F Paul Wilson - Sims 05 (14 page)

 
          
Zero
watched the surreal scene below with a by-now-familiar mix of anticipation and
dread. The faint aftereffects of the Scotch had evaporated when he received
Romy’s message. He’d arrived at the hospital shortly after Betsy and the
others, and left Tome and Kek parked in the van while Patrick admitted him
through the doctor’s entrance. Like every other department in the hospital,
security was a skeleton crew because of the holiday; so Zero, wearing a hat
pulled low, dark glasses, and a scarf around his lower face, made it to the OR
suite without being stopped.

 
          
Betsy
had commandeered the amphitheater OR, and now Zero gazed down at a brightly lit
operating table fifteen feet below, where a nurse was scrubbing and shaving
Meerm’s distended belly. The sim lay tense and trembling with IVs running into
both arms. The hovering dark-skinned anesthetist, who Betsy referred to as
Madhuri, was ready to put her under.

 
          
The
scrub nurse looked up and said, “Hey! Who’s the guy in the mask?”

 
          
Zero
leaned back out of sight. He’d replaced the hat and scarf with his usual ski
mask.

 
          
“A
trusted friend,” Betsy said. “Don’t worry about him, Joanna. Just get our
patient prepped.”

 
          
Betsy
had told him she’d chosen the amphitheater for its audio-visual system, and
Zero thought that an inspired idea. They could still lose this war; maybe an
A-V record would provide some insurance. The problem was how to get the system
up and running.

 
          
“There,”
Patrick said, close at his side as he sighted along the top of the mounted
camera. “That’s pointing in the general direction.”

 
          
Zero
turned and seated
himself
at the computer console.
“Good. Now let’s see if we can get a picture.”

 
          
“You
know how to work this sort of rig?” Patrick said, leaning over his shoulder.

 
          
“Not
really, but it seems to be a dedicated
system,
and if
the menu’s at all intuitive…”

 
          
The
menu formed on the screen and Zero groaned. It looked like a crossword puzzle
with numbered feeds and rows of input from and output to and acronyms he didn’t
understand. Suddenly the air in the balcony seemed too thin. He ripped off the
mask and took a deep breath. He looked down at his trembling fingers poised
over the keyboard. It wasn’t just the computer program, it was everything…the
huge responsibility that he’d taken on over the past couple of years…he felt as
if it were all crashing down on him at once. Everything he’d been living for
hinged on what he and these good humans did here tonight.

 
          
He
took another breath and focused on the screen. He could handle this.

 
          
A
little trial and error, a lot of intuition…he could do it. He had to do it.

 
          
Meerm so ver fraid.
Not fraid needle.
Fraid
this place.
And fraid hurt. Hurt so
bad
.

 
          
“Okay
now, Meerm,” say mask lady. Nice lady. “I’m going to make the hurt go away.”

 
          
Meerm
feel warm, feel hurt go.
This ver nice lady.

 
          
“I’m
going to put you to sleep now, Meerm,” lady say. “And when you wake up, you’ll
have a baby. Won’t that be nice?”

 
          
Yes.
Baby.
Meerm baby.
So nice.
Meerm want hold, want kiss. Make baby safe.
Hold-hold-hold and
nev
let go.

 
          
Sleepy
now, but not stop think baby…Meerm baby…Meerm ver own baby…happy Meerm…

 
          
“Stop!”
Luca shouted. “Pull over right now!”

 
          
Lowery
slammed on the brakes. As the Jeep screeched to an unexpected halt, the two
following vehicles skidded past and swerved to stops ahead.

 
          
“Where’s
the blower?” Luca shouted. “Give me the fucking blower!”

 
          
“Here,”
Lowery said, slapping the PCA into his palm. “What’s the matter?”

 
          
“I
am so stupid,” Luca said, punching in
4-1-1
.
“So fucking stupid!”

 
          
“Are
you going to tell me—?”

 
          
“Cannon’s
answering service! They’ll know where she is!”

 
          
He
got the number from information, punched it in, and asked for Dr. Cannon.

 
          
“Dr.
Cannon’s not available,” a woman’s voice told him. “Dr. Moss is covering.”

 
          
Shit!
“I really need to speak to
Elizabeth
personally. This is her brother and we’ve got a family emergency that
needs her immediate attention.”

 
          
“Oh,
I’m so sorry to hear that. I’ll try her house and—”

 
          
“I’ve
already called and she doesn’t answer.”

 
          
“Maybe
she’s at the hospital. I can page her if you wish.”

 
          
“Would
you? That would be wonderful.”

 
          
Luca
waited on hold, feeling the time drag by, and then the operator was back on.

 
          
“I
just spoke to the hospital. Dr. Cannon is in surgery. I can leave a message for
her as soon as she gets out.”

 
          
Surgery?
Could it be…?

 
          
“Which hospital?”

 
          
“
Nassau
Community.
Do you want me to—?”

 
          
He
cut her off and turned to Lowery.
“
Nassau
Community
Hospital
.
You know where it is?”

 
          
“Not
a clue. Give me the address and the GPU will—”

 
          
“Right.”

 
          
Luca
punched
4-1-1
again.
He’d call the switchboard and ask for the address.

 
          
“Why
didn’t I see it?” he shouted. “The sim’s in labor! That’s why Cannon’s house
was empty. Everyone’s at the hospital. She’s having her baby.”

 
          
Lowery
grinned. “And we didn’t bring any cigars.”

 
          
“Yes,
we did,” Luca said, patting his HK.
“The exploding kind.”

 
          
Romy,
capped, masked, and garbed in surgical green, stood between Betsy and Joanna at
the stainless steel sink and learned how to scrub. Betsy’s other scrub nurse
had begged off, refusing to leave her five-year-old son to open his Christmas
presents without her. That left Romy to fill in.

 
          
“Work
the lather into the skin,” Betsy was saying, her voice slightly muffled by her
surgical mask, “especially between the fingers and around the nails.”

 
          
“I
don’t know if I can do this,” Romy said. She was shaking inside. “It’s not the
blood or the
cutting,
it’s just that I’ve never even
seen—”

 
          
“You’ll
be fine,” said Joanna to her right. “I’ll handle the technical stuff. The most
you’ll have to do is hang on to a retractor while—”

 
          
“She’s
crashing!” cried an accented voice from the operating room. “Something’s
happened!”

 
          
“Oh, God, her uterus!”
Betsy said. “It’s ruptured!” She
grabbed three packets of sterile gloves and handed them out. “Just put them on!
Forget about gowns and sterile procedure. We’ll worry about sepsis later. Right
now we’ve got to move or we’ll lose her!”

 
          
The
next ten minutes were a crimson-tinged blur through which Romy watched Betsy
and Joanna work like a single four-armed organism. Their communication seemed
almost telepathic as Joanna would slap an instrument into Betsy’s palm as soon
as she thrust out her hand. Romy repressed a cry of anguish as Betsy cut
quickly through Meerm’s abdominal wall, releasing a torrent of blood that
gushed down her flanks and soaked the table. Joanna said something about a
uterine artery and Betsy was calling for suction but Romy’s eyes were locked on
the glistening bloody dome of Meerm’s uterus floating in that sea of red. And
the surreal
aspect of being able to glance up at the TV
monitor suspended in a corner and view
the scene from a different angle.
And then Betsy was cutting into that muscular sack, reaching through the slit
and pulling out a limp, bloody, silent baby. She held it up by its feet,
slapped it once, then again, and with that the little arms jerked outward and
the baby emitted a piercing cry. And then Betsy was clamping and cutting the
cord as she called for Zero or Patrick, she didn’t care who, to get down here
and take charge of this baby because she needed everyone here to help her stop
Meerm’s hemorrhaging before she died.

 
          
Seconds later, Patrick, looking even more frightened than he had
after they’d been run off the Saw Mill, stumbled through the doors into the OR.

 
          
“What
do I
do ?”
Patrick said as Joanna deposited the
squirming, squalling, scrawny, blood-slippery bundle of baby into his arms. It
terrified him. God, what if he dropped it? “I don’t know a thing about babies!
I’ve never—”

 
          
“No
Butterfly McQueens allowed,” the nurse told him. “Madhuri will talk you through
it.” Then she turned back to the furious activity on the operating table.

 
          
Patrick
turned to the anesthetist.
“Madhuri?”

 
          
“Take
it to the table over there,” she replied in a voice that was at once lilting
and rapid fire. “There’s a basin of warm water. Rinse it off, wipe it down, and
then wrap it tightly in one of the blankets.”

 
          
“But—”

 
          
“Hurry!
Get it wrapped up! You don’t want hypothermia! I’d
help you but I can’t leave—” She glanced at a monitor and called out, “Heart
rate up to one-sixty!”

 
          
Gingerly
cradling the slippery baby in his arms, Patrick stepped to the cleaning table
and placed it on a towel. And now, as it screamed and thrust out its skinny
limbs, he could see that it was a girl. He dipped a towel in the basin of warm
water and began wiping away the blood and clinging membranes. This caused an
escalation in the wails. She was so small, so fragile looking. He hoped he
didn’t rub too hard and break something, but he kept it up, working as quickly
as he could. As soon as she was reasonably clean, he found a soft blanket at
the rear of the table and wrapped it around her.

 
          
He
looked over to Madhuri to ask,
Now
what?
but
she was busy hanging a new IV bag, a small, red one, on
an IV pole so loaded with infusion bags it looked like a Christmas tree. The
baby was still crying so he lifted her into his arms—he felt a little more
confident now that she was dry and blanket wrapped—and held her tight against
him.

 
          
Amazingly,
her wails tapered off. And now that he had a chance to look at her, he marveled
at how human she looked. He’d never seen a real live newborn. He’d seen photos,
of course; whenever the associates at his old firm had entered fatherhood, they
always brought in pictures taken right after birth showing these homely,
scrunched-up elfin faces that everyone pronounced beautiful. But this baby was
beautiful.
Maybe because she hadn’t been extruded through a
birth canal.
A nice symmetrical face, a tiny nose,
little bow
lips, a light down of hair on her head but none on her body.
Damn, she looked human.
More so than some of those
associates’ kids.

 
          
He
turned to look at the operating table and met Romy’s dark eyes, the only part
of her face visible between the cap and the mask.

 
          
“How’s
Meerm doing?” he asked.

 
          
Betsy
stood next to Romy, and answered without looking up. “I clamped the big bleeder
but she’s not out of the woods yet. She damn near bled out. We’ve got packed
red cells and volume expanders running full blast, and that should bring her
pressure back.”

 
          
“Patrick,”
said Zero’s voice over the loudspeaker, “hold up the baby so we can get a good
view.”

 
          
Patrick
turned, loosened the blanket, and lifted her toward the camera lens pointed his
way from the balcony. Zero had got the video system working in time; now he
seemed to have mastered it. Patrick glanced at the monitor and saw himself,
viewed from above, holding the baby.

 
          
“Boy
or girl?” Romy asked as Patrick turned back their way.

 
          
“Girl.
A beauty.”

 
          
Betsy’s
head snapped up.
“A beautiful girl?”

 
          
“A real doll.”

 
          
Patrick
saw the confusion in Betsy’s eyes and was framing a question about it when
Madhuri began shouting.

 
          
“V-fib!
She’s in V-fib!”

 
          
Oh,
no! Zero felt a pang as he saw the sudden frenzied activity around the
operating table on the computer screen. You can’t lose her. She just became a
mother.

 
          
He
watched with growing dismay as Betsy performed CPR on Meerm’s chest, then
applied the defibrillator paddles, shocking her heart again and again. His eyes
drifted from the painful scene to the thumbnail feeds he’d accessed from the
hospital’s security cameras—an easy task once he’d got the hang of the program.
Almost five in the morning and all quiet at Nassau County Community Hos—

 
          
Zero
stiffened as he saw two Jeeps and a van pull up at the emergency room entrance.
No audio, but the way the vehicles rocked on their springs meant they’d been
moving fast.

 
          
Most
likely nothing, he told himself, but he kept watching, and his gut began a
quick crawl when he saw six men in full SWAT gear pile out onto the pavement.
He couldn’t see their faces through their lowered visors but he spotted “FBI”
on the back of one of them. He didn’t believe that for an instant. This was
SIRG through and through, and maybe Portero himself.

 
          
He
glanced at the OR feed—Betsy was still laboring over Meerm’s inert, supine
form—then at his upload indicator for the digital movie of the birth.
Almost complete.
But now he had to slow the invaders,
mislead them, divert them.

 
          
As
Zero slipped the ski mask back over his head, he had an idea…