Robin Cook - Shock

DEBORAH RESPONDED BY instinct, again slapping her hand against the raised OPEN,CLOSE button, closing the heavy steel door in the face of the onrushing men. At the same time she was assaulted by Cindy from behind, who grabbed her around the neck and tried to pull her away from the door. Deborah resisted, keeping the button depressed.

"Get this banshee off me!" Deborah cried. Cindy was screaming that the door had to be opened.

Joanna peeled Cindy's fingers from around Deborah and shoved her stumbling backward. But the woman quickly recovered and lunged back at Deborah.

"Joanna, hold the damn button," Deborah yelled while fending Cindy off with one hand.

As soon as Joanna had the panel depressed, Deborah brought both hands to bear on the persistent technician. Although Deborah had not hit anyone since clocking a bratty male fellow fifth-grader, she hauled off and punched Cindy on the left cheek. After four years of varsity lacrosse, Deborah was significantly stronger and more of an aggressor than she'd been in the fifth grade, and the blow stunned Cindy into sudden silence and immobility. A second later she sagged to the floor in slow motion, first sinking to her knees and then sloshing prostrate like a melting ice cream cone.

Deborah cried out from the pain in her hand, which she flapped wildly for a moment. Forcing herself to regain control, she grabbed the nearest incubator and rolled it over to the door. Joanna immediately comprehended what Deborah had in mind and helped guide the incubator so that its weight continued to depress the button, which both women recognized was keeping the door closed. To be sure the incubator wouldn't move, Joanna and Deborah continued to hold on to it to maintain its position.

"What's your plan?" Joanna demanded in a panicked, forced whisper.

"The only way out is the dumbwaiter or the freight elevator! What do you think?"

"The freight elevator!" Joanna. "We know exactly where it is, and we know we'll fit."

A few paces away, Cindy pushed herself up into a uncertain, semi-sitting position. She had a blank, unfocused expression in her eyes like a boxer hit too many times.

"All right!" Deborah said after casting one last glance at Cindy, who was now struggling to get to her feet. "Let's do it!"

Both let go of the incubator in unison and made a dash back through the maze of rooms. Unfortunately they made a wrong turn and ended up in a blank room. They had to retrace their steps before getting back on track. Behind them they heard the unmistakable sound of an incubator clunking up against another followed by deep-throated shouts by the men.

"Heaven help us if that freight elevator is not running," Deborah managed between gasps.

They rounded the final bend, ran past the doors to the autopsy theater, and literally collided with the freight-elevator doors. A heavy canvas strap protruded through the chest-high horizontal gap. Deborah grabbed it first, but Joanna lent a hand as well. With their combined weight, the doors gave way, with the lower door opening downward while the upper door rose. When the gap between the two doors was large enough, the two women climbed in.

The elevator itself was a heavy wire-mesh cage eight feet square. To the right at chest height was a control panel with six buttons. The floor was made of rough wooden planking. Above, the supporting cables disappeared up into blackness; the only light was coming from the hallway through the open doors. In the near distance heavy footsteps could be heard running toward them and closing quickly.

"The doors!” Deborah yelled as she reached up and grabbed the canvas strap attached to the inside edge of the upper door. Joanna reached up and grabbed it as well. Once again with their combined weight the women succeeded in getting the heavy doors to move. Slowly at first and then with increasing speed they began to close, but before they did, the men arrived outside. A hand was thrust between the narrowing gap and grabbed a handful of Deborah's doctor's coat, yanking it back through just as the doors came together and thrust the women into blackness. With her hands still grasping the canvas strap, Deborah felt herself roughly hauled against the door.

"Hit one of the buttons!" Deborah screeched to Joanna without taking her weight off the strap. She could feel someone outside was now trying to open the doors, but to do so they would have to lift Deborah in the process.

Like a blind person, Joanna groped for the control box she'd caught a glimpse of before the closing doors had extinguished the light.

"Hurry! God damn it!" Deborah yelled. She could feel herself being lifted off the planking.

Frantically Joanna widened her blind search over the surface of the wire mesh. Finally her hand knocked against the control box. In the blackness she pushed the first button her fingers encountered.

A high-pitched screeching sound erupted, like chickens being tortured, and with a lurch, the old freight elevator began to rise.

Deborah let go of the strap she'd been gripping, and falling to her knees and twisting, she managed to yank her arms free of the doctor's coat, which was still caught between the closed freight elevator doors. A second later, with an agonizing tearing and crushing sound, Deborah felt the coat disappear into the narrow gap between the front lip of the rising elevator and the stone elevator shaft wall.

"What the hell was that noise?" Joanna demanded through gasps for breath.

Deborah shuddered in the darkness. She knew the crushing sound could have been her body had she not gotten out of the coat. She, too, gasped for breath. "It was my flashlight and car keys being crushed in my doctor's coat."

"We've lost our car keys?" Joanna moaned with her chest heaving.

"That's the least of our worries at the moment," Deborah managed. "Thank God this elevator worked. Those men almost got us. I mean, that couldn't have been any closer."

Joanna's flashlight snapped on. She shined it at the control box. The button that was depressed was the third floor.

"What should we do?" Joanna asked tensely. "We're heading for the third floor. Should we see if we can change that?"

"This is hardly a high-speed elevator," Deborah complained. "The third floor is probably better than certainly the first and maybe even the second. I don't want to run into those men again."

"Obviously,' Joanna said. With her breathing coming under a semblance of control, it was her turn to shudder. "Now we have proof this place is capable of murder, and they probably know we know. And that Cindy bitch knew the men were coming the whole time we were in there. That's why she was being so nice to us. We should have suspected something was wrong the minute she offered a tour. What's wrong with us?"

"That's all easy to say now," Deborah said, still panting. "We were under the delusion they were violating ethics here, not commandments. Murder for eggs makes this a completely different ball game."

"We have to get out of here!"

"True," Deborah said. "But without car keys we're not driving anyplace, at least not in our own car. I think our best bet is to get to a telephone in the Wingate Clinic on the first or second floor."

"The problem is, that's probably what they are expecting," Joanna said. "At least that's what I would expect if I were them. What do you say about hiding for a time to give ourselves a chance to think what we should do and come up with a plan?"

"Maybe we should hide until morning," Deborah suggested. "My guess would be that a very small minority of the people who work here know what they are really doing, and if they did, they'd be as horrified as we are. We could approach someone for help."

"My guess is that they are going to search until they find us tonight. We've got to get out of here."