Part 3 (1/2)

CHAPTER 5.

SUSAN WALKED DOWN THE HALLWAY of the hospital, quickly detouring on sight of David Goldstein rounding a corner in front of her. She darted into the gift shop, showing a sudden interest in the magazines. She picked one up and hurriedly thumbed through it, glancing over the cover to see when Goldstein and his colleague had pa.s.sed. When the hallway was clear, she set the magazine down, embarra.s.sed to realize she had taken a sudden interest in ”Teen” magazine. She nodded at the proprietor of the store, who was gazing at her with some disapproval.

Susan quickly entered the elevator, sliding her security card through the reader. She leaned against the wall, breathing a sigh of relief as the elevator began to move smoothly upward. Her relations.h.i.+p with David Goldstein had only grown worse over the years, and it had started out as a disaster.

David Goldstein was already a full doctor at the time Susan began completing her residency. When she first arrived at the hospital, a few of the nurses approached her and warned her of Goldstein's wandering hands and inappropriate comments. It hadn't taken very long for him to target Susan as his next conquest. Susan quickly tired of the constant innuendo and intimate touching, so she confronted him. When that had no effect, she filed a complaint against Goldstein for s.e.xual hara.s.sment.

Little was done regarding the complaint, but the behavior did stop. Goldstein treated her like a pariah from that point on, but that was fine with Susan. The nurses were also secretly pleased, and Susan became an underground heroine to them.

After that incident, Goldstein ignored her for years. Susan successfully completed her residency and began her research in her spare time. Possessing far more ingenuity and dedication than David Goldstein, it wasn't long before she pa.s.sed him in the hospital's hierarchy. When the first patent came in, it established Susan as a significant contributor to the hospital's coffers, and more than David Goldstein's equal.

Susan glanced upward, not really seeing the digital numbers illuminate as the elevator pa.s.sed each floor. Her exalted position in the hospital, however, had not stopped Goldstein from attempting to take advantage of her several years later, probably at the worst time of her life.

She was 28 and heady with the success of her research. She had taken only a few months off to give birth to her son, then returned to the excitement of the lab. Her husband, Brent, was an angel, willing to care for their infant while Susan worked long hours. Susan was extremely happy, wondering how life could get any better.

And then she received the news that made her wonder how life could get any worse. Brent had been killed in a plane crash. The airline pilot, a 20-year veteran, had forgotten to de-ice the wings upon take-off. The plane never made it off the ground, and the ruptured fuel tanks ensured that no one survived. Susan's grim consolation was the fact that Brent had changed his mind at the last minute and decided not to take their son. Beyond that, she was completely devastated.

It was in this setting that David Goldstein again attempted to initiate a relations.h.i.+p with Susan. At first his warmth touched Susan, but once she realized it was feigned, she attempted to withdraw from him. Goldstein would have none of it, however, and pressed his attentions until he ended up nearly raping her in a service elevator. But the attempt was not to succeed because Susan's grief and devastation coalesced into a fury that both stunned and overwhelmed Goldstein. After kneeing him in the groin and delivering a solid right cross, she beat him nearly senseless with her handbag. He never touched her again.

The doors opened in front of her, causing Susan to start. She had almost forgotten where she was. She stepped out into the hallway. Few people had access to the research and development wing, and no one had security clearance to her lab. It was one of her demands of work conditions, allegedly to guard against industrial espionage.

In reality, Susan just didn't want to be bothered. She stepped off the elevator onto her floor, feeling the familiar comfort of her ”office.” The only place she felt more comfortable was with her son, regardless of location.

She peered into the darkened lab as she slid her security card through the reader. The door opened with a barely audible click and the motion detectors turned the lights on. She waited until the door whispered closed behind her, then went into her inner sanctum. She peered through the window of the observation booth into the sterile room beyond.

The woman was exactly as she had left her. She appeared to be a corpse hooked up to some monitors. Susan glanced over at the readouts which displayed the woman's vital signs for the last 12 hours. Respirations, none. Blood pressure, none. Pulse, five.

Susan glanced at the readout closer. Per hour. Five beats per hour.

She turned back to the woman who lay unmoving in the bed. At first, Susan had stayed with the woman for 24 hours, expecting some dramatic change in her condition. But when nothing changed, Susan finally determined there was no sense in her standing by. She felt some guilt, as if she were abandoning a patient, but then was angry at herself for feeling that way. She wasn't even certain this woman was alive, and she couldn't describe any more bizarre circ.u.mstances.

The body had seemed to ”draw” blood even though the IVs ran on gravity feed. That would have been strange in and of itself, but the body had ”drawn” a total of 19 liters. The average human body held only nine. Susan was not certain where all the blood was going, but knew that Mason was becoming concerned after his fourth trip to the blood bank. She herself was concerned, wondering if she was not on the verge of creating the human tick.

Susan was also uncertain what she was going to do if the woman showed any additional signs of life. She had convinced herself the woman was dead and that she was just continuing treatment for experimental purposes.

Susan glanced over at the EEG readout. That was the one thing that had remained constant, the inordinate amount of brain activity. Susan had even placed the electrodes on herself to test the machine. The readout quickly stabilized into one of normal brainwaves. When she replaced the electrodes on the woman, the pattern quickly arced back into the strange but symmetrical patterns of before.

Susan donned a sterile gown, then hit the release to the door. She entered the antiseptic room and moved the full-body scan, portable MRI into place. It was quite an expensive test and Susan wasn't quite sure how she was going to justify it to accounting.

She didn't care. She exited the room and re-entered the control booth. She adjusted a few controls on the panel in front of her, then turned to watch as the blue beam slowly traveled the length of the p.r.o.ne body. Susan turned expectantly to the floor-to-ceiling screen on the wall next to the gla.s.s window. The screen flashed a few times then sprang to life with the full-size picture of the internal organs and skeletal structure.

Susan stared at the image for a moment, a look of puzzlement on her features. She stood up and took a step towards the image, her puzzlement turning to confusion, then concern. She was not one to talk to herself, nor was she one to use profanity, but she now did both under her breath.

”What the h.e.l.l?”

Susan stared at the image, trying to figure out what was wrong. But what was ”wrong” was subtle, and though she immediately recognized something was amiss, it was hard to put her finger on what exactly that was.

She c.o.c.ked her head to one side, as if by looking at the internal structure from another angle she could better understand it. She turned her head to the other side, but the body was no more comprehensible.

”Where the heck is the stomach?” she murmured aloud.

She reached over and hit the print b.u.t.ton to burn a hard copy of the readout. The full-size copy began spooling from the machine and she caught it before it touched the floor. She laid it out on the table, staring at the picture in confusion. She was unable to draw even obvious conclusions.

She glanced through the window at the p.r.o.ne body, then reached over to the keyboard on her computer. She typed in a few commands to load the voice activation unit, then adjusted the microphone. As she began speaking, the computer began diligently recording her words, the letters spilling across the screen.

”The heart appears to be suffering from some type of pulmonary edema,” she said, her attention returning to the printout. She circled the large organ in the center of the chest. ”Although pulmonary edema is an understatement. I've seen cases of pericarditis, but I've never seen anything like this.”

Susan paused, c.o.c.king her head to one side. She leaned closer to look at the heart. ”Actually it doesn't appear to be edema, either. It doesn't show up as fluid at all. The tissue there is contiguous with the heart muscle.” Susan stopped, disbelief evident in her own voice. ”It appears the heart is three times its normal size.”

The computer dispa.s.sionately recorded her words, stopping when she stopped. The words began to spill across the screen as she resumed. ”Perhaps this is a birth defect of some kind, or some sort of deformity. Not severe enough to cause death but perhaps something that could be adapted to over time.” Susan stopped again, unable to believe her own words. A birth defect. As if anyone could live with a heart three times its normal size. She peered over the image. And she still couldn't find the stomach. Perhaps it had shrunk during the woman's comatose state.

Susan resumed her discourse. ”The liver appears slightly larger than normal and the lungs appear about half-size for an adult of her size.” She eyed the veins and arteries that snaked throughout the image. ”It appears the subject has an extremely well-developed circulatory system. The capillarization of the muscles is extraordinary.”

Susan stopped, suddenly noticing one very prominent artery. She had to look twice before she could articulate what she was seeing. Even then, her a.s.sessment deviated from her former professional monologue. ”Well, I haven't actively practiced medicine in a few years,” she murmured to herself, ”but I remember enough to know the esophagus is not connected to the aortic valve.”

Susan pushed away from the table, suddenly angry. The most logical explanation was that someone had gone in and ”operated” on this corpse to make it look like a radically altered anatomy. The body in the image was impossible. Someone had created a rather elaborate scheme to make her believe this person was still alive, and she had a pretty good idea whom that someone might be.

Her mind began racing. She suddenly realized Mason would have to be in on it as well. It would have been fairly easy for he and David Goldstein to rig this entire episode, first to make her look foolish in ER, then...

Susan felt a coldness in the pit of her stomach. Then they would catch her up here, running all sorts of ”Dr. Frankenstein” experiments on an obviously dead corpse. Her indiscretion involving the ”borrowed” bodies would come to light, her reputation as a researcher would be ruined.

Her paranoia began to s...o...b..ll. She looked to the EEG. It would be simple enough for someone to rig the machine, and the heart monitor as well. She began to cast her gaze wildly around the cubicle, searching for a camera or recorder. They could be watching her right now, doc.u.menting her actions. Her paranoid gaze settled on the computer screen, and her last words blinked at her incriminatingly.

This whole thing was a matter of manipulating Susan into believing what she wanted to believe. Mason had played her so easily, pretending to be dumb. He and Goldstein had known Susan would begin twisting the evidence in the direction of her research.

Susan leaped to her feet and rushed into the sterile room. If she could just get rid of the body before they had an opportunity to spring their trap. She could get rid of all the evidence, then play dumb when they tried to catch her in the act. If she could just get rid of this body...

She gathered the sheets, trying to wrap the body completely so that no part of it showed. But her hands were shaking so badly she nearly knocked the body to the floor, and in her struggle to catch the corpse, lost the sheet completely. The lower half of the woman's body was now exposed.

She struggled against the weight of the woman and finally succeeding in shoving the body back onto the bed. She reached down to pick up the sheet and her eyes caught sight of the woman's legs. She stopped.

For a long moment, she didn't move. She slowly stood upright, the sheet forgotten as it slipped from her nerveless fingers. She reached out, hesitantly touching the body.

The woman's legs were intact. There were no compound fractures, no broken skin, only mild bruising where before there had been horrendous injuries.

Susan gazed at the legs. She had been so caught up in looking at the internal organs on the MRI printout she had missed the obvious. She felt a cold chill whisper down her spine, but it was a very different chill than she had experienced a moment before. This was a much more primitive fear. Thoughts of a conspiracy slipped away.

Susan slowly began backing away from the body. It was still slightly askew in the bed, but she was not going to right it. Nor was she going to turn her back on it before she left the room. She felt for the doork.n.o.b behind her, then slid through the crack she opened.

Susan slammed the door, locking it. She peered through the window, not exactly certain what she expected to see.