Critical Condition

by Peter Clement

  Shit, he was being ridiculous, he chastised himself. Better keep his wits about him, or he'd scream at the sight of some poor clerk from ER trying to find a chart. He started to whistle, as much for solace to his jumpy nerves as to warn any unsuspecting newcomers that they weren't alone.

  When his cell phone rang, he leapt into the air and dropped the folders he was carrying.

  "Jesus Christ!" he said, fumbling the instrument out of his pocket and putting it to his ear.

  "Find anything?" McKnight asked, sounding sleepy."You scared me to death."

  "By calling you? Man, you must be getting skittish."

  Sheepish was what Richard felt at the moment. "Hey, you caught me off guard is all. My damn phone hardly ever works down here. I wasn't expecting it to ring."

  "What have you got for me?"

  "I told you, I won't breach confidentiality—"

  "Fine! Fine! I don't have to know a single thing about any patient. Just what our two dead men were up to."

  Richard thought a moment. "Yeah, that might be possible."

  "So what have you discovered?"

  "Nothing yet. I got sidetracked by something with Kathleen."

  "Is she okay?" All at once McKnight sounded wide awake.

  "Yeah. I mean, physically. But earlier tonight she got really agitated by something, and one of the nurses shot her full of tranquilizers again."

  "What upset her?"

  "I don't know. She's sleeping it off. Why all the questions?"

  The detective said nothing for a few seconds. "A team of detectives will be over at the hospital first thing in the morning to start interviewing people about Hamlin and Lockman. I'd like to talk to Dr. Sullivan then, too, if I may. Will you be there?"

  "Sure. I'll meet you in ICU. I take it you're officially part of the investigation now?"

  "Around seven?" he said, not answering the question.

  "See you then," said Richard, wondering if the detective was involved formally, or out of his attachment to Kathleen. "And thank you," he added, welcoming the big man's special interest in any case.

  After punching the END button, he kneeled down to pick up the spilled charts.

  He'd recovered half of them when the room suddenly went dark.

  "What the hell," he said.Must be a power failure, he thought at first. Probably from the storm outside.

  Then he noticed that the vents continued to breathe ice on him from overhead. Air-conditioning didn't work when the power went off to the whole building. Plus, a general outage should have automatically brought on the emergency lights.

  "Hey!" he yelled, wondering if somebody from ER actually had come to get a chart without his hearing them. On the way out, figuring no one was here, whoever it was might have flicked off the switches.

  But no one answered.

  A passing night watchman perhaps.

  "Hello?" he called.

  Only the noise of the vents filled the silence.

  But wouldn't someone have heard him talking on the phone, even with the air-conditioning going? After all, it wouldn't have covered up his voice.

  He began to grow uneasy.And how could they have turned off over a dozen switches at once?

  His mouth went dry.

  Maybe it was only that a fuse blew, just for this area, he reasoned. The emergency generators wouldn't have come on for something so local. The explanation relaxed him a little. It seemed reasonable enough, and put to rest the creepy crawlers that had started racing through his brain.

  Sort of.

  The plumbing clunked and clanked the way it always did, as if someone were hammering on it with a monkey wrench. The sound reverberated off his skull.

  He got down on his hands and knees, feeling for the remaining files scattered around him. If the electricity was fine in the rest of the hospital, he thought, he'd take what he'd collected upstairs and look at them in his office.

  He had quite a load in his arm as he felt his way along the files. He wasn't entirely sure he was going toward the door, since he'd been pacing and turning while talking with Mc Knight. He figured it didn't matter, since the aisles ran perpendicular to the exit. He'd walk until he hit a wall, then go left until he either found the exit or hit another wall. At the worst, if he was going opposite to what he thought and heading for the back of the room, he'd simply have to keep following the walls until he eventually came to the way out.

  He walked quickly, knowing that there was nothing he could trip over. When he came to a break between sections of the cabinets, he clutched his load to his chest with one hand and flapped the other in the intervening space until he made contact with the next line of shelves. He was moving so swiftly that when he finally did reach a wall he nearly banged his face into it before stopping. Undaunted, he turned in the direction he thought the door would be, and felt his way toward it.

  The pipes along the length of the room gave a shudder.

  He figured he'd know when he reached the open reception area. There'd be no shelves at all in that part. Then the door would be directly in front of him. He couldn't remember if it had a lit EXIT sign or not, but it should, one with its own circuit. Whether he'd also see a light coming under the frame from the outside hall he'd no idea. It was of no importance. He'd feel his way to the door handle if he had to.

  A few minutes later he began to suspect he had gone the wrong way after all, since he hadn't come to the clearing that he'd expected. "Shit," he again muttered, the inky blackness weighing in on him.He passed the end of a cabinet and hit another wall.

  Feeling disoriented, his heartbeat quickened. "Okay, just focus on getting your bearings," he said aloud to help settle himself down. "This means I'm at the far corner in the back of the room. I turn left, go straight until I reach the front wall, and left again to the door."

  He'd taken three steps when he thought he heard something rustle behind him.

  It had been just loud and harsh enough to be distinguished above the steady whoosh from the ducts above him.

  Already primed to jump out of his skin having seen what he had at Lockman's, and being in a basement, he sent a screamer into his brain with the first answer that came to mind.

  Rats!

  "Get away!" he screeched, and started running blindly ahead. "Get back, you filthy little creeps!"

  In his imagination he pictured the darkness teeming with them, and when the sounds behind him increased, he became certain packs of them were on his heels.In full panic and without thinking, he hurled his heavy bundle of charts behind him.

  "Aggh!" he heard someone yell, followed by the sound of a heavy thud.

  "What the . . ." He went another ten yards before it registered that his pursuer was human.

  His first thought was to pull up and see who it was. But before he could even slow his stride, the image of Lockman's corpse popped back to mind. Oh, Jesus, what am I doing? he asked himself, his second thought being to get the hell out of there.

  He accelerated into the dark, careening off the sides of shelves.

  Chapter 10

  He ran blind. His hands fluttered along steel edges and guided his flight like a pair of startled birds, losing bits of skin on the sharp metal corners. He swept his fingers further in, until they stuttered over the cardboard spines of the records, and, reaching deeper, scooped an armload of them onto the floor as he passed. A series of grunts and sliding noises came from behind him, like someone trying to run on wet leaves.

  He poured on the speed, and, as he flew by, hooked onto more clumps of folders and wrenched them out. Yet another round of curses and slips sounded on his heels. At the end of the next cabinet he cut left. If he reached the open reception area, the door would be to his right, he figured, taking advantage of the wider aisles that ran parallel with the front wall to go even faster. Once he was through it and into the hallway outside, he could get to the stairs.

  The exertion made his ears plug. Unable to see or hear beyond the confines of his own body, he fled in a vacuum, his
heart hammering pure adrenaline to his brain and the rasp of his own breath becoming the only sounds to fill his skull.

  He imagined a bullet from behind.

  A gutting.Or something worse?

  He hit the receptionist's counter at full tilt, the waist-high barrier delivering a perfect punch to his solar plexus and jackknifing him into a forward somersault. His breath exploded through his cords in a roar as he flipped through the air. From inside the sealed confines of his own head, it sounded as if it could curdle blood, but he doubted it would frighten off whoever was after him. He let out a second bellow when he slammed, back first, onto the floor and slid into a desk.

  Fighting to get his deflated lungs working again, he staggered to his feet and stumbled in the direction of what as near as he could guess would be the exit. Any moment he expected to feel the hands of his hunter come out of the darkness and grab him. That he wasn't already in his clutches meant he must have lost the creep by ducking left when he did, instead of continuing straight to the front wall.

  To his dismay there was no illuminated EXIT sign. He scanned the blackness, looking for any hint of light coming from under the door frame.

  None.

  Find the handle by feel?

  But the killer might already be waiting there, expecting him to try just that. His scream sure as hell told the man where he was.

  Fighting to breathe normally, he crouched down, taking slow shallow gasps through his mouth to make himself as silent as possible.

  He needed a strategy.

  And he needed to hear.

  Pinching his nose and blowing hard, he made his ears pop, the rush of the air-conditioning breaking over his head like a wave.

  But there was no sound of the man.

  Get back into the stacks, Richard told himself. Far enough away that he could call for help over his cell phone without being heard. Then he'd have to start moving again— and fast.

  He got up, bent over, and crept away from where he thought the exit was. He went about ten yards before clunking headfirst into a wall that shouldn't have been there.

  Shit!Immediately he figured he'd taken the wrong way again. But by feeling around beside him he discovered a desk, then another, and realized he'd hit the partition behind the work area.

  Remaining absolutely still, he strained to pick up any noises to suggest the man was approaching him.

  Again he heard nothing. Maybe the whoosh from the ventilation ducts was covering up the sound. He knew the man was out there, probably listening equally as hard. Better move, he told himself, and gingerly made his way to the end of the partition. He turned right and skittered across the floor, reaching an aisle between two rows of shelves that he moved along. With every stride he anticipated steps coming from behind.

  No one followed. For good measure he zigged left for a few rows, then right again, always moving farther from the door, and, he hoped, away from whomever was after him. Finally he stopped, figuring it was as good a spot as any to call for help, and reached into his pocket for his phone.

  It was gone.

  No! He patted himself down as if it might have traveled someplace else in his clothing.Nothing.

  Oh, my God. It must have fallen out when I took my somersault.

  He went very still. Should he try to go back and find it?

  He began to feel very cold, as if icy fingers were worming their way through him.

  What if he hadn't lost it in the reception area? It could have worked its way out of his pocket and dropped to the floor anywhere while he was running. With his ears plugged, he wouldn't have heard it fall.

  He swallowed, his mouth completely dry.

  And where was the man? He must have figured by now what he, Richard, had done, so should he keep moving?

  The thought of blundering into that killer kept him from budging. He simply stood and listened, knowing that whoever was after him was surely doing the same. A silent standoff, he thought, like two submarines, each waiting for the other to make a mistake and give himself away. And time was on his enemy's side. It would be impossible to stay completely quiet for the hours it might take before someone came to his rescue. Something would be bound to give him away, especially at close range. It could be as little as his bones creaking, an untimely gurgle from his stomach, or a sneeze from the tickle inside his nose.

  His hunter, on the other hand, didn't so much have to keep silent as be patient.

  As he remained motionless, bent over and uncomfortable, he thought he heard a shuffle off to his right.

  He waited.

  The unmistakable growl of an empty stomach came from about ten feet away, somewhere near the entrance to the aisle where he was hiding.

  Richard brought his respirations down to practically nothing.

  What to do?

  // he comes closer, I'll try and coldcock him with a punch, then maybe I can run for it again.

  He got ready, drawing back his fist, breathing silently through his mouth, slowly standing upright and adjusting his stance.But the man withdrew, until he could hear him moving a few rows over.

  Richard stayed where he was a few minutes, allowing the slight sounds that marked his adversary's progress to fade away completely. All at once he felt an advantage. There was no one between him and the door. He might just creep back and get out. But another thought came to mind. What if he got his stalker?

  Kathleen woke to tugs on her IV tubing. She shot her eyes open expecting to see the janitor from hell injecting her. Instead she gazed directly into the eyes of a nurse who changed her intravenous bag.

  "You awake, Dr. Sullivan?" the woman asked.

  Kathleen didn't blink a reply. If she started on about one of the cleaning staff who tried to kill her with a syringe, they would knock her out again. She needed Richard!

  Summoning the use of her fingers, she tried to point at her tracheostomy, hoping the nurse would understand and remove the tube, then help her to conduct a conversation.

  Unexpectedly, she moved her wrist as well.Staring at it in amazement, she managed to flop her hand back and forth a few times. It was a clumsy wave, but the achievement made her feel she'd been released from irons.

  "Well, look at you," declared the nurse as if she was encouraging an infant who'd just learned how to shake a baby rattle.

  Kathleen's sense of triumph vanished, driven off by the woman's patronizing tone. Her mood swung to the opposite extreme as it often did these last few days. A bottomless despair for her future loomed so black and large in her head, it crowded out everything else— the bed, the ICU, the walls of the hospital. It left her to float in a night empty of hope and as vast as space.

  Don't you know I'm damn near forty, have a grown daughter, and am a geneticist, you idiot, she wanted to scream at the faceless smile. Do you even have a clue what it is to lose what I've lost, to feel condemned to being a baby again? To know if I live, all I've got ahead of me is absolute helplessness, unless I relearn every move, every action, every simple feat that I haven't thought twice about doing since I was three years old. Have you the slightest inkling what it's like to have no guarantee I'll ever get any of it back, no matter how hard I try? Because if you did, you'd spare me your goo-goo, gaga routine and sa ve it for the nursery.

  But she figured it would lose something in the translation, gasping all that out in three- and four-word phrases.

  She tried to move her forearm, but it still wouldn't respond. A quick inventory on the other side revealed she'd no improvement over the finger movements she'd fallen asleep with. But when she tried her feet, both sets of toes wiggled, brushing against the weight of the sheets, the right more than the left.

  So she'd a live hand stranded on a dead stick, and could mess up the bedding at the foot of the mattress. All in all, not much, but she'd take it.

  At least her newfound skills with her wrist allowed her to grab the tube in her neck. She couldn't disconnect it from the respirator, but a few tugs on it got rid of her minder's frosty smile.r />
  "Whoa there," she said, slapping Kathleen's hand away and giving her a cross look. "That's for me to do, not you."

  Then get to it and let me speak.

  The annoying woman did everything else but, adjusting the IV, checking the monitors, recording her vitals, even adjusting the head of her bed.

  Damn it to hell! Kathleen seethed. She wanted Richard. She wanted Detective McKnight and the whole bloody NYPD. Not her pillows fluffed. Richard quietly got a foothold on the edge of a nearby shelf, hoisted himself off the floor, then felt around above him for the overhead pipes. Probing the darkness with his fingers and feeling nothing, he knew he'd have to go higher. Another step up did it, and his hand slid over a plexus of conduits until it found one that felt as big as a log. After looping his arms around its iron surface, he swung his legs to the top of the lengthy filing case he'd just climbed and hooked it between his heels. Quietly, he pushed and pulled against it, enough to feel it teeter, but not fall over. He was ready.

  "Who are you?" he called. "What do you want?"

  Only the whispers of the vents spewing out their cold by his head made a sound. He began to worry he wouldn't hear the man approaching.

  "I said, who are you? Why are you after me?"

  What if the man didn't take the bait, remained too wary, simply waited at a distance? Richard wouldn't be able to hang there forever. Maybe he could bluff the creep into rushing him.

  "Hello, police? This is Dr. Richard Steele," he said, doing his best to mimic a panicky call to the cops. "I'm on my cellular, and there's a man who has me trapped in the basement of New York City Hospital. He's threatening to kill me. . . . Yes, I'm sure. . . . He may even be the person who murdered Doctors Tony Hamlin and Matt Lockman. . . .Where am I exactly? In the Medical Records Department—"

  "Damn you!" a high-pitched voice shrieked from some distance. Dull footfalls on the carpeted floors machine-gunned in his direction.