The husky voice belonged to a short, stout plumber in a gray jumpsuit. "What the h.e.l.l are you doin" in here?" The plumber"s eyebrows knitted angrily, but then relaxed when he spotted the white ribbon dangling from Kevin"s ID badge.
"A mop fell. I ... I"ve just checked the closet and that service panel in the back. It leads to a ventilation shaft. Everything"s clear."
"Where"s the rest of your group?"
Kevin remembered the names of the two workmen Kathleen Brown had been grilling. "Owens and Mueller went on ahead to check out the hydrotherapy room down in P.T. We were going to do that and then break for lunch."
The plumber pushed Kevin aside with a brawny, hairy arm and leaned forward to peer at the service panel. He was so close that Kevin could smell his aftershave. "Do you have any tape?" he asked.
"Uh, tape?" Kevin for once was at a complete loss.
The plumber stopped the half-open door with his foot, as he tore off two six-inch pieces from a roll of masking tape and slapped them against the door in the shape of an X. "Don"t want anyone else to have to go back in there," he said.
Kevin snickered nervously. "No. No, of course not."
The plumber gave Kevin a condescending look, then turned and started with the other two men down the Pike. Kevin could hear them joking as they turned a corner-perhaps a laugh at his expense.
Go ahead, sneer all you like, he thought. Before the day"s over, you"ll know that the joke is on you.
Five minutes later, Kevin charged into the lab, shutting the door so hastily that it pinched the heel of his shoe.
"So, is it working?" he called out as he rushed toward his desk.
"THE RELAY IS FUNCTIONING AT 99.98 PERCENT SIGNAL INTEGRITY, WHICH IS MORE THAN ADEQUATE. AT 13:11:19 I INTERCEPTED AN ENCRYPTED E-MAIL FROM SPECIAL AGENT RAYMOND LEE TO KATHERINE M. ALBRIGHT AT THE WASHINGTON OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, REQUESTING AUTHORIZATION TO EMPLOY SPECIAL INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES ON RAHMAN AL-SHARAWI, A FOREIGN NATIONAL ILLEGALLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES."
"No good. We"ve got to get Rahman out of there. He likes to talk daggers, but he"s really a thin-skinned son of a b.i.t.c.h. Not the sort that can stand torture."
"HE IS PRESENTLY BEING HELD IN ROOM EI-1, THE PSYCHIATRIC ISOLATION ROOM. HE IS GUARDED BY ONE UNARMED POLICE OFFICER INSIDE THE ROOM, AND FOUR OFFICERS WITH SIDEARMS IN THE ADJOINING ROOM EI-1A."
"Too bad we didn"t put a bomb in the isolation room. We could have done the world a service and taken the b.a.s.t.a.r.d out. But who knew?"
"ROOM EI-1 HAS NO WINDOWS, AND ONLY A SINGLE DOOR OPENING ONTO ROOM EI-1A. THERE IS, HOWEVER, A FALSE CEILING WITH A THIRTY-SIX-INCH CRAWL s.p.a.cE THAT PROVIDES ACCESS TO THE MAIN CONDUITS FOR THE HOSPITAL"S SUPPLY OF WATER AND PRESSURIZED OXYGEN. APPROXIMATELY TWENTY METERS WEST OF ROOM EI-1, THIS CRAWL s.p.a.cE CONNECTS WITH AN OPEN VERTICAL WELL THAT RUNS BESIDE CORRIDOR 12 THROUGH THE FIRST FOUR LEVELS OF GOLDMANN TOWER A. THE IDEAL ACCESS POINT-"
"No. I"m not leaving the lab again. Not for anything. Not even to take a p.i.s.s." He threw his athletic bag across the room, raising a shriek from Loki, who leaped out of the darkness onto the counter near the sink. Kevin made a few clicks with his tongue and tapped his finger on the desktop to summon Loki back, but the monkey only stared at him, jerking his head up and down. Irritated, Kevin opened a drawer and pulled out the bag of peanuts. He took one peanut and began tapping it on the desk. Slowly, with a few bursts of nervous chitters, Loki crept to the end of the counter. Then, like a flash, he leaped the five feet from counter to desk, and in another bound was under Kevin"s nose, stretching his little hand out toward the peanut. Kevin laughed and held the peanut above his head.
"Wait! I have an idea. Brilliant, actually! We can ... we can, uh, send a little e-mail of our own. f.u.c.k the Justice Department! Can you route a message through the server at CIA headquarters in Langley? Can you match their encryption pattern?"
"YES."
"Okay, get me the name of someone over there who is plausibly connected with anti-terrorist operations in the Middle East. Someone with unimpeachable authority."
"ACCORDING TO THE CURRENT CIA DATABASE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR WILLIAM J. MCCLINTOCK WAS FORMERLY THE DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN a.n.a.lYSIS IN THE DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE. HE IS CURRENTLY ON A FACT-FINDING MISSION TO KARACHI, PAKISTAN."
"He"ll do. It"s midnight in Pakistan, so it won"t be easy to reach him for confirmation. Encrypt the following message, routing it with his URL as the return address: "Request for enhanced interrogation of Rahman Abdul-Shakoor Al-Sharawi is denied. No further interrogation or debriefing of this individual should be attempted. Al-Sharawi is a confidential informant of the utmost importance to national security. Advise his immediate release. Signed, William J. McClintock, Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency." Send that to our friend Special Agent Lee, along with a covering message from the FBI director"s office to make it look authentic."
"DRAFTS OF BOTH MESSAGES ARE ON THE PRIMARY MONITOR. SHALL I SEND THEM NOW?"
"Please do."
Kevin surrendered the peanut to Loki, absent-mindedly stroking the top of the monkey"s head, feeling the vibrations of Loki"s voraciously working jaws through his fingertips. He was more pleased with himself than ever. He had come back without a scratch from a climb more dangerous than the south face of Annapurna. He had re-established control. He had beaten the FBI at a game whose rules these stupid fascists had not even begun to understand.
The starship commander"s chair creaked as Kevin shifted forward, typing a command to bring the video feed from Harry Lewton"s computer-cam onto the monitor in front of him. Any minute now. He could hardly wait to see the look on Raymond Lee"s face when McClintock"s order came through.
1:20 P.M.
"I think we need to anticoagulate," said Dr. Brower, the chief of the NICU.
"Anticoagulate?" said Ali. "He"s just come out of brain surgery. If his blood can"t clot and he"s bleeding, you"ll kill him."
"It"s a calculated risk."
"No. It"s sheer foolishness."
Ever since he had gotten out of Recovery, Jamie"s heart rate had been slowly climbing, and his breathing had gotten faster and deeper. He had also developed a low-grade fever. At first, Brower worried about pneumonia. But a portable chest X-ray showed clear lungs, with just a trace of atelectasis, or deflation, at the bases. This was common after surgery, and was often accompanied by a slight fever. So Ali dismissed it and looked for a neurological cause for the rapid heart rate.
But while Ali"s thoughts were on Jamie"s brain, Brower fixated on the chest. He ordered an electrocardiogram, which suggested that the right side of Jamie"s heart was working extra hard. A number of things could have caused this, but Brower was most concerned about pulmonary embolism-a loose blood clot lodging in the main arteries of the lungs. Surgery greatly increased the risk of this, and it could lead to sudden death if untreated.
"Pulmonary embolism?" Ali was skeptical. "He"s been in these anti-embolism boots since he got out of the OR. There"s no evidence of it on the chest X-ray."
"Most X-rays are actually normal in pulmonary embolism. When a positive finding does occur, it"s very commonly a small pleural effusion or subtle atelectasis, like what we see here. I think we should get a pulmonary ventilation-perfusion scan."
"Fine, fine." Ali had had no success with her own hypotheses. Her greatest suspicion was that Jamie was experiencing an unusual type of seizure activity that was affecting the heart-regulating center in the brainstem. He had had one seizure that morning that she had witnessed herself. But the electroencephalograph monitoring Jamie"s brain electrical activity wasn"t very helpful, because the presence of the SIPNI device itself was distorting the signal in that region. Interpreting it was like reading Chinese written by a sloppy calligrapher on the back of a galloping horse. So all she had to go on was watchfulness and intuition. Unwilling to trust Brower or the nursing staff, Ali stayed on in the ICU, monitoring Jamie"s vital signs herself, poised to administer new anti-seizure drugs if things got dramatically worse.
While Ali waited for Patient Transport to take Jamie downstairs for his ventilation-perfusion scan, Mrs. Gore stole into the ICU for a ten-minute visit permitted by ICU rules. Fortunately, Jamie was resting quietly when she came in. Mrs. Gore went directly to his bedside, where she touched the back of her hand to his forehead, and lifted up his blanket to make sure that his sheets were dry.
Ali had been escorting a small group of surgical interns on their rounds through the ICU, but she excused herself on seeing Mrs. Gore.
"His eyes aren"t moving, Dr. O"Day," said Mrs. Gore when she saw Ali approaching. "Usually when he sleeps I can see his eyes move a little. And his breathing doesn"t seem right."
"He isn"t sleeping, Mrs. Gore. He"s in a light coma."
"Coma? Isn"t that dangerous?"
"It"s partly because of the medication we"re giving him. But he"s not progressing as well as we would like. I need to be honest with you about that."
"Is he going to-"
"It"s too soon to tell what will happen. I believe he"s going to do just fine, but this was a very complicated surgery he"s just been through. There can be a lot of speed b.u.mps on the way to recovery. We talked about that, more than once, over the past few months."
"Yes. Yes, I remember."
Mrs. Gore bent close to Jamie"s ear and whispered. As she straightened up, she reached over and sharply pinched his cheek. "Was it okay to do that?" she said with a guilty look.
"Sure, sure," said Ali, smiling.
"I do that to him and all the other boys in the dorm at bedtime. If part of him is awake now, he"ll feel it, and he"ll know that I"m here with him."
As Ali nodded, Mrs. Gore scrutinized the plastic bags of solutions that were dripping into Jamie"s IV line.
"Really, Doctor," she said, "it"s so dark in here I don"t know how you can read the labels on these things. Are you sure he"s getting the right medicine?"
"Yes, he"s getting exactly what I"ve ordered for him."
Just then two attendants showed up and parked a gurney parallel to Jamie"s bed.
"What"s happening?" asked Mrs. Gore.
"They"re taking him downstairs to Nuclear Medicine," said Ali. "We"ve ordered something called a ventilation-perfusion scan. It"s a test to make sure that he hasn"t got a blood clot in his lung. I don"t think he has, but we want to make sure."
"Will the test hurt?"
"Not at all. We"ll inject small amounts of radioactive tracers to map out the patterns of air flow and blood flow in the lungs. A blood clot disrupts the flow of blood, but not of air. So we look for a mismatched abnormality on the scan."
"Well, you know what you"re doing," she said, stepping aside to let one of the orderlies get next to Jamie"s bed. "I trust you because Jamie trusts you. "Dr. Nefert.i.ti would never let anything happen to me," he says. "Dr. Nefert.i.ti"-that"s what he calls you. "You"ve got to trust her, Mrs. Gore, "cause she"s like one of the smartest doctors in the world.""
"Mrs. Gore," said Ali, suddenly lowering her voice, "does Jamie"s mother know he"s in the hospital today?"
"We haven"t had any contact with her. It"s by court order, you know. His mother insisted on it."
"I don"t see how a mother could do that. How could she not want to know?"
"She"s given him up, Dr. O"Day. Sometimes you have to make a clean break. The human heart can only stand so much."
"Did she surrender her rights irrevocably?"
"Yes, she did."
"What if he gets his sight back?"
"That won"t make any difference."
"That ... that"s horrible. He needs a mother now. He needs her to be right here with him. I know you"re doing your best, Mrs. Gore, but it"s not the same. Look at him lying there in the bed all alone...." The orderlies had just slid down the railings of Jamie"s bed. One of them turned Jamie on his side, while the other slid a plastic transfer board under him.
"He"s a strong boy, Dr. O"Day. He"s strong, and-"
"But he shouldn"t have to be strong. He"s only seven, for G.o.d"s sake. There should be someone to be strong for him."
"I agree. But-"
"Can he be adopted?"
"Adopted? By whom?"
"Me."
Mrs. Gore gave Ali an astonished look. "You, Dr. O"Day?"
"Yes, me."
"You mean, if the operation is a success? If he gets his sight back?"
"Sighted or blind. As he is."
Mrs. Gore raised her hand to her gaping mouth. "I ... I"m flabbergasted, Doctor. How long have you been thinking about this?"
"Since ... day one." It was true, although she had only just now realized it.
With a nurse cradling Jamie"s head, the orderlies grabbed the transfer board and lifted him from his bed onto the gurney. The board barely sagged under his feather weight.
"Well, surely you know the difficulties," said Mrs. Gore. "A blind child needs constant supervision. With all your medical duties, can you manage that? The home environment needs to be redesigned to meet safety guidelines. That"s expensive. There are other costs, too. The state pays his tuition now, but you would be taking it on yourself."
"If he were my natural child, I would have found a way to do all that. I"ll find a way now."
"What does your husband say?"
Kevin? Ali was taken aback by the question. "I have to tell you, Mrs. Gore. My husband and I are divorcing."
"Oh, Lord!" Mrs. Gore averted her gaze. "That makes it twice as hard, Doctor."
"Just tell me, can it be done?"
"Maybe." Mrs. Gore looked back at Ali. "I"ve noticed how Jamie"s face lights up each time he"s with you. When you two talk, it"s like you have your own secret language. There is something special there, I admit it. Something he doesn"t have with his teachers ... or with me."
"Would you back me up?"
The whites of Mrs. Gore"s eyes shimmered under a film of tears. Her lower lip trembled ever so slightly. "I ... I don"t know. Forgive me, this is all just so sudden. I mean, yes, of course I would. You"d make a fine mother, Dr. O"Day. And in Jamie ... in Jamie you"d be finding a wonderful, sweet, loving, and very courageous boy."
"How do I start?"
"You"ll need to pet.i.tion the court. I can help with that. They"ll appoint a social worker to do a home study. There"ll be more paperwork than you could ever imagine. CORI check, tax returns, things like that. It"ll take six months, maybe a year to get through it."
"I would like to take him home with me the day he leaves the hospital."
"That ... that"s imposs-" Mrs. Gore looked into Ali"s eyes and met the steel-hard gaze of a surgeon who robbed death for a living. "Okay, I can ask the court to appoint you as a temporary guardian."
"Yes. Please."
"Tell me, are you sure about this?"
"I"ve never been more sure about anything." Ali smiled, nervously, not knowing why. As her lips stretched, she felt a tear roll out from the corner of her eye. "I ... I love Jamie, Mrs. Gore. I want to be his mother."
Mrs. Gore, wide-eyed, lowered her voice to a near-whisper. "All right, I"ll go and make some telephone calls. Get things started." The two women looked at each other for a moment, then Mrs. Gore turned abruptly and hastened away, her heels clicking a fast but uneven staccato against the floor.
A clang. Jamie"s gurney was rolling toward the door. Ali held out her hand, signalling the orderlies to pull up. Bending over the bed rail, she looked down at the unconscious Jamie, admiring his curly hair, his beautiful snub nose and rosy lips. Her son! Through the simple magic of opening her heart to Mrs. Gore, the whole world had been transformed in an instant. Forget the court rigamarole. She was already Jamie"s mother. Nothing would change that-now or ever. She reached under the blanket and touched his hand-pink, warm, and yielding-feeling his unspoken cry for rea.s.surance, and answering him with her touch. I"m here for you, Jamie. You are loved. You always will be loved.
She lost track of time as she looked at him. Finally, one of the orderlies coughed, and she reluctantly pulled away her hand and allowed the progress of the gurney to resume. She followed them with her gaze, watching long after the door had stopped swinging back and forth in their wake.