Presidential Donor (6 page)

Ritter stood up and leaned his knuckles against the table.

"How could you idiots let this happen? Don't you know you've wasted precious time the President doesn't have?" Ritter laid it on thick.

"Not to mention, the national security issue," Charlie Lathbury chimed in.

Bradley was getting frustrated. "I realize that. We have already started another search."

National Security Advisor Pete Mazur stood up. "Mr. Bradley, could you excuse us for a few minutes. I'm sure you understand. This is a very sensitive issue, and we need to confer in private. I'll meet with you in your office, just as soon as we're finished here."

"Of course," Bradley said, and slipped quietly out the door.

When Bradley had left, Mazur took a deep breath and pushed his heavy glasses higher on his nose. His eyes appeared huge and bug-like behind the lenses, so thick they appeared cut from Coke bottles.

"All right, what I'm about to say might sound cruel, it might sound callous, and it may even shock you, but I'm going to say it anyway. Our President needs a heart. The only suitable donor is alive and well right here in Zurich. We don't even know if another donor can be found. So I ask you, what are our options?"

"I think we know the answer to that," Charlie Lathbury said.

Ritter stood up. "We need to act fast.
Now--who is this donor?"

"Mr. Mazur, this is unbelievable. Not only is it morally and ethically wrong, it's not something I want myself, or the hospital, involved in."

"I don't think you understand, Mr. Bradley," Mazur said, boring down on him. "It's a matter of national security for the United States."

Bradley ran his hand through his oily hair. "Yes, but what you're talking about is tantamount to murder!"

"You are an American, are you not, Mr. Bradley? Or has living over here changed your values?"

Bradley exhaled silently. "Of course not."

"Then you can understand why we have to do this. The President needs a heart, you've got a donor, and we need him."

"A donor who is not dead," Bradley said. "A donor who is
not
even a donor anymore." Bradley's ruddy complexion had turned scarlet.

Mazur's face hardened. "Exactly my point--he still is a donor. That's all you need to know, or say, we will handle the rest."

"Mr. Mazur please tr--"

"You just make sure his records disappear--quickly. Furthermore, you are to tell no one about this. Not one single person. Do you understand, Mr. Bradley?"

"I understand." Bradley felt bile in his throat.

"Good," Mazur stood up, then excused himself. Halfway out the door, he stuck his head back in and looked at Bradley.
"No one."

Bradley nodded as the door closed. He sat down at his desk and his hands collapsed in his lap. His fear turned to anger as he considered his choices. He looked around the room at all the administrative awards he had garnered over the years. Degrees and diplomas covered his walls. Nothing, however, could have prepared him for this.
It wasn't something they taught in school.

"Goddammit." He slammed his fist down on the desk.

Bradley picked up the phone and punched the extension for medical records. After one ring, a clerk picked up.

"Medical records," the voice said.

"This is Bob Bradley. I need a patient's records brought over from Zurich Trauma. I need all of them right away, and I don't want them copied. I just want the original hard copies in my office in the next half hour. His name is Jack McDermott. Thank You."

Bradley hung up the phone and stood in numb silence for a minute. He went to his computer and logged on. He hesitated for a moment, then punched in a special code known only to him.

The prompt appeared on the screen, and he typed: JACK MCDERMOTT- MEDICAL RECORDS-COMPLETE LIST. The computer clicked several times as the file downloaded to the hard drive.

When it finished the screen read: MEDICAL RECORDS DOWNLOAD COMPLETE

Bradley's hand trembled as he moved it back to the keyboard to do the unthinkable. He pushed the delete key and another prompt appeared: ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DELETE THIS FILE? He pointed the mouse at yes, and clicked. In an instant he removed any trace of Jack McDermott ever being a patient at Zurich Trauma. The only remaining thing to do was to get the actual paper records that were on their way to him now.

Twenty-five minutes later, there was a soft tap on his door. When he opened it, a medical records clerk stood there with stack of manila folders in her hands.

"Here are the records you asked for, Mr. Bradley."

"Thank you," He took the files and placed them on his desk.

"You need anything else?" the clerk asked.

"No, that's all, thank you."

Bradley stared at the eight-inch pile of folders. He shook his head as he left his office.

God forgive me.

Peter Schell sat down at his computer terminal and decided to back track. He had to find out how he'd screwed up Jack McDermott's file. Maybe he could still redeem himself. If he could come up with a legitimate reason, perhaps Bradley would go easy on him.

He typed in the name: JACK McDERMOTT

To his surprise, NO FILE FOUND came up. He typed it in a second time, checking the spelling against the name written on the three by five cards. Once again, though, NO FILE FOUND came up.
Impossible
. Probably a computer glitch. He decided he would call medical records, but first he needed to take a much-needed smoke break. The stresses of the morning were taking a toll on him, and he needed to relax for a few minutes.

Schell got up and walked down the hall to the back exit where he could smoke without being noticed. Being a heart hospital, they took a dim view of someone who smoked.

A light snow greeted him as he stepped out the door. He pulled his collar up close around his neck and lit up his cigarette. He took a long drag, blowing the smoke out forcefully, as if it took all his anxiety with it.

He could little afford to lose his job. With a wife and two kids to support, it was all he could do to make ends meet now. If he were to get fired, it might mean returning to Yugoslavia. He felt a sudden chill.
I'll never go back there.

Suddenly, his peripheral vision caught a glimpse of
something.
The only thing Schell registered momentarily was the feel of a hand on his chin--then excruciating pain--
and the crunching sound his head made as it was nearly twisted off.

Then blackness...

On the third floor of Zurich Trauma, the nurse on duty poured some red medicine in a plastic cup and started down the hall. Two attendants in green scrubs pushed a stretcher up to the nurses' station and stopped. One of them, a powerfully built man with a crew cut, smiled at her. "We need Mr. McDermott in radiology," he said.

"Do you need help getting him on the stretcher?"

"No, I think we can handle it."

She cocked her head. "You're new, I don't remember you."

"You're right, today is my first day."

"I thought so. Anyway, Mr. McDermott is in 316."

"Thanks," crew cut said. He pushed the stretcher down the hall with the other attendant behind him.

* * *

Standing before his window, Jack had no doubt his afternoon plans were already cast in stone. He remembered Dr. Leah mentioning some kind of test.

Something to check for any residual head injury, as he'd put it. Leah told him if it came back clear he could go home.
Home my ass.

The story awaiting him now became far more compelling than the one that he came here for.
The President with a massive heart attack.
He would stay here and cover the story, banged up head or not. He turned to see two attendants enter his room with a stretcher.

"Okay, Mr. McDermott, you can climb on the stretcher now," one of the attendants said.

Jack slid onto the stretcher, keenly aware of the pain pinching in his neck.

He still had his IV, and the nurse had given him a shot of Demerol less than twenty minutes ago, but it hadn't taken effect yet. It didn't completely eliminate the pain, but it made it tolerable. He saw the nurse coming up the hall and craned his neck to give her a wave.

Jack felt a slight buzzing sensation in his head.
Sensory overload,
he thought. For senses dull, just hours before. He was dreaming for all he knew, just
dreaming
he woke up. Subconscious wishful thinking from his accident-induced sleep.

As the attendants pushed the gurney onto the elevator, and the doors closed, Jack felt a tingle in his legs. As the elevator descended, he moved a little to one side thinking his legs had fallen asleep.
This Demerol seems different than before.
His lower body suddenly felt like a lead blanket was placed on it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the attendant behind him pull something from the IV line. The elevator continued down, seconds passed.

When the elevator finally stopped, Jack tried to speak, but his lips wouldn't move. It was as if his mouth hadn't gotten the command. Then it came to him in a sickening revelation.

He was paralyzed!

Panic engulfed him. He was aware of everything around him. He just couldn't move anything
--not even an eyelid
. Now he was certain something terrible was happening to him!

He could hear the two attendants...

"Stuff works fast doesn't it?"

"Best shit there is," answered the other voice.

"How long will it keep him out?"

"What do I look like, a fucking chemist? I don't know. I just follow orders. Put the stuff in the IV, then bring him to the morgue--period. No specifics or drug pharmokinetics; I just know it's good shit, cause I've used it before."

"Hey, sorry I asked."

"I'm sorry, man, I'm just a little jumpy."

Jack felt a jolt of terror go through him.
What the fuck?
Why are they doing this? He heard the crackle of a radio, then a voice.

"This is Rye, we've secured subject. Ten-twenty in the morgue."

The morgue?
Jack thought
. Why in the hell was he in the morgue? He was alive!

At least he thought he was.

At least for now!

Eva Smorzak smiled as she walked into her favorite place in the hospital--
the morgue.
Although trained as an anesthesiologist, she loved pathology, especially forensic pathology. As far as medicine went, it was tops. That is, if you could call it medicine at all. To her, it was beyond medicine. Since in the traditional sense, medicine deals with making people well, where forensic pathology tries to figure out how someone died. Not that Eva was the least bit morbid, it simply fascinated her. How you could take a piece of hip bone, found in a creek somewhere, and then tie it to a homicide, perpetrated two years earlier. Then figure out, the bone belonged to a woman whose husband had taken a chain saw to her. It boggled the mind.

In the darkest reaches of her subconscious, Eva thought perhaps her fascination with death lie in her grandparent's slaughter in the holocaust. All those haunting images of emaciated corpses, thrown in a pile, like compost.

Maybe she
was
morbid. Maybe it eased her pain.

So here she was in Jonah Bailey's world again today. Had it not been for a certain professor of pathology at her med school, she might have become Jonah's official assistant. The professor told Eva six months into her internship; she didn't possess the tenacity for forensics. Her confidence shaken, she changed to anesthesia--all because of a male chauvinist jerk.
She would like to do his anesthesia--free of charge--should the need ever arise.

Jonah Bailey looked up from the autopsy table and smiled when Eva walked up.

"Eva." His voice boomed of the tile walls loud enough to wake the corpse in front of him.

She looked at the body on the table. The long Y-shaped incision extending from the neck to the pubic bone was already closed. Eva made a pouty face.

"I'm too late."

"Oh there's plenty more," Jonah said. "You have time?"

"I don't have anything better to do. This isn't exactly
romance-central
around here."

Jonah grinned. "You know, Eva, this guy here looks like your type."

Eva burst out laughing. "Very funny! Now that you mention it, though, a corpse does sound better than nothing."

"Sick sense of humor. I like that." Jonah said.

They walked to the adjoining room where gurneys stood lined up side by side. Every gurney held a body covered by a white sheet. Toe tags decorated discolored feet that peeked from under each one. Being the largest trauma center for hundreds of miles, they had no shortage of accident victims, and the unfortunate ones ended up here with Jonah. Eva looked at all the bodies and wondered how Jonah ever got caught up. She was glad she could help. The ever-present odor of death and formaldehyde lingered in the air, and Eva tried to ignore it. The work was so much more interesting than putting people to sleep.

"So what do we have today?" she asked.

"Interesting case, just brought in. Thirty-year-old white male. Found on the side of the road not far from here. No visible trauma, been dead less than twenty-four hours."

"Whatta ya think?"

Jonah furrowed his brow. I don't know yet. Let's take a closer look. Can you hand me that tray over there?"

"Sure." As Eva walked down the row of gurneys, she brushed against the last one. The sheet covering it slipped off and exposed part of the body.

"Oops."

Jonah looked over as she started to put the sheet back in place.

"Wait a minute, Eva." He walked around the gurney. "I know this guy, I'm sure of it."

Eva pulled the sheet back and took a closer look.

She gasp!