ADRENALINE: New 2013 edition (36 page)

Rusty had done well with his surgery and now was resting comfortably in the SICU. Doug noticed the cold snap had finally broken, and the wind had died down. He gazed at the horizon as he walked. The sun was in no hurry to show itself, but judging from the clear skies, it looked like it would turn out to be a nice day.

An approaching vehicle crunched on the loose gravel and broke the morning silence. Doug stopped walking and waited for the familiar Explorer to be parked. Ken Danowski climbed out, grabbed his duffel bag and ambled over to Doug.

“Morning, Doug,” he said. Doug saw Ken do a double take when he took a closer look at him. “Wow, you look like shit. Bad night?”

“I’ve had better,” Doug replied with a tired smile.

“What the hell’s going on? Does this have anything to do with all the police cars I saw out front?”

Doug gave Ken the complete story of what had happened last night. Ken let out a big whoop when he learned the truth about the sabotaged cases. He’d obviously been wallowing in guilt and self-doubt ever since his awareness case with Mrs. Lubriani. Ken skipped into the hospital, now apparently ready to tackle his day on call.

Doug continued to make his way to his truck. He was physically exhausted but was strangely more at peace with himself than he had been in years. He was still broken up over Mike’s death, but he realized he had not been responsible. Mike’s drug abuse had nothing to do with his death; he had been murdered. Turning him in wouldn’t have changed a thing. Doug felt certain of this and was greatly relieved.

He stopped by the trashcan. He had two things to dispose of. He unzipped his bag and retrieved the letter to Dr. Nichols. Doug stared at it, unwilling to part with the letter just yet. It was a link to several days ago when Mike was alive. He would miss Mike badly; as a friend, he was irreplaceable. Several tears surfaced, and one managed to drip onto the letter. “Goodbye, friend,” he whispered as he ripped up the letter and tossed it in, watching the shreds flutter down. No point in telling anyone now.

But there was something else, something more important, contributing to Doug’s peace. When he had been close to death, with Raskin’s hands coiled tightly around his neck, he had been forced deep inside himself. He had discovered that his inner core was really a fusion of his own being with that of Laura and the kids. The very emotions he had sought to keep frozen for so long had actually saved him. This was where his strength really flowed from.

A wellspring of love and commitment for Laura bubbled forth. Its headwaters traced their origin almost twenty years ago to their
young romance when they had first met, passionate and vigorous. Several years later, marriage vows added force to the gathering waters. Downstream further, with the addition of each child like a feeding tributary, the stream was transformed to a river, complete with areas of turbulence and calm but always joined by a current of conviction. The river grew in width, depth, and strength as they shared the trials of parenthood and suffered through the heartache of losing their grandparents and two of their parents.

It had all become clear to him.

His attraction to Jenny was revealed for what it was—a lifeless, ghostlike imitation that was swept away like debris before the raging floodwaters of his true love. He reached into his bag a second time and pulled out his hotel reservation for the Hyatt on the Inner Harbor. He tore it up and hurled it into the trashcan. Who’s in charge, anyway?

He hopped up into his truck and gunned the engine. He couldn’t wait to see Laura and make up for lost time.

Dr. John Benedict, husband and father of three sons, graduated cum laude from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and entered post-graduate training at Penn State University College of Medicine. There, he completed medical school, internship, anesthesia residency and a cardiac anesthesia fellowship. He currently works as an anesthesiologist in a busy private practice in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Author website:
johnbenedictmd.com

Author email:
[email protected]

(The author welcomes all feedback and correspondence.)

Don’t miss
The Edge of Death
, John Benedict’s mind-bending sequel to
Adrenaline
. Available Now!

From the Back Cover:

Powerful creatures have long been rumored to roam the Earth—demons, wraiths, the undead, vampires. What if they are not just the stuff of legend? What if there is a scientific basis for their existence?

There’s a secret lab in the basement of the prestigious Buchanan Medical Center, where the newly declared dead become subjects in pathologist Gunter Mueller’s research in cutting-edge resuscitation medicine. None of his subjects have survived—
until now
.

Not only is he alive, Nick Chandler has undergone a chilling metamorphosis into a man of supernatural prescience, superhuman strength, and absolutely no remorse—as Chip Allison and his friend Kristin Duffy quickly discover. Chip is on duty as monitor watcher in the ICU when Chandler is wheeled in; mere minutes later, Chandler has fled into the night, leaving behind a violently murdered nurse, the first of many victims.

Besides being an avid dog lover, Kristin has an interesting hobby: she takes Kirlian photographs—images of the auras all living creatures give off. When she applies the technique to a photo of Chandler inadvertently captured on the night of his escape,
Chandler has no aura
. And somehow, Chandler knows she has that damning photograph...

Still suffering flashbacks after being attacked by his former boss wielding a bone saw three years ago, anesthesiologist Doug Landry is teaching residents at the Buchanan Med Center during a six-month sabbatical when his wife Laura is seriously injured in a biking accident. When things go terribly wrong on the operating table, Laura is delivered to Dr. Mueller for resuscitation...

EXCERPT FROM
THE EDGE OF DEATH:

CHAPTER ONE

Tuesday, 5:00 p.m.

Consciousness crept slowly into Nick Chandler’s brain, fingers of awareness snaking into his mind like shafts of sunlight penetrating the morning haze. Here, in the meadow where he lay, there was no time—or pain. He was content to bask in the warm sun and drink in the mingled scent of freshly mown grass and the heady nectar of honeysuckle. Such peacefulness was beyond his experience.

Voices that seemed miles away hummed lightly about his ears. Or was it just the sound of insects flitting about in the hedgerow? The only other sensation he felt was the rhythmic whoosh of air being forced into his mangled chest.

Thoughts began to coalesce, disturbing ones. Questions queued up for attention, threatening to perforate the fuzzy cocoon of his mind.
Where am I? What happened to me?
Then a stranger thought, more insistent, jumped the line.
Am I dead?

Chandler shooed these thoughts away—he didn’t want to deal with any questions right now. Answers usually brought pain and he preferred the tranquil limbo of his nonexistence. But one question buzzed back, like a pesky horsefly, refusing to be ignored: Was this what it felt like to be dead? He couldn’t be sure—and, he realized, he didn’t care. Deep down, though, he remembered that people were
supposed
to care about such things.

He sensed that something was different about him, changed somehow, though he couldn’t put his finger on it; the feeling was way too vague. But he knew he was right.

Chandler sighed. Too much work for now—he was bone-tired. Besides, the sunlit meadow beckoned. He let his mind submerge again, bobbing just beneath the surface of consciousness.

An unknowable amount of time passed as Chandler drifted in and out, until the buzzing returned and grew louder, finally nudging him awake. He sensed other people around him, picked up bits of conversation.

“ . . . congestive heart failure secondary to viral myocarditis . . .”

“ . . . overwhelming sepsis with full-blown ARDS . . .”

“ . . . multi-system organ failure with progressive renal and hepatic shutdown . . .”

Later an older male voice, deep and resonant with a professorial tone, commanded his attention. “Lauren, bring us up to speed on what happened yesterday.”

Chandler struggled to focus and stay awake to hear this part; the meadow would have to wait.

A young female voice, crisp and assertive, answered. “He coded around noontime and we consider it a miracle that we brought him back in the first place. An hour later, though, he arrested again and this time we couldn’t get him back. He was pronounced dead. He was then rushed to PML.”

“You mean Dr. Mueller’s lab?”

“Yes. The postmortem lab.”

“I assume you are all familiar with Dr. Mueller’s groundbreaking research into resuscitation science?” the professor said, garnering quiet murmurs of assent. “Go on, Lauren.”

“The patient was immediately placed on full cardiopulmonary bypass. His heart was stopped with a hyper-cool cardioplegic solution, ultra-low oxygen therapy was instituted, and a slew of cerebral protective drugs and antithrombin agents were administered. After twenty-four hours of this treatment, combined with sufficient resting of the myocardium, they attempted to restart his heart. Amazingly, after several countershocks, his heart resumed beating and he was soon transferred here to the ICU. The patient hasn’t regained consciousness, though.”

That certainly answers a lot of questions
, thought Chandler.
Carol Sue was right about the virus—should’ve listened to her
. And now that they mentioned it, he
did
remember signing some weird form dealing with resuscitation. It was from the Buchanan Med Center Bioethics Committee and was so chock-full of legalese, he hadn’t been able to make heads nor tails of it at the time. But the gist of it was, if any of it came into play, you were basically fucked. And by signing it, you had just helped the hospital install an ironclad covering for their collective butts.

He had been so sick when he was admitted that this particular form and all the others he signed had been a complete blur to him. Except now, he could call to mind clearly the five-page experimental resuscitation protocol that dealt with the Mueller lab. He could page through the sheets in his mind, backward, forward, and zoom into any paragraph for a closer look. He had no idea how this was possible.

The professor spoke again. “So, what is his prognosis at this point?”

Prognosis?
The word was delivered with such grave overtones. Again, Chandler fought off a wave of drowsiness.

“The patient is basically terminal and will be lucky to survive the night,” Lauren answered, delivering her clinical assessment with a tasteful touch of sorrow.

Talk about your good news-bad news
. He wasn’t dead, but it didn’t sound like he had long to live. Except again, Chandler
knew
they were wrong, as they’d been about the consciousness part. He couldn’t say how he knew, or why, just that he felt certain.
But what was it the perky med student, Lauren, said? She considers it a miracle that I’m still alive
. A tiny smile curved his swollen, cracked lips and pulled painfully at the tape holding his endotracheal tube in place.
Miracle might not be quite the right word for it
, he thought, drifting back down into the narcotic haze of the soft meadow.