Robin Cook - Marker

Laurie and Marvin exchanged greetings as she helped herself to a mug of coffee. "Looks like we're going to be busy," she said, eyeing the folders.

"I'm afraid so," Marvin agreed. He tapped the folder in front of him with his knuckle. "We got another of these confusing postoperative cases from the General."

"No kidding!"

"There's a note from Janice on the front."

Laurie read the note quickly. It outlined the details on Patricia Pruit, answering all the usual pertinent questions. Laurie sucked in a deep breath. Providing she found no significant cardiac pathology, her series was now up to fourteen, with eight at the Manhattan General alone. It couldn't go on.

"Let's do Pruit first," Laurie said.

"Before the two boys?" Marvin questioned. "Did you see all the newspeople waiting out in the lobby?"

"I did, and they can wait some more," Laurie said. She wanted to confirm as soon as possible that Pruit was part of her series and let Roger know. Something had to be done. They couldn't stand on the sidelines any longer.

"Okay, I'll go down and get set up."

"Anything else of note?"

"Most seem routine to me. I think you'll want to pass on the majority of them. My guess is that we are looking at doing four cases, but you may have other ideas."

While Marvin went down to the autopsy room, Laurie went through all the folders. As she had anticipated, Marvin was right. They'd do the four cases and call it a day, unless anything of note came in while they were working. With that decided, Laurie went up to her office to stash her coat. She was glad she had, because sitting on her desk was a stack of hospital charts. To her amazement, the PAs had somehow managed the impressive feat of getting Lewis and Sobczyk's charts from the Manhattan General and the six charts from St. Francis, all in record time.

The chart on the top of the pile was Rowena Sobczyk's. Laurie flipped it open and shuffled through some of the pages, glancing at the OR notes and the anesthesia record. As with McGillin and Morgan, there was nothing out of the ordinary. She was about to put the chart down when a short strip of abnormal EKG flopped out. It was about two feet long, having been folded, accordion-style, into the chart with just the first six inches glued to the page.

Laurie opened the chart to the location. It was a note written by the resident in charge of the resuscitation attempt. Laurie quickly read it and found it unenlightening. She then extended the EKG tracing and studied it. The complexes were stretched out, suggesting that they represented ineffectual heartbeats, if they had been heartbeats at all. They could have been merely poorly coordinated cardiac electrical activity that didn't cause any muscular contraction. As the sequence continued, the complexes became progressively more distorted, then rapidly flattened out to a straight line. On the border, scribbled in pencil, was the message: "Short EKG segment from the outset of the resuscitation attempt, after which no further electrical activity was obtained."

She'd never had a strong background in reading EKGs, and this short segment didn't suggest anything to her. Yet she couldn't help but think it might be significant, since there had been no similar tracings on either McGillin or Morgan, who'd had no electrical activity on EKG whatsoever, and she thought she might show it to someone more knowledgeable than she. She marked the spot in the chart with her ruler, and even scribbled on a Post-it note to remind herself to show the tracing to a cardiologist.

Her phone rang, and the sound made her jump. She eyed it, hoping and wondering if it could be Jack. She put her hand on it and allowed it to ring again, feeling the vibration through her skin in a vain attempt to influence the identity of the caller. Her efforts notwithstanding it was Marvin, and the message was simple: All was ready downstairs in the autopsy room.

Laurie returned Sobczyk's chart to the top of the pile, with the ruler sticking out of the side. She was looking forward to going over them later that afternoon, particularly those from Queens, to make sure the cases mirrored those from the General. She then looked back at the phone, and for a brief moment contemplated calling Jack. In the process, she noticed the small light on the side of the phone indicating she had voicemail. Confused by who would have left her a voicemail during the night, she picked up the receiver again and checked her messages.

Laurie was surprised first by the time of the message and then by the sound of Roger's voice. She was impressed that he had taken her suggestion so seriously that he'd been working nonstop until two o'clock in the morning. She was even more impressed that he had managed to come up with what he considered a list of suspects, including an anesthesiologist by the name of Najah who'd recently transferred from St. Francis to the Manhattan General. As she continued to listen to the message, she felt a definite sense of satisfaction and an eagerness to hear the details, although when was another matter. As she headed back toward the elevators to the basement, she wondered if and when Jack might call. You never knew with Jack.

As Laurie had anticipated, the post on Patricia Pruit was strikingly similar to the others in the series, with absolutely no pathology to account for her sudden demise. True to form, the operative site was without any excessive bleeding, without signs of infection, and there were no clots in the major vessels of the legs, abdomen, or chest. The heart, lungs, and brain were all entirely normal.

At the end of the procedure, Laurie helped Marvin move the corpse back onto a gurney.

"Which one of the kids do you want to do first?" Marvin asked as he unlocked the gurney's wheels.

"It doesn't matter," Laurie said. She had opened the two folders on a neighboring autopsy table and was searching for the forensic investigator's reports. Then, getting a second thoughts, she said, "In fact, why not put them both up at the same time."

"Fine with me," Marvin said agreeably. He pushed the gurney with Pruit's corpse out through the main door.

A few years ago, Laurie would have taken the folders up to the lunchroom between cases, but now that she had on her moon suit, it was too much trouble, so she read the investigative reports standing up, with her ventilation fan as a backdrop. She could immediately see why some journalists would be interested. The tragic episode had the kind of lurid appeal that the tabloids loved. The accident had happened at three o'clock in the morning at the 59th Street station. The uptown train had thundered in and run over the two kids.

Conflicting stories were the problem. The engineer claimed that the kids had waited until the last minute to jump, so there was nothing he could do. Such a scenario suggested a double suicide, but the engineer failed a Breathalyzer test, casting severe doubt on his reliability. The other story came from the conductor, who claimed he was between car one and car two, looking out at the station, as the train came in. He said he didn't see any kids on the platform, and he passed the Breathalyzer test. The third story was from the agent in the token booth, who claimed that a suspicious man had gone through the turnstile right after the kids but disappeared.

The door to the hall burst open and Marvin pushed in another gurney. "This is not pretty," he said.

"I can imagine," Laurie said. She continued reading the investigative reports. No suicide notes were found, either on the platform or on the victims. Conversations with both sets of parents did not confirm any episodes of depression. In the words of one of the parents, the kids were "wild and full of the devil but would never kill themselves."

"I'm going to get the other one," Marvin called out.

Laurie waved over her shoulder as she continued to read. Once again, she was impressed with Janice's work. How Janice could pack as much as she did into a single night, Laurie had no idea.