Tess Gerritsen - Bloodstream

Mrs. Horatio had scrawled a giant D plus in red marker. The test paper was covered with Taylor’s angry slashes in black ink. Next to the humiliating grade, he’d written: “Die, Mrs. Whoratio.”

“Noah, are you paying attention?”

Noah flushed and turned his gaze back to the front of the class. Mrs. Horatio was holding up the frog for all to see. She actually looked like she was enjoying herself as she placed the tip of the pithing needle against the back of the frog’s head. Her eyes were bright, her mouth puckered and eager as she jammed the needle into the brainstem. The frog’s hind legs thrashed, its webbed feet slapping in pain.

Amelia gave a whimper and dropped her head down, her blond hair cascading over the desk. Chairs were squeaking all over the room now. Someone called out with a note of desperation: “Mrs. Horatio, can I be excused?”

“…have to move the needle back and forth with a certain amount of force. Don’t worry about the feet flapping around like this. It’s purely reflex action. Just the spine shooting off impulses.”

“Mrs. Horatio, I have to use the bathroom…

“In a minute. First, you have to see how I do this.” She twisted the needle and there was a soft crack.

Noah thought he was going to puke. Struggling to maintain that look of utterly cool nonchalance, he turned away, his hands clenched Under his desk. Don’t puke, don’t puke, don’t puke. He focused on Amelia’s blond hair, which he’d often admired. Rapunzel hair. He Stared at it, thinking how much he’d like to stroke it. He’d never even dared talk to Amelia. She was like a girl in a golden bubble, beyond the reach of any mere mortal.

“There now,” said Mrs. Horatio. “That’s all there is to it. You see, Class?

Total paralysis.”

Noah forced his gaze back to the frog. It lay on the teacher’s desk, a limp, floppy carcass. Still alive, if you believed old Horatio, but showing no signs of it. He felt a sudden and overwhelming pity for that frog, imagined himself sprawled across that desk, eyes open and aware, body unresponsive. Darts of panic going nowhere, just exploding like firecrackers in your brain. He himself felt paralyzed and numb.

“Now each of you pair up with a lab partner,” said Mrs. Horatio. “And scoot your desks together.”

Noah swallowed and looked sideways at Amelia. She gave a helpless nod.

He moved his desk next to hers. They didn’t speak to each other; it was a partnership based purely on proximity but hey, whatever it took to get up close.

Amelia’s lips were trembling. He wanted very much to comfort her, but he didn’t know how to, so he just sat there, his face assuming, by default, its usual bored expression. Say something nice to her, moron. Something to impress her You may never get another chance!

“Frog sure looks dead,” he said.

She shuddered.

Mrs. Horatio came walking down the aisle carrying the jar of frogs. She stopped beside Noah and Amelia.

“Take one. Each team works on a frog.”

The blood drained from Amelia’s face. It was up to Noah.

He shoved his hand in the jar and grabbed a wriggling frog. Mrs. Horatio slapped a pithing needle down on his desk. “Get started, you two,” she said, and moved on to the next team.

Noah looked down at the frog he was holding. It stared back at him, bug-eyed. He picked up the pithing needle, then he looked at the frog again. Those eyes were begging him, Let me live, let me live! He put down the needle, his nausea back full force, and looked hopefully at Amelia. “You wanna do the honors?”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “Don’t make me, please.”

One of the girls screamed. Noah glanced sideways and saw Lydia Lipman leap out of her chair and scramble away from her lab partner, Taylor Darnell. There was a wooden thud, thud, thud, as Taylor stabbed his pithing needle into the frog.

Blood spattered on his desk.

“Taylor! Taylor, stop it!” said Mrs. Horatio.

He kept stabbing. Thud, thud. The frog looked like green hamburger. “D plus,” he muttered. “I studied all week for that test. You can’t give me a D plus!”

“Taylor, go to the principal’s office.”

He stabbed the frog harder. “You can’t give me a lousy D plus!”

She grabbed his wrist and tried to take the needle away from him. “Go see Miss Cornwallis now!”

Taylor yanked away, knocking the dead frog off his desk. It tumbled into Amelia’s lap. With a shriek, she jumped to her feet and the small corpse slatted to the floor.

“Taylor!” Mrs. Horatio yelled. Again she grabbed his wrist, this time forcing him to drop the pithing needle. “Leave this room immediately!”

“Fuck you!”

“What did you say?”

He stood up and shoved his chair to the floor. “Fuck you!”

“You are suspended as of right now! You’ve been sullen and disrespectful all week. This is it, buddy. You’re out of here!”

He kicked the chair. It bounced up the aisle and crashed into a desk. Grabbing his shirt, she tried to march him toward the door, but he twisted free and shoved her backwards. She fell against a desk, toppling the jar. It shattered, and frogs leaped free, scattering away in a writhing carpet of green.

Slowly Mrs. Horatio rose to her feet, fury blazing in her eyes. “I’m going to have you expelled!”

Taylor reached into his backpack.

Mrs. Horatio’s gaze froze on the gun in his hand. “Put it down,” she said.

“Taylor, put it down!”

The explosion seemed to punch her in the abdomen. She staggered backwards, clutching her belly, and dropped to the floor with a look of disbelief. Time seemed to halt, frozen for one interminable moment as Noah stared down in horror at the bright river of blood streaming toward his sneakers. Then a girl’s terrified shriek pierced the silence. In the next instant, chaos exploded all around him. He heard chairs slam to the floor, saw a fleeing girl stumble and fall to her knees in the broken glass. The air itself seemed misted with blood and panic.

Another gunshot exploded.

Noah’s gaze swept around in a slow-motion pan of fleeing bodies, and he saw Vernon Hobbs tumble forward and crash into a desk. The room was a blur of flying hair and churning legs. But Noah himself could not seem to move. His feet were mired in a waking nightmare, his body refusing to obey his brain’s commands of Run! Run!

His gaze panned back across the chaos to Taylor Darnell, and to his horror he saw that the gun was now pointed at Amelia’s head.

No, he thought. No!

Taylor fired.

A streak of blood magically appeared on Amelia’s temple and the rivulet slowly dripped down her cheek, yet she remained standing, her eyes wide and focused like a condemned animal’s on the gun barrel. “Please, Taylor,” she whispered.

“Please, don’t..

Taylor raised the gun again.

All at once, Noah’s legs broke free of their nightmare paralysis, his body moving of its own accord. His brain registered a multitude of details at once.

He saw Taylor’s head come up, face rotating toward Noah. He saw the gun slowly sweep around in an arc. He saw the look of surprise in Taylor’s eyes as Noah came flying at him.

Another bullet exploded out of the barrel.

“I’ve just noticed my patient was admitted. Why didn’t anyone call me?”

The ward clerk looked up from her desk and seemed to shrink when she saw it was Claire asking the question. “Uh… which patient, Dr. Elliot?”

“Katie Youmans. I saw her name posted on one of the doors, but she’s not in the room. I can’t find her chart in the rack.”

“She was admitted just a few hours ago, through the ER. She’s in X-ray right now.”

“No one notified me.”

The clerk’s gaze dropped like a stone to her desk. “Dr. DelRay's taken over as attending physician.’