Michael Palmer - Natural Causes

Sarah felt Matt's huge, comfortable hand squeeze hers and then vanish. She strained to separate nightmare from nightmare. Bit by bit she remembered.

As her consciousness and awareness grew, so did the indescribable discomfort of the endotracheal breathing tube and the fearsome sensation of air hunger. She could hear the ventilator bucking and whirring as it fought against her own attempts to breathe. Clearly, it was set on automatic rather than assist. It was set to breathe for her, not necessarily with her.

Slow down, she begged herself. Don't fight it… Remember what you tell patients on vents… Easy now… Go with it… Relax and go with it… Meditate… Find the swan… Find your spirit… Find it and just watch it fly…

"Sarah, can you hear me? Sarah, open your eyes. It's Alma. Alma Young… There, that's it…"

Sarah blinked against the blurriness and the sting of light. Gradually her vision cleared. The SICU nurse was looking down at her with concern.

"They were full in the medical ICU," she said. "We all wanted you in here anyway, and Dr. Blankenship said okay. One of the other nurses called to tell me what had happened, and I came back in to 'special' you. Do you understand all that?… Good. I'm going to undo the restraints on your wrists. Please don't touch the tube. Understand?… Good."

Sarah waited patiently as the broad leather straps were loosened and then removed. Her pounding headache was subsiding. She was fully awake now and rapidly regaining control. Someone had tried to kill her! Someone had injected her beneath her scalp with something rapidly acting and incredibly potent. Now she was on a vent. All those school psychologists and university psychiatrists had been wrong. The recurring dreams that had once so plagued and disrupted her life had never been a distorted reenactment of some terrible event hidden in her past. Rather, they were a prophesy, just as Louis Han's Thai healer had intimated they might be. This was the struggle for which the dreams were preparing her. This was the battle of her life. And she had survived-first in Chinatown and now in the SICU. Thanks in some way to the horrible nightmares, she was continuing to endure against whatever evil was trying to crush her.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose…

Sarah flexed some circulation into her hand, and then reached up and pointed to the endotracheal tube.

"I know. I know," Alma said. "As soon as we get your blood gas results, I'm going to call anesthesia and Dr. Blankenship, and see if we can get that tube out. Are you okay for now?… Good. I've switched your vent to demand, so you can breathe any way you want. You sure you're okay? Sarah, I just want to say that whatever's going on will pass if you let it. There's never the need to do what you thought you had to. But listen, we can talk about all that later. I'm just glad you're all right."

A respiratory therapist came in and drew a sample of blood from the line in Sarah's radial artery. During the interminable half hour that followed, Matt stayed beside her, doing what he could to keep her calm, and filling her in on the events surrounding her resuscitation.

"It was morphine in the IV bag," he said. "The empty vials were on the floor. Dr. Blankenship says we got to you just in time. Whatever the emergency team gave you worked incredibly well. You've actually been awake for most of the night. But the nurses have been giving you stuff so that they could keep you on the ventilator. The box of acupuncture needles that you reported as stolen was on the desk in that room, along with an unopened vial of the rattlesnake venom and a scribbled, unsigned note on a prescription blank, that just said 'I'm sorry.' The door to the room was bolted from the inside. Right now I'm about the only one in this hospital who doesn't believe you tried to kill yourself… Am I right?"

Sarah squeezed his hand and nodded as vigorously as she could manage.

"I knew it," Matt whispered. "It's been at least, oh, three or four months since any woman who was my lover tried to kill herself… Squeeze my hand if you think that was funny… Oh, I see… Listen, there have been some wild things going on in this Ayurvedic powder business-not the least of which is that Mallon is going to tell the Graysons to drop their suit against you. Not settle, drop. I'll tell you all the details later.

"Rosa told you she found out who engineered that virus, right? The guy who stutters. But she wouldn't tell you or anyone else his name, right? Well, now she thinks she knows where he is. She tried calling you at home and at the hospital to bring you up to date. Finally, one of the nurses told her what had happened and exactly where you were, and she showed up here around eleven last night. She came in again at two this morning. She really cares about you. I'd be surprised if she's slept any more than I have. She won't say where this virus guy is, but she's driving there today to try to find him. Eli's arranging for her to use a hospital car for the day, no questions asked…

"Hey, hang on now, pal. Alma's coming, and I think the anesthesiologist is with her."

The news from the laboratory was excellent. Sarah's blood gases-her pH, oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels-were all good enough for her to come off of assisted ventilation. The sensation of having her trachea suctioned out, and then the endotracheal tube pulled, was one Sarah hoped never to experience again. She sputtered and gagged, and coughed spasmodically. But again, Matt was there for her, steadying her through the coughing jag, stroking her arm, even kissing her on the forehead.

"Careful you don't get disbarred," she rasped, when the cough had finally subsided.

"I told you, they're dropping the case. I won't be your attorney anymore. We can go public. In fact, I've rented a sound truck for later today just to cruise the streets and tell the people of Boston that I love you and that we're going to get to the bottom of this."

"I love you, too, Matt. I really do. Hey, what time is it, anyhow?"

"Six. A little after."

"God, twelve hours of my life, gone just like that."

"It could have been all of it," Matt reminded her.

Sarah's response was cut short by the sound of a throat being politely cleared. Standing at the foot of the bed was a rumpled, graying man wearing a red clip-on bow tie. He held Sarah's loose-leaf SICU record cradled open in one arm and peered down at it through Ben Franklin spectacles. Although she had never met or even seen the man, Sarah correctly guessed his specialty before he introduced himself.

"I'm Dr. Goldschmidt," he said. "I'm a psychiatrist. Sir, if you'll excuse us for a few minutes…"

"This is Matt Daniels," Sarah said quickly. "He's my-my lawyer."

Goldschmidt eyed Matt for a few seconds.

"Perhaps he should stay, then," he said. "If it's all right with you."

"Please," she said hoarsely.

"Very well, then. I know you've been through a lot and that they just took your breathing tube out. So I'll be as brief as I can." He moistened his thin, bluish lips with his tongue. "Tell me, Dr. Baldwin. Have you ever tried to hurt yourself before last night?"

Sarah's eyes flashed. She glanced over at Matt, who motioned for her to keep calm.

"The answer is no. But I did not try to hurt myself last night either, Dr. Goldschmidt. Someone tried to kill me and make it look like suicide."

"I see," Goldschmidt said, scratching something down in her chart. "But how do you explain the door being bolted from inside?"

"Someone had a key."

"Perhaps. But from what I've been told, even housekeeping and maintenance don't have keys to those rooms."

"I didn't try to kill myself."

"Dr. Baldwin, I just want to help you."

"Then let me go home."

"You know I can't do that."