Tess Gerritsen - Bloodstream

At the edge of the woods she halted, trying to see what lay in the shadow of the evergreens. She could make out the boy’s footprints, trailing into the underbrush, and here and there a bright splash of blood.

Heart thudding, she eased into the woods. The most dangerous animal is the one in pain.

Her ungloved hands were numb from cold, from fear, as she moved aside a branch and peered deeper into the woods. Behind her, a twig snapped sharply. She spun around and almost cried out with relief when she saw it was the trooper, who’d followed her out of the building.

“Did you see him?” he asked.

“No. His footprints lead into the woods.”

He waded toward her through the snow. “Security’s on the way. So’s the emergency room staff.”

She turned to face the trees. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“Water. I hear water.” She began to run, ducking under low branches, stumbling through underbrush. The boy’s footprints were weaving back and forth now, as though he had been staggering. Here was churned-up snow, where he’d fallen. Too much blood loss, she thought. He’s stumbling and on the verge of collapse.

The sound of rushing water grew louder.

She broke through a tangle of evergreens and emerged on the bank of a creek.

Rain and melting snow had swollen it to a torrent. Frantically she scanned the snow for the boy’s prints and spotted them moving parallel to the creek for several yards.

Then, at the water’s edge, the footprints abruptly vanished.

“You see him?” the guard yelled.

“He’s gone into the water!” She splashed knee-deep into the creek. Reaching underwater, she blindly grabbed whatever her hands encountered. She came up with branches, beer bottles. An old boot. She waded in deeper, up to her thighs, but the water was moving too fast and she felt the torrent pulling her downstream.

Stubbornly she braced her foot against a rock. Once again, she plunged her arms deep into the icy water.

And found an arm.

At her scream, the trooper came splashing to her side. The boy’s hospital gown had snagged on a branch; they had to rip the fabric free. Together they lifted him from the creek and dragged him up the bank, onto the snow. His face was blue. He was not breathing, nor did he have a pulse.

She began CPR. Three breaths, filling his lungs, then cardiac compressions.

One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, the sequence automatic and well rehearsed.

As she pumped on his chest, blood gushed from his nostril and spilled to the snow. Reestablish circulation, and blood flows to the brain, to the vital organs, but it also means the body bleeds again. She saw a fresh stream of dark red trickle from his torn hand.

Voices drew near, and then footsteps were running toward them. Claire stepped back, wet and shivering, as the ER personnel lifted Scotty onto a stretcher.

She followed them back to the building, and into a trauma room exploding with noise and chaos. On the monitor, the cardiac tracing showed a pattern of ventricular fibrillation.

A nurse hit the defibrillator charge button and slapped paddles on the boy’s chest. Scotty jerked as the electrical current shot through his body “Still in V. fib,” said Dr. McNally. “Resume compressions. Did you get the bretylium in?”

“Going in now,” a nurse said.

“Everyone back!” Another shock to the heart.

“Still in V. fib,” said McNally. He glanced at Claire. “How long was he underwater?”

“I don’t know. Possibly up to an hour. But he’s young, and that water’s close to freezing.” Even an apparently dead child could sometimes be revived after cold-water immersion. They couldn’t give up yet.

“Core body temp’s up to thirty-two degrees centigrade,” a nurse said.

“Maintain CPR and get him warmed up. We might have a chance.”

“What’s all this blood from the nose?” a nurse asked. “Did he hit his head?”

A trickle of bright red slid down the boy’s cheek and splattered to the floor.

“He was bleeding when we pulled him out,” said Claire. “He could have fallen on the rocks.”

“There’s no scalp or facial trauma.”

McNally reached for the paddles. “Stand back. Let’s shock him again.”

Lincoln found her in the doctors’ lounge. She had changed into hospital scrubs, and was huddled on the couch, numbly sipping coffee, when she heard the door swing shut. He moved so quietly she did not realize it was him until he sat down beside her and said, “You should go home, Claire. There’s no reason for you to stay. Please, go home”

She blinked and dropped her head in her hands, fighting not to cry. To weep in public over a patient’s death was to show loss of control. A breach of professional facade. Her body went rigid with the struggle to hold back tears.

“I have to warn you,” he said. “When you leave the building, you’ll find a mob scene downstairs. The TV crews have parked their vans right outside the exit.

You can’t walk to the parking lot without running their gauntlet.”

“I have nothing to say to them.”

“Then don’t say anything. I’ll help you get through it, if you want me to.” She felt Lincoln’s hand settle on her arm. A gentle reminder that it was time to leave.

“I called Scotty’s next of kin,” she said, wiping a hand across her eyes.

“There’s only his mother’s cousin. She just came up from Florida, to be with Kitty while she recovers. I told her Scotty was dead, and you know what she said? She said, ‘It’s a blessing.” She looked at Lincoln and saw disbelief in his eyes. “That’s what she called it, a blessing. Divine punishment.”

He slipped his arm around her, and she pressed her face to his shoulder. He was silently granting her permission to cry, but she didn’t allow herself that luxury. There was still that gauntlet of reporters to confront, and she would not show them a face swollen with tears.

He was right beside her as they walked out of the hospital. As soon as the cold air hit them, so did the barrage of questions.

“Dr. Elliot! Is it true Scotty Braxton was abusing drugs?”

“-rumors of a teenage murder ring?”

“Did he really chew off his own thumb?”

Dazed by the assault of shouts, Claire waded blindly into the gathering, not seeing any of the faces as she pushed through. A cassette recorder was thrust into her face, and she found herself staring at a woman with a lion’s mane of blond hair.

“Isn’t it true this town has a history of murder going back hundreds of years?”

“What?”

“Those old bones they found by the lake. It was a mass murder. And a century before that-”

Swiftly Lincoln stepped between them. “Get out of here, Damaris.”

The woman gave a sheepish laugh. “Hey, I’m just doing my job, Chief.”

“Then go write about alien babies! Leave her alone.” A new voice called out:

“Dr. Elliot?”

Claire turned to focus on the man’s face, and she recognized Mitchell Groome.

The reporter stepped toward her, his gaze searching hers. “Flanders, Iowa,” he said quietly. “Is it happening here?”

She shook her head. And said, softly: “I don’t know.”

Warren Emerson’s lungs hurt from the cold. His outdoor thermometer had registered nine degrees this morning, so he had dressed warmly. He was wearing two shirts and a sweater under his jacket, had pulled on a hat and mittens and wound a scarf around and around his neck, but you could not protect against the cold air you breathed in. It seared his throat and made his chest ache, his lungs spasm. He sounded like a locomotive chugging down the road. Wheeze-cough, wheeze-cough. Not even winter yet, he thought, and already the world has turned to ice. The bare trees were encased in it, their branches glittering and crystalline. He had to walk with care on the slick road, deliberately planting each footstep on the speckled ice, where the county trucks had left their spray of sand. It took twice the effort just to stay on his feet, and by the time he reached the edge of town, the muscles in his legs were trembling.