Saving Meghan

by D. J. Palmer

There was a funny edge to her voice, an anger I hadn’t picked up on before. I figured we’d take the elevator to wherever my mom was, but Dr. Nash took me to the stairwell instead. I didn’t even think to question it; I just went with her as she led me up floor after floor.

  “Where is she?” I asked again, my voice echoing in the stairwell like I was calling up from the bottom of a well.

  “She’s here, up a few floors. Just keep walking.”

  “Why didn’t we take the elevator?”

  “What’s the matter? You don’t like exercise?” Maybe she was trying to be funny, or cute, but her voice sounded strangely menacing to me.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, even though I felt fatigued because I hadn’t exerted myself in ages. We went up four flights … and then five … then six, and so on. With each step, I could feel my cells starving for air, each of them dying slow, painful deaths. I slowed my ascent, but Dr. Nash gripped my arm tighter, all but pulling me up those stairs.

  “Hurry,” she said darkly. “Your mom is eager to see you.”

  But where is she? I wondered. We were near the top of the stairs, and yet Dr. Nash took me even higher.

  My uneasiness increased with every step. I knew I wanted to go down, no, had to go down—now. A surprise burst of adrenaline gave me a spurt of energy I hadn’t felt in ages. I spun like I was dodging a defender on the soccer field, quickly putting two steps between Dr. Nash and me. But before I could make it to step three, Dr. Nash grabbed my arm with crushing force, pulling me back toward her with a violent yank.

  I screamed, “Help!” loud as I could, my voice bouncing off the walls. Dr. Nash let go of my arm to cover my mouth with her hand, and at the same time I felt cold, sharp steel pressed against my throat. Terror coursed through me when I peered down to see what looked like a scalpel clutched in Dr. Nash’s hand. The blade was hidden from my view, but I could feel it digging into my flesh. I became as rigid as a block of ice.

  “You think needles are bad, Meghan?” Dr. Nash hissed in my ear. “Try having your throat sliced open. That’s as bad as can be. Now, keep walking.”

  “Why … are you doing this?” I asked.

  “Walk or bleed—those are your two choices.”

  I headed up the stairs, because it really wasn’t a choice at all.

  CHAPTER 56

  ZACH

  He had his cell phone out, and within moments was connected to the duty nurse on the BHU. He put the call on speaker so Becky could hear the conversation.

  “This is Dr. Zachary Fisher,” he said with the authority of someone who still worked for the hospital. “I need to speak with Meghan Gerard right away, it’s urgent.”

  There was a pause that made Zach’s stomach turn over with worry.

  “Meghan left a few moments ago with Dr. Nash. She’s bringing her to see her mother in the ICU.”

  “How long ago exactly?” Zach’s tone was sharp.

  “I don’t know,” the nurse said, clearly shaken. “Five minutes, maybe more.”

  “Get this tube out!” Becky screamed. “Get this damn tube out now!”

  “Call the police!” Zach shouted at the duty nurse. “Lock down the Mendon Building. Tell them to find Dr. Nash. Tell them to find her now!”

  “She’s got her,” Becky said, her voice a tremor. “She’s got Meghan. Get me unhooked. Do it! Do it now!”

  Zach gave it a thought, just for a moment or two, where he contemplated the consequences of complying, then realized that if he were in Becky’s position—if it were Will and not Meghan in jeopardy—he’d rip the damn tube out of his nose himself.

  Zach quickly donned a pair of disposable gloves retrieved from the shelf behind Becky’s bed, forgoing the usual hand hygiene. Instead of a towel, he used his jacket to catch the fluids that would soon spill out. Without alerting the nursing staff, Zach separated the tube from suction. Normally, he’d have used a syringe flush with ten milliliters of normal saline, but he did not have one at the ready. He instructed Becky to take a deep breath and hold it. Clamping the tube with his fingers, doubling it up on itself, Zach began to pull. Becky’s face contorted in discomfort as the tube came up her nasal passage. Clear fluid poured out her nose and onto the jacket as the tube came free.

  Zach went to work on the IVs next, disconnecting them with practiced efficiency, while Becky blew residual fluids into a tissue. As he removed the hookups connected to various monitors, alarms began to ring out. A team of nurses, as well rehearsed as any Broadway troupe, stormed into the cubicle, ready to take action, looking shocked to find Zach helping Becky out of her bed.

  “Get me a pair of scrubs,” Zach said, putting his arm around Becky to help keep her upright.

  “Where are you taking her?” a perplexed-looking nurse asked in a panicky voice.

  “I’m taking her to her daughter,” Zach said.

  CHAPTER 57

  MEGHAN

  Walk or bleed.

  Those were my two options as I opened the door marked ROOF ACCESS—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and stepped from the stairwell into a cool night. City lights from the surrounding buildings battled back the dark like an artificial dawn. A breeze blew my loose hair in front of my face, setting a chill against my skin.

  Nash half dragged, half shoved me onto the roof. All was silent except for the sounds of traffic below and a steady hum emanating from big metal boxes dotting the rooftop. I tried to find my composure, strengthen my resolve, but my heart was lodged in my throat while my knees knocked together like castanets.

  Dr. Nash held the scalpel to my neck, pressing the point into my skin. In my mind, I saw the blade sink into my flesh, felt it tear across my throat, ripping open a grisly gash in the shape of a wicked grin.

  “Please … please let me go.” My weak voice quaked with fright. I thought of my father, how he’d hate that voice. He’d want me to stand up to Nash like he’d wanted me to stand up to my mother. He’d want me to be strong, to fight back.

  “Walk,” Nash said.

  It was the damn scalpel—the needle to end all needles—that made my legs move.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  A voice in my head shrieked at me: Run! Fight! Scream!

  But my body wouldn’t obey. I was moving in slow-motion, taking one step after another, shuffling forward like a sleepwalker. For years, I’d been pushed around, told what to do, where to go, what to eat, when to sleep, what doctor to see, what pill to swallow, so taking another step toward the roof’s edge seemed simply like something else I had to do. But my feet slowed, giving me hope that a bit of fight might bubble up from deep inside me.

  “It all fell apart,” Dr. Nash said, mumbling to herself, as though she were trying to sort out what had happened. “I had to do it.… I had to.”

  Nash gave a second hard shove from behind to hurry me along. I stumbled forward, my arms flapping for balance, feet skidding for traction, no more than twenty steps from the drop-off. I couldn’t tell how high up we were—ten stories, twelve? What did it matter? If I went over, I’d never get up again.

  I felt another hard push from behind.

  Fifteen steps now.

  Off in the distance, I heard the wail of a siren, and for a brief moment allowed myself to believe it was a rescue team coming for me. But that wasn’t possible. Dr. Nash had told Nurse Amy she was taking me to see my mother. There was no way to know we’d gone up a stairwell. The only way they’d find me was if I hit the pavement. I didn’t know how Dr. Nash would get away with my murder. I didn’t much care.

  “Please don’t hurt me … please, please don’t.”

  I tried to sink to my knees, but my sudden movement caught the scalpel and it sliced into my flesh. Nash yanked me up as blood snaked down my neck in warm, wet rivulets. It was hardly a gush, so I figured the slice could not have been too deep, just a nick, but it awoke something inside me. The sting had come and gone. It wasn’t so bad, was it? I could take the pain. I didn’t have to be afraid to the point of paral
ysis. Not if I wanted to live.

  To save myself, I had to channel the strongest person I knew—my mother. Real or imagined, I’d have to fight back the way she had fought my disease.

  “You said it all fell apart. What did you do? Just tell me that. I deserve that much.”

  Nash pulled me to a hard stop but kept the scalpel against the side of my throat. A trickle of blood continued to ooze from my neck. One swipe of her wrist, one quick pull across my skin, and it wouldn’t matter what I was sick with.

  “What I did?” Nash’s cold voice cut through the air. “I killed your father, Meghan. That’s what I did. I killed him because I had to.”

  The world tilted. It seemed to stop. The wind no longer bit at my face. All noise became a loud ringing in my ears. My throat closed up like I was being choked.

  “My father? Dead?”

  I sputtered out the words. I didn’t want to believe it. I refused to believe it. But something told me it wasn’t a lie. My father was dead, and Nash had killed him. But why?

  “He told me, did you know that?” Nash said. “That you went snooping on his phone. That you found out about us.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “You’re … you’re Angi?”

  “We were so, so good together … so good.”

  My thoughts tumbled as though the floor had given way. “If you loved him, why would you hurt him?” I was shaking with anger and fear even as a horrible emptiness swelled in my chest.

  “You’re too young and stupid to understand,” she said.

  The pressure of the scalpel against my throat lessened. My mother’s voice, her face, her strength came to me like a guiding light.

  Before Nash could say anything more, I jumped forward, and with agility mastered on the soccer field, spun around, driving my left foot into Nash’s shin in a move that most certainly would have earned me a red card. Nash cried out in pain as I brought my right leg, my kicking leg, into her knee the way I would send a ball to the goal from twenty yards out. The kick dropped her to the ground. Nash tried to roll away, but I pounced on her, pinning her beneath my arms.

  I tried to hold her down, but she was far stronger. She hadn’t been confined to a hospital room, didn’t have switches clicking off inside her. She rolled me onto my back as though moving a sack of laundry, but somehow, I kept the momentum going, causing us to roll over a second time. As we did, Nash’s cell phone spilled from the pocket of her lab coat. I heard it clatter, but couldn’t reach it.

  Nash swung her free arm in a wide arc. In pure reflex, I attempted to block the strike instead of dodging it. A slice opened in my sweatshirt, and an instant later I felt blood filling my shirtsleeve. I fell off Nash in a sideways tumble that brought me within a few feet of the discarded cell phone. Scrambling forward on my hands and knees, I sent a donkey kick into the side of Nash’s head. Nash groaned. The kick bought me enough time to reach the phone, which I picked up as I clambered back to my feet.

  I pressed the word EMERGENCY.

  “Nine one one, what’s your emergency?” I heard a woman say.

  “I’m on the roof of White Memorial Hospital!” I shouted into the phone. “She’s going to kill me. Help! Hurry!”

  But before I could say another word, I felt a sharp sting as Nash plunged her scalpel into the small of my back.

  CHAPTER 58

  BECKY

  Terror swam through her veins. She raced for the elevator as fast as her rubbery legs could move. Nearly twenty-four hours spent in a hospital bed had stiffened her muscles and drained her endurance. A painful stitch formed in her side, slowing her gait. She hurried her steps to keep pace with Zach, who gripped her arm to hold her upright. A crowd gawked as she and Zach waited for what seemed an eternity for the elevator to arrive. Blood oozed from beneath a hastily applied wad of tight gauze and tape that covered punctures where her IV ports had been. The steady ache in her throat served as an unpleasant reminder of the nasogastric tube, but she found the discomfort easy to ignore.

  Becky donned the scrub bottoms a nurse had supplied on her ride down from the eighth floor to the fourth, leaving the floral-patterned hospital johnny for a top.

  “What if she’s not even there?” Becky said as she and Zach raced along the glass walkway connecting the Mendon Building to the main hospital. “They could be anywhere. We don’t know if they’re even in the hospital.”

  “We’re going to find them,” Zach said reassuringly. As proof, he gestured to the chaotic scene swarming outside the locked doors to the BHU. The bedlam involved dozens of security personnel, along with orderlies, Boston Police, nurses, and doctors, all of whom had assembled with startling rapidity, crowding the narrow hallway. Radios crackled. Phones rang. Voices rose above the din. Becky heard sirens blaring outside and watched with widening eyes as the commotion intensified. The noise was utterly disorienting, enough that the room began to spin.

  Without warning, a blue tide of police moved toward the stairwell with frenzied purpose. Uniformed officers danced in and out of her field of vision, but nobody recognized her as the mother of the missing girl until Detective Spence gripped her shoulder forcefully.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “We’ll handle this.”

  Becky thought she saw Detective Capshaw in front of his partner, both men in blazers, not blues.

  Zach waited until the two detectives were out of sight before he pulled Becky into the stairwell into which they had vanished. He kept a tight grip on her hand as they ascended one floor after the other. The stairs were cacophonous with shouting, the echo of fast-moving footsteps, and the click of gun holsters unsnapping.

  At the top of the stairwell, the pace slowed as a crush of bodies jammed the exit to the roof. Becky heard police officers shouting “Put down your weapon! Drop it now!”

  “Where is the mother? Get her up here, fast.”

  Becky recognized Capshaw’s husky voice as her fatigue fell away, replaced with a renewed resolve to push her way to the top of those stairs.

  “I’m her mother,” Becky implored those in front of her. “Please let me through … please.”

  The blockade of bodies formed sliver-size gaps through which Becky and Zach pushed their way to the top of the stairs. She emerged into the chilly night, feeling as though she had stepped into a dream. A line of police stretched out in front of her, many with guns drawn, some standing, some kneeling. Powerful flashlights blazed across the rooftop, which was already aglow from the light cast by the many surrounding buildings.

  Amanda Nash stood in front of the line of police, close to the building’s edge. She held what Becky believed to be a surgical scalpel against her daughter’s throat. Blood dripped from a gash in Meghan’s neck and from a cut to her arm, visible through a long slice in her sweatshirt.

  Pulling free from Zach’s grasp, Becky rushed forward, frantically calling Meghan’s name. Some police turned. Spence and Capshaw waved Becky over to them.

  “She’s here,” Spence called out to Nash. “You’ve been asking to see Becky Gerard, and she’s here. Okay? Now, put down your weapon.”

  “No!” Nash’s voice was loud and clear even over the steady whapping of an approaching helicopter.

  Becky took a tentative step forward, putting a couple of feet between her and the two detectives.

  “I’m here, Amanda,” Becky said in a plaintive voice. “Please, please don’t hurt my daughter. Please—”

  “She ruined everything!” Amanda shouted. Spit flew from a mouth misshapen in rage.

  Meghan’s blank expression showed she was in a near-catatonic state. It took all the restraint Becky could muster not to run to her.

  “It wasn’t supposed to end like this!” Nash continued. “She was going to jump. She was supposed to kill herself. Now we’re both going to jump. But I wanted you to watch. I want it to hurt.”

  “No!” Becky shrieked as she took a single step forward.

  Nash smiled wickedly and pressed the scalpel harder against Meghan�
�s throat. A spotlight from the hovering helicopter illuminated them like stage lights as the rotors kicked up powerful winds that blew Meghan’s long hair every which way.

  “You think I wanted to kill Carl? I loved him! I loved him more than anything.”

  Becky dared a few more steps. The police stayed back.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Becky said, continuing her approach, holding her hands up to show she was unarmed.

  Get her talking, Becky thought. Distract her.

  “Carl’s not dead,” Becky said.

  Nash’s eyes went wide. “No, that’s … that’s not possible.”

  Becky dared another step. “It’s true. Zach saved him, just as he saved me. But Carl still loves you, Amanda. He told me so himself. He confessed to everything, even poisoning Meghan.”

  Meghan flinched at the mention of her father’s betrayal, while a strange look crossed Nash’s face.

  “You’re lying,” Nash said.

  “No, no, I’m telling you the truth. He’s alive. He wants to see you.”

  “He didn’t poison Meghan,” Nash said, her expression one of disgust. “You think he’d do that to his own daughter? How stupid are you? You don’t even know him. All you care about is your precious Meghan. And that’s why I’m going to take her from you.” Nash moved backward, positioning her and Meghan closer to the drop-off. She craned her neck to peer over her shoulder, perhaps calculating the number of steps to a fatal plunge.

  “No,” Becky said. “Let my daughter live. Please. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Stay back,” Nash said.

  “Some good can still come from this,” Becky said, moving closer, getting to within five or six giant steps away. Meghan lifted her head so she could lock eyes with her mother as Zach came forward.

  “Amanda, please,” Zach said. “There’s another way.”

  “You really screwed this up for me, Fisher,” Nash said to Zach. “You just couldn’t let it go. You had to keep pushing for that diagnosis; you just had to keep pushing. Well, now you and Becky can have a happy life together, mourning your dead kids.” Nash took another step back, taking Meghan with her.