Робин Кук - Genesis

The first thing Jack saw in the half-light was a man dressed in a long white lab coat struggling to put down the hospital bed’s safety rail, and the sight propelled Jack into action. He knew what the alarm had to signify, namely that this shadowy individual had knowingly injected Laurie with KCl in order to kill her, and the realization infuriated him as much as he could remember anything angering him. It seemed as if every bad or terrible thing that had happened to him in his whole life coalesced into this one horrible act. Seeing red and instead of running up alongside the bed’s free side, Jack ran up behind the man who was now kneeling on the bed. From the back he grabbed a handful of the man’s white coat and pulled as hard as he possibly could. Since the man was essentially teetering on the bed’s edge, Jack’s fearful yank caused him to completely lose balance, falling over backward onto Jack. In the process, his flailing arm swept off the water pitcher, the telephone, and some of Laurie’s personal items from the bed’s side table, creating a gigantic clatter.

For a few moments in the semidarkness a violent struggle ensued, trapped between the confines of the bed and the wall to the bathroom. It involved floundering legs and flailing arms all tangled in a confusing mass. It wasn’t until the mystery man, who was splayed on top, managed to roll off Jack into the center of the room that both were able to scramble to their feet and face off. “What the hell?” the man yelled. He frantically pointed back toward the hospital bed. “The patient’s in ventricular fibrillation! She’s going to die!”

Jack didn’t answer but in a singular fury lunged forward with the idea of retackling his adversary, but the man, in a purely defensive move, stepped to the side and deflected Jack’s outstretched arms. In his uncontrolled rage, Jack bounced off the wall that had the large-screen TV.

“What are you, crazy?” the man yelled in bewilderment as Jack immediately regrouped and came at him in a headlong rush for a second time, forcing him to again step to the side like a matador dealing with an enraged bull. “The patient is in extremis!” the man cried. “We have to start CPR!”

On this occasion Jack collided with the sofa he’d been sleeping on and his momentum bent him over the couch’s back, forcing him to thrust out his arms and hands to keep from somersaulting over it. With a few seconds’ respite, the man abandoned any hope that Jack’s attention would be dominated by the need to save Laurie’s life, and in a pure panic he opted to flee the scene while Jack was regaining his footing. Wrenching open the door, the man dashed out into the corridor and disappeared.

A moment later Jack burst out of the dimly lit hospital room into the comparatively well-illuminated hospital corridor in pursuit of the man he now strongly suspected was a serial killer. It took him only a split second to determine that his adversary had run to the right toward the elevators and not back toward the nurses’ station, and he guessed why: Several nurses were rapidly approaching from that direction in response to the cardiac alarm that was still raucously blaring.

Ignoring the nurses, Jack took off like a sprinter in hot pursuit of the fleeing man, but the mere sight of the nurses had finally awakened the rational, thinking part of his brain, which then wrested control from his more primitive, aggressive, flight-or-fight reptilian center that had been in command from the moment he’d been rudely awakened by the fibrillation alarm. The first thing he noticed was that he was rapidly gaining ground on the man, suggesting Jack was ostensibly in better shape. The second thing was seeing in the distance a resuscitation team of four resident physicians in scrubs pushing a four-wheeled crash cart rushing toward them on a collision course.

Jack slowed. Ahead the man had collided with the team, roughly shoving aside the bewildered residents and commandeering the cardiac resuscitation team’s sizable crash cart. Getting on the opposite side from Jack, he forcibly wedged it sideways in the corridor, blocking Jack’s way. In the process many of its contents noisily crashed to the floor. The man then recommenced running down the corridor toward the elevators and the stairs.

“So sorry!” Jack yelled to the totally perplexed residents as he struggled to free up the crash cart to get by. Behind him he caught a glimpse of nurses ducking into the room he’d just left.

As soon as he could, he recommenced running. Bursting into the stairwell where he had seen the man disappear, the first thing Jack did was determine whether the man had gone up or down. It wasn’t difficult. Jack managed to see glimpses of the man’s white coat flapping in the breeze and hear his thundering footsteps pounding on the metal stairs several flights down as he was descending as fast as he possibly could. It was the type of stairwell that had two flights of stairs and a landing between each floor, creating a kind of rectilinear spiral. It was also possible to lean over the railing and see all the way down to the basement level nine stories below. He started down, and once again and rather quickly he could tell he was gaining on the individual.

Jack’s anger had not abated, but with his cerebrum having kicked in, he was recognizing he was chasing someone who wasn’t defenseless but rather a sizable, muscular opponent who seemed reasonably athletic. The man had done an acceptable job parrying Jack’s headlong attacks in the hospital room despite being hampered by being dressed in a long doctor’s coat whose pockets contained surgical instruments and other medical paraphernalia; he had heard them when they had noisily clattered to the floor during their brief tussle. With these thoughts in mind, Jack began to worry what else his adversary might have on his person, such as a scalpel or sharp surgeon’s scissors. Accordingly, Jack slowed to a degree to avoid catching up with him in the stairwell yet fast enough to keep pressure on him in a manner similar to how an experienced angler plays a large sport fish. It was his belief that unless the man indulged in the kind of athletics akin to the basketball Jack played or rode his bike like Jack, which Jack seriously doubted as few people did, he was confident the man would soon seriously tire from the amount of energy he was expending in his breakneck flight.

By the time they passed the building’s second floor, Jack could tell his plan was already working. It was becoming obvious that the man was clearly in trouble from the monumental exertion the panicked descent demanded. Upon passing the first floor, the loud, rapid, and repetitive drumbeat of the man’s footfalls had slowed significantly, particularly on the final flight. As Jack passed the ground level and started down the last two flights of stairs, all he could hear was the man’s labored breathing, particularly on the exhale. As Jack rounded the landing and started down the final flight of steps, he could see that the man was stooped over, hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. His coloring was ashen, his mouth slack. It appeared that he didn’t have the energy to open the heavy fire door from the stairwell into the basement.

Jack slowed as he descended the last few stairs, warily keeping his eye on the man as he approached, wondering if the individual’s distress could be a ploy and whether he might suddenly brandish a weapon of some sort. Now only five or six feet away, Jack could see that the man was wearing a wig, as it was askew on his head. Also, his glasses were crooked with one of the temple pieces bent at a right angle.

Jack reached the basement level and stepped off the last step onto the concrete floor. In contrast to his opponent, his breathing was deep but not labored, particularly not to the extent of excluding any other activity. He could see that the man was watching him with his bloodshot, pained eyes. In obvious fear of Jack’s tight-lipped expression and his relentless approach, the man straightened up with great effort and stumbled backward to press his back against the closed door.