Робин Кук - Genesis

With a sudden sense of panic, Jack leaped up, turned out his office light, and then ran down the hallway to the front elevators. He had no idea of the veracity of his rather wild and possibly paranoid suppositions, but there was one thing that he was absolutely sure of. Despite Laurie’s objecting to his staying the night in her hospital room, he was going to do it anyway. If there was any risk whatsoever, he wanted to be there to make sure it didn’t happen.

Retracing his steps by heading north on First Avenue, he power walked the length of the NYU Langone Medical Center, noticing that most of the visitors had left from the Tisch Hospital as there were far fewer people, taxis, and rideshare vehicles clogging the entranceway. It was the same at the Kimmel Pavilion. Even the Kimmel elevator was distinctively less crowded. Same with the hallway on the eighth floor. Although there were still a few family members in some of the rooms, thanks to the hospital’s very tolerant position on allowing visitors pretty much twenty-four/seven, it was relatively quiet.

When he reached the door to 838, he noticed it was only ajar by three or four inches. Quickly but quietly, he pushed it open just enough to step within and then close it behind him. Inside the room it was quite dark with only a tiny bit of light spilling out of the slightly open door to the bathroom, where there was a night light. The only other illumination was from the monitor behind the bed still dimly displaying Laurie’s ECG. The beeping had been turned off. All the window shades had been lowered.

Approaching the bed on his tiptoes, Jack looked down at Laurie’s sleeping form. She was on her back with her face mostly lost in the shadow of her framing hair. In contrast to that evening when he had arrived, she was now quietly snoring and seemed the picture of total repose, thanks to the sleeping pills, the pain medication, and the remnants of anesthesia she’d had that day. A definite sense of relief spread over Jack, seeing that she was safe and that nothing had happened to her since he left and had conjured up the possibility she was in danger because of her association with Kera Jacobsen and Aria Nichols. Watching her calmly sleeping made him question the validity of his fears and whether he was suffering from paranoia to have imagined such a scenario.

Reversing course, he made his way over to the sleeper couch positioned directly under the huge monitor that was now as black as night. After lifting one of the pillows to make sure it was a foldaway bed, he stood up and tried to decide whether to open it. The concern was that if he wasn’t careful, it might make a considerable racket and possibly awaken Laurie. Wanting to avoid that at all costs, he abandoned the idea. Instead, he turned around and merely silently lowered himself into a sitting position. Looking over at Laurie, who was about twelve feet away, he was relieved she hadn’t stirred. His plan was to stay there and keep watch all night.

After only a few minutes sitting in the dark, Jack sensed how tired he was. It wasn’t surprising, considering he had awakened before five that morning and had had a busy and emotional day. And as quiet as the hospital room was, he began to worry about falling asleep. Such a thought made him seriously question whether his presence alone could protect Laurie, given the rapidity with which potassium chloride was capable of eliciting a fatal ventricular fibrillation. Such a thought begged the question of whether someone could come into the room and inject Laurie even while Jack was there. The fact that he’d apparently proved that Madison Bryant had essentially died after three heartbeats was a dramatic confirmation of these fears. He had to think of something, but he had no great ideas. Could he stay awake somehow all night? He didn’t know that, either, but being realistic, he doubted it. The real problem was that he had no way of judging how probable his suspicions were or whether they were a distorted product of his overtired, emotional, and paranoid mindset. Maybe he should have a talk with the nursing supervisor when she came on duty at eleven or...

... five minutes later Jack shocked himself by being jolted awake after having slowly crumpled against the right arm of the small sleep sofa and then falling off onto his hands and knees on the floor. As quietly as he could, he scrambled to his feet, furious with himself. He’d worried about falling asleep, and now he had proved it was a real concern. Once again, he looked over at Laurie’s sleeping form in the half-darkness. Luckily, she was still quietly snoring and obviously still fast asleep despite the noise he’d made plopping off the couch onto the floor. He had to think of something before he really fell into a deep sleep and wasn’t lucky enough to fall off the couch in the process. Jack was well aware that he was a heavy sleeper, which probably had something to do with the amount of exercise he got on a regular basis. When Jack was really tired, even coffee wasn’t helpful. In medical school he’d been able to fall asleep standing up on occasion. Was there anything he could think of or do to make sure Laurie was safe? Was she really in jeopardy or was his imagination working overtime? There were many questions. Trying to think, he slowly sank back down onto the couch and leaned his head against the cushion. He could feel sleep threaten, and to avoid it overtaking him, he opened his eyes to their limits and took a deep breath...

May 12th

3:05 A.M.

The alarm on his phone went off at exactly 3:05 A.M., and Carl turned it off. He hadn’t needed it to awaken him as he was already awake and pumped up about what he had to accomplish in the next half hour or so. On the previous occasion, when he was finally ready to take care of the Madison Bryant threat, he’d been apprehensive. But not on this occasion. In keeping with the adage “practice makes perfect,” Carl was confident that he would be able to eliminate with equal ease the even more worrisome threat Dr. Laurie Montgomery posed. His previous, hypothetical belief that a large intravenous bolus of potassium chloride would be the perfect surreptitious method to eliminate a human being had been proven beyond any doubt with the way it had worked with Madison Bryant. Even with the woman as a patient in an intensive care unit surrounded by intensivist doctors and nurses and her body later being subjected to an autopsy by forensic pathologists, no one had had any inkling of what had actually transpired. And tonight, with Laurie Montgomery, it was going to be a breeze with her being in a private room instead of the busy ICU. In many respects it was going to be too easy, without the intricacies of the challenge the Madison Bryant situation presented.

Despite his confidence, he did not shortchange himself on his disguise. He made the same amount of effort with the black wig, dark heavy glasses, and long white doctor’s coat complete with a hemostat, a pair of scissors, a penlight, and several pens on prominent display in the breast pocket. The KCl-filled syringe was nestled in the depths of his coat’s right-side pocket. Once he was ready, he made one last check in the medical center database to confirm his destination. As he suspected, Laurie Montgomery’s room was still listed as 838. Thus prepared and after a final check on his disguise using his full-length mirror to make certain no one would recognize him, he left his office.

Although he could have gotten to the eighth floor of the Kimmel Pavilion any number of ways through the labyrinthine medical center that stretched nearly from 34th Street in the north to just shy of 30th Street in the south, he chose to walk outside. Despite his confidence in his disguise, he preferred not to run into anyone he knew, which was always a possibility within the well-lighted main corridors. As a major medical center with surgery going on around the clock, surgeons in particular were often in the hospital at all hours. Since Surgery and Pathology often had to work in tandem, he was acquainted with a number of them. Carl also avoided entering through the main Kimmel Pavilion lobby entrance for fear it would be too quiet, and he might attract the attention of one of the security personnel who might feel obligated for some unknown reason to check his med center ID. Instead he entered back into the medical center through the Emergency Department, where there was more activity twenty-four/seven.