Робин Кук - Brain

At three-thirty, he stuck his head out of his office and asked Helen if there’d been any calls from a Kristin Lindquist. She shook her head. Walking down to the X-ray rooms, Philips asked Kenneth Robbins if the young woman had shown up. The answer was no.

By four o’clock Philips had run another six films through the computer. Once again the machine suggested it was a better radiologist than was Philips by picking up a trace of calcification that suggested a meningioma tumor. Looking back at the film, Philips had to agree. He put the X ray aside to see if Helen could trace the patient down.

At four-fifteen Philips dialed Kristin Lindquist’s number. It was answered on the second ring by her roommate.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Philips, but I haven’t seen Kristin since before she left for the Metropolitan Museum this morning. She missed her eleven and one-fifteen classes, which is not like her.”

“Would you try to locate her for me and have her give me a call?” said Philips.

“I’d be glad to. Frankly, I’m a little concerned.”

At quarter-to-five Helen came into Philips’ office with the day’s correspondence for him to sign so she could post the letters on her way home. A little after five-thirty Denise stopped by.

“Looks like things are more under control,” she said, looking around appreciatively.

“Just appearances,” said Philips as the laser scanner snatched an X ray out of his hand.

He closed his office door and gave her a solid embrace. He didn’t want to let go of her and when he finally did, she looked up and said, “Wow, what did I do to deserve this?”

“I’ve been thinking about you all day and reliving last night.” He wanted desperately to talk with her about the insecurities Goldblatt had evoked that morning, and tell her that he wanted her to stay with him for the rest of his life. The trouble was that he hadn’t given himself any time to think, and while he didn’t want to let go of her yet, he wanted to be alone, at least for a while. When she reminded him she had promised to make dinner, he hesitated. Seeing her hurt face he said, “What I was thinking is that if I can get a good enough head start running these old films, maybe we could drive out to the island Saturday night.”

“That would be marvelous,” said Denise, mollified. “Oh, by the way, I called GYN and made an appointment for tomorrow around noon.”

“Good. Who’d you talk with?”

“I don’t know. But they were very nice and seemed genuinely happy to accommodate me. Look, if you finish up early why don’t you come over?”

Denise had been gone about an hour when Michaels arrived, delighted to see that Philips had finally started working on the program in earnest.

“It’s exceeding all my expectations,” said Martin. “There hasn’t been a single false negative reading.”

“Fabulous,” said Michaels. “Maybe we’re farther along than we’d guessed.”

“It certainly looks like it. If this keeps up, we could have a functioning, commercially available system by early fall. We could use the annual radiology meeting to unveil it.” Philips’ mind raced ahead, imagining the impact. It made his professional insecurity that morning seem ridiculous.

After Michaels left, Philips went back to work. He’d developed a system of feeding the old X rays into the machine that speeded up the process. But as he worked he began to feel progressively more uncomfortable about Kristin Lindquist’s absence. A growing sense of responsibility overtook his initial irritation at her apparent unreliability. It would be too much of a coincidence if something happened to this woman that precluded him from getting more X rays.

Around nine Martin dialed Kristin’s number again. Her roommate answered it on the first ring.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Philips. I should have called you. But I cannot find Kristin anyplace. No one has seen her all day. I’ve even called the police.”

Philips hung up, trying to deny reality by telling himself it couldn’t happen. It was impossible... Marino, Lucas, McCarthy, Collins, and now Lindquist! No. It couldn’t be. It was preposterous. Suddenly he remembered he hadn’t heard from Admitting. Lifting the phone, he was surprised when it was answered after four rings. But the woman who was looking into the case had left at five and wouldn’t be back until eight the next morning, and there was no one else who could help him. Philips slammed the receiver down.

“Damn!” he shouted, getting up from his stool and beginning to pace. Suddenly he remembered the section of McCarthy’s brain he’d put in the cabinet.

At the darkroom, he had to wait for a technician to finish processing some ER films. As soon as he could, Martin opened the cabinet and retrieved the film and the now dried-up slice of brain. Not knowing what to do with the specimen, he ended up dumping it into the wastebasket. The unexposed film went into the developer.

Standing out in the hallway next to the slot where his film would emerge, Martin wondered if Kristin’s disappearance could possibly be just another coincidence. And if it were not, what would it mean? More important, what could he do?

At that moment the X ray dropped into the holding bin. Martin expected the film to be totally dark, so that when he snapped it up on the viewer, he was shocked. “Holy Christ!” His mouth opened in disbelief. There was a lucent area the exact shape of the brain slice. Philips knew that there was only one possible cause. Radiation! The density abnormality on the X rays was from a significant amount of radiation.

Philips ran all the way down to Nuclear Medicine. In the lab next to the betatron he found what he needed: a radiation detector and a generous-sized, lead-shielded storage box. He could lift the box but it wasn’t something he was interested in carrying so he put it on a gurney.

His first stop was his office. The jar with the brain was definitely hot so he donned some rubber gloves and put it into the lead box. He also found the newspaper he’d put the brain on and put that in the box. He even went out and found the knife he’d used to cut the brain and put that in the box as well. Then with the radiation detector he went around his room. It was clean.

Down in the darkroom, Philips got the wastebasket and dumped its contents into the box. Testing the wastebasket afterward, he was satisfied. Back in his office he took off the rubber gloves, threw them into the box, and sealed it. He checked the room again with the radiation detector and was pleased to find only an insignificant amount of radiation. His next step was to take the film out of the dosimeter he wore on his belt and prepare it for processing. He wanted to know exactly how much radiation he’d received from the brain specimen.

During all this feverish physical activity, Martin tried unsuccessfully to relate all the disparate facts: five young women, presumably all with significantly high levels of radiation in their heads and maybe other parts of their bodies... neurological symptoms suggestive of a condition like multiple sclerosis... all with gynecological visits and atypical Pap smears.

Philips had no explanation for these facts, but it seemed to him that the radiation must have been the central issue. He reasoned that high levels of general radiation could cause alterations in cervical cells and therefore an atypical Pap smear. But it was peculiar that all of the cases had had atypical smears. Once again it seemed difficult to explain a specific phenomenon by coincidence. Yet what else could be the explanation?

When the cleanup was completed, Philips wrote down Collins’ and McCarthy’s unit numbers and the dates of their GYN visits on his list. Then he hurried down the central corridor of Radiology and cut through the main X-ray reading room. At the elevators, he pushed the down button with a rising sense of urgency. He realized that Kristin Lindquist was a walking time bomb. For the radiation in her head to show up on a regular X ray, there had to be a very large amount involved. And to find her, Martin believed he would have to solve all the puzzling events of the last week. To his surprise he found Benjamin Barnes draped over his work stool. The pathology resident might not have a pleasant personality but Martin had to respect the man’s dedication.