Noble Vision (57 page)

This storm of disturbing thoughts funneled in his mind while his lawyer arranged for a bond hearing to release him. His trim form moved fitfully from side to side in the small cell. He knew that if he were stopped from performing Nicole’s surgery, he would loathe everything and everyone from that day forward in a blind, searing hatred gripping his soul for the rest of his life.

Still reeling from his father’s tragic demise and Marie’s betrayal, David yearned for yet another . . . enemy, a man who would surely smash any remaining hope of performing Nicole’s surgery. Nevertheless, David kept a thousand childhood pictures of this man framed in golden memories.
Randy
, he cried to himself in desperation.
Where’s Randy?

An officer arrived to announce that he had a visitor and to take him to another gloomy place. The gray walls and wire-mesh window of the new room resembled a cloudy sky. A dividing wall with a glass partition sliced the room, separating David from the outside world. When the door on the other side of the barrier opened, David gasped. “Randy!”

The brothers had apparently forgotten their differences, because they both pressed their arms against the partition, each like a mirror image of the other. The men lowered their arms slowly, reluctantly, and sat down facing each other across the glass.

“I’m the reason you’re in jail.” Randy’s voice drifted to David through slats in the divider.

“What?”

“After I made a deal to campaign for the governor in exchange for your getting permission to do Nicole’s surgery—”

“You what? You mean you didn’t . . . really . . . join Burrow?”

“Hell, no.”

“I thought you—” a stab of pain cut David’s voice.

“I never sold out, David, not consciously. Although what I did amounts to that. I made a deal with Burrow. I had to make you think I turned against you; otherwise, you’d never accept CareFree’s offer. But did I win any
right
for you to work without CareFree’s blessing? No. Did I win any
right
for the hospital to be free of Burrow and his inspectors? No. My deal did nothing but get you a
favor,
which can be taken away just as capriciously as it’s given. That’s what everybody in medicine does today. We bargain for a crumb, but we never contest our feeder’s power to decide who eats and who starves. I did the same thing as Dad did, really. I tried to combine you with CareFree.

“And my deal backfired royally. In order to approve your experiments, the bureaucrats had to inspect your research lab. That’s how you got caught. I was screaming for Burrow to have that lab inspected. Now look at the bind you’re in!”

“You tried to
help
me? You were on
my
side?”

“Of course, pal. I’m sorry I had to pretend—”

“Forget it,” said David, smiling broadly in his eagerness to erase his agony over Randy’s betrayal. “I did the same thing you did, brother. Instead of blowing the whistle on Burrow to the media, I went along with the farce. I put Nicole’s life in his hands by leaving the decision about her surgery to him and his gang. Now I’ve got to take control. I must operate within twenty-four hours, or she’ll never see again. I need a cat I was experimenting on, which was seized during my arrest. I ran into a problem, and that cat holds the answer. I can’t operate on Nicole without getting it back.”

“The police probably brought the cat to the animal facility downtown, the one that was broken into last winter.”

“They said they were bringing it there.”

“Hell, I can get the cat back.” Randy whispered, so the guard in the room would not overhear. “I’ll break in the same way the vandal did last winter. The papers described the whole affair. I never mentioned this, but I’ve always had my suspicions about who that vandal was. Weren’t they holding some of your rats at the time?”

David grinned.

“I don’t think I’ll need to do quite the same job as the vandal did of smashing all the windows and trashing the place.”

David’s grin widened.

“But I’ll get the cat. Your lawyer is here. He’ll get you out on bail or on your own recognizance, depending on how dangerous a character the judge thinks you are.”

“He should only know.”

“Then I’ll meet you at Riverview and get you an operating suite.”

“But you’ll lose your job. I can’t have that. I’ve got to find another way.”

“Your arrest was announced in the middle of our board of directors’ meeting this afternoon. The board, of course, revoked your staff privileges. But I didn’t go along with it. I did something that made me happier than I’ve been in years. It’s amazing how all the tension I was living with suddenly disappeared.”

“What the hell did you do?”

“I told them that if you go, I go. So I quit.”

“No!”

“Oh, yes,” Randy said, laughing gaily. “I’ll be officially replaced tomorrow, so you
must
operate on Nicole
tonight
, before my resignation is announced. Tonight I’m in charge. In my final act as president, I’ll get you an operating room, brother.”

“I can’t let you do that! You’d be open to who knows what charges—”

“You
must
let me help you, David. Not for your sake but for mine. When I quit, I felt tremendously relieved and . . . free. I told the board to go to hell. I told them that you’d be the first one they’d look for if they needed brain surgery. I told them they were cowards and hypocrites, but I wasn’t going to be like them anymore. You know, no one argued with me. They
knew
I was right. But they wouldn’t budge.

“Even the bonus and raise I got for being Burrow’s fair-haired boy gave me nothing but grief. To get that money, I had to promote a cause and a man I despised. Now I’ve got a chance to do something really important. You can’t take that away from me, David. What’s the old saying, that a life lived in fear is a life not lived at all?”

David closed his eyes in relief and deliverance. “I love you, brother.”

“I love you, pal.”

They pressed their hands together against the glass.

“Nothing can stop you now, David. Everything’s going to be okay.”

David’s eyes held hope. Everything was going to be okay. Could he believe it?

Chapter 31

Everything’s Going to Be Okay

The third-floor surgical suites of Riverview Hospital were quiet at 6:00 that Tuesday evening. An attendant washed the floor of a vacant corridor, an orderly wheeled a bin of laundry through a darkened hallway, a nurse carried a tray of equipment into an empty room. The day’s scheduled cases had been completed and the night’s emergencies not yet begun. No one noticed two masked men in scrubs inside the only lighted operating suite. David and Randy were looking at a small creature on a table, cat 5, which Randy had mysteriously retrieved.

With equipment suitable for the animal, David anesthetized the cat, hooked it up to a respirator and monitor, and then opened its skull. A tiny patch of exposed brain was the only part of the feline visible on a blue canvas of surgical drapes. The surgeon explained the procedure while his brother observed.

“See those optic nerves?” said David excitedly. “They grew back! Look at them, man!”

“Incredible!” Randy smiled under the mask.

“I’m giving the cat an IV of Phil Morgan’s general anesthetic, which is the safe one. Now, I’ll inject the scar inhibitor over the nerves.” David drew a solution in a needle, then sprayed the liquid over the cat’s optic nerves. He waited. “There’s no adverse reaction. The cat’s vital signs are okay. But CareFree removed Phil’s anesthetic from the formulary, so there’s none left, except this small amount, which isn’t enough for Nicole’s surgery. Phil is shipping me more, but it won’t arrive until tomorrow morning.”

“Can’t you use another anesthetic?” asked Randy.

“I used a few different general anesthetics safely on animals in combination with my new drugs, but they’ve all been pulled by CareFree.”

“We can’t wait for Morgan’s anesthetic to arrive. In the morning my resignation will be announced, and I won’t be able to issue an order to remove the garbage.”

David nodded. “In my early attempts to use this treatment, I experimented on the optic nerve of rats. I employed a
local
anesthetic, which numbed the scalp while the patient remained conscious. Because there’s no sensation of pain in the brain itself, as you know, local anesthetics are sometimes used for brain surgery, such as in cases where the patient’s conscious response is needed. I thought that after I had freed the rats’ optic nerves from the scar tissue, I could immediately check their vision during the surgery. But the optic nerves swelled and the animals didn’t regain sight instantly. When I realized I couldn’t find out the results during the operation, there was no reason to keep the animals conscious, so I switched to general anesthesia.”

He took a vial from the anesthetic cart near him and pierced its rubber seal with a needle. “This is the local anesthetic I used on the rats, and which I can use tonight on Nicole.” He injected the drug into the cat’s scalp, then waited. “Nothing abnormal,” he said, watching the monitor and listening to the cat’s steady heartbeat. “The local anesthetic is working fine with my scar inhibitor, as it did with the rats.”

Then David took another bottle from the cart. “This is the general anesthetic that I used as a replacement when CareFree pulled Phil Morgan’s drug off the formulary. This drug, I believe, reacted with my scar inhibitor to kill two of my cats. I want to prove that by injecting this cat with it.” He injected the suspect anesthetic into the cat’s IV tube. “The scar inhibitor is already in the cat’s system, so let’s see if there’s a reaction.”

In moments the electronic monitor sounded its alarm. The graphs showing the animal’s heart activity and other vital signs lost their regular pattern and rapidly became flat. “The cat’s dead,” said David, relieved. “Now I can do Nicole’s surgery.”

Smile lines beamed above two masks.

From a wall phone David dialed Nicole’s hospital room.

“Hello, Mrs. Trimbell,” he said to the familiar voice that answered. “There’s been a change of plans. Instead of operating tomorrow morning, I’m going to have Nicole brought to surgery right now.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Trimbell.

“Can I speak to her?”

“She went for a walk.”

The smile lines suddenly disappeared from around David’s eyes. “I thought you weren’t going to let her out of your sight.”

“Oh, this is different,” Mrs. Trimbell said cheerfully. “You needn’t worry. She’s with someone trustworthy.”

“Someone apparently trustworthy got to her twice before and drove her to—” David’s mind suddenly made a chilling connection. “Is Nicole with . . . my . . . wife?”

“Why, yes, she is. How did you guess?”

“You’ve got to find her right now, Mrs. Trimbell, and get her away from Marie!” Mrs. Trimbell did not recognize the desperate shriek that was David’s voice.

After the surgeon raced to Nicole’s room, and after he, Mrs. Trimbell, Randy, and the nurses searched everywhere—in the corridors, the bathrooms, the visitor’s lounge, the other patients’ rooms—but could find no trace of Marie or Nicole, everything was emphatically
not
okay.

Chapter 32

The Phantom’s Plea

David, Randy, and Mrs. Trimbell stared at Nicole’s belongings in her hospital room. Apparently to avoid being caught, the dancer had vanished in her robe without taking the time to dress or to gather her purse, phone, or other possessions. Riverview’s security guards had combed the medical complex for the missing patient, but to no avail. Mrs. Trimbell had checked Nicole’s apartment but returned to report no sign of anyone having been there.

According to Mrs. Trimbell, Marie was wearing a long coat. The others surmised that she had placed the garment over Nicole’s robe so that the two of them could leave the hospital unobtrusively. David dialed a variety of phone numbers in an attempt to reach Marie. He dialed her pocket phone, their home, her office, her car; but his wife did not answer. Using unrepeatable words, he left messages, but she replied to none of them.

He called Reliable Car Service, the company used previously by Nicole, and learned that she had not requested a car that evening. Had Marie dropped her off somewhere? David tried to discover where the car service had taken Nicole when she had disappeared previously. The dispatcher, however, did not have the information; the owner was not there; the dispatcher would call the owner; yes, he would stress that it was an emergency; the owner was not answering his cell phone; the dispatcher would call David as soon as he made contact.

The surgeon sat on Nicole’s hospital bed, nervously glancing at his watch. Seven o’clock. Exasperated to have come this far only to be stopped again, he called the private detective who had searched for Nicole after her previous disappearance. The investigator responded immediately, arriving to find the troubled faces of David, Mrs. Trimbell, and Randy. The stoical man with astute eyes listened as the others gave an account of Nicole’s disappearance.