Patient One (23 page)

David shook his head. “It’s not anemia from blood loss. It’s volume depletion. A liter of saline will take care of it.”

Carolyn asked quickly, “Do you want me to start an IV on you?”

David nodded. “Pronto. And while you’re getting the IV set up, check on the President and see if he’s bleeding again.”

“Okay,” Carolyn said, rising to her feet. “But you stay put! Don’t you move off of this couch, and I mean it. I can’t get through this mess without you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” David assured her.

“You stay put!” Carolyn ordered again, and hurried out of the room.

David leaned back, weak and now bone-weary as well. He felt his eyes closing and had to fight to keep them open.
Don’t sleep,
he commanded himself.
Because if you do, you’ll sleep deeply and lose valuable time, and your leg will stiffen and you’ll be worthless in combat. And people will die because your brain was muddled by a little sleep, but not nearly enough. So stay awake!
He stretched out his leg and the throbbing pain came back. Good! That would keep his mind occupied on something other than sleep.

He looked over to Marci, who now had a white washcloth covering her forehead. It accentuated her eyes and nose and cheeks, making them appear far more prominent than they really were. Part of the washcloth was draped down along the side of her face and when she turned, it moved, like the end of a turban blowing in the wind …

Oh, God!
David groaned as a flashback came into his mind.
Not here! Not now!

But the images sharpened and the memories flooded back. A screaming mob of African terrorists were running toward him, yelling at the top of their lungs, the ends of their white turbans flying in the air. They were old and young—some boys, some men, all filled with hate and showing no fear. Then came the gunfire and explosions. The dead were everywhere, some without arms or legs or heads. Yet more came, their numbers endless. The Special Forces unit was surrounded with no way out. The mob was howling for their necks.

David jerked his consciousness back to the present. Sweat was pouring off him, his hands shaking so badly they flapped. And he couldn’t catch his breath. With effort he clasped his hands together and forced himself to inhale. As air went into his bronchi, David heard a wheezing noise.
Shit! Oh, shit! I sound like an asthmatic
. He had to strain even harder to expand his lungs. Ever so slowly, his breathing eased and the other symptoms of his panic attack subsided.

David lay back heavily and gathered himself. The attacks had never come this close together. And they couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Goddamn it! I’m turning into an invalid, just when I need every ounce of my strength to survive!

He stiffened suddenly, as he heard footsteps coming down the corridor. They were heavy footsteps, accompanied by a rattling sound he didn’t recognize. David hoped it wasn’t Aliev, but braced himself in case it was.

Carolyn rushed back into the suite, dragging an IV pole behind her. “The President is doing okay.”

“What’s the color of his gastric juice?” David asked.

“Light pink with no clots,” Carolyn replied, as she applied a tourniquet and rubbed alcohol over a vein in David’s forearm.

“He may still be oozing blood,” David worried.

“That beats the hell out of hemorrhaging, doesn’t it?” Carolyn expertly started an IV and taped the needle into place. “How fast do you want it to run?”

“Wide open.”

Carolyn adjusted the IV flow, then sat down next to David and sighed wearily. “This reminds me of my days as a flight nurse.”

David looked over quickly. “You rode an ER helicopter?”

“For five years, before I decided to work on the Beaumont Pavilion,” Carolyn answered, smiling weakly at the memory. “I miss it. There’s something about zooming around in a helicopter that gives you a real adrenaline rush.”

“It can be addictive,” David recalled.

“Do you miss it, too?” Carolyn asked.

“The copter rides—yeah,” David said wistfully. “But not the hell that came after.”

“Well, it looks like that hell is catching up with you again.”

“And with you.”

Carolyn stared out into space briefly, then said candidly, “I just hope I don’t fall apart when hell comes.”

“It’s already here,” David said, reaching over to gently squeeze her hand. “And you’re doing great.”

“You’re the one doing great. Only God knows how you’ve been able to hold things together up here.”

“Just dumb luck.”

“Baloney! You’re not some ordinary academician. If you were, you’d be in a corner, shaking in your boots at this moment.”

David shrugged and looked up at the IV streaming into his arm. He wished it was a unit of whole blood. That would surely set things straight.

“Right?” Carolyn persisted.

David shrugged again.

“Don’t you clam up on me,” Carolyn said bluntly. “I’ve got some important questions about you, and I want answers.”

David had to smile at her directness. “Fire away.”

“You were a doctor in the military. Right?” Carolyn asked.

David shook his head. “I became a doctor after my military service.”

“Which branch were you in?”

“Special Forces.”

“Really?” Carolyn said, taken by surprise. But then she nodded, thinking that would explain a lot. “What kind of missions did you go on?”

“You don’t want to know,” David muttered, his face tightening. He hated talking about the past. Hated it. Because it always brought back the bad memories. “Ask me about something else.”

“Okay,” Carolyn said, now seeing an opening she’d been waiting for. “How come a good-looking doctor like you isn’t married?”

“I was,” David replied, looking up at the IV bag, which was still three-quarters full. He wished the whole liter was already in so he could stand and walk out. “A long time ago.”

“And?” Carolyn pressed on.

“Marianne was a nurse at Walter Reed, where they restructured my chin after the helicopter crash that ended my military career,” David said neutrally. “She got me through a bad time. We fell in love. We married. I went back to college and got into medical school, and we planned for a wonderful future together. I graduated, did an ER residency, and was offered a faculty position at University Hospital. I rose up through the ranks and became Chief of the Service. Life was great. It couldn’t have been better. We had a big house and a beautiful baby daughter. Then one day Marianne had a sudden nosebleed that wouldn’t stop and was seen by our family physician. She was diagnosed with acute myeloblastic leukemia, and died eight months later.”

“Oh,” Carolyn said softly, and looked away. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

Carolyn flicked her wrists, unhappy with herself. “Sometimes I talk too much.”

“You’re doing fine,” David said, pushing Marianne’s face from his mind. But the sound of her voice—that warm, wonderful voice—stayed for a moment longer. It was always the last part of the memory to leave. “What about you? I’d guess that someone as pretty as you has been married before.”

“No such luck.”

“Not even close?”

“Once I was close. Or so I thought. He was a handsome neurosurgeon who was separated from his wife and promised me everything. Marriage. Children. The big house. A vacation home …” She let her voice trail off, her mind drifting for a moment.

“And?”

“And he went back to his wife,” Carolyn said without bitterness. “And I went back to dating uninteresting men, with a few meaningless flings here and there.” She sighed heavily to herself before adding, “None of them worth talking about.”

“And then?”

“Then you find yourself in your late thirties, and even the uninteresting men aren’t around anymore. So you resign yourself to staying single.”

“No interesting men at all?” David asked.

“Only one,” Carolyn said and smiled thinly at him. “And he just came into my life.”

David squeezed her hand a little tighter. “Have you always been this subtle?”

“Always.”

David reached for her chin and guided her lips to his. He kissed her softly, feeling her warmth and her pleasant shiver. “Do you usually sweep men off their feet like this?”

“Only the special ones,” Carolyn said as she kissed him back.

“Where’s an empty linen closet when you need one?”

“Almost halfway down the hall,” she said, smiling slyly and kissing him again. “Do you know what I wish for right now?”

“What?”

“For the whole world to disappear for a while, except for you and me.”

“It just did,” David said softly and drew her even closer.

They heard footsteps rapidly approaching. Two terrorists were grumbling loudly to one another.

“Can you make out what they’re saying?” Carolyn asked quietly.

David shook his head. “They’re speaking Chechen, but I can tell from the sound of their voices that they’re pissed off about something.”

“Jesus! What now?”

“Who knows? Just be very careful what you say. Remember, they can understand every word you utter.”

“Chances are they’ll ask about the guard.”

“If they do, play dumb.”

The footsteps were now just outside the door, the voices even angrier.

David and Carolyn quickly moved apart.

Aliev hurried into the room, and glared at David and the IV running into his arm. “What are you doing in here?”

“He was about to pass out from fluid loss,” Carolyn answered hastily. “He needed an IV.”

“We tried the treatment room,” David lied easily. “But there was no IV pole in there.”

“And there was an extra one in Marci’s room,” Carolyn added to the lie.

Aliev’s expression turned into a snarl. He waved away the explanation, either not believing it or not caring. “You were told to stay, and you disobeyed.”

“But he needed the fluid,” Carolyn argued. “He was about
to—”

“Enough!” Aliev cut her off. “If this happens again, you won’t have to worry about fluids, because you will both be dead. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Carolyn said submissively. Then she swallowed hard and requested. “May we finish the infusion?”

“No!” Aliev snapped. “The IV is to be stopped at once.”

“Why?” Carolyn protested mildly. “It’s only a saline solution. It can’t—”

Aliev viciously slapped at the IV line, jerking the needle out of David’s vein. Saline sprayed onto Carolyn and across the room. Some of it reached Marci. The girl choked back a scream.

David clenched his fists, resisting the urge to kick Aliev in his testicles and grab the Uzi. The Chechen was close enough for David to do it. But it would also be a death wish, because he and Carolyn would end up dead, killed by the balding terrorist in the doorway.

Aliev glowered down at David. “Do you have something to say?”

David shook his head and looked away.

Aliev’s eyes suddenly narrowed. He quickly glanced around the suite before asking, “Where is the man who was guarding you?”

David shrugged. “He stepped outside a few minutes ago.”

Aliev turned to the terrorist in the doorway and barked out orders in Chechen. The balding terrorist hollered down the corridor, then waited for a response. Moments later two voices answered. The terrorist looked back to Aliev and shook his head.

Aliev glared at David, saying, “We had better find our man or someone up here will pay a terrible price.”

David was about to suggest that the missing man may have defected, but held his tongue. The last thing he wanted to do was agitate Aliev further.

Aliev growled under his breath, obviously upset with the turn of events. He checked under Marci’s bed and in the bathroom for the missing terrorist, then came back to David and Carolyn. “When the guard left the room, which way did he go?”

David shrugged again. “I didn’t notice.”

“Why do I have the feeling that you are lying to me?” Aliev glowered.

“We didn’t see the direction he went,” Carolyn reaffirmed. “He just walked …”

There was a sudden commotion in the corridor, with loud yells and racing footsteps. The balding terrorist stuck his head into the room and blurted out a long sentence in Chechen.

Aliev clenched his jaw as his face turned a deep red. He grabbed David by the collar and jerked him up to his feet. Then he motioned to Carolyn with his Uzi. “Both of you, outside.”

In the corridor, Aliev shoved David and Carolyn into the stairwell for the fire stairs, where a terrorist was pointing to a smear of blood on the white concrete floor next to the staircase. Aliev put his index finger on the smear and noted that the blood was fresh. Stepping back, he quickly scanned the solid walls of the enclosure, then peered down the stairs and into the space between the staircases. Finally, he checked the underside of the stairs going up.

“I think the American Secret Service has taken him prisoner,” Aliev deduced, now speaking Chechen. “And they must have killed my cousin in the kitchen as well. It seems they have found their way around our booby traps.”

“But how?” the balding terrorist asked.

“That I do not know,” Aliev said and hurriedly snapped his fingers at a third terrorist. “Use your cell phone and connect me to the Vice President.”

“Should I tell them why?”

“No,” Aliev told him, then brought his attention back to David and Carolyn and switched to English. “Did you hear sounds of a struggle?”

“None,” David answered. “But remember, we were busy caring for a very ill patient.”

“And what about you?” Aliev asked Carolyn.

Carolyn shook her head.

Aliev stared at the couple, looking for signs that would indicate they were lying.

The terrorist next to Aliev handed over the cell phone, saying, “The Vice President is ready for you.”

Aliev continued to stare at David and Carolyn as he spoke into the cell.

“Listen very carefully, Lady Vice President. One of my men is missing and I know he has been captured by your Secret Service. If he is not returned to me within two minutes I will kill a hostage.” Aliev paused and listened closely to the response. “Yes. I will stay on the line.”