Blind Eye (3 page)

“Hold on a second,” Eaton snapped, starting to stand. “What do you think you're doing here? This is a secure research facility for—”

He never finished. The other intruder opened fire, starting with the project manager and then shooting each person around the table in turn.

Amid the popping of the weapons, the last thing Marion heard was the high-pitched shriek that she realized had finally burst from her own throat. As she tried to back away from the table, her metal chair tipped.

She did not see or hear or feel anything more, however. All consciousness exploded in a molten sea of light as a pair of bullets struck her in the head, sending her flying off the chair. Spinning as she fell, Marion's body hit the floor. And when she came to rest, a crimson pool quickly spread over the beige tiles around her head.

York, Pennsylvania

M
ark Shaw killed the engine of his old Chevy pickup and sat for a moment, looking at the pink neon lettering on the sign above the Silver Diner. Even in the morning sunlight, he could see the
ner
in the name flickering. Those letters had been threatening to go out since he was in high school. Some things never changed.

There was a time when the thought might have been comforting.

Through the windows, he could see the faces of guys he'd grown up knowing. Lucille came into view with an armful of breakfast plates. As he watched, she slung the food onto the cracked Formica of one of the booths as she had been doing since the ark landed. Her husband Abel was visible through the little window in the kitchen behind the counter, looking at the chrome carousel of paper order slips. Mounted on the wall at the end of the counter, the TV was tuned in to CNN.

With a sigh, Mark hauled himself out of the truck. The smell of bacon and onions greeted him before he even went up the three concrete steps to the diner door. He knew Lucille would have a cup of coffee on the counter for him before he sat down.

Inside, a few of the regulars were missing, but there was no one he didn't know. He was surprised to see old Mrs. Swartley sitting at a booth down at the end with two other retired teachers he remembered from junior high. He didn't realize she was still living in York. The three women were wearing matching gold bowling shirts. The short, permed white hair of the trio could have been part of their uniforms. A Thursday morning league, no doubt. She smiled at him but kept talking to her companions.

Joe Moyer and Andy Alderfer were at the counter, and Mark took his place a seat down from them. Joe and Andy had graduated from high school with him and been working for the town's public works department ever since. The bone-colored mug appeared, steam rising from the black liquid.

“Hi, hon,” Lucille said. “Let me guess…three eggs over easy with sausage, home fries and wheat toast, with a side of raisin toast.”

“No, let's try something different this morning,” Mark answered, looking up at the Specials board. “How about bacon instead of sausage?”

“Oh, be still, my heart,” she responded dramatically.

“Lucille thought she had a live one on the line,” Joe said to Mark with a laugh.

“I think I saw Abel start to dance in the kitchen,” Andy added.

“Whadya say?” the cook asked suspiciously through the window.

“Nothin',” Andy replied innocently. “Our boy Mark was just thinking of having some Eggs Benedictine.”

“Eggs
Benedict
, you idiot,” Abel grumbled. “Jeez, we need a better class of clientele.”

“Hey, I'm really hurt here,” Andy responded wryly. “Aren't you hurt, Joe?”

“Don't drag me into this,” his friend said, sipping his coffee.

Lucille grinned at Mark and stuck his order up on the carousel.

“So,” Joe said, changing the subject. “Did you decide what you're gonna do?”

Mark stirred the coffee thoughtfully. He couldn't get away from it. Anywhere he went, whoever he spoke to, that was what they wanted to know. He couldn't just be.

“Hey,” Andy said. “My cousin Brian would give his left nut for that spot on the police force.”

“Don't rush him,” Lucille said, planting a hip against the counter. “He just got back from Iraq. And watch your language.”

“Sorry,” Andy said contritely. “I meant left testicle.”

“Oh, much better.”

“How long do you have before you have to decide?” Joe asked.

“The chief said he can give me till the end of the month,” Mark said.
If only the rest of them could be as patient
.

“Well, that's fair,” Andy said. “Do you know which way you're leaning?”

Mark shook his head. He wasn't being a hard-ass. He really didn't know. Before his reserve unit had been deployed overseas, he would have said he would be a member of York's finest until he retired, but now…

York was home, but it just didn't seem the same. Fifteen months on the ground in Baghdad and Falluja had left him feeling…what? He wasn't sure what the right word was.
Disconnected. Hollow. Restless
. Some word that incorporated all of that.

He wanted to reconnect with things here, but something didn't feel right. Just before he'd shipped out, his
father had found a job in Erie, and he and Mark's mother had rented out their old house and moved. The garage and the little apartment above it were saved for him. That was where he was staying…for now. Pretty damn depressing for a twenty-eight-year-old.

Mark had no siblings, and the only relative he had left in York was his grandmother, who had been in an assisted-living home for the past five years. She didn't recognize him at all and had even become agitated when he went to visit her upon arriving home. And his relationship with Leslie had simply petered out a few months before he went to Iraq.

Two girls from the car dealership up the road came in, drawing Joe and Andy's attention, and Lucille went in back to help Abel put together the take-out order.

Mark was glad to be off the hook. He glanced up at the TV on the wall. Lucille never had the sound on, but the aerial images on the screen showed a spectacular fire on what looked like an offshore oil platform. From the text scrolling across the bottom, he realized it was some kind of research facility on a converted monitoring station in the Gulf of Mexico. As he watched, a huge explosion blasted flames and debris in every direction, causing the helicopter doing the filming to shudder.

Whoever was on that thing, he thought, was a goner.

Waterbury Long-Term Care Facility
Connecticut

J
ennifer Sullivan moved into the room with the practiced quickness that her twenty-six years as a nurse had instilled.

“Hey, what's going on in here?” she said brusquely. She was barely five feet tall, brown eyes, short dark no-nonsense hair, average weight. She considered herself nondescript, plain. But people told her she had a certain presence. She was impossible to ignore. Jennifer knew it was her confidence—and her insistence on providing the best care to her patients. She focused right now on the patient thrashing in the bed. “Come on, sweetheart. What are you doing to yourself?”

Pat Minicucci was already there, trying to hold JD down. Jennifer could see the feeding tube was detached from the abdominal port and lay on the floor.

“I can't hold her much longer,” the nurse's aide said, a note of urgency in her voice. “Have you ever seen her like this?”

“Never,” Jennifer admitted. Glancing at her watch as she stuck her head into the hallway, she called to a passing dietary aide to get the doctor. Luckily, Dr. Baer
wouldn't have left the facility yet to see to his own practice. She moved to the other side of the bed and put a hand on JD's shoulder.

“Did something bite her or sting her?” Jennifer asked, glancing around in the bedding for a spider.

“I don't know,” Pat replied breathlessly.

“Well, did she fall? Where did you find her?”

The patient's brown eyes were open wide, and she was looking about the room, continuing to fight against the arms holding her. With each heave of her body, JD emitted gasps of breath from between clenched teeth.

“I heard her as I was walking past the room. When I looked in, she'd already slid down to where the bed strap was up almost to her throat. She'd lost the tube.” Pat leaned more heavily on JD's arms as Jennifer checked the bed for anything that might be poking into her. “As soon as I unhooked the strap, she went wild.”

JD couldn't have been a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she continued to put up a fight against the hold on her arms.

“Be gentle with her,” Jennifer found herself saying. Pat was young and close to twice the weight of the patient. She was also new and didn't know much about JD.

“I thought she was in a coma.”

“No, she's an MCS patient. She's in a minimally conscious state,” Jennifer added as clarification.

“What's the difference?”

“MCS patients, like JD here, can be visibly awake or asleep. There have been times over the past few years when I've seen her reach for things, even hold them. I've noticed her follow with her eyes people moving about in the room. Sometimes there is even gesturing or verbalization that is intelligible…at least to me.” Jennifer
caressed the young patient's brow. “The important thing to remember is that she's really fragile.”

There was no denying it. All the old-time nurses had a soft spot in their hearts for her. JD had been here a little over five years now, and she was the easiest of the traumatic brain injury patients to take care of.

“Slide her up the bed a little.”

Together, the two women moved the patient enough for Jennifer to reclip the bed strap. Sitting against the edge of the bed, Jennifer leaned over JD and put her hands on either side of the young woman's face to check the skin of her neck for any bites or scratches.

Immediately, the patient stopped fighting.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Pat exclaimed softly, “you have the touch.”

Jennifer saw the young patient's eyes focus on hers. “Hi, JD. Do you see me, honey?”

JD's arms now lay limp on the rumpled bed sheets. The noise she had been making in her throat stopped. Jennifer motioned for Pat to let go, and the younger nurse cautiously released her grip on JD's arm. Jennifer leaned her head slightly to check her scalp. The eyes followed her.

“What's bothering you, sweetheart?” she asked, accustomed to talking to JD, even though the other nurses were sure she didn't understand.

A male voice came from the doorway. “I hear there's been some trouble here?”

Both women turned to see the physician who had just come in. Dr. Ahmad Baer spent three days a week, a couple of hours of each day, at the nursing facility. Baer was new to them, less than six months. But so far, Jennifer thought, he was doing okay. He had his own practice over by the hospital and saw patients at a re
tirement home in Woodbury, as well. Jennifer had heard last week that Baer was also teaching a course at UCONN Medical School every other semester. The staff here had already labeled him as workaholic, which was a nice change as far as Jennifer was concerned.

“We were having some trouble with her…until a couple of seconds ago,” Pat said, staring in amazement at the calm patient. “She was fighting us like crazy.”

The doctor walked toward the bed and picked up the feeding tube off the floor. He handed it to Pat.

“I can see that.” He took a small flashlight out of his pocket and moved to the head of the bed.

Jennifer stepped away to give the physician room. She noticed JD's eyes following her.

“She maintains a visual fixation on you,” Baer commented. “Is this usual?”

“I spend a lot of time with her,” Jennifer admitted. “I'm one of the few who've been here from the first day they moved her in. I've thought she might recognize me. But Dr. Parker, who retired before you got here, always said it was wishful thinking on my part.”

Jennifer had spent more than half of her life doing this. She was forty-nine, turning fifty in January. Understanding her patients was second nature to her, like eating or breathing. Still, she recalled one piece of advice she'd been given early on in her career—to not get attached to patients. And she hadn't, until JD. There was something about the young woman that tugged at Jennifer's heartstrings. It was more than the helplessness. Most of the patients she dealt with were in some kind of vegetative or minimally conscious state. This one she somehow connected with. She was certain that the young woman understood her words more than anyone believed. JD was just a little older than her own
daughters, and Jen frankly didn't give two shakes what anyone else thought of the way she fussed over her. Seniority had its privileges. She could be extra attentive to a patient if she wanted.

The doctor held JD's chin steady as he checked the movement of the eyes.

“I'm not as well-read as I'd like to be on this patient, Jennifer. What can you tell me about her?”

Who was he kidding? she thought silently. He didn't know
anything
about JD. The young patient was on the same medication and feeding schedule that she'd been on for years. There had been nothing new tried since the first year that JD was here. No rehab efforts, no new treatments. Standard physical therapy and that's it. She'd hoped that Baer would see her sometime soon. But there'd been no reason for it before now.

“Her chart is right here,” Pat Minicucci offered, pulling the clipboard from the holder at the foot of the bed. “But it won't help much.”

They were grossly shorthanded, and there were a dozen things that Jennifer thought Pat could be doing right now, but the young nurse's aide was apparently curious about what was going to happen, too.

“I'll look at it later. Jennifer, what can you tell me?” Dr. Baer asked again.

There were things that were written every day on a patient's chart, like the medications or nutrients the patient should get, as well as vitals and therapy session records and such. But there were other things that weren't there.

“This January will be six years since her accident,” Jennifer told him. “She was pushed out of a moving vehicle one night on the highway, on I-84 in Cheshire. No one saw it happen…or at least no one ever came
forward. She was taken to St. Mary's Hospital, the closest level-two trauma center. There were multiple head injuries and a broken arm, as well as a lot of road burn. The trauma team attended her immediately and the acute-care unit at the hospital saw to the minor stuff. She never recovered from the head trauma, though.”

“Everyone calls her JD for Jane Doe,” the physician assumed.

“There was no ID on her when they took her to the hospital,” Jennifer said, nodding. “From what we were told, the police fingerprinted and photographed her that very first night, but there were no matches. Nothing ever came of any investigation, as far as I know.”

“Is she a ward of the state?”

Jennifer nodded again. “Title 19 Medicaid patient. The probate court assigned a local lawyer to act as conservator. I can't remember his name right now. But he has power of attorney.”

Dr. Baer straightened from the bed, and JD's eyes focused on her again. Jennifer reached over and took the young woman's hand. She was certain JD appreciated the touch. Everyone needed kindness and human contact.

“She's an absolute sweetheart. She's never given any of us a lick of trouble in all the time she's been here. I'm wondering if something wasn't poking into her. It's not like her to get worked up like this.”

“How long has she been here exactly?” the physician asked, taking the chart from Pat.

Jennifer knew the answer. “She got bounced around to a couple of different facilities during the first few months after the accident. Then she was moved here. It was in August. So it's been five years and three months.”

“What a great memory!” Pat blurted.

Jennifer shrugged. “I remember because my family and I always go to the Cape at the end of July. And JD was brought in right after I came back from vacation.”

“Has she been in a minimally conscious state since she's been here?”

“Yes. She came in as an MCS patient.”

“Anything done to wean her off the feeding tube?” Baer wanted to know, quickly paging through the chart.

“No.” Jennifer wished she could say more. But she wouldn't bad-mouth their former attending physician. Dr. Parker should have retired ten years before he did, as he had no interest in doing anything different. She had made recommendations as far as exercises or little things they could do to work with JD, but he wouldn't have it. Standard maintenance treatment was all he would allow.

“Is it too late now?” she asked. “If there's anything extra we have to do, it'd be okay. We'd really like to help her, if there's a way.” She realized it wasn't right to talk for everyone else. “I'll put in some extra hours myself.”

Jennifer saw JD close her eyes. She wasn't sleeping, only shutting them out. It was so sad. The young woman did communicate with them. Jen was sure of it.

“Do we have any idea how old she is?” the physician asked.

“The file said early twenties when she arrived here, so we celebrated her twenty-seventh birthday on Christmas Eve.”

The physician looked up and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Jennifer thought this was the first time she'd seen him do that.

“Does this mean she'll be twenty-eight this coming Christmas?” he asked.

“Yes. We'll have a big party for her right here and you're invited.”

If he was amused by that, he gave no indication of it. He flipped through the most recent pages. “Has she had any epileptic fits in the past that you remember?”

“No,” Jennifer said with certainty. “That's not what this was.”

She wanted JD to get better, not to be diagnosed with another disorder. With this doctor, she thought there might be a chance. There were a lot of new things that would be tried out if there were family around.

Baer wrote down some notes on the clipboard. “I'm writing a prescription for some sedatives, in case she becomes agitated again.”

Disappointment poured through her. “Is that all we're going to do?”

He looked at her with surprise.

Jennifer bit her tongue. She didn't want an enemy but an ally. “I was wondering if you could review her files…perhaps see if there's anything that needs to be changed on her meds…or other things. Treatment that might trigger more responses.”

The physician looked down at the clipboard again. “Okay. Put her on my schedule for tomorrow. We'll see if there's anything that needs to be changed.”

This was a start.

“I'm impressed,” Pat said after Baer left the room. “You really care about her, don't you?”

Jennifer looked over at the bed. JD's eyes were once again open and watching her.

“Yes, I do.”