Ben pursed his lips, as if another thought was forming.
Luke preempted him. “I have to get back to the E.R.”
“Go on, then, git.” Ben flapped his hands in the air and turned back to his microscope. “And make sure you get that body down here. Soon.”
Another boy played in Luke’s memory as he walked back to the E.R., a teenage boy who would be a man today, had he not died on Luke’s watch. The boy occasionally released his grip on Luke’s mind, sometimes for days at a time, but he always came back. Luke had a lifetime to replay the events of that night, which, no matter how much time passed, refused to fade to a distant memory. All the things he could have done differently, all the things he could have done more quickly, all those things that — had he simply been better — would have spared the boy’s life.
When the Pentagon recruited him for Proteus fifteen years ago, he was just six months out of the Naval Academy and one of only three Navy SEALs drafted for the program. It was all about proving he was good enough. It was all about the achievement. It was all about being one of the twenty-four most elite warriors in the world. It was the kind of thing that restless and adventuresome young men leap into without thinking about where the journey would take them, and how it might forever strip the calm from their souls.
Luke entered the stairwell leading back to the first floor. The pain was coming now, as it often did when he thought about the boy. It was barely a twinge, a faint throb just above his right eye, but it would build swiftly.
He had entered Annapolis as a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old, filled with the dreams and ideals of a youthful imagination. But somewhere along the way, honor and service morphed into an irrational zeal and he crossed over to a darker reality. He became an unholy weapon — a Proteus warrior. When he came out the back end of that journey seven years later, they took back his uniform and weapons but they couldn’t reclaim the killing skills or psychic residue that clung to him like a caustic resin.
Luke slowed his pace, counting the steps to distract himself. The metallic echo of each footfall on the steel-grate treads pounded at his skull. He climbed another step, gripped his forehead and squeezed with all the strength he could summon. Suddenly, a sharp stabbing pain pierced his skull. He grabbed the handrail to balance himself.
Just a few more seconds…
His right eye exploded, shattering his senses, emptying his mind. His back arched, the muscles in his face convulsed. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the pain was gone.
He leaned heavily over the handrail, his grip slipping as cold sweat seeped from his palms.
“Dr. McKenna, are you okay?” a woman’s voice asked.
Luke strained to focus his vision. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He pointed to his stomach. “Must have been something I ate.”
When he finally looked up, he recognized the woman. She was a stair climber, like him, part of that small subculture of hospital workers who eschewed elevators.
She looked doubtful, but after he straightened, she stepped past him.
He followed her with his eyes as she walked down the stairs. When she turned back toward him, he said, “If you’re going to the cafeteria, don’t order the lasagna.”
8
“She blames us for her boy’s death,” Caleb Fagan said. “Josue Chaca’s mother is a quiet sort, but I can see it in her face.”
Luke lifted his gaze to the immunologist, whose dyed-brown hair was too dark for his vein-streaked alabaster skin.
They were sitting in the E.R. doctors’ room. Luke had been filling out a Suspected Nonaccidental Trauma report for the Erickson case while listening to Caleb describe his brief visit with the Guatemalan boy’s mother.
“She tell you anything? Anything that might point us to a cause of death?” Luke asked.
The immunologist shook his head. “I assume there’s going to be an autopsy.”
“Sunday.”
“Call me when you get the results back.” Caleb slapped his thighs as if to signal his legs that it was time to leave. “Our folks in Guatemala are going to want to know what you find.”
Luke nodded while looking out the door. It was nine-thirty and the E.R. was taking in wave after wave of children whose illnesses had either been relegated to benign neglect or gone unnoticed by distracted parents slogging through their workweek. Friday nights during the winter months were always hectic, but tonight had turned into a chaotic mess — courtesy of his brawl.
Across the room Chewy Nelson fished blindly into a bag of Cheetos while eyeing the jean-clad posterior of a young blond woman standing just outside the door. The reed-thin intern looked as if he’d turn to salt were he to take his eyes off the woman.
Just as Luke was about to turn back to his report, Barnesdale appeared in the doorway. The man opened his mouth to say something as soon as his eyes found Luke.
But Chewy’s mouth was faster. “Whoa, the Big Kahuna himself. Dr. B, did you hear about the fight? I’m tellin’ ya, it was unfrigginbelievable what Dr. McKenna did to that jumbo burger.”
Barnesdale pitched his head slightly, in the manner of someone trying to decipher a linguistic puzzle, then turned to Luke. “I expect to see you in my office as soon as your shift ends at ten. And you’d better have a damn good explanation for what happened here this evening.”
“This about Erickson?” Luke asked.
“Unless there are any other parents you assaulted tonight — yes, this is about Erickson.” He tapped his watch. “And remember, don’t keep us waiting.”
“Us?”
“The law firm that represents this hospital in litigation. One of their partners is in my office.”
Barnesdale was turning to leave when the desk clerk poked her head through the door and held up two fingers. “Dr. McKenna, line two’s for you. A woman named Tartaglia. This is the third time she’s called. Says it’s urgent. She really wants to talk to you.”
Kate Tartaglia considered the risks to her career as she passed under the Hollywood Freeway, driving east on Melrose Avenue.
But she had to do something. Another child was dead, and no one was searching for an explanation because, as far as she could tell, no one else at Zenavax even acknowledged the problem.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When she joined the company four years ago, she’d brought with her a key discovery from her work at University Children’s. Zenavax’s flu vaccine, like Elmer’s, consisted of an inactivated alphavirus into which they inserted a portion of the influenza virus’s genome. When injected into vaccine recipients, the alphavirus produced copies of a flu-virus-like protein. She had shown Zenavax’s research staff how to amplify the body’s immune system’s response by modifying the alphavirus. The result was a vastly more effective vaccine.
That contribution had given her immediate stature in the company, something she never would have had if she’d stayed at University Children’s. The hospital would have sold or licensed their work to some large pharmaceutical company. And yes, it was their work, not just Elmer McKenna’s. She had made important contributions to his research, but if the hospital had sold the rights to the flu vaccine, the best she could have hoped for was a position in some bloated and slow-moving research department at one of the big drug companies.
At worst, her contributions would have been overlooked and she would have gotten a pat on the head and a pink slip.
So instead she had joined Zenavax, a small entrepreneurial company that put her in charge of its clinical testing programs. The influenza vaccine turned out to be a stunning commercial success and quickly became the best-selling flu vaccine on four continents, including the world’s largest and fastest growing market — China.