, ramming our security guards left and right, his explosive violence and superior strength bringing them down one after another. He snatched a weapon from the last one before he rammed out of the Sanctuary.

  He was making it impossible. Impossible to bring him down without hurting him. Without killing him. No—no!

  “Listen to me!” I shouted at the security guards who were struggling to their feet, more shocked at their boss’s rampage than injured. “We go after him. I’ll charge him. Even if he shoots me, don’t stop and don’t hurt him. Just jump him, all together. Don’t let go before you disarm him and restrain—”

  Megumi’s shout over the com-system had the words backlashing in my throat. “Cali! Juan has a unilaterally dilated pupil! His ICP has shot up to sixt
y!”

  Damn, damn, damn! An impending transtentorial herniation. In the time he’d been deprived of medications during the fight, intracranial pressure had increased so much, his brain was trying to squeeze out of the base of his skull. Once it did, he was dead. Had to stop it.

  Had to stop Matt.

  Couldn’t do both.

  Couldn’t trust anyone but me to stop Matt. None of the others were a match for him, even together. And if he got far, and got reported, the police would probably shoot him on sight.

  I grabbed one of our gofers. “Listen carefully. Go to OR, tell them to shave our patient and initiate barbiturate coma. And to repeat the interrupted drug protocol. If either Al or Savvy can be spared, tell them to proceed with a craniotomy.”

  Then I ran to get me some silent, incapacitating weapons.

  Just as I stacked my bag of tricks, the com-system crackled again. Al. “Cali, Mercedes is slipping, we’re both barely holding on to her. You come take care of Juan.”

  But I couldn’t leave Matt to his fate. To rampage out there, to kill or get killed.

  There was only one thing I could do now. I could trust only one other person to bring him back safe. Damian.

  He’d fully recovered from that bullet through the heart, thanks to his supreme recuperative abilities and fitness, and almost inhuman rehabilitative efforts. And he was more than a match for Matt at his worst. He cared for Matt, too. Considered him a sort of brother-in-arms. I knew exactly what lengths Damian would go to, in the name of love and friendship, firsthand.

  And I hated him for it.

  Right now, it made him my only chance.

  Problem was, he’d said he was no longer having me watched. He’d promised never to do it again. That would make him of no use to me now. By the time he came over from wherever he was, Matt’s trail would be cold. Only if he had his sentries somewhere nearby could he intervene quickly enough.