Текст книги "Heartless"

Автор книги: Patrick T. Phelps

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

CHAPTER FIVE

“What the hell took you so long? Henry asked, his gut full of beer.

“It’s a long drive, Henry. And we would have been here an hour earlier if Stanley here hadn’t insisted on seeing where the baby was going to be kept.”

“It didn’t feel right, just dropping the baby off and scurrying off like damn kidnappers. That place gave me the creeps and your friend, Straus, that guy has some issues,” Stanley said before ordering a beer.

“Stanley,” Mark said, “are you comfortable with the arrangements? I mean, are they secure enough?”

“I guess. Who the hell knows,” Stanley said. “I think so. I just don’t trust that Straus character. He was trying to hide his excitement, but he sucks at hiding.”

“What happened?” Henry asked. “Did they find anything out that we missed?”

Peter Adams waited for his single-malt scotch to arrive at the table before answering Henry’s question. “Doctor Straus’s team each examined the patient, and all agreed with our assessment. It has no heart, no more than half of a lung and no reason to be alive.

“Despite Stanley’s reservations, I fully trust William and am very confident that you made the right choice in trusting my judgment. William and his team will have no prying eyes as they figure out the mystery that is keeping the baby alive.” He downed the scotch in one, intentionally delayed, gulp. “And with that, I believe I have fulfilled my end of the bargain.”

“Yes, you have, Peter,” Mark said. “And thank you. Enjoy your sabbatical.”

“I plan to. And, in case you were worried, I’ll arrange for my associate, Doctor Cross, to provide his services full-time at the hospital during my extended absence. Mark, you will, of course, need to move his pay up close to what mine is. Needn’t overlook anything that might raise suspicions.”

“Of course,” Mark said. “Anything else you can think of?”

“Just tell people that I decided to go into private practice. A ‘spur of the moment’ decision. Not that I think anyone will doubt my interest in being on my own, but just in case, let any who are interested know that I am taking time to relax and to prepare.”

“You’re a real dick, you know that, Peter,” Stanley said. “A class act dickhead.”

Ignoring Stanley, Peter extended his hand to Mark, saying, “Continue to have my checks sent to my home address. I’ll alert you to where I will need them sent after I decide where I open my ‘private practice.’”

Mark shook Peter’s hand. Without any other words or gestures, Peter turned and walked out of Shifts Lounge.

“Now what?” Henry asked.

“Return to business as usual.”

Mark, Stanley, and Henry sat in silence, each wondering how long it would take for them to be able to return to “business as usual.” While Mark and Henry continued to discuss Peter and how disappointed they were with his behavior, Stanley sat quietly, staring at the half-empty glass of beer in front of him.

“Stan?” Mark asked. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “Lots of stuff running around in my brain right now. Lots of stuff.”

His description of his thoughts was not lost on Mark nor Henry, though Stanley knew that what was filling his mind was not just random “stuff.” It was thoughts of Michelle Pettingall.

At thirty-years old, Stanley was not a stranger to having feelings for a woman, especially one as attractive as Michelle Pettingall. What he wasn’t accustomed to was what to do once an attraction was identified.

Stanley did not lack self-confidence when it came to his skills as a surgeon. Nor did he struggle when an opportunity arrived to share his opinion. But building up courage to approach a woman was a much needed and utterly lacking skill in Stanley’s arsenal of talent.

When he and Peter first arrived at the loading docks of Hilburn, they were met by Jacob Curtis, a short, stocky man, whose arms were intended for a much taller man. The three doctors stood in uncomfortable silence, with only Jacob Curtis’s repeated suggestions that “Doctor Straus should join us any second now.”

When Straus arrived, he ignored feeling the need for any introductions and instead directed the group to follow him up a seldom-used staircase. At the top of the stairs, Straus lead the team left down a very long and very empty hallway to his office.

“Where is everyone?” Peter had asked.

“I work better when not interrupted. I have this hallway to myself, for the most part,” Straus replied.

Once in his office, Stanley was astounded at the climate change. From what he had seen and experienced from his short tour of Hilburn, its dank colors, floors in need of a fresh coat of wax, and an odor that hung thinly but clearly in the air, Straus’s office was what one would expect the office of a CEO of a Fortune 500 would resemble.

A solid, blonde-wood desk was the most eye-catching thing about the office. It was at least six feet long, pristinely clean, and polished with a shine that even the best Marine would envy. The lighting was muted but bright enough to afford anyone a clear view of the office. Works of art, from artists Stanley had never heard of, hung on the wall and were showcased with top-hanging frame lights. The couch was brown leather and matched the three chairs that framed up a sitting area. Books, all with their spines without a crease, adorned the solid oak bookshelves positioned on three of the four walls.

“Gentlemen,” Straus began once he afforded his guests enough time to admire his office, “ welcome to Hilburn.”

To Stanley, he extended his hand, saying “Doctor William Straus.”

“Stanley Mix, and I believe you already know Peter.”

“Indeed I do. Indeed I do.” Straus moved closer to Peter where the two old friends embraced in an awkward hug.

“It is wonderful to see you again, Peter. How are the wife and … kids?”

“Maggie is fine, and no kids. And if my memory serves me, how are Claire and Robert doing?”

“You have me at a disadvantage with your memory. Both are well. Robert turns eight next month, and Claire has, thankfully, retained her good looks and shape.”

The old friends laughed, at what, Stanley could only guess.

“But where are my manners? Stanley, Peter, though I am certain he has introduced himself already, this is Jacob Curtis.”

The doctors shook hands and exchanged the briefest of the obligatory niceties.

“And this,” Straus said as he moved towards the baby held in Stanley’s muscular arms, “this must be our newest patient.”

Unsure of whether Doctor Straus wanted to hold the baby himself, Stanley positioned his body to give Straus and Jacob Curtis a better view.

“Remarkable,” Straus said. “I want to thank you, both of you, for trusting me and my team with this sensitive operation. Be assured, I run a very tight ship around here. A very tight ship. Confidentiality and extreme privacy will be maintained.”

“Where will you keep the baby?” Peter asked.

“I have opened a once-closed and seldom-used ward of my institution to serve as both our private lab and the baby’s room. Should you wish to observe the area, you are most welcome.”

“I think it’s better if we just say our goodbyes and be on our way,” Stanley suggested as he made clear his intentions to hand off the baby to Straus.

“Jacob, please hold the child while I assemble the rest of the team. You don’t mind staying for a bit longer so that I can introduce my team, do you, Stanley?”

“No. Not at all. That would be fine,” he lied back in response.

“Excellent. I’ve already instructed them to meet us here. It is a large institution and Ward C is a bit of a walk. Give them just another few minutes.”

It took Straus’s team at least ten minutes before arriving at Straus’s office. Introductions were made, and Stanley no longer wanted to leave after being introduced to nurse Michelle.

“Doctor Straus,” he started, “maybe we should see your Ward C. We are all a bit concerned, as you know. Seeing what you have in place will go a long way in easing all of our concerns.”

“Wonderful!” Straus said. “But first, and this is not meant to question your abilities or you intentions, allow Doctors Curtis and Lucietta to conduct a quick exam of the baby. Nurse Pettingall,” he said, gesturing to Michelle who was standing a few steps away and behind the group. “Feel free to conduct a good, old-fashioned nurse’s exam, should you feel compelled.”

The sarcasm of Straus’s invitation to Michelle was not lost on Stanley.

“Unbelievable,” Jacob Curtis said as he finished his quick but thorough exam. “I’ll need to have more tests and scans done, but….”

“Doctor Lucietta, if you please?” Straus said, interrupting Jacob Curtis.

Doctor Brian Lucietta could only manage to say, “mysterious” after completing his exam.

“Very well, then,” said Straus. “Off to Ward C. I believe you’ll find that I’ve thought of everything. Almost everything, at least.”

As the group turned towards the office door, Straus paused, his hand on the doorknob. He turned to the group to say, “I will give a crisp $100 bill if anyone in this talented group sees or even hears another employee during our walk to Ward C. Anyone up to taking my bet?”

“You didn’t make it a bet, just an offer,” Stanley corrected.

“Indeed, you are correct, Doctor Mix. I guess my confidence may have cost me a chance at a wager. No bother. Let us be on our way.”

No one saw or heard anyone during the two minute walk to Ward C.

While Straus was giving a tour of the hub and the observation rooms, Michelle was instructed to bring the baby into the room designated as its room. Stanley took the opportunity to walk with Michelle.

“I am sorry about all this,” he said.

Michelle turned slowly towards Stanley, and brought her index finger up to her pursed lips.

“Shhh. Every room has microphones,” she whispered.

“What happens in these rooms?” Stanley asked as silently as he could.

Michelle shook her head and shrugged her shoulders so slightly to not raise suspicions if Straus was observing her through the two-way mirrors.

As she placed the baby in the crib, she turned towards Stanley, making sure that his six-foot plus, broad frame shielded her from the hub’s view.

“I don’t like this, and I get the sense you don’t either,” she mouthed.

“I dislike it more every second,” he mouthed back.

Michelle offered a smile as she moved back into potential view. “There. This will be a safe and secure place for him,” she said, not worrying about her voice being picked up by the room’s microphone while indicating to Stanley that there would be no more private conversation. “Shall we join Doctor Straus in the central room?”

“Of course,” replied Stanley.

After Straus concluded his tour of Ward C and had walked his guests back down to the loading docks, Stanley promised himself to find a way to talk with Michelle again. As Peter and he said their “thank you’s” and “goodbye’s,” he paused and held onto Michelle’s hand a bit longer than protocol would suggest a parting handshake should take.

“Nice meeting you, Michelle Pettingall,” he said.

“You too,” she offered back.

“Peter,” Straus’s voice halted the stare Stanley was enjoying into Michelle’s eyes, “give me two days to run our initial tests. Call me to arrange a conference call with the rest of your team back in Chicago.”

“Fair enough,” Peter said. “And, again, I can’t thank you enough.”

With that, the meeting was over and Peter and Stanley got into Stanley’s car, started the engine, and began their journey back to Chicago.

CHAPTER SIX

“But I don’t want to know what’s keeping him alive. Damn it, Peter, I thought I was clear when I said I wanted this whole thing to be done and over with,” Mark Rinaldo said as Peter Adams smugly stood in front of Mark’s desk.

“Mark, how is it possible that you can just pretend that everything that happened last week, didn’t? Aren’t you just a bit curious about what is keeping the child alive? Even the slightest bit of curious?”

“Peter, the more we discuss this, the greater the chances are of this whole damn thing being made public.”

“Mark,” Peter said as he sat down in the chair facing Mark’s desk, “learning more is precisely how we can keep things quiet. Hell, we don’t even know if the child will last another day. All I am suggesting is that you get on this call with Dr. Straus and his team, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll have figured something out that will make this whole thing better.”

Mark sighed and sat motionless and quiet for several seconds.

“What time is the call?” he asked.

“Five, eastern time.”

“Fine.”

“I’ve already invited Stanley,” Peter added.

“And his reaction?”

“Same as yours.”

“Okay. My office in two hours, then?”

“Two hours.”

The crackles sounding through the telephone line were loud enough to be annoying but not so loud that Mark, Peter, and Stanley couldn’t hear what was being said.

The voice of Straus sounded. “Doctors, I am glad you all decided to join us on this call. As we all have very busy schedules, I’ll forgo formal introductions and will summarize our findings thus far. Should you have any questions, which I am certain that you will, please feel free to ask. Either I or one of my team members will be happy to answer. Are you ready on your end?”

“Yes, all set here, William.”

“Excellent. Gentlemen, allow me to begin by thanking you for thinking of me. I fully understand the circumstances that brought this miraculous child to my care and also take your trust in me quite seriously. For that, I thank you.

“Doctors, each day we are faced with new and unique challenges in our fields. Some are quickly remedied and others, well, others turn from a challenge to a mystery. And so it is with our child.

“The first order of business should be to tell you his name. Alexander Black. A name both descriptive and common enough to dispel any curiosity should anyone ever hear any of us discussing the case.

“Now, to answer your most obvious question that I assume you all have been asking yourself a million times, no, Alexander has no heart and has only a half of a lung. His lung does function, however at a very diminished capacity and only when he falls asleep. Curiously, Alex has only slept twice for a total of eleven hours in the five days he’s been living here.

“To your next assumed question, which certainly must be “what is keeping him alive?” We have the answer for that, and the possibilities are incredible!”

“To understand what it is that is keeping Alexander Black alive, I have to first cover a few other discoveries. First, the blood work was normal.  The blood was obviously left over from his twin.  The blood is not circulating, it had simply pooled in his extremities.

“The patient is showing an incredible ability to learn quickly and to remember. He has already learned how to feed himself a bottle and had displayed an ability to locate hidden objects. Fairly remarkable.

“But now to the test results. The only way to describe the cell formation is ‘supercharged.’ I will explain. As we all know, cells contain oxygen. Once the oxygen in the cell is depleted, the cell is filled back up with oxygen by our blood via the circulatory and respiratory systems. In Alexander, however, his cells re-supply, both by themselves and by transferring and borrowing from other cells. The cells contain thousands of times the normal amount of oxygen and are able to share this oxygen with nearby cells. This ‘sharing’ enables the cells to share oxygen, glucose, glycogen, triglycerides, water, and whatever else the body needs.

“This sharing extends to energy, as well. His stomach does function, though not as a normal stomach. Food seems to be broken down quickly into cell transferable energy. All the results are not in yet on the stomach, so this is still sketchy. Also, any waste products are also carried and transferred from cell to cell and are then drained via gravity out of the body. We don’t feel that the patient will ever have any control of his elimination, however.

“He is able to go without sleep until the oxygen levels in his cells is too low to sustain movement. He then falls into a deep sleep, which activates his one half of a lung to begin drawing air, thusly re-charging and replenishing the cells.

“Most notably, there seems to be no cell decay or even cell death. This, if true, would explain his ability to learn quickly and remember practically anything. Once a brain cell is imprinted with an event, the cell will always be there and will be ready to relinquish its content whenever needed. This is another area where more tests are needed, but so far, we have seen no cell decay and no cell death.

“Also, it seems that the more he grows, the stronger his cells grow. If this mutual growth continues, he will only need to sleep after very long periods of intense activity. I also feel that Alexander could become very dangerous. If he can truly remember everything that happens, everything he hears, sees, or touches, and if his growth continues, he is going to be one very strong, very smart person.

“To sum up our findings thus far, some preliminary tests show that Alexander has a life expectancy of just over thirty-years. At that point, his cells, though not in decay or death, will no longer be able to transfer oxygen as efficiently. What will happen, again in theory, is that as he grows closer to his ‘life expectancy,’ he will begin to sleep more and will eventually simply never wake up. My team may be wrong, though, and Alex could live a thousand years. They just can’t provide a ‘rock solid’ estimate for you. His cells may find a way to continue well beyond what I project. His brain cells are already showing signs of environmental adaptation. He is, and will remain, for a while at least, a mystery.”

There was silence at both ends of the phone line while the doctors at Saint Stevens avoided looking into another’s eyes. No one knew what to ask, yet all had thousands of questions. Mark Rinaldo broke the silence after the silence entered its second full minute.

“Super-charged cells? This includes all cells?”

“It appears so,” Straus answered.

Mark fell silent again. As each word came out of the small, black speaker sitting on the desk of his office, Mark fell deeper into the realization that his sleep would be affected for a long time to come. “Even Alexander,” he thought wryly, “will be getting more sleep than me.”

Besides the conference call and the questions it raised, Mark was also thoughtful and worried about Henry Zudak, who hadn’t been back to work since Alexander was born. Stanley told Mark that Henry was suffering from severe headaches and night terrors. Mark was worried because of the intense concern he saw in Peter’s eyes.

“How bad are the dreams?” Mark asked Stanley a few days after Henry informed Mark that he needed some time off.

“I guess that they are pretty bad. Very realistic.  They’re really doing a number on him. He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. I gave him some Valium hoping that the drug would help calm him down. He keeps saying that ‘eyes’ are coming after him.”

Mark wasn’t seeing any “eyes” in his dreams, only memories, which were bad enough. And as Mark sat in the conference room listening to Straus rattle off his findings on Alexander, he began to wonder if he would ever see Henry Zudak deliver another child again.

“There are a few other findings,” Straus called out from the black speaker, interrupting Mark’s thoughts and the silence of the conference room. “I did some muscular tests and found that the patient’s strength is quite exceptional for an six-day-old infant. His reflexes are quick and responsive, and his cartilage has already begun transforming to bone. As with all his other cells, both his muscular and skeletal cells are ‘super-charged.’ No decay, self-replenishing, and with the potential to grow in strength as the patient matures.”

The long pause that followed had all the doctors at Saint Stevens staring at the speakerphone. The hundred plus years of education in the room couldn’t ask one single question. They wondered what they could ask about something that they were not yet convinced was real. A quick crackle sounded through the speaker, sending a bolt of excited and startled energy through Mark and his team.

“The last thing I want to say, believe it or not, is perhaps the most difficult fact to understand and to accept. He can talk. Not words, mind you, not yet anyway. But he can use his vocal chords. We have no idea how he can do this without his lung performing while he is awake, but he can. He’s done this on several occasions. The first time almost scared us to death. In order for Alex to speak, he must become perfectly still. I have some theories that may explain this ability, but I won’t share them until I run some more tests.”

“Doctor Straus? Peter Adams here. I have a quick question. You said that his cells have a life expectancy of around thirty years. Are you saying that he will live for thirty years? I guess I didn’t quite understand what you were saying.”

“Not for certain. The tests do indicate that the cells will lose their ability to transfer energy after thirty years, but we can’t say for sure. We tested his cells after each of his sleep episodes and found that they lose some transfer ability. An incredibly small amount of loss, but loss nonetheless. Remember, he has only fallen asleep twice so we don’t have enough data to really be accurate. Also, we don’t think he can produce new cells, so whatever we take out, we have to put back. Not sure if the cells we put back continue to function. We certainly don’t want to cause permanent damage by removing too many cells. Could be a very delicate balance. Again, his cells do show indications of an ability to adapt and evolve as needed. I simply cannot say for sure how long Alex will live.”

“Excuse me, Doctor Stanley Mix here. You said that the child could be dangerous when he grows up. What did you mean by that?”

“If he has a negative disposition, his retained knowledge and exceptional strength could be dangerous to anyone who tried to outsmart him or overpower him. Just speculation on my part, Doctor.”

“Are you going to be able to keep him in a safe area, just in case?” Stanley asked as his mind relived a retained image of Michelle’s face.

“I can assure you that my facility will retain the child until it becomes impossible to do so. If that day comes, I have a private lodge up North to which I could make some renovations and keep the child up there. I’m looking at this as a full-term endeavor. I’m not going to give up on this child until I find out everything there is to find out, or, God forbid, he passes on.”

“Some of us may want to visit Alexander from time to time. Can that be arranged?” Mark asked while staring directly at Stanley, asking with his eyes if he thought Henry would benefit from a visit with Alexander.

“I was going to invite you all up myself,” the pride filled voice of William Straus answered back. “Come anytime. By the time you come, I’m sure that we will have more information for you. Then, we can discuss Alexander face to face, doctors to doctors. There is truly nothing I would enjoy more than to have all of you visit my Center. Come anytime.”