Sigma One (13 page)

"Heart rate 140 and feeble," he called out.

"Get a blood pressure!" Roddy ordered reaching behind his back for the walkie-talkie that was hung on his belt.

Angel responded by rolling up Burt's right shirtsleeve and strapping on the blood pressure cuff which he then pumped up as he continued monitoring Burt's pulse.

"Blood pressure 70 over 60!"

By this time Roddy had moved toward Burt's head and was leaning over him peering into his eyes.

"This doesn't look good Angel. This guy's fibrillating and his eyes are dilated. Give him 10 cc's of lidocaine to stabilize his heart rate and give him a bicarb. I'll call this in while you're doing it!"

Roddy brought the walkie talkie up to his face.
"Simpson here!"

"Go ahead," the dispatcher replied.

"Looks like we've got another overdose victim. White male. Early twenties. Pupils dilated. Blood pressure 70 over 60. Pulse weak at 140. We'll be in in ten minutes. Notify emergency. The victim hasn't arrested yet, but he is in fibrillation. We administered 10 cc's of lidocaine and are trying to get his pulse stabilized. We'll keep you posted."

"Roger, Simpson. Good luck," The dispatcher then repeated the preliminary diagnosis.

Debbie, on hearing the word "overdose", was shocked. It couldn't be! Not Burt. She reached over and grabbed Roddy by the shoulder.

"Burt doesn't use drugs! It can't be an overdose!" she said vehemently as if her saying it would make it true. She then remembered Burt's earlier strange behavior.

"Listen, Ms. Andrews. We can't be sure, but all of the signs point to an overdose. I've seen alot of these cases. Now if you don't mind, we've got work to do. Please stay out of our way if you want us to help your fiancé."

Debbie's face dropped at being rebuffed, but she did as Roddy said and backed away slowly staring down at the two paramedics working over Burt.

Roddy administered another shot of lidocaine and Angel ran out the door to get the stretcher. Debbie moved forward.

"Is he having a heart attack?" she whispered not wanting to say it aloud. Tears streamed down her face.

"I'm afraid he is, Ms. Andrews." His reply was unfeeling and professionally detached.

Debbie backed away again and put her hands up to her face. "Don't let him die. Don't let him die. Don't let him die." She repeated these words over and over again to herself while visions of her own father's death raced through her mind.

Angel returned shortly with the stretcher and helped Roddy carefully load Burt on it as Debbie watched in anguish. When Burt was securely strapped down, they lifted him and the metal legs of the gurney snapped into place with a loud crack. Debbie hesitated momentarily before following the two out, still thinking about the warning Roddy had given her Parlier about getting in the way. But when she saw they were going to leave without her, she followed and climbed into the back of the ambulance with Angel and Burt. Once she was securely seated in the back, Roddy got into the cab and turned on the siren and lights and quickly accelerated the vehicle down the street toward the hospital.

As they sped along, Debbie looked down at Burt. His breathing was shallow and he was motionless; his eyes, closed. An IV was taped to his arm. She stared at it and said a silent prayer. This was the first time in three years since she and Burt had been going out together she realized how much she needed him. The thought of losing him terrified her and she couldn't help but to begin crying again.

The ride to the hospital only took five minutes. Roddy took a shorter route through the campus and was able to avoid the backup on 101. As they sped down the street from the cafeteria, Debbie kept her eyes on Burt, looking for any sign of improvement; anything that would indicate that this was all a bad dream and not really happening. She didn't notice the other students sunning themselves on the lawns in front of the dormitories in the beautiful California sunshine. She didn't notice the lacrosse game taking place on the playing field or the boy and girl who were walking arm in arm looking dreamily into each other's eyes. She didn't notice anything or pay any attention to anything but Burt. Burt was her life and as she held his hand which was cool to the touch, she could-do nothing but hope and pray he would be all right. She just kept telling herself he'd recover.

Angel could see the intensity in Debbie's eyes and felt sorry for her. It was obvious to him this young lady was in love, but he couldn't help feeling a little angry as well.

"Listen. Ms. Andrews,"Angel said. His dark Mexican eyes burned like coals when he spoke. "I don't know what you and he have going, but take my word for it. He's not worth it! Anyone stupid enough to use drugs doesn't deserve someone like you!"

Roddy overheard his partner and silently agreed.

Debbie was startled at first hearing what Angel had just said. But her feeling of being caught unawares, was quickly replaced with anger as the accusation sank in.

She slowly lifted her gaze up toward the perpetrator and the love that had been in her eyes turned to bitter hatred. Her blue eyes burned with rage.

"Where do you get off making those accusations? You don't even know him and if you did you wouldn't say anything so stupid! Burt never used drugs a day in his life!" She was defiant. She wouldn't sit there passively and have this pseudo-doctor attack Burt. He couldn't defend his honor, so she felt she had to. She wouldn't let him get away with it.

Angel shook his head, but said nothing more. He knew he must have hit a nerve with his comments, but was smart enough to keep quiet now. He probably shouldn't have said what he did, but he felt so strongly about drug users having lost a brother in a drug-related drive-by shooting in East Los Angeles six years earlier, that he let his emotions get the best of him. His brother never used drugs either, but it was drugs that got him killed when he was just twelve years old when some gang member, stoned out of his mind on PCP pulled the trigger, and Angel felt that it was people like Grayson--the buyers--who kept the drug dealers on the streets. Angel had to say something about it earlier, but now was not the time to continue the argument. Even if Grayson used drugs, Angel couldn't jeopardize his life which is what he would be doing if he continued to argue with Debbie and not pay attention to his job, which was to save the miserable bastard now under his care. As much as he would have liked to speak, he didn't, and so he turned his attention to Burt, and away from Debbie.

Debbie sensed the criticality of Burt's situation and didn't pursue the argument further either as she watched Angel pull out another syringe and stick the needle into Burt's arm.

The ambulance screeched to a stop only seconds after Angel finished the injection and the ambulance doors were quickly jerked open even before Roddy shut off the engine.

The bright light burst into the back of the vehicle and stunned Debbie. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dim interior of the vehicle and it took her a few seconds before she saw the crew of three hospital nurses and one doctor motioning her to get out.

Once out of the vehicle, Debbie stepped out of the way and watched the crew quickly lift Burt out and rush him into the hospital.

As they wheeled him in, Angel was walking alongside the doctor and relaying to him the treatment they had given Burt on the way in from the campus. They were too far ahead for her to hear it all. She did overhear the most important part though which gave her a mixed sense of hope and dread as Angel stated that "he hadn't arrested, yet!"

Before going through the entryway to the hospital, Angel turned one last time to Debbie. "We'll do what we can, miss. You'll have to wait in the emergency room lobby." His voice was cold and sent a chill down Debbie's back.

As Angel rounded the corner, he just shook his head in disgust, and answered. "He looks like he's responding to the lidocaine." He then added coldly, "are you sure he didn't use any drugs? This is very important."

Immediately she responded defen
sively. "No,,,,No drugs.               Ever!"

"Okay. You wait here! I've got to go!" he said. With that, he turned his back to her and quickly followed the team of nurses down the hall leaving her alone in the entrance.

Back in his Washington suburbs home, Patrick Huxley sat in his living room chair mulling over in his mind what his lifestyle would be like after he used up the three months he had remaining to make the project work.
O’Shaunnesey's death spelled the end of all that he had worked so hard for over the years, and if a replacement couldn't be found soon it would be impossible for the project to continue. None of his other researchers had the distinct telekinetic ability that seemed to have come so easily for the now-deceased O’Shaunnesey. None of them showed the slightest hint at all of being able to link with a computer. Not that they all weren't great scientists, they were, but there was only one O’Shaunnesey, and in spite of his drunken demeanor and cantankerousness, he had offered the only hope. Now he was gone, and with his death, the future looked dismal.

Just as Pat was about to get up and go for a walk in the backyard to clear his thoughts and to try to get himself out of the pathetic state of self-pity he had driven himself into by dwelling on the death, he heard a car pull up in the driveway. He waited and as suspected, he heard two ear doors slam after the engine was shut off. He looked at his watch and noted the time at 4:30 and knew that Sarah and Alice were home, a distraction he neither wanted nor felt he could manage given the mood he was in. He needed private time to think and he wouldn't be able to get any thinking done with his wife and child around to bother him. He loved his family dearly, but when he had problems like he did right then, he felt it better to be alone. He preferred to sort things out on his own. He didn't feel guilty for feeling that way. To him it came as natural as breathing. He presumed the reasons for his wanting and-needing solitude when he felt pressured, came from the training he had received in the Navy as an aviator. In the air, self-reliance was the key to staying alive. That's what he had been taught in flight school anyway, and that's what he had come to learn to believe. In spite of the fact that fighter jocks were taught to fly in formation most of the time, when they started an attack, ultimately whether or not they stayed alive depended on individual, not group ability. A wingman could keep his own ship from falling out of the sky, but he couldn't control yours. Only you could do that. And his wife and daughter couldn't help him then with the dilemma he faced as a result of O'Shaunnesey's death any more than a wingman could.

Pat quickly reached for the overcoat he had worn earlier that day and shuffled out the patio door before his family could come inside to stop his retreat.

The Huxley House was situated in one of the newer Planned Urban Developments that had sprung up on the outskirts of Washington, the type of development where all the homes built in it were the newer colonial three story ones with similar floor plans, however each with a different mixture of brick and frame facades to add the illusion that each was custom built. Each home sat on its own private three acre lot, and there were strict architectural rules that had to be followed by anyone that bought there. The development rules had been patterned after similar ones that existed in communities outside urban Los Angeles only modified slightly to meet the particular needs of Washington zoning laws. One could have suspected this had they known the developer originally came from Orange County, California. It sat on five acres, and the nearest neighbor was nearly a quarter a mile away, which added to the feeling that they were actually living in the country, when, in fact, they were only five minutes from the beltway, that girdle of highway that surrounds our nation’s capital and provides easy aces (at some times of the day), to all the centers of power in government. In spite of the strictness of the community rules being somewhat a bother, the size of the lot, the access to the beltway, and the stream that ran diagonally through the property, starting sixty yards from the house, outweighed any inconvenience adherence might have imposed, and these were the major reasons that they decided on the home.

Pat headed for that stream now as he slid the patio door shut behind him, hoping he would reach the small stand of woods that fronted the stream before Sarah and Alice could notice that he was home. In the brief span of twenty seconds, he had reached his objective and disappeared from sight behind the first of the trees that marked the beginning of the woods.

Sarah didn't open the garage door and put her car in immediately. Otherwise she would have seen that her husband's car was already there. She had too many other things on her mind. She was worried about Pat and the strange way he had been acting over the past two weeks, and she was also concerned that he wouldn't like the haircut she had just gotten. He had always liked her long hair, but Sarah had grown tired of it of late and decided that a change in appearance might change the way Pat looked at her and improve their sex life as well. That's what she thought anyway when she ordered the beautician to "cut it off and color all the gray." Now she was having second thoughts about what she had done. Had it not been for this preoccupation with their romance and her looks, she would have put the car in the garage as she usually did and would have immediately known her husband was near.