Blind Eye (20 page)

University of California, San Diego Medical Center

“I
just finished talking to the doctors, Shawn,” Helen Adrian said into the phone. “I think you should take the next flight home.”

She was relieved when her future son-in-law assured her that he was already in the airport, and he'd be in San Diego by early afternoon tomorrow. Shawn was saying something else, but Helen couldn't concentrate. She hadn't had anything to drink since the flight over from Santa Fe. She needed a drink badly.

She looked up at the signs hanging from the ceiling and wondered if they sold any kind of liquor in the gift shop.

“Yes, I'm here,” she said into the phone, realizing that Shawn was asking something. “What did you say?”

“The extent of Cynthia's injuries,” he repeated. “How bad are they, Helen?”

“They're very bad. They say she's in critical condition.”

He wanted to know exact details, but Helen couldn't remember everything. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Cynthia was her rock. The responsible adult in her life. She had to make it through.

Her head hurt. Helen sat down on the nearest bench. “I don't know, Shawn. I just know they're doing everything they can for her here. You can call the hospital directly yourself.”

He asked for the name of the doctor in charge. Helen couldn't remember. Everything was moving so fast. Nothing was being given to her in writing. No help for her, really. No consideration. Just that young doctor, talking a mile a minute, and Helen having a hard time picking up even every third word he was saying.

“It's not like he's her personal doctor or anything,” she said weakly. “Just call the hospital. They'll connect you to whomever is in charge of her care.”

Helen wanted to hang up and go to Cynthia's condo. She needed to sleep. Shawn needed to be here, taking care of this, she told herself. Cynthia and Helen both needed him. Somebody had to take charge of things.

He was asking something else. “Say that again. I don't have good cell service here,” she lied.

“Did you see her?”

“Yes, I saw her. They would only allow me to be in there for a few minutes. She's hooked up to all kinds of equipment. She's out of it…totally. Still unconscious. She's so broken up. It's so sad.” Helen was overwhelmed with so many emotions. She wished she could remember more of what that young doctor had told her about what was wrong with Cynthia. But she couldn't.

She asked him to wait as she grabbed a tissue and wiped her face and blew her nose. She came back on the line.

“When did you say you'll get here?” she asked, not remembering if he'd told her or not.

He told her he'd be in tomorrow afternoon.

Helen wanted to ask him why so late, but she remem
bered that he was somewhere in Africa. She'd never been there and had no idea if that was making good time or not.

“I have to go, Shawn,” she told him. “There's no reason for me to stay here. I'm staying at Cynthia's condo. They can get hold of me there if they need to. No one tells you anything here, anyway, and the waiting areas are so…public. There is no privacy….”

Helen stopped making excuses when she realized Shawn wasn't trying to get her to stay at the hospital. She was glad they understood each other.

She ended the call and looked around for one of the nurses to tell them she was leaving. There was a man standing very close to her, a cell phone pressed to his ear. Helen hadn't seen him before and she hadn't heard him saying anything. She was sure he'd been eavesdropping.

He turned his back to her when she glared at him.

“Goddamn press,” she muttered under her breath, walking to the nurses' station.

Waterbury Long-Term Care Facility
Connecticut

M
ark Shaw and Sid Conway sat next to the computers and other electronic equipment that had been pushed to the side in Amelia's room. Everything was turned off, and all the equipment was ready to be moved with the patient to the rehabilitation hospital tomorrow afternoon. Between the calls Dr. Baer and Attorney Viera had been making and their insistence on immediate action, Amelia did not have to wait before being transferred.

They both looked at the door at the sound of someone's footsteps going past. As the sound receded, Sid stifled a yawn and rubbed the back of his neck. It was sometime after midnight. They'd been quietly talking in the semidarkened room for a long time.

“When was the last time you slept?” Mark asked.

Sid shrugged. “I haven't kept track. I'm not really tired.” Another yawn belied his words.

“Well, you look tired,” Mark told him. He understood, though. Neither one of them wanted to miss anything that might happen next with Amelia. “I'll stay here if you want to go and at least take a shower.”

The neurologist glanced at the bed and the patient. He seemed to be considering the offer.

Amelia had been sleeping when they came back from the meeting in the conference room. Jennifer went home soon after; she had to work first shift tomorrow. Sid had mentioned that Amelia's sleep patterns would very likely follow no schedule. She could wake up after a short nap…or sleep for another six years. Both men were hoping for a few short naps and then something more “normal.”

Mark hadn't seen Amelia since the change from her minimally conscious state early Sunday afternoon. He didn't know if she would still recognize him when she woke up. But he believed what he'd said to everyone in the conference room. He was convinced that some kind of communication between the two sisters had been going on and was the
cause
of this sudden development in Amelia's case. After talking to Sid tonight, he saw no reason to change his mind about anything he'd said.

“Jennifer mentioned there's a shower off the staff's kitchen area that I can use,” Sid told him. “You'll stay with her until I get back?”

“I have nowhere else to go,” Mark reassured him.

The neurologist picked up a shoulder bag that was slung over one of the chairs and left the room.

Mark meant what he said. This was where he needed to be right now. The phone calls from the police station in Waterbury and from his chief in Pennsylvania had given him nothing new. No one at the Gulf of Mexico site was doing anything different because of their inquiry. As far as those rescuers were concerned, there were no survivors.

He didn't know where to go or whom else to call. Kim Brown had told him that she and her father were coming
East. She was uncommitted, though, as far as the exact timing of her trip. Mark didn't know how much of a difference the mother's presence and involvement would make in terms of anyone believing that Marion could be alive.

Mark looked at the sleeping woman. He remembered his talk with Marion so vividly. He thought how happy she'd be if she knew she'd been right all these years…if she knew that her sister was alive.

Amelia knew things, too. And she'd try to tell them. Mark believed there were a lot more answers that lay with her.

There was a soft knock on the door and a young nurse poked her head in. She looked at the bed and her gaze searched the room until it fell on him.

“Officer Shaw?” she whispered.

Mark got up and walked to the door.

The nurse had moved to the hallway and was standing next to a two-level pushcart with different prescriptions and medications lined up along the top.

“Yes.”

“Someone's waiting for you at the front desk.”

Mark stood still, staring in the direction of the double doors that led to the front entryway.

“Are you sure they're waiting for
me?
”

The woman reached inside the front pocket of the flowered scrub top she was wearing and handed him a pink slip of paper with the message on it.

“This was at my station when I came back from down the hall.”

Mark looked down at the note and then at his watch. The time on message was only a couple of minutes ago. He tried to think who could possibly be waiting at the front desk for him at twenty minutes past midnight.

“I can stay with JD if you want to go and check it out,” she offered.

Mark realized that, to a lot of these people, Amelia would always be JD.

He'd seen this nurse a number of times before. The name tag read Pat. There was no receptionist at the front desk at this hour of the night, so the night security person must have been the one who called.

“I think I'll call the front desk first,” he told her.

She motioned to a phone on the hallway wall. “You can use that one. Dial zero and it will ring at the front desk.”

The door to Amelia's room was wide-open. Mark walked to the phone and dialed the number. No one answered the first or second ring. He turned around toward the door in time to see the nurse who'd been speaking to him walk into Amelia's room with two syringes and her clipboard.

He dropped the phone on the cradle and ran across the hall into Amelia's room. The woman was setting up whatever injections she was going to give her on the table next to the bed.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She looked back at him, surprised. “I'm giving JD her meds.”

“What kind of meds?” he asked.

“The meds Dr. Baer has prescribed. Is there a problem with that?” Her tone had turned defensive. She motioned to the rolling table next to the bed and the clipboard next to one of the syringes. “See for yourself.”

“Is this something new or medication she's been getting all along?” he asked.

“Something new,” she said flatly. “I was told by second-shift nurses that JD woke up this afternoon, and
that Dr. Baer was here and examined her. He changed her medication. Now, I have a lot of patients to attend to, so if you don't mind…”

She held up one of the syringes and tapped it, ready to insert it into the IV that they had hooked Amelia up to tonight.

“Wait,” Mark barked.

The nurse jumped. Amelia's eyes opened. She looked startled. She looked up at the nurse and at the needles she was holding.

“You scared me. Scared her,” she complained, glaring at Mark before her attention shifted back to the patient. “She's looking at me. She never did that before. Does she understand us? Is she really conscious now?”

“What's going on?”

Mark breathed a sigh of relief seeing Sid coming back into the room. Maybe he was overreacting, but somehow his cop instincts were on full alert tonight.

The night nurse quickly complained that Mark was interfering. “I'm trying to do my job and I don't appreciate being pushed around by people who have no business even being here after visiting hours. The system for distributing meds works perfectly fine. Just because a patient has a new scrip—”

“What new scrip, Pat?” Sid asked. It was obvious he knew her, too. The water still dripped from his hair. “Dr. Baer prescribed nothing for Amelia that I know of.”

Frowning, she pushed up the paper with the list of patients and their medications, and nodded to the prescription slip on the clipboard. “Right there.”

The neurologist pulled the piece of paper from under the clip and looked at the writing.

“Where did you find this?” he said immediately, looking and sounding alarmed.

The young woman backed away from the patient. As she did, she dropped the syringe on the table as if it were hot coal. “The scrip was clipped to JD's folder at my station. Dr. Baer's name is on top and there's a signature on it.”

“Do you
know
Dr. Baer's signature?” Sid asked accusingly. “This could be anyone's.”

Mark reached into his pocket and took out the message she'd given him before. He handed it to Sid. “Does the handwriting match this note?”

“They could be the same,” Sid said.

“And it's not Dr. Baer's handwriting, is it?” It was not a question.

Sid was glaring at the nurse. “No, I guarantee you it isn't.”

“What were they trying to give Amelia?”

“A muscle relaxant called vecuronium,” Sid said. “At this dosage, with the sedatives still in her system, Amelia would have been dead in minutes.”

Nuclear Fusion Test Facility

M
arion had no idea the elevator doors could be so heavy.

Prying the doors open with the four-foot-long crowbar she'd brought from the maintenance closet, she pulled until she could get her shoulder and then her body wedged between them. As she did, the crowbar fell with a loud clang that reverberated in diminishing echoes along the corridor.

Marion stopped. She had to rest. The doors were crushing the breath out of her and her head was about to explode. The two corpses lying not twenty feet from her made breathing very difficult. She had to do something before she became sick yet again.

She looked around, desperately hoping to find something that would help take some of the pressure off her body. Seeing the duffel bag on the floor, she slid downward to a sitting position, straddling the door with one leg and one arm on either side, and reached for it.

She couldn't reach it. Not even close.

Terrified that she might not have the strength to open the doors again if she let them close, Marion paused,
forcing herself to think clearly. Now was not the time to panic.

The crowbar. On the floor in the dark, outside the beam of the flashlight that lay beside the duffel bag, she spotted it. Reaching with her foot, she was able to pull it closer until her fingers encircled the cool metal bar. It was heavy, but Marion was able to maneuver it well enough to pull the duffel bag over to her.

Quickly taking the hammer from the bag, she laid it on the floor next to her. She took a deep breath and pushed the doors open a few more inches, enough to stuff the hammer beneath her on the track between the two elevator doors. Still holding the doors with all her strength, she gently eased them back to the point where they rested against the two ends of the hammer.

It was a little more than a foot, but it was all she needed.

Backing out of the elevator entry, she picked up the duffel bag and the shoulder bag and pushed them through the partially opened doors. They hit the floor, dropping three or four feet beneath the research lab's floor level to the bottom of the elevator shaft. She picked up the flashlight and the crowbar, and shot one last look at the bodies of the two scientists she'd covered with plastic bags. Pushing the crowbar through the opening, she stepped over the hammer, dropped the light onto the bag and climbed carefully down into the shaft.

The cement at the bottom was rough and the bumpers for the elevator took up most of the space. The drop was more than she'd thought. Standing upright, Marion looked just over the top of the hammer at floor level. She shone the light down on the unfinished cement surface and gathered up her bag. The air was moist and warm and heavy and unmoving.

Marion looked around. The double doors to Test Drift facility were directly across from the doors for the lab.

Opening the first set of doors had taken a lot out of her. She sat down on the duffel bag and directed the light at the rungs of ladder that went up the side of the shaft and disappeared into the pitch blackness overhead.

She wondered if the ladder went all the way up to the hoist on the roof. From the looks of it, though, she didn't think there was much room between the ladder and the track for the elevator car. She realized there must be an emergency access door in the floor of the car itself. The WIPP facility manual identified the distance from the lab floor to the surface at 2,150 feet.

“I might as well be climbing Mount Everest,” she muttered in the murky air.

Marion considered for a moment if climbing the ladder—assuming she had the strength—was the best way to go. It was unlikely the killers were hanging around up there after all this time, but there was nothing to say that the building at the top of the shaft hadn't been destroyed.

She had to make up her mind.

Marion reached inside the shoulder bag and took out a bottle of water. She drank half of it, then shone the light up the metal rungs again. It still seemed like the better choice. Going up, she wouldn't have to think about the imminent risk of radiation poisoning in the Test Drift storage area. At least, not more risk than she'd already taken. There was a reason the adjacent facility was run by robots.

The booklet identified the radiation levels in the sealed chambers as topping at four hundred rem, about equivalent to forty thousand or so chest X-rays. That
amount of radiation would kill half the people receiving it. Marion's estimation was that the actual numbers would probably be a lot higher than that.

Having talked herself into climbing the elevator shaft, she went through the two bags. There was no way she would make it carrying both of these bags. She separated what she thought she might absolutely need as far as food and drink. If she survived the climb, she might also have to survive a walk through the desert, and she didn't know how far that trek would be. She took extra batteries for the flashlight. The tools were heavy, but she decided she might need something to help her open the doors at the top once she got there. She couldn't carry the crowbar; it was just too heavy. The best choice seemed to be the hammer.

As she yanked the hammer free, the doors slid shut with a dull thud.

Marion took a couple of deep breaths to fight the momentary feeling of panic. The walls instantly seemed to grow closer. Her lungs couldn't draw in enough air.

She leaned down and hurriedly put all the things she'd decided to bring into the shoulder bag. She laid the flashlight and the coil of rope she'd found in the maintenance closet on the ground at her feet and hoisted the bag across her shoulders. She couldn't think too much about where she was, how little her chances were. She couldn't defeat herself before she tried. There was still the question of where the elevator was physically in the tunnel and if she could get around it or through it. She decided she'd just have to face that hurdle when she got to it.

Marion pushed her head and one arm through the coil of rope and hooked the flashlight to it.

“Okay. Let's do it,” she whispered, looking up.