Robin Cook - Fatal Cure

"Where's the gun?" David demanded.

"Gun run done fun," Van Slyke said.

David grabbed Van Slyke by the arm and pulled him out of the car. Angela yelled at David to be careful. She'd heard what Van Slyke had said. She told David that he was clanging; he was obviously still acutely psychotic.

David pushed Van Slyke around so that he was facing the car. Then he frisked him for any weapons. He didn't find the pistol.

"What did you do with the gun?" David demanded.

"I don't need it anymore," Van Slyke said.

David peered into Van Slyke's calm face. His pupils were no longer dilated. The transformation was remarkable.

"What's going on, Van Slyke?" David asked.

"On?" Van Slyke said. "On top. Put it on top."

"Van Slyke!" David shouted. "What's happened to you? Where have you been? What about the voices you hear? Are you still hearing voices?"

"You're wasting your time," Angela said. She and Nikki had come around the front of the car. "I'm telling you, he's acutely psychotic."

"No more voices," Van Slyke said. "I made them stop."

"I think we should call the police," Angela said. "And I don't mean the local bozos. I mean the state police. Is your cellular phone in the car?"

"How did you quiet the voices?" David asked Van Slyke.

"I took care of them," Van Slyke answered.

"What do you mean you took care of them?" David was afraid to learn what Van Slyke meant.

"They won't be able to use me as a dupe," Van Slyke said.

"Who do you mean by they?" David asked.

"The board," Van Slyke said. "The whole board."

"David!" Angela said impatiently. "What about the police. I want to get Nikki away from here. He's talking nonsense."

"I'm not so sure," David said.

"Well, then, what does he mean by the board?" Angela asked.

"I'm afraid he means the hospital board," David said.

"Board sword ford cord," Van Slyke said. He smiled. It was the first time his expression had changed since they'd confronted him in the car.

"David, the man is not connected to reality," Angela said. "Why are you insisting on having a conversation with him?"

"Do you mean the hospital board?" David asked.

"Yes," Van Slyke said.

"Okay, everything is going to be all right," David said. But he was trying to calm himself more than anyone else.

"Did you shoot someone?" David asked.

Van Slyke laughed. "No, I didn't shoot anyone. All I did was put the source on the conference room table."

"What does he mean by 'source'?" Angela asked.

"I have no idea," David said.

"Source force course horse," Van Slyke said, still chuckling.

Feeling frustrated, David grabbed Van Slyke by the front of his shirt and shook him, asking him again what he'd done.

"I put the source and the force on the table right next to the model of the parking garage," Van Slyke said. "And I'm glad I did it. I'm not a dupe for anybody. The only problem is, I'm sure I burned myself."

"Where?" David asked.

"My hands," Van Slyke said. He held them up so David could look at them.

"Are they burned?" Angela asked.

"I don't think so," David said. "They're slightly red, but otherwise they look normal to me."

"He's not making any sense," Angela said. "Maybe he's hallucinating."

David nodded absently. His thoughts were suddenly somewhere else.

"I'm tired," Van Slyke said. "I want to go home and see my parents."

David waved him off. Van Slyke walked across the street and into his yard. Angela stared at David. She'd not expected him to let Van Slyke go. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Shouldn't we call the police?"

David nodded again. He stared after Van Slyke while his mind began pulling everything together: his patients, the symptoms, and the deaths.

"Van Slyke is a basket case," Angela said. "He's acting like he just had electroshock therapy."

"Get in the car," David said.

"What is it?" Angela asked. She didn't like the tone of David's voice.

"Just get in the car!" David shouted. "Hurry!" He climbed into the driver's seat of the Cherokee.

"What about Van Slyke?" Angela questioned.

"There's no time for Van Slyke," David said. "Besides, he isn't going anywhere. Come on, hurry!"

Angela put Nikki into the back seat and climbed in next to David. David already had the car started. Before Angela could close her door, David was backing up. Then he made a quick U-turn and accelerated up the street.

"What's happening now?" Nikki asked.

"Where are we going?" Angela asked.

"To the hospital," David said.

"You're driving as bad as Mom," Nikki told her father.

"Why the hospital?" Angela asked. She reached back and patted Nikki's knee to reassure her.

"It's suddenly beginning to make sense to me," David said. "And now I have this terrible premonition."

"What are you talking about?" Angela asked.

"I think I might know what Van Slyke was talking about when he referred to 'the source.' "

"I thought that was just schizophrenic babble," Angela said. "He was clanging. He said source, force, course, and horse. It was just gibberish."

"He may have been clanging," David said, "but I don't think he was talking nonsense when he said source. Not when he was talking about putting it on a conference table that had a model of a parking garage on it. That's too specific."

"Well, what do you think he was referring to?" Angela asked.

"I think it has to do with radiation," David said. "I think that's what Van Slyke was talking about when he said he'd burned his hands."

"Oh, come on. You're sounding as crazy as him," Angela said. "You have to remember Van Slyke's paranoia on the nuclear submarine had to do with radiation, so any similar talk probably has more to do with the return of his schizophrenia than anything else."

"I hope you're right," David said. "But it has me worried. Van Slyke's training in the navy involved nuclear propulsion. That's driving a ship with a nuclear reactor. And nuclear reactors mean radiation. He was trained as a nuclear technician, so he knows something about nuclear materials and what they're capable of doing."

"Well, what you are saying makes sense," Angela said. "But talking about a source and having one are two vastly different things. People can't just go out and get radioactive material. It's tightly controlled by the government. That's why there is a Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

"There's an old radiotherapy unit in the basement of the hospital," David said. "It's a cobalt-60 machine Traynor's hoping to sell to some South American country. It has a source."

"I don't like the sound of this," Angela admitted.

"I don't like it either," David said. "And think about the symptoms my patients had. Those symptoms could have been from radiation, especially if the patients had been subjected to overwhelming doses. It's a horrendous possibility, but it fits the facts. At the time radiation had never entered my mind."

"I never thought about radiation when I did Mary Ann Schiller's autopsy," Angela admitted. "But now that I think of it, that could have been it. Radiation isn't something you consider unless there is a history of exposure. The pathological changes you see are nonspecific."

"That's my point exactly," David said. "Even the nurses with flu-like symptoms could have been suffering from a low level of radiation. And even…"

"Oh, no!" Angela exclaimed, immediately catching David's line of thought.

David nodded. "That's right," he said. "Even Nikki."

"Even Nikki what?" Nikki asked from the back seat. She'd not been paying attention to the conversation until she'd heard her name.

Angela turned around. "We were just saying that you had flu-like symptoms just like the nurses," she said.

"And Daddy too," Nikki said.

"Me too," David agreed.