Lethal Exposure

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Friday, 11:44 a.m.

Fox RiverMedicalCenter

On the last day of his life, Georg Dumenco’s exiled family members began to arrive-spectators at a premature wake. Paige led them in, hesitant but proud to perform one last service.

On his hospital bed, Dumenco looked hideous with his skin blistered, reddened, and sloughing off in wet flakes; it seemed a mercy for him to remain drugged, but the scientist rallied and fought, insisting on a last few hours of use out of his brilliant mind.

Upon learning that his prediction was correct after all, but that the antimatter was being bled off and thereby ruining the data from the detector apparatus, Dumenco sagged into stunned relief, as if prepared to die now that he had verified his precious theories.

The Ukrainian struggled to wakefulness and squinted at the new visitors in his hospital room, trying to see through the translucent curtain surrounding his bed. Paige thought Dumenco’s face bore a dreamlike expression, as if he couldn’t believe that his family had finally come to him, that this wasn’t just radiation-induced delirium.

Paige stood beside the visitors, trying to remain unobtrusive. This was their moment with their long-lost Georg. She had the flight schedules. The FBI had arranged for their tickets with the greatest expediency, rushing them from their hiding places across the mid-western United States.

Dumenco’s wife, Luba, his youngest daughter, Alyx, and his son, Peter, had come from Minneapolis, while his eldest daughter Kathryn ironically had just begun college at the University of Chicago. She lived close to her father, but was discouraged from seeing him… until now, when he lay on his deathbed.

Kathryn came forward in new blue jeans with her two hands clutched in front of her. Her straw-colored hair was cropped short, sticking out in a scarecrowish style that made her look like a waif. Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes were huge and shadowed as if she hadn’t gotten much sleep.

Paige’s heart went out to her, though she said nothing, just watching the tableau. Living in Chicago, young Kathryn had probably learned on the news that her father was dying and had spent days in anguish wondering whether she should break the secrecy, to put her entire family at risk by going to see her father one last time.

Luckily, Craig had taken care of that choice.

The wife also came forward to hold Alyx and Peter tightly, both of them shuddering as they stood beside the bed rails. Luba seemed afraid to approach the radiation-damaged wreck that had once been her husband. Georg Dumenco lay breathing raggedly through an oxygen mask, his eyes darting back and forth, sometimes with recognition, sometimes without.

Peter reached tentatively forward to touch his father’s hand, but then drew back, afraid he might cause further injury. The scientist looked so fragile, as if the soap bubble of his life could easily burst. Instead, the young man hunkered down, leaning against the visitor’s chair and began to whisper. Kathryn stood next to him, still biting her lower lip like a ghost.

In his bed, Dumenco managed a smile.

Because of his high-profile research, the technical papers he published, and his consideration for the Nobel Prize, Georg Dumenco would have been easy to locate. Paige was sure the family members must have followed the career of the man who had arranged for them to flee the Ukraine. But, because of the sharp and secret eyes of enforcers from the former Soviet Union, Dumenco had insisted that they never get in touch with him, never be seen with him.

It seemed a horrible prison sentence to Paige, but the man who had tried to kill him in the hospital, who had broken into his apartment, destroyed Dumenco’s computer and incapacitated Craig and Jackson with chlorine gas, had proven such precautions necessary.

Carrying a bag under one arm, Trish LeCroix stepped into the hospital room like a worried mother hen. Paige watched her fidget in her clean white doctor’s uniform, her figure petite, her nails done perfectly, her hair short and no-nonsense, her glasses delicate and stylish. Trish’s every move spoke of carefully planned elegance.

Paige could see why Craig had been attracted to her, but the woman seemed more like a trophy than a human being. With her aggressive work for the PR-Cubed, her time spent studying the fallout and repercussions of Chernobyl, and her impeccable training and residency record, Trish LeCroix had many passions and convictions… and little flexibility. Craig must have just gone along with her, distracted by his FBI duties.

Paige smiled, thinking that for being so decisive in his work as a Federal agent, where he could discern the faintest connections, Craig was naive and almost passive in personal relationships. But his slightly-embarrassed nervousness, which he always tried to hide, was one of the things Paige found most endearing about him.

She had forgotten how much she’d missed him over the past year.

Trish crossed her arms over her chest and scrutinized Dumenco’s family, then glanced over at Paige. She wore a sour but grudgingly tolerant expression.

Trish reached into the bag and removed various items: an ornate gold-plated cross, framed photographs of Ukrainian churches, and colorfully enameled religious icons that looked like collector’s plates. Trish set them up on the bedside table and around Dumenco’s room, firmly pushing his stacked technical papers aside.

The scientist’s wife nodded in gratitude, perhaps recognizing a few of the keepsakes. The younger daughter, Alyx, helped to display a few of the items, thankful for something to keep her busy. Paige stared at Trish, her blue gaze filled with questions.

“I went to Georg’s apartment. He gave me his keys,” Trish said defensively. “I took a few things from his walls. I thought he’d be glad to have them around him.”

Earlier, Paige had set up the polished stone chess pieces Craig had brought for Dumenco, placing them where the dying man could reach them if he wanted. Dumenco had made no move, no suggestion that he wanted to attempt a game of chess, but he seemed to enjoy looking at the pieces nevertheless, hypnotized by the way the light played across their slick curves.

Alyx’s blond hair, longer than her sister’s, flowed down between her shoulder blades. She picked up one of the small icon paintings and clutched it as she stood beside Kathryn, looking down at her father. Luba stood stoically, gripping the shoulders of her children; she stood in silence as the boy Peter continued to talk aimlessly. Now he was saying something about various baseball teams and pitchers.

Dumenco sat awake, watching them. His eyes were bright and sparkling. He leaned forward, reaching out with one swollen hand, then he winced as his entire body convulsed.

As Dumenco shuddered, Trish hurried forward. She glanced down at a prep tray and selected a filled hypodermic syringe, which she prepared to inject into one of the IV lines taped to Dumenco’s arm.

“What are you doing?” Paige asked quietly, touching her elbow.

Trish’s dark eyes flashed. “He’s in pain-can’t you see that? I’m trying to relieve some of it.”

“But won’t that make him unconscious?” Paige asked. “He’s barely awake now.”

Trish kept her harsh voice low, as if to prevent the stricken family members from hearing her. “All of his major organ systems have been destroyed or damaged. I don’t know how he’s managed to last this long, but he’s literally falling apart. The pain must be excruciating.”

“I know that,” Paige said, also keeping her voice low. “But his daughters are here, his wife, his son. You said yourself that he doesn’t have much time left, maybe hours, maybe days.”

Trish shook her head. “He’ll never survive to the end of this day.”

“Then leave him awake and conscious for these last few moments with loved ones he hasn’t seen in a long time.”

“I’m a doctor. I’m supposed to ease suffering and relieve pain,” Trish said, holding up the hypodermic as if it were a dagger. “How can I let him lie here and ignore his condition when I know what agony he’s going through?”

“What are you afraid he’s going to say with his last breath?” Paige said coldly. “Something about you? Something you don’t want anybody to hear?”

Trish looked at her in astonishment. Paige knew all about Trish’s activist work, the lectures she had given, and how many hard-line stands she had taken… but now, all the hypothetical situations had changed, and she was faced with a real patient-and perhaps for the first time, a real man she had known very well.

Trish backed off without answering Paige’s question. She returned the hypodermic to its tray. “We’ll leave him awake for now,” she said. “But I have to watch him very carefully.” She stood back at an uneasy distance from Paige.

Dumenco’s family clung together at his bedside and waited for the scientist to die.