Fredric Stern - The Endorphin Conspiracy

Balassi moved the earpiece closer. He could hear Lancaster panting heavily on the other end, visualize his jowls quivering. He smiled to himself. “She knew more than you think, Phillip. She passed some very incriminating evidence to the one she had recruited as her courier, Dr. Geoffrey Davis. He was becoming as much a loose cannon to the project as Kapinsky was before.

Balassi thought back to what Geoff had told him about Suzanne’s background, her father, her obvious motivation. How could Lancaster not have known? “Do you know who she really—”

“I know what she did , Balassi.”

“Then you know who her father—”

“—I don’t care if her father was the goddamned pope! That Davis boy called me, and we tracked him down. We had him followed and were about to pick him up and reclaim the information when you interfered.”

“You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Balassi said triumphantly.

“Oh?”

“He’s been eliminated. One of my associates took care of it.” His thin lips formed a self-satisfied smile.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, good doctor, but my sources tell me he’s alive and in the emergency room of your very own medical center as we speak. And the information you speak of is still not accounted for. Our man at the scene combed the area and couldn’t find a fucking thing.”

“It’s impossible, I—”

“That’s right, Balassi. Alive. You fucked up big time. So big, I have no choice. It’s really a shame I have to do this. For forty years the—”

“I, it’s, it’s impossible.”

“There’s no way out now, Balassi. I have no choice but to pull the plug like I did forty years ago. Only this time, it’s for good. As of now, the Sigma Project is shut down. Forever. Too many careers, too many lives, are at stake. You know how high up this thing goes.”

Balassi sat in stunned silence. He thought of 1962, Cameron Daniels jumping to his death, the cablegram to Dr. Schmidt, ordering him to shut down MK Ultra. “You can’t do that, Phillip.”

“There is no other way, Balassi. My advice to you is to keep a low profile. Take some time off. Pack up today and go to your house in the country for a couple of weeks.”

“You can’t—”

“It’s over. Keep clean, or I’ll bring your head in on a silver platter and serve it to the IG myself.”

A loud click, and the line went dead.

Balassi continued to hold the phone to his ear, staring off into space. He had invested his entire adult life in this project. He was the Sigma Project. No one could take it from him.

“Where are those goddamned units of whole blood?” barked George Spiros, Director of the Trauma Unit. “The patient was typed and crossed over twenty minutes ago. Doesn’t the blood bank realize we have a doctor’s life on the line here?”

“They’re on the way, Dr. Spiros,” answered Jan Creighton.

Spiros was tense. Jan had known him for seventeen years and rarely had she seen him lose his cool during a trauma. After , maybe, but not during . Not since the assassination attempt on the governor had she seen him in a state like this.

“Run in both bags of normal saline full bore. Let’s get a third IV line going for the blood. Stat!” He turned to Flynn, the trauma doc, who had just tapped the peritoneal cavity with a large syringe. “How bad’s he bleeding?”

Flynn held up the syringe filled with dark blood. “Pretty badly. Probably ruptured his spleen. If we can keep up with it and maintain his blood pressure while we’re waiting on the OR, we’ll be okay.”

Beads of sweat formed on Spiros’ upper lip. His gaze darted nervously back and forth between his patient and the monitors. Geoff’s heart rate had reached 120, his blood pressure was 90/50 and dropping. Spiros knew he was hemorrhaging faster than they could replace the lost volume. It was a race against death, and it was pretty tenuous.

“Don’t breath him so fast,” he barked at the respiratory tech squeezing the black ambu bag. “Turn up the oxygen, six liters. Somebody get another blood gas!”

The tech nodded, slowed down the respiratory rate.

“Jan, what’s holding up the OR?”

“The room’s almost ready, Dr. Spiros. Anesthesia said they need about five more minutes—”

“Tell anesthesia if we have to wait five more minutes, we won’t need the OR!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Choy, how’s his neuro status?”

Karen Choy had just finished the most difficult neuro exam of her short clinical career. She had seen worse: mangled car accident victims, the cop, Smithers. But she had never had to work on someone she knew so well.

She looked at Geoff, his battered, swollen face, the raccoon-like dark circles around his swollen shut lids. She couldn’t believe it was the same living, breathing, handsome Geoff Davis she had worked with.

“Well, uh, the patient’s—Dr. Davis’—deep reflexes are intact, and he responds to pain.”

“His pupils, Choy, how are they?”

“His pupils, yes, sir. His pupils are small, about two to three millimeters. They react equally. The small pupils seem a little unusual given the extent of the head injury. Eye movements are intact, too, Dr. Spiros. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“That’s very good, Choy. A good assessment by you, even better for our patient. At least his neurons seem intact.”

Karen Choy nodded.

“And the PET scan?”

She hesitated. “Well, it wasn’t really a good study, Dr. Spiros. They, didn’t have much time because—”

“I don’t care how good it was, Doctor Choy. Just tell me what you found!”

“It was consistent with mild to moderate coma, prognosis good—”

“Blood’s here!” came a voice from the doorway. The tech carrying two bags of dark blood held them up triumphantly.

“Dr. Spiros, Dr. Pederson’s on line two,” yelled the ward clerk.

“Tell him Dr. Davis’ neuro status is stable.”

A moment passed while the message was communicated to Pederson.

“He wants you to make sure the OR knows he’s coming down himself to put an intracranial bolt in when the surgeons finish working on his belly.”

Spiros glared at the clerk. “Jesus Christ! My patient’s hanging on by a thread and Pederson’s worrying about drilling a hole to put a fucking monitor in his head? Tell him to call the OR himself. We’re busy trying to save a life here.”

“BP’s dropping, seventy over palp, pulse thready. Hang the other unit of blood, stat!” Flynn blurted out.

Then the monitor sounded its high-pitched alarm. “He’s in V-tach!” Karen Choy yelled.

Spiros rushed to the crash cart. “Give me a gram of epi!”

All eyes were on the monitor as he squirted the ampule of epinephrine through the IV line.

They watched and waited.

“No change.” He turned to Flynn. “Give me those paddles!”

“Shouldn’t we give the epi a few more seconds to work?”

“I said give me those goddamn paddles!” Spiros grabbed the paddles from Flynn and put them on Geoff’s chest. “Ready at two hundred. Stand away!”

Geoff’s body arched violently upward, then fell back on the bed board with a thud.

Jan Creighton covered her mouth with her hand.

Nothing.

“Again! Get back.”

Spiros readied the paddles again, then fired.

The monitor was eerily silent for what seemed like forever. Nothing. All eyes remained fixed on the screen. Then a blip.

“He’s in sinus rhythm!” Flynn yelled. “His heart’s stabilized!”

“Thank God,” said Karen Choy.

“Dr. Spiros, the OR is ready,” said the clerk.

“It’s about fucking time. Let’s go!”