Devils cure, p.11
Devil's Cure, page 11
“You’re aware,” said one of the prison guards, “that this man is now your responsibility until he leaves the vehicle.”
Allan nodded. “That’s right.”
The prison guard handed Allan a set of keys, which he promptly put in his pocket.
“Those are for his manacles. We suggest you leave them locked at all times.”
“Very good. Let’s secure him,” said Allan.
Working together, the four guards moved Haines onto the operating table and proceeded to strap him in, pulling the belts tight, one across his chest, upper thighs, his calves. Separate straps encircled his biceps and forearms. Through it all, Haines was silent and impassive, allowing his limbs to be shunted around as if he denied ownership of them.
“For God’s sake,” Allan said irritably. “What kind of half-assed job is this?”
Laura looked over in alarm to see Allan holding the open loops of Haines’s wrist manacles.
“Good thing I tested this. You boys asleep on the job?”
One of the prison guards, a wiry, hatchet-faced man in his mid-forties, shook his head in disbelief. He looked pale. “Geez, I can’t … look, I’m sorry, I was sure they were tight. He’s so dopey he kept staggering away on me.”
Laura watched as Allan locked the wrist manacles, tested them, then quickly checked Haines’s ankle manacles, too. They were fast.
“We’ll be waiting outside the loading gate,” the prison guard said. “If he’s any trouble, give us a shout.”
“Yeah,” grunted Allan. “Thanks.”
The prison guards walked out through the side door, and Allan closed it after them, slamming the bolt home. For a moment, the only sound was the low drone of the air-conditioning.
“Don’t worry,” Allan told her. “He’s snug as a bug.”
“Thanks.” She walked to the head of the table and forced herself to meet David Haines’s gaze.
“I’m Dr. Donaldson.” She was startled at how parched her mouth was.
“Yes. They told me about you.”
She did a quick analysis of his voice: the tone was neutral, without any trace of antagonism. She felt encouraged.
“Then you know what I’ll be doing this morning.”
“Yes.”
On the way down from Chicago, she’d tried to predict what his behavior might be during the procedure. For all she knew, she was in for an unceasing fire-and-brimstone rant. She’d also deliberated on what manner she herself should adopt. In the end, she’d come down on tried-and-true professional detachment She would not speak to him any more than was absolutely necessary. She would not engage with him in any way, and she would certainly not argue with him. She’d promised herself that several times. She was not here to win a debating match. All she wanted was the fluid in his veins, and a bountiful bone marrow harvest. Then she could find out whether this would be just another heartbreaking footnote in the annals of cancer research, or a triumphant headline.
She made her voice brisk. “We’ll start with the routine blood work, and save the bone marrow till last. Is that all right with you?”
She was already reaching for the sterile swab, grateful for the small tasks that would keep her from looking at his eyes.
“You think you’re helping people.”
His tone was less accusatory than simply incredulous. She swiped the alcohol pad over his inner elbow, the muscles of his forearm rippling involuntarily. She knotted the tourniquet around his bicep, tight.
“Make a fist, please.”
“But it’s you people who are spreading disease.”
She felt curiously reassured by his inflated rhetoric. If he was beyond the realm of measured, rational discussion, it would be easier to write him off as a freak, a specimen.
She slid the catheter into his vein and taped it against his skin. Notching the tubing onto the back of the catheter, she released the tourniquet and watched as the blood began to leave his vein, drawn slowly up toward the vacuum bag. With a sense of wonder, she thought of all that might be in it—some magical elixir from a fairy tale. How strange it should be carried in such a vessel.
He was watching her. She’d always found brown eyes in men softer, vulnerable even, but David Haines’s eyes had intent. They were not a predator’s eyes exactly; she knew she was not an object of desire to him, but something more chillingly abstract. She wasn’t a woman at all, just a metaphor, a handmaiden of Satan. She looked away.
“I’m going to draw two units. It’ll take about half an hour for each.” She wished she could take more, but 500 ccs was a maximum at one sitting, an ethical limit.
She checked on Allan and Joseph. They stood with practised poise at either end of the lab, hands clasped at their waists, weight evenly distributed on both legs, alert. Their eyes never left Haines. Laura walked to a small fridge and took out a can of fruit juice. She cracked the tab and dropped in a straw.
“I’d recommend it,” she told Haines. “Keep you from getting dehydrated.”
She tilted the straw towards his mouth, and he accepted it. She took this as a good sign, perhaps even a symbol of surrender, or at least acquiescence. But he took only a small sip before he pulled his head back.
“You’re afraid to talk to me, aren’t you? A man strapped to a table, slated for execution. Afraid of what you might hear?”
“I’m not afraid to talk to you.”
She looked at the blood bag above his head, wishing it would fill faster. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything. She knew she should be avoiding conversation with him, and it was obvious he was trying to goad her. Her eyes flickered to Allan, but his expression offered her no reproof; no guidance, either.
“Ignorance is only a sin if it’s willful,” Haines said.
His self-righteousness rankled her, the implication that she was a thoughtless drone, pathetically misguided.
Before she could check herself, she said, “People have a responsibility to educate themselves, I agree.”
Shit. Why couldn’t she just ignore him? She’d been worried about this: at the best of times she was hard pressed to maintain a noncommittal silence. It ran against her grain. She was aware of her heart racing. She placed the fruit juice on the instrument tray; he didn’t seem to want any more.
“You’re exactly right,” said Haines. He sounded solicitous. “So you should know that prayer is the only real cure.”
“Lots of atheists getting over the flu, last time I checked.”
It came out more flippantly than she’d intended, but sudden anger flushed away her regret. Why should she be afraid of him? Why should she hold back? He was strapped to the table, watched by two armed guards, at least one of whom would like nothing better than to shoot his very own serial killer. And in an hour he’d be escorted back into that godforsaken pile of stone that would become his morgue.
Her entire life was devoted to curing cancer, and she would not be cowed by this man. She would not pretend to politely consider his views; and she could not endure the idea of him misconstruing her silence for agreement, or worse, defeat. If he flew into a psychotic rage, so be it. His blood would still flow from his veins into her specimen flasks.
But far from exploding into a passion, Haines seemed unperturbed. He gave a small, friendly smile.
“I was like you once. I used to believe in modern medicine. But maybe you haven’t been keeping up. Tuberculosis, pneumonia, and meningitis are on the comeback. Bacterial strains so powerful antibiotics are useless. Ebola and necrotizing fasciitis. Scramble all you want for new cures, but the bacteria have the numbers, and you’re losing the battle. Find a new antibiotic, too late, they’re already resistant in India, and all it takes is one sick man on an airplane to spread it across oceans. All God’s way of telling us we’ve been defying his will too long.”
She’d heard variations on this spiel before, of course. The failure of modern medicine. It was splashed across papers, a favorite topic of TV newsmagazines. She’d had dozens of conversations on the subject herself, and it was one about which she had fierce opinions.
“You’re saying modern medicine has failed?”
“Not failed. Was never meant to be.”
She knew that he’d studied for two years at medical school, and the very idea was almost inconceivable to her. How could someone with such a background convert to some dime-store belief system?
“Well, there’ve actually been studies about prayer,” Laura said. “I’ve read them, with interest. But they are all seriously flawed. There’s not a scrap of real scientific proof it works.”
“I’m proof. I never get sick anymore.”
“I’ve seen malignant tumors in your bloodstream. You’ve just got a good immune system.”
“God rewards the worthy. The others were meant to die for their sins.”
“A two-year-old girl with retinoblastoma? What’s her sin?”
Haines looked at her impassively. “Your sentimentality is so common now. We’re all of us sinners, but our age has tried so hard to deny it. You all fear death so much, but death is not the worst thing that can happen to you.”
Her hearted pounded with anger as she turned away, knees weak. She didn’t want to talk anymore. It had all been a mistake, a folly of her own egotism, and she regretted it. She couldn’t believe she’d actually been readying journal citations, statistics for his edification. Pathetic.
She began to label the second blood bag, trying to still her shaking hand.
“You think you’ve found some miracle cure inside me? God’s not the only one who works miracles on this earth. It’s a devil’s cure. And God have mercy on you if you unleash it.”
She looked up at him.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
His eyes were mournful.
“Then better you had not been born.”
She removed the second bag of Haines’s blood from the stand and placed it beside the first in the cooler. That done, she removed the catheter from his arm. Then, from a sterile package she took the bone marrow needle and showed it to Haines.
“You know what this is, right?”
It was hollow, about four inches long and as thick as a pen refill. At the top was a removable knob that enabled you to put the force of both hands behind the needle.
Haines said nothing.
“I’m going to drive it into your hip bone until it hits marrow. I’ll take an aspirate in two locations. It’ll hurt. Are you allergic to any drugs?”
Haines just sniffed contemptuously.
In her years as a resident she’d gained plenty of experience taking stem cell samples from the marrow. Like most neophytes, she’d been too delicate at first, afraid of inflicting pain, afraid of the needle skittering off the bone into unanesthetized flesh. But she’d learned you needed to put your full weight behind the needle, gouging into the bone until you felt the give and knew you’d entered marrow. She’d learned to close her eyes when she pushed: it helped her to concentrate, to feel her way through the bone by touch; and it meant she didn’t have to look at the patient’s suffering.
In her experience it was often the children who were bravest, the ones who had become so accustomed, so early, to pain and indignities that this was simply another excruciating procedure to be endured. In her early days, she had provided the tears for them, turning her face so they wouldn’t see her eyes as she ratcheted the needle into their hips.
“I’ll give you a local anesthetic—unless you don’t believe in those either.”
Again, Haines said nothing. She preferred it this way.
“We’re going to roll you onto your side first.”
She nodded to Allan and Joseph and they smartly approached the table and methodically began to loosen some of Haines’s straps. She’d told them ahead of time this would be necessary. The two straps across his right arm had to be removed altogether, the chest and hip belts slackened.
Haines rolled over onto his left side easily, even cooperatively. Laura thought she detected a certain resignation to his body gestures. Blood loss. She was right to take the blood first, he’d have less fight in him for the harvest. His eyes had a glassy sheen, and his lips were forming inaudible prayers. Good. Let him keep himself busy. The two guards re-tightened the straps around Haines’s new position and stood back to watch.
With a sterile syringe Laura pulled back five ccs of xylocaine. She swabbed his hip.
“I’ll pray for you, Doctor.”
Her forearms erupted in gooseflesh. The words, spoken so calmly, sounded like a benediction, but one perverted with menace.
She pricked the flesh below the crown of his hip, slowly pushing deeper as she dispensed the anesthetic, and drawing back on the needle periodically to make sure she hadn’t hit a vein. If she did, there’d be a telltale seep of blood back into the needle; too much xylocaine into the bloodstream and you could have a cardiac arrest on your hands. The plunger hit bottom and she slid the needle out.
“We’ll give it about a minute to take effect.”
She turned away from him to put the spent needle back on the tray. She registered the look of shock on Allan’s face before she heard the noise—a horrible gurgling emanating from Haines’s throat. She whirled, found him writhing against the restraints, his face already red and misted with sweat.
All at once she was back in the emergency room, an anxious intern, mind narrowed to imperatives. Assess. Allergic reaction. To the xylocaine itself? No, almost unheard of. The carrying agent was the only real possibility, the chemical preservative mixed with the anesthetic. So rare, but it had been known to happen.
From Haines’s grinding jaws, saliva and sputum seeped into the pillow and paper sheets. Her throat constricted sympathetically.
“I need him on his back!” she shouted.
She saw Allan and Joseph both hesitate.
“He’s choking!”
They came forward then, their faces pale masks of shock, and started loosening belts.
Laura ran to the cabinets and snapped open three cupboards before she found the crash cart. Shit. Why hadn’t she imagined this as a possibility, at least had things standing by? She dragged the crash cart across the room, eyes darting over the contents of the preassembled emergency kit: de-fib paddles, syringes, ampoules of adrenaline and epinephrine, surgical tape, a penlight—and the intubation equipment. She’d have to get a line down his throat before it closed completely.
Haines was on his back now, eyes bulging, jaws working desperately to force air down his throat. Laura yanked the eight-inch plastic hose from the crash cart, inserted the guide wire.
“Help me hold him still!”
Allan put one large hand across Haines’s forehead and pressed down. Haines’s teeth were clenched tight and Laura had to pry them apart with her hands, getting bitten twice in the process. She put the penlight in her mouth and clamped hard, keeping the beam focused on his throat. He was coughing and gagging so much it was difficult to see the extent of the swelling, but the mucous membranes did look dangerously inflamed. Without hesitation she shoved the tube through the gnashing teeth and down his throat—no time for delicacy. He fought it, bucking, but she got it down to his vocal cords in time. She pulled back the guide wire and checked for air flow. Good.
But when she looked at his eyes she saw he wasn’t blinking. He was going into shock. Quickly she taped the tube to the side of his mouth and reached for the crash cart again, fingers dancing over ampoules until they hit the pre-loaded syringe of epinephrine. She wished she’d kept the catheter in his arm—it would’ve been quicker access for the drugs. Intramuscular was her only option now. She checked the dosage, half a millilitre and—
The syringe, suddenly, was in his hand.
“Hey!”
Haines closed his fist around it, and his right arm described a small, perfect arc, slamming the needle up to its hilt in Allan’s eye socket. Screaming, the guard plucked frantically at the syringe. But he couldn’t move, because Haines had hooked his fingers around his chest holster, snapping the catch. The flap sprung open and Allan finally lurched back. His gun slipped free into Haines’s hand. Haines’s index finger was already crooking itself around the trigger.
Laura saw his eyes then, and they were not the eyes of a man in anaphylactic shock. In that sliver of a second she knew he’d faked everything, and done it infallibly, down to the last detail. His breath came in harsh, rapid bursts, amplified grotesquely through the plastic tubing still in his throat. His eyes locked on hers as the gun swung towards her.
“Move!”
She felt Joseph’s hand on her arm, wrenching her to one side so that he’d have a clear shot. A volley of gunfire reverberated through the lab before she even hit the floor. Crouched beneath the operating table she saw Joseph sit down suddenly, like a surprised toddler. The left side of his face was missing. Another shot hit him in the chest, knocking him flat.
All her senses had become strangely sluggish: her vision had contracted to a tunnel; she was aware of no sound except the bizarre whistling gasp of Haines’s breathing directly overhead. She stared dully at the blood pooling around Joseph’s body—an impossible amount, it seemed, until she realized it wasn’t all coming from Joseph. Her eyes swung slowly to the wall cabinets. Bullets had blasted apart the cooler, and in numb horror she understood that it was Haines’s blood that was seeping across the floor, mingling with the guard’s. She blinked, feeling an overwhelming sorrow.
“Goddamnit!” The word, shrieked in agony through clenched teeth, snapped her from her reverie. It was Allan, one hand clamped over his eye socket, trying to stand. She didn’t want to watch, but before he’d even straightened up, a bullet hit him in the abdomen, and he folded over onto himself, collapsing in a heap. He gave a long, defeated wheeze and was still.
