Coma

35

Thursday, February 26, 5:47 P.M.

The heavy industrial-weight vinyl ceiling tile was slowly slipping from Susan’s grip, and she clenched her teeth. Her hands were numb from holding it with just the tips of her fingers, forcing the tile against its metal supports on the opposite side of its six-foot expanse. She could hear the guard below talking on his two-way radio. If the tile fell, he’d find her. She closed her eyes as tightly as she could to take her mind off her fingers and her aching forearms. It was slipping. It was going to fall. The guard switched off. Then the window closed. Susan held on somehow. She didn’t hear the guard exit, but the tile fell with a dull thud that jarred the whole suspended ceiling. Susan listened intently as blood rushed into her tingling fingers, painfully. There was no sound below. She let herself take a deep breath.

Susan was up in the ceiling space above the tissue lab. It was ironic that before her search of the ORs at the Memorial, Susan never knew of the existence of ceiling spaces. Now clambering up there had saved her life. Thank God for the filing cabinet on which she had stood to lift the tile.

Susan took out her floor plans and tried to examine them in the sparse light filtering up through the edges of the ceiling tiles. She found it impossible even after her eyes had adjusted. Looking around in the gloom, she noticed a rather concentrated beam of light coming from some larger fissure in the ceiling about twenty feet from her position. With the help of the upright studding marking the wall of the tissue lab and a neighboring office, Susan managed to work her way over to the light source and position herself so that she could see the plans. What she wanted to find was the main chase like the one she had seen at the Memorial. She thought that if it were big enough it would be a possible way out. But the chase was not listed in the key. However she did find a rectangular enclosure drawn next to the elevator shaft. Susan decided that it probably represented the chase she was after.

She moved along the top of the wall of the tissue lab, holding onto the upright studs until she reached the step up to the fixed ceiling of the corridor. It was made of concrete, to support the tracks for the trolleys. Once on it, the going was much easier. She moved toward the elevator shaft.

The closer she got to the elevator shaft the more difficult was her progress both because it got significantly darker and because more and more pipes, wires, and ducts converged in the direction she was heading. She had to move by feel, advancing a foot forward slowly, blindly. Several times she touched a steam pipe and it burned her. The smell of burnt flesh drifted into her nose.

In utter darkness she reached the elevator shaft and felt the vertical concrete. Rounding its corner, she followed a pipe with her hands and felt it turn down at a ninety-degree angle. Other pipes did the same. Leaning over them, she looked down into the darkness. A faint light filtered up from far below.

With her hands Susan determined the size of the chase. It was about four feet square. The wall common to the elevator shaft was concrete. She selected a pipe about two inches in diameter. Lowering herself into the chase, she put her back against the concrete wall and grabbed the pipe with both hands. Then she put her feet against other pipes and pushed back firmly against the concrete wall. In this fashion she inched herself down the chase, like a mountaineer in a chimney.

The going was not easy. Moving only inches at a time, she tried, although not always successfully, to avoid the steam pipes, which were blistering hot. After a while she was able to distinguish the pipes in front of her. Looking into the darkness, she could see vague forms, and she realized that she had reached the ceiling space of the first floor. She was making progress and she felt a certain elation. But it was tempered by the thought that if she could use the chase to go down, someone could use it to go up. And she realized then how relatively easy it was for someone to gain access to the T-valve in the oxygen line at the Memorial.

Susan continued inching downward. Below her there was a bit more light filtering upward. There was also the progressively louder sound of electrical machinery. As she approached the basement level, Susan realized that there was no suspended ceiling below her in the basement There would he no way to conceal herself and move laterally. She worked herself down until her eyes cleared the structural floor on the first level, then stopped her movement, wedging herself securely against the concrete to survey the scene.

The machinery room and its power plant were lit by a few work lights. The pipe Susan was using for her descent, apparently a water pipe from its feel, continued to the floor. But several other pipes, larger than the one she was holding, angled off horizontally, hanging by metal straps about four feet below the concrete slab of the building’s first floor. They ran high above the machinery area.

Susan stepped onto one of these pipes. She was no acrobat, but perhaps her natural ability as a dancer helped. With her right hand and her head pressed against the solid concrete, she moved crouching along the pipe, trying not to look down.

She teetered a bit but gained confidence. Ahead she saw a wall and beyond, another ceiling space. By maintaining pressure on the ceiling above she did a tightrope walk along the pipe. Susan passed directly over the power plant and was within four feet of her goal when there was a startling flash of light very close to her, almost causing her to lose her balance. The lights had come on in the machinery room.

Susan shut her eyes, pressing her hands against the ceiling and hooking the groove of her shoes against the pipe. Beneath her a guard moved slowly around the machinery, a big flashlight in one hand, a pistol in the other.

The next fifteen minutes were probably the longest single period of time in Susan’s life. She felt so exposed, with a white dress against the dark pipes and ceiling, that she could not fathom why she was not seen. The guard searched carefully, even the cabinets under the workbench. But he never looked up. Susan’s arms began to tremble from the tension necessary to keep her balance secure. Then her legs followed, so that she was afraid her shoes would soon be tapping a message against the pipe. Finally the guard was satisfied and left, turning out the main lights.

Susan did not move immediately. She tried to relax, conquering her tension and incipient vertigo. She longed for the fixed ceiling about four feet away. It was so close yet so far. She moved her right foot forward about six inches, then put weight on it. Then she moved the left up to the right. Both her arms and legs pained her tremendously. She thought about just letting herself fall forward onto the ceiling but she was afraid of the noise being heard. Instead she continued in her painful caterpillar way. When she reached the ceiling, she collapsed onto her back, breathing hard and letting the blood flow back into her deprived muscles.

But she knew she could not rest for long. She had to find a way out of the building. Lying on her back, she again consulted the floor plans. There were two possible exits. One was the supply room very close to where she now was. Another was at the far end of the building, beyond a room labeled “Dp.” Susan checked the key. Dp stood for dispatch.

Thinking about the man carrying the heart and the kidney from the auxiliary room between the ORs made Susan opt for the dispatch room despite the proximity of the supply room. She thought that perhaps they were planning on transporting the organs. She knew that transplant organs should be used as soon as possible.

Replacing the floor plans, Susan pulled herself to her feet. Her dress was now badly soiled and torn. She kept to the fixed ceiling over the basement corridor as she made her way in the direction of the dispatch room. The going was comparatively easy because it was not totally dark. Like the machinery space, large sections of the basement had no ceiling at all, and enough light was transmitted along Susan’s path that she could move at a regular pace, avoiding the pipes and ducts with ease.

She arrived at the extreme corner of the building and guessed from another glance at the floor plans that she had reached her goal. She lay supine on the fixed corridor ceiling with her head over the dropped ceiling of the dispatch room. As carefully as she could, she lifted a tile until she could just get her fingers under its edge. With effort she pulled it up until she could just see below. The room was occupied!

Not daring to let the ceiling tile go for fear of noise, Susan watched the man below, bent over a desk, filling out a form. He was dressed in an unzipped leather coat. On the floor were two insulated cardboard boxes. They were boldly labeled: “Human Transplant Organ—This side up—Fragile—Rush.”

A door which she could not see opened below. A second man appeared. It was one of the guards.

“Let’s go, Mac. Let’s get these things loaded and out of here. We’ve got work to do.”

“I’m not taking nothing until the proper papers are done.”

The guard left by a swinging door on the far side of the room. Susan got a glimpse of another area before the door closed. It looked like a garage.

The driver finished his forms and tossed a copy into a basket on the counter. The other copy he put into his pocket. He loaded the cartons onto a dolly and backed through the swinging doors.

Susan let the ceiling tile fall back into place. Quickly she moved over to the wall at the far end of the corridor. She could hear the noise of a truck door being shut and latched.

It was darker near the wall, and Susan ran her hand along the wall expecting to feel concrete. Instead she felt vinyl tile, oriented vertically. Susan could plainly hear a truck engine turning over. She pushed against the tile but it seemed to be securely held in place by a metal flange. The truck engine caught, coughed, and quit. The starter began to whine again.

Desperately Susan pushed against the metal flange, feeling it bend up. She repeated the maneuver in several locations. The truck engine caught again, rattled and coughed and then roared, finally sinking back to a controlled idle. Susan then heard the distinctive rumble of a massive and heavy garage door being elevated. Her fingers clawed for the top of the vinyl tile. She pulled it toward herself but it stayed firm. She raised more of the flange and pulled again. The tile came in suddenly, causing Susan to fall backward. She recovered quickly and stared through the vertical opening into an underground garage area. Directly below was a relatively large truck belching exhaust. By the entrance stood the guard, activating the overhead door switch. He was watching the door ascend.

Susan leaped into space and hit the top of the truck with her feet and hands at the same time. The noise of the impact was lost within the echo of the truck engine and the rumble of the garage door. She flattened herself spread-eagled as the truck lurched forward. She felt the inertia of her body cause her to slide backward. She tried to grip something, anything, but the top of the truck was smooth metal and her hands groped in vain. She managed to clear the garage door, but as the truck mounted the incline to the street, Susan’s backward slide became more uncontrollable. Her feet actually slipped over the rear of the truck as she tried to press her hands flat against the smooth surface.

The truck reached the street and the driver braked before turning left. Susan’s body then slid forward, careening counterclockwise. The frigid cold struck her. The driver picked up speed, and Susan felt a sense of helpless terror. She inched toward the cab and clamped her numb fingers over a low ventilator. Then there was a bump and Susan’s body flew up, only to slam down on the metal roof a moment later. Her chin and nose hit the surface so hard that it dazed her. She was only vaguely conscious of what happened after that.

Susan became lucid rather suddenly. She lifted her head and recognized that her nose and lip were bleeding. She watched the buildings and recognized the area. It was the Haymarket. Of course, she thought the truck was heading for Logan Airport.

The truck halted for a traffic light. Traffic was still rather heavy. Susan worked her way right up to the cab. She pulled her feet around and stood up on the roof of the cab. Then she sat down and let her feet onto the hood. At that point she lowered her head and looked through the windshield at the driver. The man was shocked and immobile, his eyes staring without believing, his hands rigidly gripping the steering wheel.

Susan slid from the hood to the fender, then leaped for the ground. She scrambled to her feet and ran between the cars toward Government Center. The driver recovered somewhat, opened his door, and shouted after her. Other angry yells and blaring horns drove him back into his cab. The light had changed. As he put the truck into gear and pulled forward, he told himself that no one would believe this story.