Tess Gerritsen - Harvest

"Abby, listen to me." It was Wettig again, his voice low and impatient. "We're trying to reach Mark. I'm sure he'll be here soon. Right now, you have to cooperate or we can't help you. Do you understand? Abby, do you understand?"

She stared up at his face and she went very still. So many times before, as a resident, she had felt intimidated by his flat blue eyes. Now, strapped down and helpless under that gaze, she felt more than intimidated. She felt truly, deeply, frightened. She glanced around the room, seeking a friendly face, but everyone was too busy attending to IV's and blood tubes and vital signs.

She heard the curtain whisk open, felt a lurch as the gurney began to move. Now the ceiling was rushing past in a flashing succession of lights, and she knew they were taking her deeper into the hospital. Into the heart of the enemy. She didn't even try to struggle; the restraints were impossible to fight. Think, she thought. I have to think.

They turned the corner, into X-ray. Now another face, a man's, appeared over her gurney. The CT technician. Friend or enemy? She couldn't tell any more. They moved her onto the table and buckled straps across her chest and hips.

"Hold very still," the tech commanded, 'or we'll have to do this all over again."

As the scanner slid over her head, she felt a sudden rush of claustrophobia. She remembered how other patients had described CT scans: like having your head jammed into a pencil sharpener. Abby closed her eyes. Machinery clicked and whirred around her head. She tried to think, to remember the accident.

She remembered getting into her car. Driving onto the Turnpike. Then her memory tape had a gap. Retrograde amnesia; the accident itself was a complete blank. But the events leading up to it were slowly coming back into focus.

By the time the scan was completed, she'd managed to piece together enough memory fragments to understand what she had to do next. If she wanted to stay alive.

She was quietly cooperative as the CT technician transferred her back onto the gurney — so cooperative, in fact, that he left off the wrist restraints and buckled on only the chest strap. Then he wheeled her into the X-ray anteroom.

"The ER's coming to get you," he said. "If you need me, just call. I'm right in the next room."

Through the open doorway she could hear him talking on the telephone. Yeah, this is CT. We're all done here. Dr. Blaise is looking over the scan now. You want to come get her?

Abby reached up and quietly unbuckled the chest strap. As she sat up, she felt the room begin to whirl. She pressed her hands to her temples and everything seemed to settle back into focus. The IV.

She ripped the tape off her arm, wincing at the sting, and pulled out the catheter. Saline dribbled out of the tubing, onto the floor. She ignored the saline, concentrating instead on stopping the flow of blood from her vein. A sixteen-gauge puncture is a big hole. Though she taped over it tightly, it continued to ooze. She couldn't worry about that now. They were coming to get her.

She climbed off the gurney, her bare feet landing in a pool of saline. In the next room, the tech was cleaning up the CT table. She could hear the rattle of tissue paper, the clang of a trash can.

She took a lab coat off the door hook and pulled it on over her hospital gown. Just that effort seemed to drain her. She was struggling to think, to see through a white haze of pain as she moved to the door. Her legs felt sluggish, as though she were wading through quicksand. She pushed into the hallway.

It was empty.

Still slogging through quicksand, she moved up the corridor, reaching out every so often to steady herself against the wall. She turned a corner. At the far end of the hallway was an emergency

HARVEST

exit. She struggled towards it, thinking: If I can just reach that door, I'll be safe.

Somewhere behind her, from what seemed like a great distance, she heard voices. The sound of hurrying footsteps.

She lunged against the emergency exit bar and pushed out, into the night. Alarm bells started ringing. At once she began to run, fleeing in panic into the darkness. She stumbled off the kerb into the parking lot. Broken glass and gravel cut into her bare feet. She had no plan of escape, no destination in mind; she knew only that she had to get away from Bayside.

There were voices behind her. A shout.

Glancing back, she saw three security guards run out the ER entrance.

She ducked behind a car — too late. They had spotted her.

She lurched to her feet and began to run again. Her legs still didn't work right. She was stumbling as she dodged between parked cars.

Her pursuers' footsteps pounded closer, moving in from two directions at once.

She turned left, between two parked cars.

They surrounded her. One guard grabbed her left arm, another her right, She kicked, punched. Tried to bite them.

But now there were three of them, and they were dragging her back to the Emergency Room. Back to Dr. Wettig.

"They'll kill me!" she screamed. "Let me go! They're going to kill me!"

"No one's going to hurt you, lady."

"You don't understand. You don't understand.t'

The ER doors whisked open. She was swept inside, into the light and lifted onto a gurney. Strapped down, even as she kicked and thrashed.

Dr. Wettig's face appeared, white and taut above hers. "Five milligrammes Haldol IM," he snapped.

"No!" shrieked Abby. "No.t'

"Come on, I want it given STAT!"

A nurse materialized, syringe in hand. She uncapped the needle.

Abby lurched, trying to buck free of the restraints.

"Hold her down," said Wettig. "Goddamn it, can we get her immobilized here?"

Hands clamped over her wrists. She was twisted sideways, her right buttock bared.

"Please," begged Abby, looking up at the nurse. "Don't let him hurt me. Don't let him."

She felt the icy lick of alcohol, then the prick of the needle plunging into her buttock.

"Please," she whispered. But she knew it was already too late.

"It will be all right," said the nurse. And she smiled at Abby. "Everything will be all right."

"No skid marks on the pier," said Detective Carrier. "The windshield's shattered. And the driver's got what looked to me like a bullethole over the right eye. You know the drill, Slug. I'm sorry, but we're going to need your gun."

Katzka nodded. And he gazed, wearily, down at the water. "Tell the diver he'll find my gun right about there. Unless the current's moved it."

"You think you fired off eight rounds?"

"Maybe more. I know I started with a full clip."

Carrier nodded, then he gave Katzka a pat on the shoulder. "Go home. You look like shit warmed over, Slug."

"As good as that?" said Katzka. And he walked back up the pier, through the gathering of crime lab personnel. The van had been pulled out of the water hours before, and it now sat at the edge of the container yard. Streamers of seaweed had snagged on the axle. Because of air in the tyres, the van had turned over underwater, and its roof had sunk into the bottom ooze. The windshield was caked with mud. They'd already traced its registration to Bayside Hospital, Operations and Facilities. According to the Facilities manager, the van was one of three owned and operated by the hospital for the purpose of shuttling supplies and personnel to outlying clinics. The manager had not noticed any of his vans were missing until the police had called him an hour ago.

The driver's door now hung open, and a photographer was leaning inside, shooting pictures of the dashboard. The body had been removed half an hour ago. His driver's licence had identified him as Oleg Boravoy, age thirty-nine, a resident of Newark, New Jersey. They were still awaiting further information.