Syndrome

by Thomas Hoover

  "How did you get this number?" a frightened voice burst through. Ally recognized it, though it was nothing like the one she remembered from the confident, brassy TV personality that Kristen used to be. "I just got away and came here. And right after I got here, someone called my machine and then hung up. Are you tracking me? Whoareyou?"

  "I. ." Ally was so startled she couldn't think of anything to say immediately. "Kristen, is that you? I just saw your mother. I. . I got this number fromher. She came out to the Dorian Institute looking for you. She's very worried about-"

  "You're lying to me. You're trying to trick me and get me back." She was breathing heavily, as though she'd just run a set of stairs.This is a person just barely holding it together, Ally thought. "Anyway, Kristen is not my name. My name is Kirby. They wrote it down for me and … I'm very confused. I found a bracelet in my suitcase that had 'Starr' on it. Maybe that's my last name. It sounds right, but I can't remember-"

  "You don't remember having a show on cable?"

  "I. . I think I knew someone who had a TV show, but I don't think it was me."

  "Kirby. . or whatever your. . listen carefully. I think you were undergoing an experimental procedure for your skin. At a place in New Jersey called the Dorian Institute. The doctor was Karl Van de Vliet. You were in clinical trials for the National Institutes of Health. Then something happened and you left. Do you rememberwhyyou left? Or when?"

  "No." She stifled a sob. "I can't remember anything."

  Ally took a deep breath, not liking the vibes she was getting. "Do you want to talk about it?"

  "No. I don't want to talk to you or to anybody. I got out of that place and-"

  "'That place'?" Ally asked. She was being passed by a huge bus and she could barely hear. "You mean the institute?"

  "You know where I mean. And don't come looking for me down here either, because I'm not going to be here."

  Jesus, Ally thought, what's with her?

  "Kris-Kirby, I'm not connected with anybody at the Dorian Institute. I'm supposed to become a patient there myself. I'm just trying to find out what happened to you when you underwent your treatment there."

  "I can only remember little things." She was moaning. "There was this man. He said I could have anything I wanted. I trusted him. And now. . I see faces but I can't remember who-"

  "Kristen-that's your real name, by the way-can we meet? I promise you won't be harmed. I just-"

  "You don't understand do you? You don't know what's happening to me." Her voice had begun to break. "It's the Beta. I don't know how long it's going to be before-"

  "Before what? What beta? What are you-Kristen, we've really got to meet. I mean it. I desperately need to talk to you. Maybe we could find another doctor, if that's what you need. Could I come down-"

  "I have no idea who you are. You could be. . He says they're trying to help me, but I'm not getting any better."

  Ally was pulling onto the interstate, heading south. It was hard to concentrate on driving, but at the same time she wanted to push the speed limit. Kristen sounded like she was getting ready to disintegrate or flee.

  Then she had another thought.

  "Kristen, it's okay if you don't trust me. But could you tell me more about your. . side effects? Are they-"

  "I think that's why he moved me. To that place. But then he …" She was growing even more agitated and impatient. "Look, I really can't talk anymore."

  I'm losing her, Ally thought.Try to make her hang on.

  "Kristen, would you please take my phone number? You sound like you could use a friend."

  "Oh Christ, I'm so scared. I don't-"

  "Just take it. No harm. Then if something happens and you want to-"

  "All right," she said finally. “Tell me and I'll write it down."

  Ally gave it to her, then added, "I run an interior-design firm. I actually did some work for you once, so we've met. You can call my office, so let me give you that number too. No way am I connected to the institute where you were."

  She said she was writing it down.

  "You know," Kristen went on, "I think this is God's way of punishing me for wanting something nobody should have." Then she began to sob again.

  "How exactly-"

  "I found a door that wasn't locked and I just came here. I don't know what guided me. And when I got to this street, I knew exactly which building it was. There was no name on my bell or anything, but I knew. I even knew who had my emergency key. It's like I have a sense memory of this apartment but I can't remember ever actually living here."

  "Your name is Kristen Starr," Ally said again. "Try to remember that. And will you please stay there till I can get there and talk to you?" Then she made what she immediately realized was a fatal mistake. "There's a reporter, a sweet guy who's doing a book about. . a medical procedure at the clinic where you were. And he's dying to talk to anybody who's been part of the clinical trials there. Could he talk to you too? It sounds like you've got quite a story to tell."

  "You've got to be kidding. If they find me, I don't know what they'll do." And the connection was severed.

  "Shit, don't do this." She quickly tried the cell phone number for Stone Aimes.

  "It's me again. Listen, she's actuallythere. Kristen's in the apartment on West Eleventh Street. I just got off the phone with her. She's the one you want. But she's like a frightened rabbit. She said she was about to leave, but if you get there soon, you might be able to catch her."

  "Damn, we're stuck in traffic at Fifty-ninth Street. There was a fender bender on Lex. But I'll get there as soon as I can."

  "Okay, maybe get your driver to try Fifth."

  "Good idea."

  She clicked off and stared at the road. The George Washington Bridge was just ahead. If she broke the speed limit once she hit the West Side Highway, and caught the lights right, she might even beat Stone there.

  Chapter 20

  Wednesday, April 8

  12:34p.m.

  "W.B., we've got a problem," Karl Van de Vliet said into the microphone. He was in his private office, on the scrambled videophone. "Kristen's mother showed up just before noon with a pistol, demanding to know where she was. When I tried to take the gun away from her, she accidentally shot herself through the side. Fortunately, it was only a flesh wound, but it took us almost an hour to stabilize her."

  "Christ! Even Kristy thinks she’s crazy. Why did she-?"

  "Kristen smuggled her a letter somehow. And she came looking for her." He thought about how they shouldn't be having this conversation on any kind of phone, even one that was supposedly scrambled. But there was no choice. "It gets worse. I just called Eight-Eighty Park and they checked her room and Kristen's not there. She was there when Roxanne brought up her breakfast at nine, but nobody's seen her since. They assumed she'd gone back to sleep. Nobody there has any idea where she went."

  "Shit. What am I paying them for? The staff is there for the sole purpose of making sure something like this didn't happen."

  "Well, W.B., that's your part of the show. I'm just trying to practice medicine. In any case, she slipped out somehow. So the thing now is, where did she go?"

  "Well, she didn't come here. Or at least she hasn't yet. Depending on how much she can still remember, she might have gone to her old place down in the Village. Maybe she still has a homing instinct. That's probably the first location we ought to check. Jesus, if she gets recognized and starts acting crazy and then Cambridge Pharmaceuticals finds out-"

  "W.B., the bigger problem now could be her mother, Katherine. You know her. She's unbalanced but she also still remembers how it all started. She was actually here a couple of times. If she sees Kristen, then God help us."

  "Karl, I've got everything-and I do mean everything- riding on this. What happened with that Hampton woman? You've got to get started with her. Is she on board yet or what?"

  "She was here this morning, but she got temporarily spooked by the gun and the craziness. She'll be back, though."
<
br />   "When?"

  "I took care of it, trust me," Van de Vliet declared. "In the meantime, I'll try to maintain Kristen's mother under sedation as long as possible. But we can't keep her out of touch forever. That would be flirting with kidnapping."

  "I'll send Ken over to West Eleventh Street to check out her place," Bartlett said. "If she's there, he'll get her."

  And he signed off, the image on the computer going dark.

  Van de Vliet felt a wave of apprehension. Every day it got worse. Would any of the other patients develop the Syndrome? Or was its development unique to the Beta?

  Kristen had agreed of her own free will to undergo the Beta, and she'd been warned that any experimental procedure involved significant risk. She'd signed release documents absolving Gerex of any liability. But when treatments go awry, patients tend not to recall the releases they signed. Undoubtedly, she'd now conveniently forgotten that fact. Assuming she still remembered anything.

  Time to go back to the OR and see how Katherine was doing. If she seemed completely stabilized and coherent, she could be moved down to the intensive-care area in the floor below, the subbasement. That way absolutely nobody could get to her. He clicked off the computer and walked back to the OR.

  "Karl, she's awake," David said as he walked in. He'd been monitoring her. "It's probably okay to move her."

  Thank God, Van de Vliet thought.Maybe there's some way to reason with her rationally.He moved over and looked down. Her hair was soaked with sweat and she looked very, very tired.

  "Mrs. Starr, can you understand me? I'm Dr. Van de Vliet. I need to talk to you about your daughter, Kristen."

  "Who. . who are you?" she mumbled, her eyes trying to focus.

  "I'm Kristen's physician. She came to see me some months back. Do you recall? About her. . skin problem. I seem to remember you came here with her at one point."

  She stared at him mutely for a moment, then closed her eyes and nodded.

  "At that time, Mrs. Starr, we discussed some radical treatment options. Things that hadn't been tried before. Do you have any recollection of that?"

  She opened her eyes again and stared at him, trying to focus.

  "You said she'd be all right," she mumbled, slurring the words. "Then your receptionist told me she'd gone to New Mexico. But I got a letter-"

  "That story was to protect her professionally," he lied. "She was afraid the press might find out she was here and start speculating about her health. But now she's in the post-procedure phase of treatment. It may be a while longer before she's able to return to the normal life she's used to."

  "She's okay, isn't she?" came a plaintive, slurred mumble. "In her letter it sounded like she’d lost her memory or something. She didn't sound right."

  It was a question that cut him to the core.

  "Mrs. Starr, I think we should focus on you right now. You've had a traumatic episode and you've injured yourself pretty seriously. You may have to stay here at the institute for a few days so we can take care of you." He took her hand which felt deathly cold. "Tell me, is there anyone we should notify of your whereabouts so they won't be alarmed?"

  "There's an address book in my purse." Her eyelids flickered. "Those are all people I'm close to. I just want to sleep. I can't think now."

  Good, he thought, the sedative is finally kicking in.

  "All right. You need your rest. We'll talk about this later." He turned and picked up the purse at the foot of the bed. But when he searched inside, he didn't see an address book.

  Where was it,he wondered.

  Alexa Hampton had started reading Kristen's letter, which probably was part of the reason she got uneasy. Did she make off with the address book? Butwhy?

  It didn't matter. She would be back.

  If Debra had done what she was supposed to do.

  "David have Mrs. Starr taken downstairs. I need to see Deb."

  "You've got it."

  Van de Vliet went down the hall and then through the heavy steel air lock and into the laboratory.

  "Deb, can I have a word with you?" He motioned for her to follow him to the computer cubicle in the back, past the head-high racks of solvent vials and the giant autoclave.

  "Is she going to be okay?" Debra asked.

  "I think so. It's in her interest that we keep her here and away from a hospital. Gunshot wounds raise a lot of questions. I seriously doubt that that pistol was licensed in her name, given how little she seemed to know about its operation." He settled into a chair and began stroking his brow. "Did you manage to take care of that matter with Alexa Hampton?"

  She nodded. "You know, she's not yet entirely with the program."

  "Yes, but she will be. Putting her mother in the clinical trials was probably crucial." He grimaced. "God, what a nightmare. A medical experiment that got away from us has turned into guns and virtual kidnapping and God knows what manner of felonies. If this thing gets completely off the track, we could all go to prison. But the real tragedy is that all the successful research we've done here will be buried in infamy."

  "It's not going to turn out that way. The results here have been so spectacular." She was gazing at him with eyes that seemed too worshipful. More and more, she made him self-conscious. She needed a father, but he did not need a daughter. He still lived on the memory of Camille.

  "This has all got to be resolved soon, Deb. There's a reporter who found out that we had to drop a patient from the program-which would be Kristen-and W.B. thinks he's a little too close for comfort. Now Kristen's mother shows up. It's all starting to unravel."

  "Don't worry," she said, getting up. "This Hampton woman is going to be back today. So I've got to get started on her blood."

  Chapter 21

  Wednesday, April 8

  2:41p.m.

  Ally was very fond of Kristen's West Village neighborhood, since she herself had once had an apartment on West Eleventh Street, just west of Seventh Avenue. The street was tree-lined and many of its nineteenth-century town houses were home to single families, though sometimes the ground floor, with the entry "under the stoop," i.e., beneath the stairs, was rented out to provide a little side income. She had rented one of those "garden apartments"-the upstairs owners were two gay bankers-and had loved it. However, it also was entirely possible that Kristen had the whole town house to herself-that was the kind of thing that a lot of celebrities who lived, or even just spent time, in New York did. There was privacy and there also was the sense of living in an actual house instead of in some cookie-cutter apartment. Then again she could have a downstairs neighbor.

  A solitary town house seemed somewhat at odds with the extroverted personality Kristen displayed on TV, but the privacy was probably intended more for her sugar daddy, Winston Bartlett, than for her.

  Ally had been pushing the pace ever since she got off the phone with Stone. At Twenty-third Street she had peeled off the West Side Highway and gone over to Seventh Avenue, where she had a straight shot downtown. She passed the old St Vincent's Hospital, and the notorious six-way intersection that caused so many accidents, and hung a right on West Eleventh.

  She was approaching the corner at Bleecker Street when a huge black Lincoln Navigator lumbered in front of her, at an angle that cut her off and blocked the street. Then the vehicle abruptly slammed to a halt.

  "What-!"

  She hit her own brakes and managed to slide to a stop just before she collided with the Lincoln's rear bumper. At first she thought they'd deliberately cut her off, but then she realized the move had nothing to do with her. A man and a woman were piling out. He was muscular and balding, with dark hair and sunglasses, and he was dressed in black. She had red hair streaked with white and was dressed in a nurse's whites. They were in a major hurry.

  That was when she recognized the man she'd met at Gramercy Park, the Japanese sidekick Bartlett had called Ken.

  Oh shit.

  Then she realized that a thirtyish woman was running down West Eleventh Street toward them, carryi
ng a dark green backpack in her left hand. They were gesturing for her to come to them and get into the vehicle, though she didn't appear to see them yet. Halfway down the block behind her, a man in a tan flight jacket was running, calling out.

  "Kristen, wait I just want to talk-"

  The running woman glanced over her shoulder at him and, at that moment collided with Bartlett's flunky. As she recoiled from the impact the red-haired woman seized her left arm.

  "Kirby, come," the woman said. "You're not well. We'll take you back."

  "No!" she yelled, and twisted free of the woman's grasp. But now the Japanese guy had grabbed her other arm.

  "It's going to be all right," he said as he caught the top of her head and started shoving her through the open door of the Navigator. "You shouldn't go out alone."

  At that moment the man in the tan flight jacket reached the scene. It was Stone, but he'd been moments too late.

  He stretched his arm into the Lincoln and tried to take the girl's hand. "Kristen, don't go with them. I just need to talk-"

  "You don't need to do anything, pal," the man called Ken declared. "Except get out of the way."

  He chopped the side of Stone's neck with an open hand, sending him sprawling backwards onto the pavement, flight jacket askew.

  Now something odd was going on. Another girl was running down the sidewalk. "Kristy, wait. Don't. ."

  But the redheaded woman had already gotten into the back seat of the SUV, beside the girl, and the Japanese man was heading around the front. Three seconds later, he was behind the wheel and peeling out. They were gone.

  Ally sat watching, stunned. But now a Chevy sedan was departing a parking space three cars down from where she was and she quickly pulled in.

  By then Stone Aimes had picked himself up off the sidewalk and was gazing wistfully in the direction of the vanishing Lincoln. The girl who'd been behind him stopped and was talking to him.