Робин Кук - Mortal Fear

“Seems like a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Shirley said as they turned left on Beacon Street.

“Where are we going?” Jason asked suddenly.

“I’m taking you home with me. My guests will still be there. It will be good for you.”

“No way,” Jason said. “I’m in no shape to be social.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want you brooding. These people will understand.”

“Please,” Jason said. “I’m not strong enough to argue. I just need to sleep. Besides, look at me, I’m a wreck.”

“Okay, if you put it that way,” Shirley said. She turned left on the next block, then left again on Commonwealth Avenue, heading back to Beacon Hill. After a period of silence, she said, “I’m afraid Hayes’s death is going to be a big blow to GHP. We were counting on him to produce some exciting results. The fallout is going to be especially tough for me, since I was responsible for his being hired.”

“Then take some of your own advice,” Jason said. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for his medical condition.”

“I know. But try telling that to the board.”

“In that case I guess I should tell you. There’s more bad news,” Jason said. “Apparently Hayes believed he’d made a real scientific breakthrough. Something extraordinary. Do you know anything about it?”

“Not a thing,” Shirley said with alarm. “Did he tell you what it was?”

“Unfortunately no,” Jason said. “And I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. He was acting rather bizarre, to say the least, claiming someone wanted him dead.”

“Do you think he was having a nervous breakdown?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“The poor man. If he did make some sort of discovery, then GHP is going to have a double loss.”

“But if he had made some dramatic discovery, wouldn’t you be able to find out what it was?”

“Obviously you didn’t know Dr. Hayes,” Shirley said. “He was an extraordinarily private man, personally and professionally. Half of what he knew he carried around in his head.”

They skirted the Boston Garden, then navigated the roundabout route to get into Beacon Hill, a residential enclave of brick-fronted townhouses in the center of Boston, whose one-way streets made driving a nightmare.

After crossing Charles Street, Shirley drove up Mt. Vernon Street and turned into the cobblestoned Louisburg Square. When he’d decided to give up suburban living and try the city, Jason had been lucky enough to find a one-bedroom apartment overlooking the square. It was in a large townhouse whose owner had a unit in the building, but was rarely there. It was a perfect location for Jason, since the apartment came with a true urban prize: a parking place.

Jason got out of the car and leaned in the open window. “Thanks for picking me up. It meant a lot.” He reached in and gave Shirley’s shoulder a squeeze.

Shirley suddenly reached out and grabbed Jason by the tie, pulling his head down to her. She gave him a hard kiss, gunned the motor, and was off.

Jason stood at the curb in a pool of light from the gas lamp and watched her disappear down Pinckney Street. Turning to his door, he fumbled for his keys. He was pleased she had come into his life, and for the first time considered the possibility of a real relationship.

It had not been a good night. Every time Jason had closed his eyes, he’d seen Hayes’s quizzical expression just before the catastrophe and re-experienced the awful feeling of helplessness as he watched Hayes’s lifeblood pump out of his mouth.

The scene haunted him as he drove to work, and he remembered something he’d forgotten to tell either Curran or Shirley. Hayes had said his discovery was no longer a secret and it was being used. Whatever that meant. Jason planned to call the detective when he reached GHP, but the moment he entered he was paged to come directly to the coronary care unit.

Brian Lennox was much worse. After a brief examination, Jason realized there was little he could do. Even the cardiac consult he’d requested the day before was not optimistic, though Harry Sarnoff had scheduled an emergency coronary study for that morning. The only hope was if immediate surgery might have something to offer.

Outside Brian’s cubicle the nurse asked, “If he arrests, do you want to code him? Even his kidneys seem to be failing.”

Jason hated such decisions, but said firmly that he wanted the man resuscitated at least until they had the results from the coronary study.

The remainder of Jason’s rounds were equally as depressing. His diabetes cases, all of whom had multisystem involvement, were doing very poorly. Two of them were in kidney failure and the third was threatening. The depressing part was that they had not entered the hospital for that reason. The kidney failure had developed while Jason was treating them for other problems.

Jason’s two leukemia patients were also not responding to treatment as he’d expected. Both had developed significant heart conditions even though they had been admitted for respiratory symptoms. And his two AIDS sufferers had made very distinct turns for the worse. The only patients doing well were two young girls with hepatitis. The last patient was a thirty-five-year-old man in for an evaluation of his heart valves. He’d had rheumatic fever as a child. Thankfully he was unchanged.

Arriving at his office, Jason had to be firm with Claudia. News of Hayes’s death had already permeated the entire GHP complex, and Claudia was beside herself with curiosity. Jason told her that he wasn’t going to talk about it. She insisted. He ordered her out of his office. Later he apologized and gave her an abridged version of the event. By ten-thirty he got a call from Henry Sarnoff with depressing news. Brian Lennox’s coronary arteries were much worse but without focal blockage. In other words, they were uniformly filling up with atherosclerosis at a rapid rate, and there was no chance for surgery. Sarnoff said he’d never seen such rapid progression and asked Jason’s permission to write it up. Jason said it was fine with him.

After Sarnoff’s call, Jason kept himself locked in his office for a few minutes. When he felt emotionally prepared, he called the coronary care unit and asked for the nurse taking care of Brian Lennox. When she came on the line, he discussed with her the results of the coronary artery study. Then he told her that Brian Lennox should be a no-code. Without hope, the man’s suffering had to be curtailed. She agreed. After he’d hung up, he stared at the phone. It was moments like that that made him wonder why he’d gone into medicine in the first place.

When the lunch break came, Jason decided to check out Hayes’s autopsy results in person. In the daylight, the morgue was not such an eerie place — just another aging, run-down, not-too-clean building. Even the Egyptian architectural details were more comical than imposing. Yet Jason avoided the body storage room and went directly to find Margaret Danforth’s narrow office next to the library. She was hunched over her desk eating what looked like a Big Mac. She waved him in, smiling. “Welcome.”

“Sorry to bother you,” Jason said, sitting down. Once again he marveled how small and feminine Margaret seemed in light of her job.

“No bother,” she said. “I did the post on Dr. Hayes this morning.” She leaned back in her chair, which squeaked softly. “I was a little surprised. It wasn’t cancer.”

“What was it?”

“Aneurysm. Aortic aneurysm that broke into the tracheobronchial tree. The man never had syphilis, did he?”

Jason shook his head. “Not that I know of. I’d kinda doubt it.”

“Well, it looked strange,” Margaret said. “Do you mind that I continue eating? I have another autopsy in a few minutes.”