Die Again Tomorrow (13 page)

CHAPTER 23

 

I
sabel seized the diary and skimmed the pages as fast as she could. Richard Barnett's careful handwriting revealed a more complicated man than she'd understood him to be. A sincere cynic. A caring loner. Hardened by death, but afraid of his own. Unwittingly complicit in a horrific scheme. Racked by guilt. Hoping for redemption through a single-malt Scotch and a bottle of Prozac.

Most shocking, the diary revealed that he'd watched his own father collapse, too. A swell of sympathy rose inside her. All this time she'd dismissed him as a callous villain, they'd shared their deepest tragedies in common without even knowing it.

When she finished reading, she looked up with a sickening feeling of remorse. The final entry was dated November 5—three days earlier.

“See?” Her mother's eyes were glassy. “The poor guy really was trying to help.”

But Isabel was already a step ahead. “Where's the package this came in?”

“There.” Her mom pointed to a torn manila envelope on the kitchen counter. “How come?”

Isabel made a frantic beeline to it. She flipped it over to see the return address: 307 Olivia Street.

His house was only ten minutes away, right near the famed Ernest Hemingway mansion. She'd passed it a thousand times without realizing it.

Behind her came light footsteps, then a soft hand on her shoulder. “Honey, are you okay? What's going on?”

She whirled around. “I have to go. It might not be too late . . .” She gave her mom a quick kiss on the cheek. “I'll explain everything soon, I promise.”

With the envelope in hand, she sprinted for the door.

“Too late for what?” her mom called to her retreating figure.

She glanced over her shoulder as she ran out. “To bring him back.”

 

 

Chris took one look at her face and turned on the siren without even asking why. The instant she climbed in, he gunned the engine, checked the rearview, and zoomed out of the driveway.

“307 Olivia,” she panted. “Go.”

Once they were out of her neighborhood, Chris shouted over the blaring noise. “Who's in trouble?”

“This guy . . .” She trailed off, realizing she had no idea how to explain their relationship.

“What guy?”

A man who'd sold her into murder without knowing it? Who was paying the worst possible price to make it up to her?

“A friend,” she said at last. “He sent me a suicide note and he's all alone. We might already be too late.”

“Oh, man.” Chris pumped the gas harder and the ambulance lurched forward, throwing her against her seat belt.

In only five minutes, they reached his street, a cul-de-sac punctuated with palm trees, well-tended gardens, and sleepy pastel-painted cottages. Number 307 was a squat, unremarkable house that seemed half forgotten. The paint was gray and peeling. The lawn was overgrown with tall brown grass. A bed of yellow roses was wilting in the sun. The navy shutters over the front window were closed, except for one broken slat that didn't turn sideways like the rest.

As soon as they pulled up to the curb, they hopped out and raced to the door. Isabel knocked loudly. Nothing happened. Turned the knob. It was locked.

“I know he's in there!”

Chris approached the front window and peered with both hands into the spot left uncovered by the broken slat. When he turned to her, his face was solemn.

“Oh God.” Her throat tightened. “You can see him?”

“I'm sorry.”

“We have to get in!”

He tried to slide the window up but it wouldn't budge.

She edged past him to a wooden side door that led to the backyard. It was easy to reach her finger up over the latch to unlock it. She mustered all her energy to follow Chris down a narrow concrete path along the side of the house, which opened up to a fenced-in lawn with a patio table and a chaise longue.

He tugged at the obviously locked back door, but she stopped him with a whisper.

“Wait! Do you hear that?”

He froze, listening. A few birds were chirping on nearby branches. A car drove by somewhere in the distance. “No, what?”

“A TV.” Very faintly, Isabel could make out the hum of voices and dim musical chords—so dim that they could almost be mistaken for the wind.

He cocked his head. “How the hell did you notice that?”

She shrugged and rushed around the side of the house where the sound was coming from. Five feet up the wall, a large window was open an inch. A light ocean breeze billowed out its sheer white curtains. Pressing her palms on the cool glass, she slid it up the rest of the way. Chris hoisted her up inside, then climbed in after her. She found herself in Richard Barnett's bedroom. Navy sheets were crumpled on the floor next to his unmade bed. With Chris on her heels, she followed the increasingly loud television sounds out to a hallway, past a kitchen, a bathroom, and finally to a living room at the front of the house.

Though she knew what was coming, a cry burst out of her when she saw him. Unconscious.

He was lying on his back at the foot of an old rocking chair, clothed in a T-shirt and black mesh shorts. His legs were bent at the knees and one arm was flung up near his head. His face was sallow, his lips dumbly parted. Vomit stuck to his chin. It had pooled on the floor beside him, soaking the neck of his white shirt in bile. The stench filled the room, sour and vaguely alcoholic. On his coffee table, an empty glass tumbler sat next to an empty orange prescription bottle.

Isabel dashed to his side and cupped his cheeks. His hazel eyes were open but unblinking. It was like staring into the face of his wax figure. She almost expected the real him to saunter in, puffing on a cigarette, and call off the horrifying charade.

Chris knelt beside her and pressed two fingers to his wrist.

“Is he really—?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“But can you still do something?”

Chris lifted up his shirt to examine his chest and muscle tone. “Body's cool but not cold. No signs of rigor mortis yet. I've seen cases like this before—someone tries to OD, passes out, then vomits in their sleep. That probably kept him alive for a couple days but unconscious. Seems like he actually only died within the last few hours.”

Her heart gave a hopeful lurch that was immediately tempered by her own knowledge of emergency first aid. Everyone knew that a person without a pulse stood little chance of regaining any brain function after four minutes without oxygen. But what if that was outdated now? She had a sudden flash of her father's crumpled body and her own helplessness—and all at once, she sank to her knees to pump Richard's chest as hard as she could.

“What are you doing?” Chris demanded.

“Not—standing—around,” she huffed, as the fatigue of her biceps threatened to derail her efforts.

“What makes you think it's not too late?”

She shot him a pointed glance. “I'm alive.”

Chris stared at Richard's body, avoiding her gaze. “His brain cells are dying as we speak, but they're not fully gone until about four to eight hours after death.” He paused. “I guess I could give him a dose of the X101 to try to buy time—”

She jumped to her feet, her arms rubbery and limp. “Then what are you waiting for?”

“You said he wanted this!” He glared at her. “We're not supposed to intervene against someone's will.”

“Are you kidding me?” Her voice was shaking. “You have the power to bring him back and you're just going to let him
die
?”

“He's already dead.”

“You know what I mean!”

Chris pressed two fingers to his temples, blinking fast. “But what if we bring him back and he's brain-damaged? I mean, we don't know exactly how long it's been, and the longer that goes by, the worse the prognosis.”

“We have to try. He's a good person, he deserves a chance.” She didn't add that she felt partly responsible for his suicide. If she hadn't gotten her mastectomy, then she wouldn't have provoked the investor's ire and Richard's attempts at appeasement. Then he wouldn't have seen his death as a solution.

Chris was still shaking his head, so she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to recall everything Dr. Quinn had explained about her own resuscitation when she'd first woken up. Cooling down the body was key.
Therapeutic hypothermia,
he'd called it.

An image popped into her mind of frozen peas. Didn't everyone have them? She ran to the kitchen and whipped open his freezer. Sure enough, there were two bags of peas, plus a chilled bottle of Ketel One vodka and an ice pack. She piled all of it into her arms and rushed back to his body, dropping to her knees beside his head. She lay the ice pack on his forehead, then the peas on his neck.

Chris stepped aside to get out of her way. “It's no use. He needs the X101, plus chest compressions, an internal ice slurry, oxygenated fat molecules, an ECMO—”

“Then help me!” she screamed. “Don't just stand there!”

He stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. “Do no harm,” he muttered.

But she could see his resolve weakening.

“Exactly,” she said. “He's dead, you can't make him worse. But if he has any chance at all and you walk away, you're neglecting the one patient who needs you the most!”

“Okay, but if he comes back brain-dead, that's on you.”

“I'm not, am I?”

Before he could reply, she marched out the front door to the ambulance and opened the back to get the stretcher. It was light enough for her to carry on her own, though she could feel the rubbery fatigue of her muscles cutting down her strength with each passing minute.

Back in the house, she set it down next to Richard's body, while Chris lugged him under the armpits onto it. She strained to lift his heavy legs as best she could. Once he was flat on his back on the stretcher, Chris single-handedly dragged him outside and hauled him into the ambulance.

The street was deserted, but they wasted no time shutting the doors to any curious onlookers. She squatted on a side seat and held Richard's limp hand as Chris got to work.

After setting a helmet-sized machine on his chest that began to deliver hard and fast compressions, Chris intubated him and connected him to a portable oxygen tank. Then he touched a finger sensor under the rubber floor pad that unlocked a compartment in the roof. Cracks materialized in the white overhead space and a door slid open. Inside was a vial of a clear liquid next to a bag of saline and a plethora of medical devices.

He retrieved a red tool that resembled a handgun, with a long thick needle sticking out the barrel. He was moving so rapidly there was no time to explain anything, so she just watched in fascinated silence as he pressed the gun against Richard's left shoulder and fired a pin into the bone. He repeated the process with the other shoulder and both knees.

Then he reached up into the compartment and carefully removed the glass vial, cradling it in both hands like it was a baby bird.

“This is it,” he said. “This is everything.”

“The X101?”

“Yes.”

She noticed his hands were trembling as he drew about two ounces of the liquid into a clear plastic dropper, emptying the vial, and injected it straight into Richard's left shoulder pin. Without further ceremony, he deposited the empty vial back into the compartment and hastened to the next step: injecting the right shoulder with a slurry of ice.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked, desperate to be useful.

“Yeah.” He paused for a split second. “Drive us back to the ship. And make it fast.”

 

 

The ambulance shrieked down the street so quickly that there was no time to notice the silver Toyota Camry rolling twenty yards behind it.

The driver inside was gaping in disbelief, holding a cell phone at his ear.

He spoke in a hushed voice as though to soften the blow:

“I have bad news, sir. She's alive.”

“Yeah, right,” said the voice on the other end. “That's impossible.”

“It's her. I'm sure of it.”

There was a pause. The voice seethed with accusation. “You saw her dead body with your own damn eyes, didn't you? Carted off the beach to the morgue?”

“I—I thought so.”

“You're losing your mind. Find me her death certificate ASAP
.
And if you want any cut of the payout, make it today.”

“Yes, s—”

But the line clicked off. The phone dropped to his lap.

He wasn't crazy no matter what the boss said.

Isabel Leon, the prime target of all the “lives,” had somehow cheated death.

Her ambulance was barreling through a stoplight two blocks ahead, its lights flashing red and blue. He floored his own gas pedal.

No way was he letting it out of his sight.

CHAPTER 24

 

T
he busy hum of the hospital carried on around Joan as if she wasn't even there. Nurses and doctors bustled past her, consulting charts, shouting commands, assisting patients on stretchers who required actual care.

Now that she was no longer in distress from her “chest pains,” she was a nonentity. Greg's colleague Dr. Yardley had written her a prescription for a muscle relaxant and pointed her toward the exit. But his odd denial of any familiarity with Greg's near-death experience piqued her suspicion. What was he hiding? Did any of the other staff know?

She stood in the hallway outside the triage room, thinking fast. This was her only conceivable opportunity to be inside the hospital, behind the scenes, without anyone tending to her. She consulted a map on the wall. To the left, down a hallway, was the reception station and exit. To the right, around a corner, was the on-call room, and next to that, the nurses' locker room.

A plan formed in her mind. Before she had time to iron out the details, she was striding to the on-call room, her chin held high. In her black pants, cream cashmere sweater, and impeccable makeup, she could have been an executive. She knocked on the white door. No one answered.

She went in and locked it behind her. The space resembled a cramped dorm, if the students who lived there were slobs. Next to a closet were a bunk bed and two cots. Sheets were tangled and bed covers kicked to the floor as if the prior occupants had fled in a hurry. In the corner, blue scrubs were overflowing out of a hamper whose top was askew.

She saw her opportunity right away. It would be risky, but she needed to act fast if she was going to do it. Any minute someone else might try to come in. She tore off her sweater and pants and stuffed them into her oversized handbag. Then she pawed through a pile of clean scrubs in the closet, looking for a woman's size medium. When she found a set, she threw it on, along with a fresh pair of hospital-issue shoe covers from a stack in the corner.

She looked at herself in the mirror hanging over the door. Her cheeks were flushed and a few mussed tendrils of blond hair hung around her face. Her red lipstick was all wrong, though. What nurse had time for that? She rubbed it off with the back of her hand.
Not bad,
she thought. She removed her pearl stud earrings for good measure.

Then she stuffed her purse under a heap of clothes in the closet and slipped out, heading to the adjacent door down the hall: the nurses' locker room. Here she didn't bother to knock, just walked right in like she belonged.

This room was larger, like the locker room at her gym. Two nurses around Joan's age were chatting near a row of sinks with their backs to her—from the sound of it, not just chatting, but gossiping.

“Well, that's not what I heard,” said one, a plump woman with tortoiseshell glasses. “I heard that he—”

Joan coughed. They turned to stare blankly at her. Before any skepticism set in, she plastered on a bright smile and stuck out her hand, walking toward them.

“Hi,” she said, “I'm Jane. I don't think we've met yet. I'm from Presbyterian uptown. Just started here in the ER.”

“Welcome,” said the other nurse, a raven-haired woman with judgmental brown eyes. “I'm Louisa, from OB.” They shook hands.

“And I'm Sharon, from peds,” the matronly nurse said in a friendlier tone. “Whose service are you usually on?”

“Dr. Hughes,” she said. It felt oddly formal to refer to Greg that way, but the other women didn't seem to notice her self-consciousness.

“Oh!” Sharon exclaimed with a knowing look. “Lucky you.”

Joan raised her eyebrows in real curiosity. “Yeah?”

“He's kind of a rock star around here. We all have a little crush on him,” Sharon admitted. She sighed, pushing away her bangs, and Joan saw that her left finger was bare.

“He's a total professional, though,” Louisa said, as though this annoyed her. “He'll barely flirt with anyone.”

“We're used to it.” Sharon shrugged. “He must have one hot wife.”

Louisa smirked. “Or at least a talented one.”

Joan gave her a tight smile. “I'll bet.” Then she lowered her voice in a conspiratorial manner. “Hey, can you ladies keep a secret?”

They nodded and moved in closer, even though no one else was around. “You can trust us,” Sharon soothed. “What's up?”

“Well.” Joan bit her lip, as if deciding whether to tell them. “I overheard something kind of scary actually . . .”

They stared at her with open intrigue. Louisa crossed her arms. “Go on . . .”

“I happened to hear Hughes and Yardley talking. Apparently Hughes sold his life insurance policy and then almost got hit by a car after some stranger pushed him.”

Their mouths fell open.

“Wait.” Joan held up a hand. “It gets creepier. Then Yardley told him one or two patients
at this hospital
died in weird accidents after selling their life policies . . . And he wondered if maybe the incidents are all somehow connected. . . ?”

They both recoiled with looks of horror. Joan couldn't quite read the glance they exchanged.

“Jesus,” Sharon breathed. Louisa said nothing.

“Could that be true?” Joan said. “Have you heard anything?”

Sharon shook her head firmly. “I haven't.”

“And she would,” Louisa said. “She always has the inside scoop.”

“Weird.” Joan couldn't press further without giving herself away, so she just lifted one shoulder as if to say
Who knows?

“Well,” she said, “I've got to get back to a patient, but it was nice meeting you guys.”

She turned around before they could see the extent of her disappointment—and her mistrust. Why was the staff denying rumors that Greg said were swirling around the entire hospital? Were they scared to talk?

No matter how tough, she was going to dig up the truth before it was too late. Before Greg was next.