Deathbed

12

Chaos. In what had been an orderly, neat, sterile operating room.

The police technicians had been at their job for hours. Some, particularly the photographers, had completed their work. All the technicians, as well as the investigating detectives, had treated—and were continuing to treat—the crime area with the reverence reserved for the only witness that was guaranteed truthful: the evidence at the scene.

Photographs had been taken from almost every angle. Surfaces had been dusted for prints. Detectives were questioning anyone and everyone who was or might in any way be involved in this case.

A hospital maintenance crew was putting a temporary patch over a huge hole in the outside wall. Since their work was not yet completed, the room was not that much warmer than the 29 degrees Fahrenheit that downtown Detroit was experiencing.

Uniformed police from the Third (downtown) Precinct were barring entry to inquisitive gawkers while permitting access to legitimate hospital personnel. Thus, among those present in OR One were John Haroldson, Dr. Lee Kim, Sister Rosamunda, and Dr. Fred Scott. Among the gawkers persistent enough to remain at the very edge of OR One were Ethel Laidlaw and Bruce Whitaker.

Channels 2 and 7, the CBS and ABC affiliates respectively, had completed their filming and departed. But not before Bruce Whitaker had tried his best to interest them in other aspects of the hospital. All, as it turned out, to no avail.

Gerald Harrington, the smooth, imposing black reporter for Channel 4, the NBC affiliate, was almost ready for his stand-up report. He needed to gather only a bit more information. His crew was setting up camera and sungun.

By far the most imposing figure in the room was Inspector Walter Koznicki. Imposing, not in any vehement or aggressive manner. If anything, he would more accurately be described as reticent and almost shy. But his bulk was considerable and his demeanor commanding.

Koznicki had been on the scene almost from the very beginning. As it happened, he had been serving his tour of duty in what the police call Code 2400, which consisted of a driver and an inspector ready to take charge immediately in any emergency. And what had occurred at St. Vincent’s clearly qualified as both a police emergency and a media event.

At this moment, Koznicki was addressing a biomedical engineering technician, one Frank Reese. Reese had been over the details many times, but this was the first time with the Inspector.

“I am well aware that you have answered these questions before, Mr. Reese,” Koznicki said, “but I am sure you will be kind enough to go over the matter one more time with me. And I have asked Dr. Scott to fill in the details so that we will have a complete picture of what took place.”

This benevolent invitation coming as it did from Koznicki was equivalent to a command performance.

“Dr. Scott, you will begin?”

“Well, it was late last night, maybe ten-thirty or eleven o’clock, when Sister Eileen was taken to emergency. She was comatose. She had been complaining of headaches and she had been the victim of an assault earlier—though she gave every evidence of having come through that with no ill effects. But sometimes . . .

“In any case, I ordered a CAT scan, which revealed a subdural hematoma—in layman’s language, the blood was squishing her brain.

“I scheduled her for surgery stat. But we had the devil’s own time trying to locate the neurosurgeon on call. By the time we located another one and he got down here and we got ready, it was nearly four in the morning.

“Sister was prepped and placed on the table. Oh, yeah, then something odd happened. Bill started the anesthetic, but the gauge indicated he wasn’t getting any nitrous oxide in the mix. So he checked the tank and it was empty. As a matter of fact, the valve was open. Someone—I can’t think why—had bled the tank.”

“Let me interrupt, Doctor,” said Koznicki. “If that had been the only thing to go wrong with the procedure, what would have been the effect?”

“Not very much, really. If the patient had been awake, she just wouldn’t have gone to sleep as expected. No matter what, the anesthetist would have found the problem, just as he did in this case. Then, all he had to do was get a full tank of nitrous oxide and hook it in.”

“I see. Strange. Please continue, Doctor.”

“As soon as Bill replaced the oxide, we got started. Sister had already been prepped, of course, so all that was left as a preliminary was to drill into her skull. For that, we needed the nitrogen. That was in the large tank standing near the wall. The circulating nurse went to get it and then, well, all hell broke loose.”

“Could you be more specific, Doctor?”

“Oh, sure. Well, she’d just begun wheeling it to the table when it seemed to tip over and fall off the dolly. The tank seemed to rip loose. Then it just took off—it simply took off, like a jet plane. There was this enormous whoosh and the tank shot across the floor and exploded right through the wall there. I guess it ended up where you found it, lodged in the motor of a police car that was parked just outside the hospital.

“And that’s about it. We were all so shocked, I think the whole team just stood there looking at the hole in the wall. I don’t know how long we did that. It probably seemed longer than it was. But when we finally came to, well, there was work to be done. We got Sister into another OR and did the job. I must admit we were pretty shook. But we got the job done.” He paused. “Funny thing, though: the nitrous oxide tank in there was empty too; Bill had to hook up another one.”

“And Sister?”

“She came out of it fine. She’s in ICU, of course, but the prognosis is very good.”

“Thank God.

“Now, Mr. Reese: What happened to the tank of nitrogen to cause it to act as it did. An accident?”

“No way! The manufacturer is well aware of the danger of gas under a lot of pressure, and so are we. So all of us take a lot of precautions.”

“Enough precautions to avoid anything like this happening?”

“Absolutely.”

“Go on, Mr. Reese.”

“Well, I brought another tank in to demonstrate what happened. I showed the other officers.” Reese looked meaningfully at Koznicki to ascertain if the previous explanation would suffice. It would not, Koznicki’s steadfast demeanor made clear. Reese proceeded. “You see this little three-wheeled cart. It’s called an H-Tank carrier. ‘H’ refers to the size. It’s one of the largest tanks.

“What happened, to begin with, was that whoever did this loosened the cotter pins in the outside wheel. What that did was to guarantee that when somebody started to pull it, the wheel would come off the carrier and the whole assembly would tip over. Still nothing much would happen, ’cause the tank is strapped to the carrier, but most of all the valve assembly and the pressure regulators are firmly affixed to the tank.

“But what this guy did was he filed almost completely through the base of the cylinder valve. And that’s not something added to the basic tank, like the regulator; the cylinder valve is part of the tank itself.

“So, you see, the guy fixed the carrier so it would tip over. Then he fixed the valve so it would tear loose from the tank. At that point, about two-hundred pounds of nitrogen per square inch tried to get out of the tank all at once. Wasn’t nothin’ gonna hold it back. It became a kind of unguided missile. And the rest of it you see. The hole in the wall and a wrecked engine in the police car.”

“I see,” Koznicki said. “That was a very clear presentation, Mr. Reese, and understandable even to the nontechnician such as myself.”

“I’m getting practice.”

Koznicki overlooked the sarcasm. “I have just one or two questions. You say the nitrogen tank, once it was torn loose, became an ‘unguided’ missile. Do you mean, literally, there was no way of telling in which direction it would travel? It could just as easily have injured, perhaps very seriously, someone in this room as it could have gone harmlessly through the wall? Conceivably, might it have been intended for someone in this room? Perhaps the patient who was about to undergo surgery?”

“I see what you mean: Could it have gone crazy like a deflating balloon? Maybe. A lot depended on how it broke free of the valve. But if you’re counting percentages, odds are it would have acted just as it did. Since it was stationed against the outside wall, the nurse would have started to pull it toward the table so the drill could be hooked up. It would have tipped over on the way to the table. And it would have broken off the valve cap while it was pointed toward the outside wall. So, as long as the break was clean—and the guy filed it down close enough to practically insure that the break would be clean—it was pretty well programmed to go through that wall, just like it did.”

“I see. Very well. My final question, Mr. Reese, is: You keep referring to the one who was responsible for this as ‘the guy.’ Is there any reason you can think of that it had to be a man?”

Reese thought for a moment. “No, now that you bring it up. It didn’t require any special strength. Anybody—man or woman—could have loosened the wheel. And filing the valve didn’t need strength as much as just patience, stick-to-itiveness. Anybody could have filed it down. He—or she—would just have had to stay with it awhile.”

“Very good. Thank you, Mr. Reese.”

Koznicki wandered across the room to gaze at the hole that was being crudely patched. And to wonder at the mind that had converted a tank of nitrogen gas into a torpedo that might easily have killed someone, if not in that room, then on the street outside.

“. . . that’s it. A wild and woolly way to begin the day. We’ll be bringing you further developments in this story as they happen. From old St. Vincent’s Hospital in downtown Detroit, this is Gerald Harrington, Channel 4 News, reporting.”

The sungun faded and the TV team began to pack up. This was the first story of this day. It was not likely to be the last.

“Mr. Harrington! Mr. Harrington!”

Gerald Harrington thought he heard someone call his name. He wasn’t sure. The voice, while it seemed insistent, was barely audible over all the sounds in the still-crowded operating room.

“Mr. Harrington! Mr. Harrington!”

Harrington spotted him. A small, roundish man wearing perhaps the world’s worst toupee and standing behind the tape placed by the police to keep the crowd back. Harrington crossed to the man. “Hi, there. What can I do for you?”

“This isn’t the whole story,” Bruce Whitaker said.

“Not the whole story? What do you mean, Buddy?” Harrington was interested. Any competent newsperson would have been.

“There are things going on in this hospital. Illicit things.” Whitaker could not resist a conspiratorial tone.

“Illicit things?”

“Yes. In the clinic. You can see for yourself. I’ll show you. Birth control. Devices. Instructions. Tubal ligations. You can see for yourself. I’ll take you there.”

Harrington was pressed for time. He was by no means averse to following news leads, but he had to make judgments on which ones to pursue. This one gave every appearance of being both a wrong turn and a dead end. It was not just that the informant seemed to be a run-of-the-mill crazy; as far as Harrington was concerned, the man was speaking nonsense.

“Okay, Buddy. Maybe I’ll check those things out later. Meanwhile, keep a good thought.”

As Harrington prepared to leave, the sound man looked at him inquiringly. Harrington’s exaggerated expression told him that it was one more of the city’s many neurotics. The sound man nodded and the team departed.

Damn, thought Whitaker, this is my golden opportunity. I don’t know how that explosion happened, but it was a godsend. Maybe literally. The news media are here in force. And I haven’t been able to lead anybody to the real story. Maybe I’m coming on too strong. But how else can I do it? We never thought of this part when we were planning. You need a PR person for this sort of thing. What am I going to do?

“Hey, you!”

“Me?” Whitaker was taken by surprise.

“Yeah, you. I heard you talking to that TV guy before. I’m Pfeiffer, Detroit News.” He showed no identification, but he had a note pad, which was enough authentication for Whitaker. “You got something on this story?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” How to handle this? Imagine: a real reporter who wanted to hear the real story! God was good!

“Name?”

“Bruce Whitaker.”

“Doctor? You a doctor here?”

“No. I’m a volunteer.”

“Then what’s with the stethoscope?”

“Oh, my . . . .” In the confusion he had forgotten the stethoscope. “Never mind that. I need it in my job.” Whitaker hoped the bluff would work.

Pfeiffer looked a bit skeptical, but forged on toward a possible new development in this bizarre incident. “Okay. What’ve you got?”

Not so pointblank now, Whitaker cautioned himself. “There’s a reason behind this explosion.”

“You mean you know who did it?” Pfeiffer was immediately excited.

“Well, not exactly. Almost.”

“Whaddya mean ‘almost’! How could you know ‘almost’ who did it! Have you got both oars in the water?”

“Let me tell you what’s behind all this, then you’ll know what I mean.”

Pfeiffer closed his note pad and pocketed his pen. He would give this nut at most three more minutes to babble on. And that only because the reporter was feeling unusually generous today.

“Inspector?” A Third Precinct detective approached Koznicki.

“Yes?” Koznicki had been absently following the patching of the wall while recalling his conversation with Father Koesler. Unfortunately, this was his day off from the hospital. He had missed all the excitement. Koznicki would bring his friend up to date tomorrow.

“Inspector . . .” The detective drew very near so he would not have to speak loudly. “We got lucky.”

“Oh? How so?”

“We got a full ten prints off that nitrous oxide tank, and identical prints off one oxide tank in each of the other rooms. They’d all been bled. Undoubtedly by the guy whose prints were on the tanks and also on the valves.”

“Very good.”

“And we got an ID.”

“So soon?”

“Well, we had both hands. And we didn’t have to look far: He’s on parole from Van’s Can.”

“What does his rap-sheet show?”

“Attempted murder.”

“Hmmm. Name?”

“Whitaker. Bruce Whitaker.”

Koznicki reflected. “Rings no bells. Where do we find him?”

“See that guy over there in the white coat talking to Pfeiffer?”

Koznicki followed the direction of the detective’s inclined head, then nodded.

“That’s our guy.”

Koznicki shook his head in disbelief. “Take him.”

The detective nodded to his partner. They closed in.

“Bruce Whitaker?”

“Y . . . Y . . . Yes?”

“You are under arrest for malicious destruction of property, violation of parole, endangerment to life, and a few more things we’ll think of as time passes.” The detective took a card from his wallet as his partner handcuffed Whitaker. “You have the right to remain silent . . . .”

“You!” Pfeiffer was astonished. “You? You did this? My crazy did this? How lucky can I get? Now, you were saying . . .”

All for nothing! They will never believe him. All for nothing! What a waste! I have accomplished nothing. I should have done it myself from the beginning. It must be done. And I must do it! I must do it quickly now!