"Bloodstream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gerritsen Tess)

12

Noah shoved two slices of bread in the toaster and jammed down the lever. “He stayed all night, didn’t he?”

“It was too cold for him to sleep in the cottage. He’ll be going back today.”

“So are we taking in every strange guy who doesn’t know how to keep his woodstove lit?”

“Please keep your voice down. He’s still sleeping.”

“It’s my home too! Why should I have to whisper?”

Claire sat at the breakfast table, staring at her son’s back. Noah refused to look at her and stood hulking by the kitchen counter, as though the toaster required all his concentration.

“You’re mad because I had a houseguest? Is that it?”

“You don’t even know him, and you invite some strange guy to spend the night.”

“He’s not a strange guy, Noah. He’s a scientist.”

“Like scientists aren’t strange?”

“Your father was a scientist.”

“Is that supposed to make me like this guy?”

The toast popped up. Noah threw the slices onto a plate and sat down at the table. She watched in puzzlement as he picked up a knife and began to slash the toast into smaller and smaller squares. It was bizarre, and she’d never seen him do this before. He’s transferring his rage, she thought. Taking it out on the bread.

“I guess my mother isn’t so perfect after all,” he said, and she flushed, stung by the cruel comment. “You’re always telling me to keep my nose clean. I’m not the one having sleepovers.”

“He’s just a friend, Noah. I have a right to have friends, don’t I?” She added, recklessly, “I even have a right to boyfriends.”

“Go ahead!”

“In four years, you’ll be in college. You’ll have your own life. Why can’t I have mine?”

Noah crossed back to the sink. “You think I have a life?” He laughed. “I’m on permanent probation. Being watched all the time. By everyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“My teachers all look at me like I’m some kind of criminal. Like it’s just a matter of time before I screw up.”

“Did you do something to draw their attention?”

In fury he whirled around to face her. “Yeah, it’s my fault! It’s always my fault!”

“Noah, is there something you aren’t telling me?”

With an angry sweep of his hand, he knocked two coffee cups off the counter and into the dishwater. “You already think I’m a screw-up! You’re never happy with me. No matter how perfect I try to be.”

“Don’t whine to me about having to be perfect. I’m not allowed to screw up either. Not as a mother, not as a doctor, and I’m getting pretty sick of it.

Especially when no matter how hard I try, you always blame me for something.”

“What I blame you for,” he shot back, “is dragging me to this dump of a town.”

He stalked out of the house, and the slam of the front door seemed to echo forever.

She reached for her coffee, which by now was lukewarm, and sipped it fiercely, hands shaking around the cup. What had just happened? Where did all that rage come from? They’d argued in the past, but never had he tried so hard to hurt her. Never had he cut so close to the bone.

She heard the rumble of the school bus as it drove away She looked down at his plate, at the uneaten toast. It had been slashed to crumbs.

“This isn’t the right place for him, Dr. Effiot,” said the nursing supervisor.

Eileen Culkin was short but powerfully built for a woman, and with her booming voice and background as an army nurse, she commanded instant respect. When Eileen spoke, the doctors listened.

Though Claire was in the middle of reviewing Scotty Braxton’s chart, she set it aside and turned to face Eileen. “I haven’t seen Scotty yet this morning,” she said. “Have there been more problems?”

“Even after you ordered that extra sedation at midnight, he didn’t sleep. He’s quiet now, but last night, he was awake the entire shift, screaming at the guard to unlock his handcuffs. Disturbing all the other patients. Dr. Elliot, that boy needs to be in juvenile lockup, or a psychiatric unit. Not a medical ward.”

“I haven’t finished the evaluation. There are labs still pending.”

“If he’s stable, couldn’t you move him? The nurses are afraid to go in the room.

They can’t even change his sheets without three people restraining him. We’d like him moved, the sooner the better.”

Time to make a decision, thought Claire as she walked down the hall to Scotty’s room. Unless she could diagnose a life-threatening illness, she couldn’t keep him in the hospital any longer.

The state trooper stationed outside Scotty Braxton’s hospital room gave Claire a nod of greeting. “Morning, doc.”

“Good morning. I understand he’s been quite a handful.”

“He’s been better the last hour. Not a peep out of him.”

“I need to examine him again. Could you stand by, just in case?”

“Sure thing?’ He pushed open the door and managed to take one step into the room before he froze. “Jesus Christ.”

At first all Claire registered was the horror in his voice. Then she pushed past him, into the room. She felt the rush of cold air coming through the open window, and saw the blood. It was spattered across the empty bed, a shocking spray of it staining the pillow and the sheets, thickly smearing the empty handcuff dangling from the side rail. On the floor just below the handcuff, a pool of red had gathered. The human tissue lying at the edge of that pooi would have been unrecognizable, save for the fingernail and the white nubbin of bone protruding from one end of the torn flesh. It was the boy’s thumb; he had chewed it off.

Groaning, the trooper sank to the floor and dropped his head into his lap.

“Jesus,” he kept murmuring. “Jesus..

Claire saw the prints of bare feet tracking across the room. She ran to the open window and stared down at the ground one story below.

There was blood mixed with the churned-up snow. Footprints, and more blood, trailed away from the building, toward the forested perimeter of the hospital grounds.

“He’s gone into the woods!” she said, and ran out of the room to the stairwell.

She dashed down to the first floor, and pushed out through the fire exit, sinking at once into ankle-deep wet snow. By the time she’d circled around the building to Scotty’s window, icy water had seeped into her shoes. She picked up the trail of Scotty’s blood and followed it across the wide expanse of snow.

At the edge of the woods she halted, trying to see what lay in the shadow of the evergreens. She could make out the boy’s footprints, trailing into the underbrush, and here and there a bright splash of blood.

Heart thudding, she eased into the woods. The most dangerous animal is the one in pain.

Her ungloved hands were numb from cold, from fear, as she moved aside a branch and peered deeper into the woods. Behind her, a twig snapped sharply. She spun around and almost cried out with relief when she saw it was the trooper, who’d followed her out of the building.

“Did you see him?” he asked.

“No. His footprints lead into the woods.”

He waded toward her through the snow. “Security’s on the way. So’s the emergency room staff.”

She turned to face the trees. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“Water. I hear water.” She began to run, ducking under low branches, stumbling through underbrush. The boy’s footprints were weaving back and forth now, as though he had been staggering. Here was churned-up snow, where he’d fallen. Too much blood loss, she thought. He’s stumbling and on the verge of collapse.

The sound of rushing water grew louder.

She broke through a tangle of evergreens and emerged on the bank of a creek.

Rain and melting snow had swollen it to a torrent. Frantically she scanned the snow for the boy’s prints and spotted them moving parallel to the creek for several yards.

Then, at the water’s edge, the footprints abruptly vanished.

“You see him?” the guard yelled.

“He’s gone into the water!” She splashed knee-deep into the creek. Reaching underwater, she blindly grabbed whatever her hands encountered. She came up with branches, beer bottles. An old boot. She waded in deeper, up to her thighs, but the water was moving too fast and she felt the torrent pulling her downstream.

Stubbornly she braced her foot against a rock. Once again, she plunged her arms deep into the icy water.

And found an arm.

At her scream, the trooper came splashing to her side. The boy’s hospital gown had snagged on a branch; they had to rip the fabric free. Together they lifted him from the creek and dragged him up the bank, onto the snow. His face was blue. He was not breathing, nor did he have a pulse.

She began CPR. Three breaths, filling his lungs, then cardiac compressions.

One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, the sequence automatic and well rehearsed.

As she pumped on his chest, blood gushed from his nostril and spilled to the snow. Reestablish circulation, and blood flows to the brain, to the vital organs, but it also means the body bleeds again. She saw a fresh stream of dark red trickle from his torn hand.

Voices drew near, and then footsteps were running toward them. Claire stepped back, wet and shivering, as the ER personnel lifted Scotty onto a stretcher.

She followed them back to the building, and into a trauma room exploding with noise and chaos. On the monitor, the cardiac tracing showed a pattern of ventricular fibrillation.

A nurse hit the defibrillator charge button and slapped paddles on the boy’s chest. Scotty jerked as the electrical current shot through his body “Still in V. fib,” said Dr. McNally. “Resume compressions. Did you get the bretylium in?”

“Going in now,” a nurse said.

“Everyone back!” Another shock to the heart.

“Still in V. fib,” said McNally. He glanced at Claire. “How long was he underwater?”

“I don’t know. Possibly up to an hour. But he’s young, and that water’s close to freezing.” Even an apparently dead child could sometimes be revived after cold-water immersion. They couldn’t give up yet.

“Core body temp’s up to thirty-two degrees centigrade,” a nurse said.

“Maintain CPR and get him warmed up. We might have a chance.”

“What’s all this blood from the nose?” a nurse asked. “Did he hit his head?”

A trickle of bright red slid down the boy’s cheek and splattered to the floor.

“He was bleeding when we pulled him out,” said Claire. “He could have fallen on the rocks.”

“There’s no scalp or facial trauma.”

McNally reached for the paddles. “Stand back. Let’s shock him again.”

Lincoln found her in the doctors’ lounge. She had changed into hospital scrubs, and was huddled on the couch, numbly sipping coffee, when she heard the door swing shut. He moved so quietly she did not realize it was him until he sat down beside her and said, “You should go home, Claire. There’s no reason for you to stay. Please, go home”

She blinked and dropped her head in her hands, fighting not to cry. To weep in public over a patient’s death was to show loss of control. A breach of professional facade. Her body went rigid with the struggle to hold back tears.

“I have to warn you,” he said. “When you leave the building, you’ll find a mob scene downstairs. The TV crews have parked their vans right outside the exit.

You can’t walk to the parking lot without running their gauntlet.”

“I have nothing to say to them.”

“Then don’t say anything. I’ll help you get through it, if you want me to.” She felt Lincoln’s hand settle on her arm. A gentle reminder that it was time to leave.

“I called Scotty’s next of kin,” she said, wiping a hand across her eyes.

“There’s only his mother’s cousin. She just came up from Florida, to be with Kitty while she recovers. I told her Scotty was dead, and you know what she said? She said, ‘It’s a blessing.” She looked at Lincoln and saw disbelief in his eyes. “That’s what she called it, a blessing. Divine punishment.”

He slipped his arm around her, and she pressed her face to his shoulder. He was silently granting her permission to cry, but she didn’t allow herself that luxury. There was still that gauntlet of reporters to confront, and she would not show them a face swollen with tears.

He was right beside her as they walked out of the hospital. As soon as the cold air hit them, so did the barrage of questions.

“Dr. Elliot! Is it true Scotty Braxton was abusing drugs?”

“-rumors of a teenage murder ring?”

“Did he really chew off his own thumb?”

Dazed by the assault of shouts, Claire waded blindly into the gathering, not seeing any of the faces as she pushed through. A cassette recorder was thrust into her face, and she found herself staring at a woman with a lion’s mane of blond hair.

“Isn’t it true this town has a history of murder going back hundreds of years?”

“What?”

“Those old bones they found by the lake. It was a mass murder. And a century before that-”

Swiftly Lincoln stepped between them. “Get out of here, Damaris.”

The woman gave a sheepish laugh. “Hey, I’m just doing my job, Chief.”

“Then go write about alien babies! Leave her alone.” A new voice called out:

“Dr. Elliot?”

Claire turned to focus on the man’s face, and she recognized Mitchell Groome.

The reporter stepped toward her, his gaze searching hers. “Flanders, Iowa,” he said quietly. “Is it happening here?”

She shook her head. And said, softly: “I don’t know.”