Tess Gerritsen: Harvest

He looked back at her and spoke again.

"I can't understand what you're saying," she said.

He repeated himself, this time with an edge of petulance in his voice. Why couldn't she understand? What was wrong with her?

She simply shook her head.

They regarded each other in mutual frustration. Then the boy lifted his chin. She realized that he had come to some sort of decision. He circled around to her back and tugged at her wrists, trying to loosen the bonds with his one hand. The cord was too tightly knotted. Now he knelt on the floor behind her. She felt the nip of his teeth, the heat of his breath against her skin. As the lightbulb swayed overhead, he began to gnaw, like a small but determined mouse, at her bonds.

"I'm sorry, but visiting hours are over," said a nurse. "Wait, you can't go in there. Stop!"

Katzka and Vivian walked straight past the nurses' desk and pushed into Room 621. "Where's Abby?" demanded Katzka.

Dr. ColinWettig turned to look at them. "Dr. DiMatteo is missing."

"You told me she'd be watched here," said Katzka. "You assured me nothing could happen to her."

"She was watched. No one came in here without my express orders."

"Then what happened to her?"

"That's a question you'll have to ask Dr. DiMatteo."

It was Wettig's flat voice that angered Katzka. That and the emotionless gaze. Here was a man who revealed nothing, a man in control. Staring at Wettig's unreadable face, Katzka suddenly recognized himself, and the revelation was startling.

"She was under your care, doctor. What've you people done with her?"

"I don't like your implications."

Katzka crossed the room, grabbed the lapels of Wettig's lab coat, and shoved him backwards against the wall. "Goddamn you," he said, "Where did you take her?"

Wettig's blue eyes at last betrayed a flicker of fear. "I told you, I don't know where she is! The nurses called me at six-thirty to tell me she was gone. We've alerted Security. They've already searched the hospital but they can't find her."

"You know where she is, don't you?"

Wettig shook his head.

"Don't you?" Katzka gave him another shove.

"I don't know!" gasped Wetfig.

Vivian stepped forward and tried to pull them apart. "Stop it! You're choking him! Katzka, let him go!"

Abruptly Katzka released Wetfig. The older man swayed backwards against the wall, breathing heavily. "I thought, given her delusional state, she'd be safer in the hospital."Wettig straightened and rubbed his neck where the collar of the lab coat had left a bright red strangulation mark. Katzka stared at the mark, shocked by the evidence of his own violence.

"I didn't realize," said Wettig, 'that she might be telling the truth after all."Wettig pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Vivian. "The nurses just gave that to me."

"What is it?" said Katzka.

Vivian frowned. "This is Abby's blood alcohol level. It says here it's zero."

"I had it redrawn this afternoon and sent to an independent lab," Wetfig explained. "She kept insisting she hadn't been intoxicated. I thought, if I could confront her with undeniable evidence, that I could break through her denial…"

"This result is from an outside lab?"

Wetrig nodded. "Completely independent of Bayside."

"You told me her alcohol was point two one."

"That was the one done at 4 a.m. in Bayside's lab."

Vivian said, "The half-life of blood alcohol ranges anywhere from two to fourteen hours. If it was that high at 4 a.m., then this test should show at least a trace left."

"But there's no alcohol in her system," said Katzka.

"Which tells me that either her liver is amazingly fast at metabolizing it," said Wettig, 'or Bayside's lab made a mistake."

"Is that what you're calling it?" said Katzka. "A mistake?" Wettig said nothing. He looked drained. And very old. He sat down on the rumpled bed. "I didn't realize. . didn't want to consider the possibility…"

"That Abby was telling the truth?" said Vivian.

Wetfig shook his head. "My God," he murmured. "This hospital should be shut down. If what she's been saying is true."

Katzka felt Vivian's gaze. He looked at her.

She said, softly: "Now do you have any doubts?"

For hours the boy had slept in her arms, his breath puffing out warm whispers against her neck. He lay limp, arms and legs askew, the way children do when they are deeply, trustingly, asleep. He had been shivering when she'd first embraced him. She'd massaged his bare legs, and it was like rubbing cold, dry sticks. Eventually his shaking had stopped, and as his breathing slowed, she'd felt that flush of warmth that children give off when they finally fall asleep. She, too, slept for a while.

When she woke up, the wind was blowing harder. She could hear it in the groaning of the ship. Overhead, the bare lightbulb swayed back and forth.

The boy whimpered and stirred. There was something touching about the smell of young boys, she thought, like the scent of warm grass. Something about the sweet androgyny of their bodies. She remembered how her brother Pete had felt, sagging against her shoulder as he slept in the back seat of the family car. For miles and miles, while their father drove, Abby had felt the gentle drumming of Pete's heart. Just as she was feeling this boy's heart now, beating in its cagelike chest.

He gave a soft moan and shuddered awake. Looking up at her, recognition slowly dawned in his eyes.

"Ah-bee," he whispered.

She nodded. "That's right. Abby. You remembered." Smiling, she stroked his face, her finger tracing across the bruise. "And you're �. Yakov."

He nodded.

They both smiled.

Outside, the wind groaned and Abby felt the floor rock beneath them. Shadows swayed across the boy's face. He was watching her with an almost hungry look.

"Yakov," she said again. She brushed her mouth across one silky blond eyebrow. When she lifted her head, she felt the wetness on her lips. Not the boy's tears, but hers. She turned her face against her shoulder to wipe away the tears. When she looked back at him, she saw he was still watching her with that strange, rapt silence of his.

"I'm right here," she murmured. And, smiling, she brushed her fingers through his hair.

After a while his eyelids drifted shut and his body relaxed once again into the trusting limpness of sleep.

"So much for the search warrant," said Lundquist, and he kicked the door. It flew open and banged against the wall. Cautiously he edged into the room and froze. "What the fuck is all this?" Katzka flipped on the wall switch.

Both men blinked as light flooded their eyes. It shone down with blinding intensity from three overhead lamps. Everywhere Katzka looked, he saw gleaming surfaces. Stainless steel cabinets. Instrument trays and IV poles. Monitors studded with knobs and switches.

In the centre of the room was an operating table.

Katzka approached the table and stared down at the straps hanging from the sides. Two for the wrists, two for the ankles, two longer straps for the waist and chest.

His gaze moved to the anaesthesia cart, set up at the head of the table. He went to it and slid open the top drawer. Inside lay a row of glass syringes and needles capped in plastic.

"What the hell is this doing here?" said Lundquist.

Katzka closed the drawer and opened the next one. Inside he saw small glass vials. He took one out. Potassium chloride. It was half empty. "This equipment's been used," he said.

"This is bizarre. What kind of surgery were they doing up here?" Katzka looked at the table again. At the straps. Suddenly he thought of Abby, her wrists tied down on the bed, tears trickling down her face. The memory was so painful he gave his head a shake to dispel the image. Fear was making it hard for him to think. If he couldn't think, he couldn't help her. He couldn't save her. Abruptly he moved away from the table.