Kit Wilkinson - Lancaster County Target

“You’ve been exposed.” The doctor’s tone mocked her as he dragged her across the hallway. “I’ll have to give you an injection, too.”

“What?” Is he mad? “Please, stop. You’re hurting me. Let me go.”

With his free hand, he produced another full syringe from the pocket of his scrubs. The needle shook as it came at her. His fingers closed in tighter around her arm as he yanked her sleeve high, exposing the skin above his grip. The hot prick of the needle stabbed her and the drug burned like fire as it entered her bloodstream. “What? What did you just give me?”

The doctor yanked her to the end of the corridor and through the door to the stairwell, not seeming to care that he crashed the door frame’s metal edge into Abby’s forehead. The blow radiated across her skull. Nausea waved through her gut as the drug made her head light—too light. Her body began to collapse. She could feel her blood pressure fall...

Please, Lord, help me.

Finally, she felt his fingers release her. She slumped to the cold, tiled floor.

The empty stairwell spun around her. The strange doctor had vanished. With all her might, she tried to reach for her cell phone. It was in her back pocket. But the drug was hitting her full force now. Her hand shook uncontrollably and the device dropped from her fingers. Her eyelids closed as she groped the floor desperately for the phone. But it was no use. She was going under and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Please, Lord...help...

Abby closed her eyes and the darkness overtook her.

* * *

“Code Blue. Code Blue. Paging Dr. Jamison. Room 307. Code Blue. Dr. Blake Jamison.”

The announcement blared through the overhead speakers. Everyone in the operatory stopped what they were doing and looked at Blake.

Code Blue? How could there be a Code Blue? It signaled that one of his patients needed resuscitation, but that couldn’t be true. He had taken on exactly three patients since transferring to Fairview Hospital. They’d been recovering well, awake, alert and resting as of two hours ago. This had to be a mistake.

“And clip.” He opened his gloved hand and waited for the nurse to place the suturing instrument in his palm. With a delicate touch, he closed up the tiny incision, returned the instrument to the nurse and removed himself from the operating area. The surgical staff would have to finish the cleanup after his first surgery at Fairfield Hospital of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Apparently, he had an emergency to look into.

“This way, Doctor.” One of the nurses tugged at his sleeve, guiding him toward the doors. “Take the service elevator. It’s faster. I’ll show you.”

A minute later, Blake entered a patient-recovery room where a crash team had assembled with a defibrillator. An unresponsive male patient, mid-to-late fifties, lay on the hospital bed. He was not one of the three patients Blake had seen earlier. Blake turned to the young nurse working near the monitors. “I’m Dr. Jamison. I was paged for a Code Blue, but this man is not my patient.”

“Cardiac arrest,” she said. “Started about fifteen minutes ago. Heart stopped soon after.”

“But he’s not my patient. I can’t treat him. Hospital policy. It could lead to a lawsuit and an insurance nightmare.”

She glanced back at the chart and pointed. “Your name is the only one on the chart.”

“That’s not possible.”

She stared back at him with a go-ahead-and-look face.

Blake picked up the chart and thumbed through the pages. Unfortunately, the nurse was correct. His name was there. And what certainly looked like his signature. “I’m telling you this is a mistake. I’ve never seen this chart before. I’ve never seen this patient before. What kind of operation do you run here at Fairview?”

“This is no joke, Doctor. This man is in cardiac arrest and that chart says you’re his doctor. I’m just the floor nurse. I have nothing to do with doctor assignments.”

Blake stepped up to the bedside, opposite the working crash team, and put aside the chart. The nurse was right. He was wasting his breath getting upset with her. He’d have to speak to the appropriate people at the appropriate time—after he had done everything he could to treat the patient. “What’s the history in a nutshell?”

“A nutshell is all we have,” the nurse continued. “We have no idea. He came in this morning. A transfer patient from New York City. Some sort of insurance issue? Apparently, he’s recovering from laparoscopic cholecystectomy.”

New York City? The place Blake had just escaped? Or tried to, at least.

He shook the spiraling thoughts of his parents’ devastating plane crash out of his head. Today another man’s life was on the line. He was a doctor. For the moment, that was all that really mattered. Forget insurance headaches. Forget his own personal grief and struggles to sort out his life.

“You’re saying this man had gallstone surgery somewhere else, was brought here and is now in cardiac arrest?”

She nodded.

“What medication has he been given? Does he have any known allergies?”

“I don’t know. As you saw for yourself, there’s not much in the chart and he only arrived an hour ago,” the nurse said. “We can’t seem to revive him. Hospital policy is to give it fifteen minutes. Should we call?”

“Not yet. Draw blood,” Blake said. “I want a basic workup. And while we are waiting, continue efforts. I want to know more about what’s going on.”

The nurse took blood samples and scampered out of the room. The crash team continued to work.

“Stand by,” one of the crew said. The other member prepared the electric plates to try to restart the patient’s heart. “Three, two, one.”

The man’s body popped from the voltage. The monitor beeped once before the flatline signal returned. Wait and repeat. Blake glanced through the chart. He was still certain he’d never seen this paperwork before or the patient who went with it—Nicolas Hancock. The name was not familiar. But on the last page, there it was—Dr. Blake Jamison. With a likeness of his signature.

Clearly, someone had made a very big mistake and Blake intended to find out who was responsible.

After a few minutes, the nurse returned with the basic blood screen. She handed the report to him almost breathless.

He read over the graphs and figures. Adrenaline levels were off the charts. That would certainly cause someone to go into cardiac arrest. “Any idea why his adrenaline would be so high?”

“No, sir.”

Blake looked up at the IV drip. “Did you attach this?”

“No, sir. He arrived with the IV in place. But I did replace the fluids.”

Blake tried to think of a scenario where a patient would have so much adrenaline in his body. The only explanation that came to mind was that he’d received a dose of epinephrine—a drug which could not be tested for, since the body already made it naturally. But a dose large enough to cause this sort of reaction was anything but natural.

This man’s cardiac arrest was looking as if it had been induced. Blake shook his head. Something very strange was going on here, but there was one thing that was certain—Mr. Nicolas Hancock was dead.

“It’s time to call,” he said. “Time of death is twelve-oh-seven.”

The nurse wrote down the hour.

“Is there a next of kin?” Blake would hardly know what to say to them.

“No, sir,” the nurse answered, her tone softening a touch. “His file says to contact his lawyer in case of an emergency. I’ll be glad to do that for you.”

“Thank you.” Blake rubbed his chin, deep in thought. This was not what he’d signed up for. He’d come to Lancaster County hoping for some peace to get past the loss of his parents, and to figure out what to do with the sudden discovery that he’d been adopted as a baby.