Robin Cook - Critical

That was it. Adam pressed the disconnect button on the phone and then called room service. He thought he'd have lunch before heading over to his second-favorite attraction in New York City: the natural history museum.

"HOW WAS I to know he'd be a karate expert," Angelo snapped back.

"That's not the point," Franco said. "The point is you didn't think, and when you don't think, you make mistakes. Luckily nothing drastic happened."

"That's easy for you to say. I feel like I got run over by a truck; my chest hurts, and so does the side of my neck."

"Consider your bruises as a warning to keep your cool. I've never seen you like this, Angelo. You're just too damn eager. As I said to Vinnie, you're juiced up something awful."

"You'd be juiced up if the broad had burned your face such that you look like a freak."

"You said that, I didn't."

"What did you do with my gun?"

"It's here under my seat," Franco said. He took out the scratched handgun and handed it to Angelo. Angelo looked it over carefully. He removed the clip, made sure there was no bullet in the chamber, then pulled the trigger several times. The mechanism worked smoothly. "It seems okay."

"It might be a good idea to fire it a couple of times to be sure." Angelo nodded as he pushed the clip back into the base of the butt.

"You haven't answered the question I asked you earlier," Franco said. "Are you going to be able to control yourself? Otherwise, I'm going to send you home for a few days. Mark my word! I'll take care of Montgomery myself."

"Yeah," Angelo said irritably. "I'll control myself! Maybe I shouldn't have gotten out of the van, but at least I got rid of the SUV, which was blocking our view."

"At too great a risk, I might add. I mean, you understand that, don't you?"

"I do now. I suppose."

"From now on, I want everything done my way until we get her on the boat. Then I don't care what you do. Apparently, Vinnie likes your cement shoes idea. That's fine. I couldn't care less if you and Vinnie want some payback beyond just whacking her. But I don't want any more reckless behavior. Are we on the same page here or what?"

"Yeah, we're on the same page," Angelo said.

"Look at me!"

Angelo reluctantly glanced over at Franco. "Say it again."

"We're on the same fucking page," Angelo repeated irritably.

"Good," Franco said. "We got that cleared up. Now let's go get some lunch. Montgomery's not being cooperative. We'll have to come back and try to get her when she leaves tonight."

"Hello, excuse me!" a voice called.

Laurie looked up from her work. One of the histology technicians was standing in the doorway, clutching a cardboard tray for microscope slides.

"Maureen asked me to run these down," the woman said. "She also asked me to apologize for not getting them to you sooner. Two people called in sick today."

"No problem," Laurie said. She reached over and took the tray. "Thanks for bringing them, and thank Maureen for getting them to me so quickly."

"Will do," the woman said amiably.

Clutching the tray, Laurie looked back at her cluttered desk. Working nonstop, she had filled in only approximately two-thirds of her matrix, although the process, as painstaking as it was, was speeding up, since she had become accustomed to where in the hospital records she'd find the specific information she wanted. She'd also added more categories as she'd gone on, which forced her to go back to cases she thought she'd finished. One thing was certain: With as many categories as she now had, constructing the matrix was significantly more work than she'd originally imagined.

Although Laurie enjoyed a certain compulsive contentment about her progress, it had to contend with a growing disappointment that her efforts were probably not going to provide any insight into the mystery. As she worked, she'd hoped that she'd see some unexpected commonality, but it wasn't happening. If a few cases were in the same OR, the next one would be in a different OR; if several patients were on the same floor, the next one would be on a different floor; and so on and so forth. Yet she had persisted and would continue to do so, since it was all she had.

Relishing a break from what was essentially tedious data entry, Laurie cleared a space on her desk for her microscope. Turning on the lamp, she slipped the first slide of David Jeffries's lung section into the stage clip, rotated the revolving nosepiece to the lowest objective, and lowered the objective close to but not touching the slide. Putting her eyes to the eyepiece, she used the coarse adjustment knobs to pull the objective back up from the slide until she got an image. Reflexively her hand went to the fine-adjustment knob and brought the image into sharp focus.

Laurie was again awed by the degree of damage wrought by the bacteria, many of which she could see as disc-like clusters in the microscope's two-dimensional field. The normal alveolar structure of the lung was being dissolved by the bacteria's flesh-eating toxins such that abscesses of varying sizes were being formed. As she moved around with the help of the mechanical stage, she could see capillary walls in various stages of sepsis, causing hemorrhages into the septic soup that filled the lungs. The amount of destruction of the lungs' normal architecture reminded her of images of a city following a carpet bombing or a trailer park directly ravaged by a category five hurricane.

For more than an hour Laurie went through the tray of slides one by one. Using a higher-power lens, Laurie was even more impressed with the bacteria's pathogenicity. Focusing in on fibrous tissue responsible for maintaining the lung's normal structural architecture, she could see that the tissue was coming apart like the skin of an onion. Covalent bonds were being broken and collagen itself was dissolving into its constituent molecules.

"Hey, sweetie," Jack said as he quietly breezed in. He was becoming progressively adept on his crutches. "How's your day going?"

Laurie looked up, her face paler than usual.

"What's up?" Jack questioned. His smile waned. "You look terrible."

Laurie took in a deep breath and let it out. The tissue destruction she had been viewing had had a visceral effect on her. The fact that it had occurred within hours in a previously healthy person couldn't help but underline how fragile human beings ultimately were. The idea of enjoying any sort of health seemed a miracle.

Jack put his hand on her shoulder. "Really, are you okay?"

Laurie nodded and took another breath. She tapped the barrel of her microscope. "I think you ought to take a look at this. Keep in mind it was a normal, healthy person just a few hours earlier."

Laurie pushed herself back from the desk to give Jack room.

Jack put his crutches aside and leaned down toward the eyepiece, but about halfway he hesitated, then regained full height.

"Wait a second," he said suspiciously. "Is this a setup? Am I being slyly seduced into looking at a slide of your MRSA case from yesterday?"

"Remind me never to try to slip something by you," Laurie said with a wan smile. Her blood pressure had quickly risen back to normal, returning color to her face and clearing the accompanying queasiness. She admitted it was a section of lung from David Jeffries.

Jack looked into the microscope, and, moving the mechanical stage, he took a quick tour of the section. "Wow," he said. "It's totally destroyed. I see hardly any normal architecture."

"Does it change your mind about elective surgery where you might find yourself dealing with such a pathogen?"

"Laurie!" Jack scolded.

"Okay," Laurie said, pretending to be nonchalant. "I just thought I'd ask."

"How were your cases today? You seemed to have been engrossed more than usual."