Harvest

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The alarm on the heart monitor was going crazy, squealing as the line traced a chaotic dance of death across the screen.

"Mr Voss." A nurse grasped Victor's arm, tried to pull him away from Nina's bed. "The doctors need room to work."

"I'm not leaving her."

"Mr Voss, they can't do their job if you're here!"

Victor shook off the woman's hand with a violence that made her cringe, as though struck. He remained standing at the end of his wife's bed, gripping the footrail so tightly his knuckles looked like exposed bone.

"Back!" came a command. "Everyone back!"

"MrVoss!" It was DrArcher speaking now, his voice slicing through the bedlam. "We need to shock your wife's heart!You have to move away from the bed now."

Victor released the footrail and stepped back.

The shock was delivered. It coursed through Nina's body in a single, barbaric jolt. She was too small, too fragile to be abused this way! Enraged, he took a step forward, ready to snatch the paddles away. Then he stopped.

On the monitor above the bed, the jagged line had transformed to a calmly rhythmic series of blips. He heard someone release a sigh, and felt his own breath escape in a single rush. "Systolic's sixty. Up to sixty-five…"

"Rhythm seems to be holding."

"Up to seventy-five systolic."

"OK, turn down that IV."

"She's moving her arm. Can we get a wrist restraint over here?" Victor pushed past the nurses to Nina's side. No one tried to stop him. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. And he tasted, on her skin, the salt of his own tears.

Stay with me. Please, please, stay with me.

"Mr Voss?" The voice seemed to call to him from across a long distance. Turning, he focused on Dr. Archer's face.

"Can we step outside?" said Archer.

Victor shook his head.

"She's all right for the moment," said Archer. "All these people are taking good care of her. We'll be just outside the room. I need to speak to you. Now."

At last Victor nodded. Tenderly he lay Nina's hand down and he followed Archer out of the cubicle.

They stood together in a quiet corner of the ICU. The lights had been dimmed for the evening, and against the bank of green screens, the silhouette of the monitor nurse sat silent and motionless.

"The transplant's been postponed," said Archer. "There was a problem with the harvest."

"What do you mean?"

"It couldn't be done tonight. We'll have to re-schedule for tomorrow."

Victor looked at his wife's cubicle. Through the uncurtained window, he could see her head moving. She was waking up. She needed him at her side.

He said, "Nothing can go wrong tomorrow night."

"It won't."

"That's what you told me after the first transplant."

"Organ rejection is something we can't always stop. No matter how hard we try to prevent it, it happens."

"How do I know it won't happen again? With a second heart?"

"I can't make promises. But at this point, Mr Voss, we don't have an alternative. Cyclosporine's failed. And she had an anaphylactic reaction to OKT-3.There's nothing left except another transplant."

"It will be done tomorrow?"

Archer nodded. "We'll make sure it's done tomorrow."

Nina was not yet fully conscious when Victor returned to her bedside. So many times before, he had watched her as she slept. Over the years he had taken note of the changes in her face. The delicate lines that had formed at the corners of her mouth. The gradual sagging of the jawline. The new whisper of white in her hair. Each and every change he had mourned, because it reminded him that their journey together was but a temporary passage through a cold and lonely eternity.

And yet, because it was her face, each and every change he had loved.

It was hours later when she opened her eyes. At first he did not realize she was awake. He was sitting in a chair by her bed, his shoulders slumped with fatigue, when something made him raise his head and turn to her.

She was looking at him. She opened her hand in a silent request for his touch. He grasped it, kissed it.

"Everything," she whispered, 'will be all right." He smiled. "Yes. Yes, of course it will."

"I've been lucky, Victor. So very lucky…"

"We both have."

"But now you have to learn to let me go."

Victor's smile faded. He shook his head. "Don't say that."

"You have so much ahead of you."

"What about us?" He was grasping her hand in both of his now, like a man trying to hold onto water as it trickles away. "You and I, Nina, we're not like everyone else! We always used to say that to each other. Don't you remember? How we were different. We were special. And nothing could ever happen to us?"

"But something has, Victor," she murmured. "Something has happened to me."

"And I will take care of it."

She said nothing, only shook her head sadly.

It seemed to Victor that the last thing he saw, as Nina's eyelids closed again, was a look of quiet defiance. He gazed down at her hand, the one he'd been holding so possessively. And he saw that it was closed, in a fist.

It was nearly midnight when Detective Lundquist dropped off an exhausted Abby at her front door. She saw that Mark's car was not parked in the driveway. When she stepped inside the house, she could feel its emptiness as clearly as one senses a chasm yawning at one's feet. He's had an emergency at the hospital, she thought. It was not unusual for him to leave the house late at night, called into Bayside to tend to a gunshot wound or a stabbing. She tried to visualize him as she had seen him so many times before in the OR, his face masked in blue, his gaze focused downward, but she could not seem to come up with the image. It was as though the memory, the old reality, had been erased.

She went to the answering machine, hoping he'd left a voice memo on the recorder. All she found were two phone messages. Both were from Vivian, and the number she'd left had an out-of-state area code. She was still in Burlington. It was too late now to call her back. She'd try in the morning.

Upstairs, she stripped off her wet clothes, threw them in the

HARVEST

washing machine, and stepped into the shower. She noticed the tiles were dry; Mark hadn't used the shower tonight. Had he even been home?

As the hot water beat down on her shoulders, she stood with her eyes closed, thinking. Dreading what she'd have to say to Mark. This was why she had returned to his house tonight. The time had come to confront him, to demand answers. The uncertainty had become unbearable.

After she got out of the shower, she sat down on the bed and called in a page for Mark. She was startled when the phone rang almost immediately.

"Abby?" It wasn't Mark, but Katzka. "Just checking to see if you're OK. I called a little while ago and there was no answer."

"I was in the shower. I'm fine, Katzka. I'm just waiting for Mark to get home."

A pause. "You're by yourself?."

His note of concern brought a faint smile to her lips. Scratch that armour of his, and you'd find a real man under there after all.

"I locked all the doors and windows," she said. "Just like you told me." Over the phone, she could hear a background buzz of voices, along with the squeal of a police radio, and she could picture him standing on that dock, the blue emergency lights flashing on his face. "What's happening over there?" she asked.

"We're waiting for the divers. The equipment's already in position." "You really think the driver's still trapped in the van?"

"I'm afraid so." He sighed, and it was a sound of such profound weariness, she gave a murmur of concern.

"You should go home, Katzka. You need a hot shower and some chicken soup. That's my prescription."

He laughed. It was a surprising sound, one she'd never heard from him before. "Now if I could just find a pharmacy to fill it." Someone spoke to him. It sounded like another cop, asking about bullet trajectories. Katzka turned to answer the man, then he came back on the line. "I have to go. You sure you're OK there? You wouldn't rather stay in a hotel?"

"I'll be fine."

"OK." Again, she heard Katzka sigh. "But I want you to call a locksmith in the morning. Have him install deadbolts on all the doors. Especially if you're going to be spending a lot of nights home alone."

"I'll do that."

There was a brief silence. He had pressing matters to attend to, yet he seemed reluctant to hang up. At last he said, "I'll check back with you in the morning."

"Thanks, Katzka." She hung up.

Again she paged Mark. Then she lay down on the bed and waited for him to call back. He didn't.

As the hours passed, she tried to calm her growing fears by tallying up all the possible reasons he wasn't answering. He could be asleep in one of the hospital call rooms. His beeper could be broken. He could be scrubbed and unavailable in the OR.

Or he could be dead. Like Aaron Levi. Like Kunstler and Hennessy. She paged him again. And again.

At 3 a.m., the phone finally rang. In an instant she was wide awake and reaching for the receiver.

"Abby, it's me." Mark's voice crackled on the wire, as though he were calling from across a long distance.

"I've been paging you for hours," she said. "Where are you?"

"I'm in the car, heading to the hospital right now." He paused.

"Abby, we need to talk. Things have… changed."

She said, softly: "Between us, you mean."

"No. No, this has nothing to do with you. It never did. It has to do with me.You just got sucked into it, Abby. I tried to get them to back off, but now they've taken it too far." ' Who has?"

"The team."

She was afraid to ask the next question, but she had no choice now. "All of you?You're all involved?"

"Not any more." The connection briefly faded, and she heard what sounded like the whoosh of traffic. His voice regained its volume. "Mohandas and I came to a decision tonight. That's where I've been, at his house. We've been talking, comparing notes. Abby, we're putting our heads on the block. But we decided it's time to end this. We can't do it any longer. We're going to blow this thing wide open, Mohandas and me. And fuck everyone else. Fuck Bayside." He paused, his voice suddenly breaking. "I've been a coward. I'm sorry."

She closed her eyes. "You knew. All this time you knew."

"I knew some of it — not all. I had no idea how far Archer was taking it.! didn't want to know. Then you started asking all those questions. And I couldn't hide from the truth any longer…" He released a deep breath and whispered, "This is going to ruin me, Abby."

She still had her eyes closed. She could see him in the darkness of his car, one hand on the wheel, the other gripping the cellular phone. Could imagine the misery on his face. And the courage; most of all, the courage.

"I love you," he whispered.

"Come home, Mark. Please."

"Not yet. I'm meeting Mohandas at the hospital. We're going to get those donor records."

"Do you know where they're kept?"

"We have an idea. With just two of us, it could take us a while to search all the files. If you helped us out, we might be able to get through them by morning."

She sat up in bed. "I won't be getting much sleep tonight anyway. Where are you meeting Mohandas?"

"Medical records. He has the key." Mark hesitated. "Are you sure you want to be in on this, Abby?"

"I want to be wherever you are. We'll do this together. OK?"

"OK," he said softly. "See you soon."

Five minutes later, Abby walked out the front door and climbed into her car.

The streets of West Cambridge were deserted. She turned onto Memorial Drive, skirting the Charles River as she headed southeast, towards the River Street bridge. It was 3.15 a.m., but she could not remember feeling so awake. So alive.

At last we're going to beat them.t she thought. And we're going to do it together. The way we should have done it from the start.

She crossed the bridge and headed onto the ramp for the Turnpike. There were few cars travelling at that hour, and she merged easily with sparse eastbound traffic.

Three and a half miles later, the Turnpike came to an end. She changed lanes, preparing to turn off onto the South Expressway ramp. As she curved onto it, she suddenly became aware of a pair of headlights bearing down on her.

She accelerated, merging onto the southbound expressway. The headlights pulled closer, high beams glaring off her rearview mirror. How long had they been behind her? She had no idea. But they were zooming in now like twin bats out of hell.

She sped up.

So did the other car. Suddenly it swooped left into the next lane. It pulled up beside her until they were almost neck in neck.

She glanced sideways. Saw the other car's window roll down. Glimpsed the silhouette of a man in the right passenger seat.

In panic, she floored the accelerator.

Too late she spotted the car stalled ahead of her. She slammed on the brakes. Her car spun and caromed off the concrete barrier. Suddenly the world tilted sideways. Then everything was tumbling over and over. She saw darkness and light. Darkness, light.

Darkness.

'… Repeat, this is Mobile Unit forty-one. Our ETA is three minutes. Copy?"

"Copy, forty-one. How're the vitals?"

"Systolic holding at ninety-five. Pulse one ten. We've got normal saline going in one peripheral line. Hey, looks like she's starting to move."

"Keep her immobilized."

"We've got her in a collar and a spinal board."

"OK. We're ready and waiting for you."

"See you in a minute, Bayside…"

And pain. Short, sharp explosions of it in her head.

She tried to scream, but no sound came out. She tried to turn away from that piercing light, but her neck seemed trapped in a choke-hold. She thought if she could just escape that light and burrow back into darkness, the pain would go away. With all her strength she twisted, straining to break free of the paralysis that had seized her limbs.

"Abby. Abby, hold still!" a voice commanded. "I have to look in your eyes."

She twisted the other way, felt restraints chafing her wrists, her ankles. And she realized that it was not paralysis that prevented her movement. She was tied down, all four limbs strapped to the gurney.

"Abby, it's Dr. Wettig. Look at me. Look at the light. Come on, open your eyes. Open."

She opened her eyes, forced herself to keep them open, even though the beam of his penlight felt like a blade piercing straight through her skull.

"Follow the light. Come on. That's good, Abby. OK, both pupils are reactive. EOM's are normal?The penlight, mercifully, shut off. "I still want that CT."

Abby could make out shapes now. She could see the shadow of Dr. Wettig's head against the diffuse brightness of the overhead lights. There were other heads moving around on the periphery of her vision, and a white privacy curtain billowing like a cloud off in the distance. Pain pricked her left arm; she gave a jerk.

"Easy, Abby." It was a woman's voice, soft, soothing. "I have to draw some blood. Hold very still. I have a lot of tubes to collect." Now a third voice: "Dr. Wettig, X-ray's ready for her."

"In a minute," said Wettig. "I want a bigger bore IV in. Sixteen gauge. Come on, people."

Abby felt another stab, this time in her right arm. The pain drove straight through her confusion and brought her mind into startling focus. She knew exactly where she was. She couldn't recall how she'd arrived, but she knew this was Bayside Emergency Room, and that something terrible must have happened.

"Mark," she said, and tried to sit up. "Where's Mark?"

"Don't move! We'll lose this IV!"

A hand closed over her elbow, pinning her arm to the gurney. The grasp was too firm to be gentle. They were all hurting her, stabbing her with their needles, holding her down like some captive animal.

"Mark!" she cried.

"Abby, listen to me." It was Wettig again, his voice low and impatient. "We're trying to reach Mark. I'm sure he'll be here soon. Right now, you have to cooperate or we can't help you. Do you understand? Abby, do you understand?"

She stared up at his face and she went very still. So many times before, as a resident, she had felt intimidated by his flat blue eyes. Now, strapped down and helpless under that gaze, she felt more than intimidated. She felt truly, deeply, frightened. She glanced around the room, seeking a friendly face, but everyone was too busy attending to IV's and blood tubes and vital signs.

She heard the curtain whisk open, felt a lurch as the gurney began to move. Now the ceiling was rushing past in a flashing succession of lights, and she knew they were taking her deeper into the hospital. Into the heart of the enemy. She didn't even try to struggle; the restraints were impossible to fight. Think, she thought. I have to think.

They turned the corner, into X-ray. Now another face, a man's, appeared over her gurney. The CT technician. Friend or enemy? She couldn't tell any more. They moved her onto the table and buckled straps across her chest and hips.

"Hold very still," the tech commanded, 'or we'll have to do this all over again."

As the scanner slid over her head, she felt a sudden rush of claustrophobia. She remembered how other patients had described CT scans: like having your head jammed into a pencil sharpener. Abby closed her eyes. Machinery clicked and whirred around her head. She tried to think, to remember the accident.

She remembered getting into her car. Driving onto the Turnpike. Then her memory tape had a gap. Retrograde amnesia; the accident itself was a complete blank. But the events leading up to it were slowly coming back into focus.

By the time the scan was completed, she'd managed to piece together enough memory fragments to understand what she had to do next. If she wanted to stay alive.

She was quietly cooperative as the CT technician transferred her back onto the gurney — so cooperative, in fact, that he left off the wrist restraints and buckled on only the chest strap. Then he wheeled her into the X-ray anteroom.

"The ER's coming to get you," he said. "If you need me, just call. I'm right in the next room."

Through the open doorway she could hear him talking on the telephone. Yeah, this is CT. We're all done here. Dr. Blaise is looking over the scan now. You want to come get her?

Abby reached up and quietly unbuckled the chest strap. As she sat up, she felt the room begin to whirl. She pressed her hands to her temples and everything seemed to settle back into focus. The IV.

She ripped the tape off her arm, wincing at the sting, and pulled out the catheter. Saline dribbled out of the tubing, onto the floor. She ignored the saline, concentrating instead on stopping the flow of blood from her vein. A sixteen-gauge puncture is a big hole. Though she taped over it tightly, it continued to ooze. She couldn't worry about that now. They were coming to get her.

She climbed off the gurney, her bare feet landing in a pool of saline. In the next room, the tech was cleaning up the CT table. She could hear the rattle of tissue paper, the clang of a trash can.

She took a lab coat off the door hook and pulled it on over her hospital gown. Just that effort seemed to drain her. She was struggling to think, to see through a white haze of pain as she moved to the door. Her legs felt sluggish, as though she were wading through quicksand. She pushed into the hallway.

It was empty.

Still slogging through quicksand, she moved up the corridor, reaching out every so often to steady herself against the wall. She turned a corner. At the far end of the hallway was an emergency

HARVEST

exit. She struggled towards it, thinking: If I can just reach that door, I'll be safe.

Somewhere behind her, from what seemed like a great distance, she heard voices. The sound of hurrying footsteps.

She lunged against the emergency exit bar and pushed out, into the night. Alarm bells started ringing. At once she began to run, fleeing in panic into the darkness. She stumbled off the kerb into the parking lot. Broken glass and gravel cut into her bare feet. She had no plan of escape, no destination in mind; she knew only that she had to get away from Bayside.

There were voices behind her. A shout.

Glancing back, she saw three security guards run out the ER entrance.

She ducked behind a car — too late. They had spotted her.

She lurched to her feet and began to run again. Her legs still didn't work right. She was stumbling as she dodged between parked cars.

Her pursuers' footsteps pounded closer, moving in from two directions at once.

She turned left, between two parked cars.

They surrounded her. One guard grabbed her left arm, another her right, She kicked, punched. Tried to bite them.

But now there were three of them, and they were dragging her back to the Emergency Room. Back to Dr. Wettig.

"They'll kill me!" she screamed. "Let me go! They're going to kill me!"

"No one's going to hurt you, lady."

"You don't understand. You don't understand.t'

The ER doors whisked open. She was swept inside, into the light and lifted onto a gurney. Strapped down, even as she kicked and thrashed.

Dr. Wettig's face appeared, white and taut above hers. "Five milligrammes Haldol IM," he snapped.

"No!" shrieked Abby. "No.t'

"Come on, I want it given STAT!"

A nurse materialized, syringe in hand. She uncapped the needle.

Abby lurched, trying to buck free of the restraints.

"Hold her down," said Wettig. "Goddamn it, can we get her immobilized here?"

Hands clamped over her wrists. She was twisted sideways, her right buttock bared.

"Please," begged Abby, looking up at the nurse. "Don't let him hurt me. Don't let him."

She felt the icy lick of alcohol, then the prick of the needle plunging into her buttock.

"Please," she whispered. But she knew it was already too late.

"It will be all right," said the nurse. And she smiled at Abby. "Everything will be all right."