He ached in a dozen different places, and he sensed that he was seeing little or nothing through his left eye. Dunleavy took several seconds to appreciate his patient's predicament. Then he muttered an apology and moved to a spot by Jared's right hand. "Welcome to the land of the living, " he said. His voice was | kind, but his eyes were sunken and tired. "You've been out for quite a while. Apparently they overestimated how much analgesia to give you. "ii "It's swollen shut, " the nurse announced. "You look like you've been kicked by a mule. Jared felt his senses begin to focus, and he struggled to reconstruct the hazy events following the explosion in the Omnicenter. His first clear image was of William Zimmermann spinning wildly about, his clothes ablaze, the skin on one side of his face hideously scorched. That one was for you, Katey, he thought savagely. An I'm-sorry-for-not believing-you present from your husband. "What time is it? " he asked. "Almost four."
"In the morning?"
The nurse nodded. "According to the report I got from the ER nurses, you've been out for about three hours since they finished working on you. We've been too busy on the floor for anyone to come and get you until now. Sorry."
"I need to get out of here, " Jared said, fumbling at the restraining strap with his left hand. His right hand, with an intravenous line taped in place, was secured to the railing of the litter. "Hey, partner, " the nurse said, setting a hand on his shoulder. "Easy does it."
"I've got to see my wife. I've-" Suddenly, he remembered the notebook.
"My things. Where are my things?"
"We've got em, Mr. Samuels. They're put away safe awaiting the moment when we read a legitimate order from your doctor discharging you. Rounds are usually at seven. Until then, if you go, you go in a Johnny."
Jared glared at the man. I'm a lawyer, he wanted to shout. I can sue you and this whole hospital for violating my civil rights, and win. Instead, he assessed his situation. In just three hours or so his physicians would make rounds and he could explain to them his need to leave. Three hours. Almost certainly, Kate would be sleeping through them anyhow, under the effects of her anesthesia. He sank back on the litter. "You win, " he said. The nurse said silent thanks with a skyward look and started maneuvering the litter out of the small examining room. "Just one thing, " Jared said. The man stopped short and again walked around to make eye contact. "I'll listen, but no promises." His tired voice was less good-natured than he intended. "I had a notebook. A black, looseleaf notebook. It should be in with my things. Get me that, and I promise to be a model patient."
Cary Dunleavy hesitated, but then withdrew the notebook from the patient's belongings bag, which was stashed on the litter beneath Jared.
I m taking you at your word, Mr. Samuels. Model patient. I'm nearing the end of a double. That's over sixteen straight hours of nursing on a floor that would fit right in at the Franklin Zoo. It's been one hell of a long night, and my usual overabundance of the milk of human kindness is just about dried up. So don't cross me."
Jared smiled, made a feeble peace sign with his bandaged left hand, and tucked the notebook between his arm and his side. The exhausted nurse returned to the head of the litter and resumed the slow trek through the tunnels to the Berenson Building. The doors to one of the Berenson elevators opened as they approached, and a patient was wheeled out by two nurses. Jared saw the two bags of blood draining into two separate IVS, and a woman's tousled black hair, but little else, as Cary Dunleavy stopped and spoke to the nurses. "What gives? " Dunleavy asked. "GI bleeding. Getting worse. She's going to the OR for gastroscopy. The team's already up there waiting."
"Good luck. Let me know how it goes."
"Will do, " the nurse said. The stretchers glided past one another.
"Sorry for the delay, Mrs. Sandler, " she continued. "We'll be there in just a minute or two."
Mrs. Sandler. Several seconds passed before the name registered for Jared. "Ellen! " he called out, struggling once again against the leather strap. Dunleavy stopped. "Hey, what're you doing?"
Jared forced himself to calm down. Ellen was on her way to the operating room, hemorrhaging. The option of waiting for seven o'clock rounds no longer existed. Kate had to see the notebook as quickly as possible.
Even if the odds were one in a million against finding an answer for Ellen, she had to see it. "Dunleavy, I've got to talk to you, " he said with exaggerated reason. "Please."
Wearily, the nurse again walked to where he could be seen. "Dunleavy, you care. I can see it in your face. You're tired and wasted, but you still care."
"So?"
"That woman who just went past here on the litter is Ellen Sandler, a friend of my wife's and mine. Dunleavy, she's bleeding-maybe bleeding to death. There's a chance the answer to her bleeding problem may be in this notebook, but it's written half in German and half in English, and it's technical as hell."
"So?"
"My wife is Kate Bennett, a pathologist here. Do you know her?"
Dunleavy's acknowledging expression suggested that he might actually know too much. "Well, she speaks some German, and she knows what's been going on with that woman who just passed us. I've got to get this to her. She's a patient at Henderson Hospital in Essex."
"Mr. Samuels, I can't-" v "Dunleavy, please. There's no time to fuck around. Undo this strap and help me get to a cab. I can move all my extremities, see? I'll be fine."
"I-"
"Dammit, man, look at me! That woman is dying and we might be able to help her. Get me an against-medical-advice paper and I'll sign it. I'll sign whatever the hell you want. But, please, do it now!"
The nurse hesitated. "That woman needs us, my friend, " Jared said.
"Right this minute she needs us both."
Dunleavy reached down and undid the restraint. "It's my ass unless you come back and talk to the nursing office. Probably my ass anyway."
"I'll speak to them. I promise. So will my wife."
Dunleavy's eyes narrowed. "Please, Mr. Samuels, " he said. "Don't do me any favors."
Even through the analgesic mist of Demerol and the distracting pain in her chest, Kate Bennett could sense the change in her husband. Bandaged, bruised, and needing a crutch to navigate, he had made a wonderful theatrical entrance into her room, sweeping through the doorway past a protesting night supervisor and announcing loudly, "The fucker's dead, Katey. Dead. He won't ever hurt you again." Then he had crossed to the bed, kissed her on the lips, and firmly but politely dismissed the supervisor and the special duty nurse. Now he sat on a low chair by her left hand, mindless of his own discomfort, watching intently as she opened the black notebook-the sole useful vestige of the fire, pain, and death in the Omnicenter. There was a strength about the man, an assuredness, she had never sensed before. The fucker's dead, Katey. He won't ever hurt you again. The words on the first page landed like hammer blows. Studies in Estronate 250, Volume III of III. Kate's heart sank. "Jared, " she said, swallowing at the sandpaper in her mouth and painfully adjusting the plastic tube that was draining bloody fluid from her chest, "have you looked at this?"
"Just to flip through. Why? Too much German? We'll find someone to translate."
"No. Actually, there's not that much… Honey, it says here volume three of three."
"What? " He shifted forward and read the page. "Damn. I never saw any other books. There might have been others, but there was so much smoke.
Everything was happening so fast… Paquette could have explained everything if he had made it."
Kate searched her husband's face as he spoke. It was not an excuse, not an apology, but a statement of fact. Paquette had held the key to a E deadly mystery. But Paquette was dead. And Jared, battered, bruised, clearly in great pain, was alive. If she could unlock the answers, it would be because he had risked his life for her. "We'll do the best we can with what we have, " Kate said, turning to the first page of what appeared to be a series of clinical tests on a substance called Estronate 250. "I'm still foggy as hell from the anesthetic and that last shot, so bear with me."