She sat on the floor beside James for half an hour, rhythmically inflating his lungs.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I was lying on the hard tile floor of the operating room. I tried to swallow. My throat was so painful, I gagged. My lungs burned with each breath. Putting my hand to my mouth, I coughed and felt a tingling sensation in my arm. I looked and saw that my entire forearm had ballooned out from an infiltrated IV of D-5½ normal saline. Reaching down, I jerked the malfunctioning needle from my arm. The cold liquid running from the IV saturated my shirt.
Then something moved beside me. I turned, and there was Elizabeth Keyes, lying next to me on the floor, staring at me.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
“Let me put that back in for you.” She studiously reattached the IV, then said, “Welcome back. I thought I’d lost you.” Tears welled in her eyes.
I reached out for her hand, squeezed it and then kissed it. “I thought I was in heaven when I looked up and saw your face. An angel, that’s what you are.”
“An angel, huh?”
“No. A hundred angels, for all you did for me.”
She took a deep breath and then asked, “You feeling okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll live…” I smiled.
“Not funny, mister,” she said, looking deeply into my eyes and not returning the smile. “You’re not gonna try that again, right?”
“No. I’m good. Especially if you stay with me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I opened my eyes and saw Elizabeth beside me, in bed, in her guest room.
I’d slept restlessly since we’d returned to the apartment in the early afternoon. Each time I woke up, I’d look for Keyes, who was always at my side, smiling. Twice she kissed my forehead. I tried to stay awake, but kept drifting off. With our medical backgrounds, we both knew my somnolence was the result of the large quantity of Pentothal I’d injected into my body. Ironically, the Pentothal had saved my life. It knocked me out so fast that I was asleep before I could inject a lethal dose of the succinyl-choline. I did get enough of the muscle-paralyzing agent into my body to cause all over muscle fatigue, a “sometimes” side effect patients describe after the agent is used in surgery.
“Thanks for saving me,” I said when I awoke.
“Next time you wanna say ‘good-bye’, do it with a Post-it note or something.”
She left the bed and went to start making dinner.
As we ate, Keyes told me she had some errands to run. She also expressed her concern for the state of my physical and mental health. She said I still seemed sluggish, and she asked me pointed questions about my depression. I agreed I still felt achy and fatigued, but I assured her I had no compulsion to do the suicide bit again. No, I wouldn’t do anything further to harm myself. Yes, I promised to remain in bed if she went out.
As we were eating, there was suddenly a loud knock on the apartment door, so loud that it startled me and I jumped a little in my chair.
But Keyes was unfazed. Without a word of explanation she got up, went to open the door, stepped out, and closed the door completely behind her.
The stairwell was lit and visible from the living room window. I got up and stood just behind the curtain and peered out. Keyes was standing face to face with a woman with tousled black hair, dark sunglasses, and a deeply tanned face. She had the same hourglass figure as Keyes but was a couple of inches taller. A heavy cardboard tube lay against the wall of the apartment. It was the type typically used to carry architecture plans or nautical charts. After a brief conversation that I couldn’t hear, the woman handed Keyes the brown cardboard cylinder, then walked briskly down the stairs and out of sight.
I ran back to the hallway, cut back inside the kitchen, and sat down just as she came back in.
After she closed the door, I walked into the living room and asked, “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Was that your friend? Was that Anna — Anna Duke?”
“Uhm… No. That was someone else.”
“What did she bring you?” I said.
“It’s personal.” She suddenly grew weary. God, she looks tired. Like the weight of the world is on her shoulders.
I felt the overwhelming desire to help her. I said, “I truly appreciate everything you’ve done for me. You saved my life, for Christ’s sake!.. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Her tears began to flow. I put my arm around her trying to console her, but she only stiffened.
“Yes, there is,” she finally said. “There is something you can do for me. I’ll tell you…later. But only if you promise you’ll do whatever I ask — no matter what it is.”
“The consequences of noncompliance?”
“Death,” she said quietly.
I laughed, but she didn’t smile. She wasn’t joking.
“Uhm, well… Remember, I’m suicidal, so dying is not a problem for me.”
That almost brought her smile back, but she just stood there looking at me and waiting.
I hadn’t given my promise.
“Promise,” I said softly.
“C’mon, let’s tuck you in.” Taking me by the hand, she led me back to the bedroom and softly pushed me back on the bed. “Oh, I forgot something,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
She returned with a glass of ice water in one hand and a folded newspaper in the other. She put the glass on the nightstand and tossed the Chronicle onto the bed beside me. “Reading material,” she said.
Within minutes of her departure, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Elizabeth Keyes laid the cardboard tube on the large table upstairs, and then pulled out the stolen hospital plans. The architectural drawings of the Jackson City Hospital were immense in size and exceedingly complicated. It was virtually impossible to follow the many alterations that had been made to the structure in the past ten years.
The Penthouse was the problem. This was the logical place, Keyes believed, for the location of Alpha Charlie’s drone controls, but a dozen different renditions had been drawn.
Taking care of Scott James over the last twenty-four hours had diverted her from actively searching for Alpha Charlie. That wasn’t good for her. Her most recently received text had been the most demanding of them alclass="underline" CELENA, CALL MY NUMBER BY LANDLINE WHEN CHARLIE IS IN HIS CONTROL SITE. IMMEDIATELY MY MISSILES WILL BE LAUNCHED. IF YOU FAIL, THE REPLACEMENT WILL COME FOR YOU. J.H.
On two separate occasions, Keyes had crawled through the ductwork of the Penthouse and had then entered every room and closet in the sixth-floor suite, but she’d been unable to find the drone controls.
Now she couldn’t find them on the drawings, either. Originally, one of the four elevators serving the hospital had opened into the center of the Penthouse. On the latest version of the drawings, however, the elevator going to the Penthouse was closed on all floors except the sub-basement, and inside Waters’ private office. The same was true of the backup stairway for that elevator.
After carefully studying all versions of the architectural blueprints of the hospital structure, as well as maps of the surrounding grounds, Keyes had come up empty. There was no sign of a control center, or a place to hide a control center. Maybe the initial intelligence she’d received had been wrong.