Robin Cook - Coma

She rolled around the door, trying to slam it shut. But the guard gripped the edge of the door with his left hand and wedged his left foot between the door and the casing.

Susan pushed with every ounce of strength she could muster but it was hardly an even match. The guard was over two hundred pounds, and his weight and strength prevailed despite Susan’s efforts. The door began to open.

Keeping her shoulder and left hand against the door, Susan gripped the scissors like a dagger. With a quick overhand stroke, she plunged the scissors into the guard’s hand.

The point of the scissors struck between the knuckles of the second and third fingers. The force of the blow carried the blades between the metacarpal bones, shredding the lumbrical muscles and exiting through the back of the hand. The guard screamed in agony, letting go of the door. He staggered back into the corridor with the scissors still embedded in his hand. Holding his breath and grinding his teeth, he pulled them out. A small arterial pumper squirted blood in short pulsating arcs onto the opaque plastic floor, forming a pattern of red polkadots.

Susan slammed the door shut and locked it. She whirled to survey the room. It was a small laboratory, with a laboratory bench in the center. To the left were two desks back to back. Against the wall were several filing cabinets. At the far end was a window.

The guard in the hall recovered enough to wrap a handkerchief about his left hand and curb the spurting blood. He passed the cloth between his index and middle fingers and tied it around his wrist. He was furiously angry, as he fumbled with his passkeys. The first key would not turn in the lock. The second key he selected would not fit it. The third key also would not turn. Finally, the fourth key turned, and the lock mechanism sprang back, releasing the door. With his foot, the guard kicked the door open with such force that the knob went through the plaster wall to the right. With his pistol cocked, the guard sprang into the room, spinning around. Susan was gone. The window was open and frigid February air was streaming into the warm room. The guard ran to the window and leaned out enough to see the ledge. He returned to the room and took out his two-way radio.

“OK, I found the girl, floor two, the tissue lab. She’s something. She stabbed me, but I’m OK. She went out the window onto the ledge…. No, I can’t see her. The ledge goes around the corner…. No, I don’t think that she would jump. Did the Dobermans get released?… Good. The only worry is that she might attract some attention if she gets to the front of the building…. OK…. I’ll check the ledge on the other side.”

The guard put his radio back on his belt, closed the window and locked it. Then he ran out of the room, clutching his wounded hand.

Thursday, February 26, 5:47 P.M.

The heavy industrial-weight vinyl ceiling tile was slowly slipping from Susan’s grip, and she clenched her teeth. Her hands were numb from holding it with just the tips of her fingers, forcing the tile against its metal supports on the opposite side of its six-foot expanse. She could hear the guard below talking on his two-way radio. If the tile fell, he’d find her. She closed her eyes as tightly as she could to take her mind off her fingers and her aching forearms. It was slipping. It was going to fall. The guard switched off. Then the window closed. Susan held on somehow. She didn’t hear the guard exit, but the tile fell with a dull thud that jarred the whole suspended ceiling. Susan listened intently as blood rushed into her tingling fingers, painfully. There was no sound below. She let herself take a deep breath.

Susan was up in the ceiling space above the tissue lab. It was ironic that before her search of the ORs at the Memorial, Susan never knew of the existence of ceiling spaces. Now clambering up there had saved her life. Thank God for the filing cabinet on which she had stood to lift the tile.

Susan took out her floor plans and tried to examine them in the sparse light filtering up through the edges of the ceiling tiles. She found it impossible even after her eyes had adjusted. Looking around in the gloom, she noticed a rather concentrated beam of light coming from some larger fissure in the ceiling about twenty feet from her position. With the help of the upright studding marking the wall of the tissue lab and a neighboring office, Susan managed to work her way over to the light source and position herself so that she could see the plans. What she wanted to find was the main chase like the one she had seen at the Memorial. She thought that if it were big enough it would be a possible way out. But the chase was not listed in the key. However she did find a rectangular enclosure drawn next to the elevator shaft. Susan decided that it probably represented the chase she was after.

She moved along the top of the wall of the tissue lab, holding onto the upright studs until she reached the step up to the fixed ceiling of the corridor. It was made of concrete, to support the tracks for the trolleys. Once on it, the going was much easier. She moved toward the elevator shaft.

The closer she got to the elevator shaft the more difficult was her progress both because it got significantly darker and because more and more pipes, wires, and ducts converged in the direction she was heading. She had to move by feel, advancing a foot forward slowly, blindly. Several times she touched a steam pipe and it burned her. The smell of burnt flesh drifted into her nose.

In utter darkness she reached the elevator shaft and felt the vertical concrete. Rounding its corner, she followed a pipe with her hands and felt it turn down at a ninety-degree angle. Other pipes did the same. Leaning over them, she looked down into the darkness. A faint light filtered up from far below.

With her hands Susan determined the size of the chase. It was about four feet square. The wall common to the elevator shaft was concrete. She selected a pipe about two inches in diameter. Lowering herself into the chase, she put her back against the concrete wall and grabbed the pipe with both hands. Then she put her feet against other pipes and pushed back firmly against the concrete wall. In this fashion she inched herself down the chase, like a mountaineer in a chimney.

The going was not easy. Moving only inches at a time, she tried, although not always successfully, to avoid the steam pipes, which were blistering hot. After a while she was able to distinguish the pipes in front of her. Looking into the darkness, she could see vague forms, and she realized that she had reached the ceiling space of the first floor. She was making progress and she felt a certain elation. But it was tempered by the thought that if she could use the chase to go down, someone could use it to go up. And she realized then how relatively easy it was for someone to gain access to the T-valve in the oxygen line at the Memorial.

Susan continued inching downward. Below her there was a bit more light filtering upward. There was also the progressively louder sound of electrical machinery. As she approached the basement level, Susan realized that there was no suspended ceiling below her in the basement There would he no way to conceal herself and move laterally. She worked herself down until her eyes cleared the structural floor on the first level, then stopped her movement, wedging herself securely against the concrete to survey the scene.

The machinery room and its power plant were lit by a few work lights. The pipe Susan was using for her descent, apparently a water pipe from its feel, continued to the floor. But several other pipes, larger than the one she was holding, angled off horizontally, hanging by metal straps about four feet below the concrete slab of the building’s first floor. They ran high above the machinery area.