Robin Cook - Critical

"Damn!" Laurie shouted. She got another: seven-thirty a.m.

With four cases out of twenty-five enough for Laurie to fear for the worst in relation to Jack, she ran from her office and beat the elevator down button in hopes of hurrying its arrival. She checked her watch as she waited. It was just after eight. Jack's procedure was supposed to take a little more than an hour, so she might make it if she got a taxi immediately. Luckily, First Avenue was a good place to get a cab in the morning because of the hospitals and other services in the area. What Laurie had decided was that she wanted to be in the Angels Orthopedic Hospital's engineering spaces above the OR as soon as possible to make absolutely certain no one else did.

AS MUCH AS Angelo thought he was depressed the previous evening, he now felt worse. They'd been waiting for almost two hours after arriving at six-fifteen, and still no Laurie Montgomery. Since she and her boyfriend had arrived the previous morning from 30th Street, he'd positioned the van so as to be able to see as far up the street as possible. Every time he'd see a taxi approach, his heart would speed up in anticipation, only to be disappointed again and again.

"I don't think she's coming to work today," Angelo growled. "Kinda looks that way," Franco said while licking his finger to turn the page of his newspaper. "As if you give a shit!"

Franco lowered his paper and glared over at Angelo, who'd turned to look back up 30th Street. He felt like lashing out at his partner in crime but didn't. It wasn't worth the effort. Instead, he started to go back to the paper when he caught sight of a figure bursting out from the OCME and descending the front steps as if being chased.

"It's her!" Franco yelled.

Angelo's head spun around. He started to demand where when he caught sight of Laurie. She was standing at the curb, holding open a taxi door so a passenger could disembark.

"Holy shit!" Angelo yelled. He reached behind his seat for the ethylene, but Franco grabbed his arm.

"There's no time," Franco asserted. "We've got to follow her. Start the damn car!"

They watched while Laurie's hand anxiously waved for the obese woman passenger to hurry. Laurie even resorted to giving the woman one of her hands and attempting to help by pulling, as if the woman were stuck. As soon as the woman was barely out of the way, Laurie threw herself into the cab and pulled the door shut. A moment later, the cab was off with a screech of rubber.

"My God!" Angelo said. "The guy must be a NASCAR nut."

"Don't lose them," Franco cried, as he blindly reached for parts of the vehicle that could keep him from being thrown from his seat.

Angelo didn't need to be reminded about not losing Laurie, and he had the accelerator to the floor. The aged van responded admirably, and it shot forward with its own screech of complaint from its tires.

Briefly, Angelo glanced in the rearview mirror to see if Richie was on the ball. He was, and was not too far behind.

"Do you think she stayed the night in the morgue?" Angelo questioned, as he wove in and out of the traffic.

Franco didn't answer. He was too busy holding on and looking out for police cruisers. Luckily, he saw none. Soon Laurie's taxi and Angelo's van had to stop for a traffic light, and Franco had an opportunity to put on his seat belt.

WHEN LAURIE HAD finally managed to get into the taxi, she had hurriedly told the driver the name of the hospital, the address, and that she was a doctor. As a plea for speed, she'd said she was on a life-and-death emergency. The cab driver, who was a young individual, had taken the request to heart, and Laurie was pleased how quickly he took them up First Avenue. Although he'd not run any red lights as far as Laurie could tell, some of them had been debatably close and had required him to accelerate through the amber.

Unfortunately, going across town was different, and Laurie's feet began a nervous tap as they were forced to wait for a taxi to unload ahead of them at the corner of Park Avenue. Not only did the stop increase her anxiety of being too late, it also gave her a chance to add to her fears. If it were true that all the cases involved the seven-thirty OR time slot, then it was understandable why Wendell Anderson had never had an MRSA case; he didn't start his surgery until significantly later by choice, at least not before doing so, as a favor to Jack.

Laurie gritted her teeth. If she hadn't been so anxious, she could have gotten angry at Jack all over again about his headstrong insistence on having his surgery that day.

As they neared the destination, having just turned down Fifth Avenue, Laurie got out more than enough money and poked it through the Plexiglas divider. She had the door open before the cab came to a complete stop, and she was out on the pavement in a flash, slamming the taxi door behind her. She ran toward the entrance but then slowed as she neared the liveried doorman for fear of making him suspicious and delaying her. Seemingly unperturbed by Laurie's dash from the taxi, the man touched the brim of his hat as a kind of welcoming salute before giving the revolving door a push for her benefit.

Once inside, Laurie continued to force herself to walk at a nearly normal gait. She was conscious of her reception on Tuesday and did not want to call attention to herself, especially since there was a uniformed security man standing off to the side of the lobby.

Laurie reached the elevators and pushed the call button. Looking up to the floor indicator, she could see that one car was nearing the lobby.

Out of the corner of her eye, to her chagrin, Laurie glimpsed the security man push off the wall and walk in her direction. Self-consciously, she looked the other way. She could sense his presence at her side but slightly behind.

The elevator arrived. With relief Laurie boarded and in the process pushed the fourth-floor button. For a beat she faced into the car, fearing the man was about to accost her, but he didn't. Yet when she turned to face the elevator doors, he boarded and their eyes briefly met. They were the only two people in the elevator as the doors closed.

Laurie quickly shifted her gaze up to the cab's floor indicator above the doors and held her breath. Expecting to be questioned at any moment, the doors closed, the elevator rose but then immediately stopped.

To her surprise and relief, the security man exited on the second floor, apparently having pressed the button when Laurie had been purposefully keeping her eyes on the floor indicator. When the doors re-closed, Laurie breathed a sigh of relief.

The elevator then rose up to the fourth floor. As the doors opened, Laurie dashed out and ran headlong down the aseptically white corridor. Coming up to the engine room door, she hesitated, praying she was wrong and that her suspicions and fears were a product of an overly active imagination. Looking at her watch, she saw it was eight-forty; the timing would be correct.

Grasping the doorknob and with a bit of effort, Laurie pushed into the engineering room and was immediately enveloped in the throaty, deep hum of the machinery in the heavily insulated, high-ceilinged room.

The heavy door made a loud mechanical click that caught the attention of a surgically masked, hooded, and gowned figure who straightened up from where he had been otherwise hidden among the ducting. In one hand he held a wrench, hardly a surgical instrument, in the other a stoppered Erlenmeyer flask.

In took only a second for Laurie to believe her worst fears were confirmed. Shouting "No!" at the top of her lungs, she raced toward the man, who took a few steps back as if he were going to flee but then changed his mind and stood his ground. Laurie ran into him at full speed with her hands clawing at his mask and ripping it away. Instantly, she recognized who it was. It was Walter Osgood.