Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

“Okay, then. We’ll put him to sleep and prep him as a team according to the method I have distributed to each of you. Those of you observing can take your places on the risers after he is asleep, prepped, and draped. Questions?”

There were none. The anesthesiologist adjusted his position to inject what Nick felt certain was succinylcholine to paralyze Mohammad before inserting a breathing tube into his trachea.

But at that instant, Aleem Syed Mohammad began to move.

First he stirred. Then he groaned. Then he reached both hands up and squeezed them against the sides of his head. Next he began to moan, then he cried out loudly and suddenly he screamed.

A moment later, he sat bolt upright, flailing his arms and screeching at the top of his lungs in what Nick assumed was Arabic. Instantly, everyone around the operating table seemed to be speaking and moving at once. The surgeons and the circulating nurse tried to force him back onto the table. His flailing arms caught one of the assistants on the side of the face and sent her sprawling. His IV tore from his arm. Blood instantly began oozing through the gauze that had been holding the large cannula in place.

His cries of pain grew louder still. His eyes seemed twice their natural size.

He violently snapped his head from side to side as if trying to dislodge a parasite.

Then, with his arms waving wildly, he flung himself off the table, sending the circulating nurse and a surgical assistant crashing into the heart-lung perfusion pump, which rose up on two wheels and toppled over.

The camera angle switched to the one looking from the foot of the OR bed toward the head-the only view that could show the utter chaos on the operating room floor, where three people struggled amidst the fluids from the IVs and the perfusion machine.

“ Sa’edoony, sa’edoony! ” Mohammad shouted out.

“I’m sure that’s Arabic,” Nick said. “But I don’t know what it means.”

Despite the noise and commotion, Mohammad’s words were clear.

“ Sa’edoony… ahderoo lee ed-Doctor Fury… ahderoo lee ed-Doctor Nick Fury! Sa’edoony… ¡Socorro! ¡Ayúdenme! ¡Búsquenme al Doctor Nick Fury!”

“Oh my God!” Nick exclaimed in a strained whisper. “That last bit wasn’t Arabic, it was Spanish. It’s Umberto! That’s his voice. I swear it is! He’s calling for me!”

“ Sa’edoony!… ”

Umberto’s screams echoed through the room.

The camera angle was switched to the overhead view.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the thrashing and screaming ended. The surgical assistants stumbled to their feet and lifted the lifeless body of their patient back onto the table.

Nick felt ill as the man’s head flopped back. His face was absolutely that of Aleem Syed Mohammad.

Plastic surgery! Nick realized. Lots of it .

“ Pump! ” Abigail Spielmann ordered.

“Endotracheal tube is in.”

“No pulse,” someone called out.

“Both lungs aerating.”

“EKG is hooked up. Flat line. Absolutely flat.”

“Pupils are blown, fully dilated, and fixed on both sides.”

“Keep pumping.”

“BP zero.”

“Looks as if he blew an aneurysm in his head,” Abigail Spielmann said with seasoned calm. “A huge one, I suspect. Could I have two ccs of epi on an intracardiac needle. I think we should see what this does and then make a decision about opening his chest for manual compressions.”

“BP still zero.”

Spielmann took the long cardiac needle and drove it down beside the patient’s sternum, keeping suction on the plunger. There was an immediate jet of dark, almost black blood into the syringe. She injected the contents into the left ventricle of the heart.

“Nothing. Straight line.”

“BP zero.”

“Pupils fixed.”

“I cannot see anything to be gained by going to the final level and opening this man’s chest. Anyone feel differently?” There was only silence from the room. “Okay, then. Time of death ten thirty-one A.M. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate your efforts. I’m very sorry this happened.”

The overhead camera showed the deceased man’s face, staring sightlessly upward at the saucer lights. Nick hit Pause and held the image in the center of the screen.

“My God,” Nick said. “While they were doing all that work on Umberto’s face, they must have taught him Arabic so he would be ready for the pre-op interviews.”

“It’s just like when I heard Manny speak in Arabic. Billy Pearl said that Manny had been brainwashed. I bet the same thing was done to Umberto,” Jillian said.

“Did your sister speak Arabic?” Mollender asked.

“No. But as Nick said, the Arabic Umberto spoke was mixed in with Spanish.”

“Okay. So, did your sister speak Spanish?”

“She was almost fluent,” Jillian replied. “We both were.”

Nick was dazed when he shut off the TV. Witnessing Umberto’s gruesome death held him spellbound, capable only of staring at his own reflection in the black television screen. He ached at the irony that Umberto’s final words had been a chilling cry for help-a cry to him.

¡Búsquenme al Doctor Nick Fury!

Get me Dr. Nick Fury.

With the man’s agonized screams echoing in his head, Nick tried to make sense of the almost inconceivable events that had occurred in the operating room three years ago. First, though, he had to begin to deal with the fact that his search was finally over. Don Reese had been right. The reason Umberto’s and Manny’s captors had not bothered issuing them new Social Security numbers was that both men were slated to die. Manny Ferris’s escape had spoiled their plan. The secret mission that was to be Umberto’s passage out of his PTSD hell had been anything but that. It had been the doorway to another, more ferocious nightmare, and ultimately the invitation to his grave.

“Umberto,” Nick murmured, feeling intense anger searing the back of his neck.

He stared at the screen as if the ghost of his friend was trapped inside it, marked for eternity by a video epitaph. Jillian placed her hand gently upon his shoulder.

“Nick, I’m so sorry.”

“What was it he said, Jill? I mean exactly.”

“Just what you would imagine-for the Spanish part, anyway. ‘Help. Help me. Get me Dr. Fury. Get me Dr. Nick Fury.’ Even though the words were jumbled in with Umberto’s screams and with the Arabic, Belle heard and understood them, although not the meaning behind them. Later on someone must have told her about the comic book character, and she set out to understand more. Belle was all about understanding-getting to the bottom of things.”

Jillian’s voice sounded distant-barely audible. Nick could not respond. He was already weighed down with guilt over Sarah’s death. Now this. Was there anything he could have done? It didn’t matter. The line between grief and guilt was often a very fine one. As long as the two didn’t paralyze his life, he thought now, there was no reason he couldn’t live with them.

Eventually, the fog enveloping his thoughts began to lift.

“Now we know,” he managed to say.

“Now we know,” Jillian echoed softly.

She wrapped her arms around him. At first, Nick thought he was trembling, but soon he realized that it was she. Jillian pulled away, her hands still on Nick’s shoulders.

“I am so sad and so damn angry,” he said.

“I know what finding Umberto alive meant to you. But you didn’t let him down. Something terrible is going on here-a secret that somebody desperately needed to keep hidden-a secret Belle paid for with her life.”

Belle. The mention of the name jolted away what remained of Nick’s self-pity. He had to stay strong and be there for Jillian, and for himself. Of all the perils on the road to truth , one of his favorite Buddhist teachings read, the truth itself could actually prove the greatest peril of all.