Raney & Levine (5 page)

9


I
n the OR, the anesthesiologist had taken off Jenna’s
nasal oxygen mask from the E.R. and intubated her, sending oxygen directly into
her trachea. He was checking her vital signs when the others, re-scrubbed,
capped and masked, came in to be helped into their gloves and surgical gowns by
a circulating nurse.

“Ready?” David asked, approaching the surgical table.

“Vitals still look okay,” the anesthesiologist said through
his mask. “Have to keep an eye on her neuro signs.”

“I’m on it.” Woody gently lifted Jenna’s right eye open,
used his penlight to check her pupil, then checked her left eye.

A nurse grimly hung a new unit of blood. Some cases threw
her more than others. Hearing about this one upset her terribly.

The ventilator whooshed as David made a long, mid-line
incision of the abdomen. He reached in and, with Sam, their gloved hands
together carefully pulled apart the abdominal muscles. Sam got in the
retractors to keep the opening open, then suctioned blood out so they could see
better.

At seven months the uterus looked like a big, upside-down
pear with the small end ending in the cervix.

“No damage to liver or spleen,” David said, gently
inspecting the organs.

“She’s lucky.”

“Hope so. There’s still her brain to worry about.” He didn’t
look up. “Woody?”

“Babinski reflexes okay.” Greenberg was at the foot of the
table now. Had just run his thumb up the soles of Jenna’s feet; both big toes
had tipped down, which was good. “How much else can you do when she’s out?”

“Just the pupils and Babinski. Keep checking.”

The scrub nurse handed David a new sterile scalpel. Now he
made a vertical incision into the uterus, opened it, and blinked at the fetus.
A little life that never had a chance, dusky-colored and awash in blood.

Sam suctioned the uterine blood out with a gurgling,
whooshing sound, muttering, “Son of a bitch who did this, I wanna kill him.”

“Get in line.” David waited seconds until he got a clearer
field. “Bleeding’s stopping,” he said.

MacIntyre finished suctioning and looked back in. The torn
blood vessels between the placenta and uterine wall had contracted and clotted.

Now for the baby.

David put in both hands and gently lifted it out. It was a
boy, about four pounds, could have lived just fine if delivered prematurely. He
held it for a moment, fighting anger, sadness, then handed the child to the
grim-faced nurse, who likewise couldn’t help herself. Out of hopeful habit, she
put the tiny body into the little bassinette, put on her stethoscope, and
listened for a heartbeat. Silence. Awful, hollow silence in the tiny chest.

Grimly, the others continued with Jenna.

David started scooping out the placenta, which had already
mostly separated from the uterus. He ran his fingers around its edge to finish
detaching it, then tied off any tiny bleeders he saw.

“I think we can save the uterus,” he said. “The arterial
supply looks intact.”

Sam irrigated the uterine interior with sterile saline
solution, then suctioned it out again. They had a clear view. In its reddish
uterine surface there were lacerations, which David sutured. Then he gently
massaged the uterus, which responded by contracting, but not enough.

“Ergotrate,” he said through his mask.

Into Jenna’s arm, Woody injected Ergotrate to further
contract the uterus and prevent any further bleeding.

Before closing, they did one more quick inspection inside
the abdomen. Everything looked okay: the liver, spleen, kidneys, stomach and
intestines.

“Time to get out,” David said, and glanced to Sam. “Want to
finish? Make it as thin a scar as you can.”

“The pupils! The pupils!” said Woody, back at the head of
the table.

The anesthesiologist also straightened and checked the
monitor. “Sudden change,” he said. “Subdural must be enlarging, causing
pressure on the brain. Get neurosurgery in here.”

The circulating nurse made the call on her phone.

David blinked, looked abruptly crestfallen. Leaned both
hands on the table, and looked painfully down at Jenna.

MacIntyre tried to stay positive. “Hey, she’s halfway there.
You’ve done all you can. She’s off transfusion, back on dextrose and water -
and she’s young, you even saved her uterus.”

“She could’ve gone straight into the recovery room…” David’s
voice trailed.

“So they’ll wheel her out for a CAT scan. You’ll have to go
with her anyway, right? Make sure she
keeps
recovering?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll come too.”

10


D
etectives Ted Connor and Ray Zeinuc studied Brian
Walsh. Agitated, early thirties with thinning light brown hair and intense
round eyes.

“Who would do this?” he kept saying. “Who would
do
this?” He hunched over, his hands clenching and unclenching his knees. He
seemed more uptight than sorrowful.

Walsh was on a bench outside OB surgery. The detectives had
pulled chairs from the nurses’ station and sat facing him in the wide hall.
Zeinuc just stared at Walsh and tapped his ballpoint annoyingly. Connor leaned
back, crossed his arms, and said nothing. Cop silence to get the other guy to
talk.

Walsh avoided his gaze, and twisted his body away toward the
glass wall of the surgical suite.

“Why can’t I see my sister?” he demanded.

“She’s being operated on,” said Connor. “You already asked
that question. Now will you answer mine?”

Walsh turned back nervously, his darting, round eyes only
brushing the detectives. He still gripped his knees.

“We
weren’t
estranged,” he said. “She just hadn’t
been speaking to me lately…”

“And that was why?”

Behind Connor, an orderly pushed a laden gurney, a nurse
pushed an instrument tray, and then another nurse ushered Alex Brand, Keri
Blasco, and a weeping couple into the doctors’ lounge. The cops avoided
exchanging glances, but Brand propped the lounge door open. By prearrangement,
Connor had positioned his chair so he could see through the door, judge body
language, confer with Brand and his interview by phone.

He looked back to Brian Walsh, who was shifting a bit less nervously,
clutching his knees again.

“Jenna said she was sick of me always trying to protect
her,” he said slowly, begrudgingly. “It’s been like that since High School,
she’d get into trouble and I’d get her out…”

“That was a Catholic High School?” Zeinuc asked, scribbling.

“Yes. I was the good one, and she hated that. Years passed
and she kept…getting into worse stuff…” He swallowed, stopped abruptly.

“What worse stuff?” From Connor.

A frown. No reply.

“When did you last speak to her?”

More scowling over to the surgical suite. Without looking
back Walsh said, “In June. I called her, tried to reason with her…” His voice
trailed.

“About?”

“Family business. Private.”

Zeinuc flipped a notebook page, and Connor leaned forward.
“Care to be more specific?”

“I
told
you.” Walsh wheeled on him. “Family business.
We had issues
.”

Connor flicked a glance at the wall clock. “Where’s your
wife, by the way?”

“I don’t know. I called her, left a voice mail.”

“That was twenty minutes ago. She hasn’t called back.”

A shrug. “She will.”

“Her name is Dara, right?”

“Right.”

“What does she do?”

“Works nights in a convalescent home.”

“Did you know Jenna had an OB appointment here?”

Walsh’s eyes slid away. The detectives traded glances.

“Did you know-”

“Okay, yes.” Squirming and shifting again.

“I thought you hadn’t spoken to her.”

Dry-lipped: “My wife did. She called her once or twice,
tried to be friendly.”

“When?”

“Recently. I told Dara I didn’t want to hear about it.”

Connor’s phone vibrated and he answered, peered into the
lounge at Brand who was turned a little away with his phone to his mouth. Keri
was trying comfort a sobbing woman.

Brand’s voice said low, “The couple’s name is Susan and Paul
Sutter. Jenna was their surrogate mother because Susan’s a type 1 unstable
diabetic.”

Connor’s eyes went sympathetically to the Sutters. Paul
Sutter, looking stricken, had both arms around his wife.

Brand continued. “They don’t like Brian Walsh. Didn’t know
about him when the pregnancy was IVF-initiated in March. Jenna was broke,
needed the money, and they liked her. Sweet girl, they say. Later the brother
started hounding her. She told them he’d become obsessed with the church over
the last couple of years, warned her surrogacy was a mortal sin and she was
going to burn in hell. She told them she just was a holiday Catholic, but he
upset her. She finally told him to leave her alone.”

Connor was taking notes. Glanced back into the lounge just
as tearful Susan Sutter, pale with pale hair, maybe forty, looked up to him.
Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen in a face too ghastly white. Connor had
known type 1 diabetics. They’d sometimes pass out in the street, at the wheel,
be presumed drunk and nearly die. This was so depressing.

Hanging up, Connor passed his notes to Zeinuc and glared at
Walsh. “So you were trying to save your sister’s soul? Is that it?”

A sullen silence.

“You consider surrogacy a sin?”

“That’s the Church’s position.”

“So killing the child Jenna carried would save her from
eternal hellfire?”

“No! I never would have done that!”

“Sure you would’ve,” Zeinuc said sarcastically, inventing
like the good interviewer that he was. “Last June she was only three months
along, so if you got her to abort, convince her to confess
really sincerely
,
she could’ve been absolved, right? Isn’t absolution terrific?”

“She hasn’t gone near confession in years.”

An evasive non-answer.

A nurse ran past them carrying orange juice for Susan
Sutter, hovered over her while Paul Sutter used their glucose meter to prick
her finger. The trio grimly checked the results. Susan drank; lay her head
tearfully on her husband’s shoulder.

And Connor’s phone vibrated again. A voice on the other end
told him Walsh’s alibi didn’t check out. He worked in a Greenwich Village
appliance store, but had taken an hour off for a “late lunch” around when Jenna
was attacked. “Not very bright, huh?” the voice finished.

Connor hung up.

“Where’d you have your late lunch?” he asked.

Cocky: “Phil’s Deli, I’m sure I’m on their surveillance
tape.”

The detectives traded looks again.
Maybe a planner after
all. Maybe he ate real fast…

Connor gave Walsh a solid stare. “So you’re a devout
Catholic?”

“Yes.”

“Your address here lists Macdougal Street in Greenwich
Village. How long have you lived there?”

Uncomfortable: “Five months.”

“And before that?”

“Staten Island.”

“Ah! So five months ago you moved to the Village, which
isn’t exactly known for its churchgoers. Why is that?”

A shrug. “It’s where I found work.”

“It wasn’t because your sister lived in the Village and you
wanted to keep tabs on her?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“There aren’t appliance stores on Staten Island?”

“Nobody was hiring.”

“But there are snakes, aren’t there? Lots of garter snakes
in Staten Island?”

For the first time Walsh locked eyes with Connor, screwing
his face. “
Snakes?
What are you
talking
about?” He looked
genuinely confused.

Zienuc added helpfully, “Those snakes are common. They’re
all over.”

Connor fumed and took another tack. “Maybe this
isn’t
just about the baby,” he said sharply. “Jenna was hit hard on the head. So hard
it surprised the doctors the blow didn’t kill her. So this was personal. You
couldn’t control her anymore. That made you seriously mad at her, didn’t it?”

“
No
.” A vein throbbed on Walsh’s temple.

“It drove you crazy.” Connor started inventing too. “You’d
assigned yourself to protect her soul, and failed. Now I’m a little rusty here,
it’s been a long time since catechism, but doesn’t that mean you too failed in
your holy mission?”

“What? No!”

“Sure it does,” Zienuc said, back to annoyingly tapping his
ballpoint. “You failed to save her soul, which means she’s sent
you
to
hell too.”

“No it
doesn’t
.” Walsh’s face contorted. “You’re
twisting everything! I didn’t
do
this!”

“Is your wife a good Catholic by the way?”

“Of course!”

The nurse just leaving Susan Sutter asked them to keep it
down. Connor apologized, and said they were done anyway.

“Okay Brian,” he said. “You can leave for now, but we’re not
done with you or your wife. Tell her to come in to be interviewed, or we’ll
come to her. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

11


D
avid slammed a locker door closed.
“Please
move
in with me,” he pleaded, intense, uptight.

“I’ve already moved in with you,” Jill said, just as tense.
She yanked on a new scrub top, pulled her long dark hair out of it and let it
drop down her shoulders.

David exhaled hard. “I mean, full time. A few clothes in a
drawer doesn’t mean you’re moved in.”

They had showered and changed in the women’s locker room,
where all such traffic had been directed during the police investigation. It
was six-thirty and the place was nearly empty. Tricia Donovan had just left.
Jill and Tricia had helped deliver their first breech birth, had narrowly
avoided complications, and David was fretting about Jenna Walsh, just out of
more surgery for a clot on her brain.

Both were exhausted. Thoroughly spent and starving, and now
having a go at each other.

Jill put a foot on the locker room bench and started tying
one of her running shoes. David leaned over her, his voice low.

“There’s a new creep out there, sending us
messages with
snakes.
Megaphone Guy called the hospital the devil’s workshop. Or
maybe
he just meant the OB department, or just us
, the media’s faces for all
this.”

“Isn’t fame wonderful?” Jill’s hands shook.

“Your apartment’s in a decrepit brownstone. A busted lock on
the downstairs front door, for God’s sake.”

“I only go back there for clothes.”

“I’ll go with you. We’ll get them all-”

“And I sleep at your place or in the on call room-”

“With me. That’s bed’s really
small
, Jill.”

She stopped tying her second shoe, frowned down at it for a
moment. “I’m not a child,” she said unhappily. “Please…you gotta stop being
overprotective.”

He straightened, and looked away. Jill glanced up at him. He
looked hurt.

Oh, guilt time…again. She was sorry.

“Can we discuss this on full stomachs? Please?” She
straightened too, touching his arm tentatively, then putting her arms around
him. David gave in, hugging tiredly back. She nuzzled into the crook of his
shoulder, practically sagging on him. “That wasn’t the real me talking because
I’m ready to faint,” she whispered. “Head’s busting and we haven’t eaten.”

“Okay.” David fell silent but kept brooding.

In the staff elevator, which they had to themselves, he
paced and his fretting resumed. “The snakes, the damn snakes. It’s the
same
guy
.”

“It’s usually me who obsesses, David.”

“Nobody killed
yet
, but it’s somebody seriously
whacko who’s after the whole hospital.”

Jill peered up determinedly, watching the floor numbers
bring them down to the cafeteria. Five, four … She’d learned their different
ways of reacting to stress. David spewed and let his feelings show. Jill
retreated into herself.

“The clincher is Hutch’s rubber snake,” he fumed, stopping
to watch Jill watch the numbers. “Why a
fake
garter snake, when you can
get fake cobras, rattlers, copperheads? Because real garter snakes are
everywhere, easy to find, and after the anatomy lab a woman - pregnant with an
appointment waiting
here
– gets brought in horribly beaten with a real garter
snake wrapped around her. So we can connect them, right? In case he thinks
we’re stupid?”

Three, two…

David looked away and resumed pacing, his fists bunched in
his scrub pockets, his voice dropping lower. He glared at a GIVE BLOOD poster.
Then at notices for staff meetings.

“Same creep and he’s
more ambitious
than July’s
whacko, a planner sending abused women as threats to us and Jesse
and now
the whole hospital.”

Jill had glanced further up. “Why is the button for the
sixth floor taped over?”

“Huh? Oh, that’s the generator floor. Machines and stuff
that power the hospital.” He paced again. “Shit, Jenna’s snake is with the cops
for evidence. I would have liked a better look at it. Under a microscope.”

“It died.”

“No way it could have lived. Its belly had been torn, it had
lost most of its blood-”

“David?” Jill breathed out slowly, sounding truly weak. “If
you knew the headache I have. Please. Can we just eat first?”

The others were waiting at their favorite table in a far
corner of the cafeteria. The table had become a sort of clubhouse for the five
of them. Woody Greenberg, Sam MacIntyre and Tricia Donovan had been through it
all with Jill and David. During the first crisis on the roof, they’d gone
nearly crazy running around and shouting into their cell phones. Then the
second time they’d gone through the same horror, when Jill and David were again
almost killed.

Déjà vu all over again Jill thought, depressed, as she and
David carried their trays past filled tables, the whole cafeteria back to the
same anxious hush, with staff in scrubs sending sympathetic or worried glances
their way. News of the anatomy lab snake and Jenna’s attack had spread fast, on
top of today being Madison’s big announcement about Jesse, and Jill and David’s
faces again blanketing the media.

Tricia had told them in the locker room that TV and cable
were already covering the attack on Jenna Walsh, surrogate mother. No mention
of the snake, though. That hadn’t leaked – yet - from the hospital, and the
cops must be withholding that part.

“Hangin’ in?” a radiology friend fisted David’s arm as he
passed.

“By a thread, thanks,” he muttered.

Other residents sent Jill anxious little waves. So did a
table of her fellow interns: Charlie Ortega the Hugger, Ramu Chitkara so very
English from Oxford, and Gary Phipps, who usually lived on Mounds bars.

Charlie jumped up to hug her around her tray. “You okay?
Jeez,
awful
day.” She smiled faintly, then at Ramu, there too urging tea
(“Darjeeling!”), and Gary, also hugging and jibbering how freaked
he
was.

She managed reassuring nothings for them, then followed
David to their table.

Woody took her tray from her and MacIntyre pulled out a
chair.

“You look pale,” Woody said.

“Really pale,” MacIntyre added helpfully.

“It’s my every-three-months look,” Jill said, thanking them,
sitting between David and Tricia, who pushed Ketchup to her.

“You’ll need it on that excuse for a grinder.”

“It’s all they had left.”

“What? The mystery meat is gone? Summon the waiter. I want
to complain to the chef.”

Nobody smiled, including Tricia after her feeble attempt to
lighten the mood. They all started to discuss Jenna Walsh.

“They called me,” David said grimly between bites. “Her
subdural was evacuated, but did pressure damage to the brain.”

“She still comatose?” Woody asked feelingly.

“Yep, being monitored in the neurosurgery recovery room.”

Tricia got emotional. “So horrible. That poor girl. And the
baby, the poor little baby…”

Jill bit determinedly into her grinder. She got a few bites
down, and then couldn’t eat more. Her heart thudded, and her head. She felt a
little sick.

“Anyone got Advil?”

MacIntyre pulled two blister packs from his pocket and
pushed them across to her. “Keep ‘em,” he said. “I raided the charge nurse’s
supply. Sorry it’s not Percocet.”

Jill smiled thinly, pushed a pill out from under its
aluminum foil cover. It was an effort.

Under his bluster, Sam was a sweetheart. Sandy-haired and as
tall as David, he was actually attractive unless one minded his occasional
temper, his white jacket that always looked slept in, and the eating manners of
a timber wolf. Now he was flipping Advil packs like playing cards to everyone
around the table.

Woody said, “Aw, let’s steal the good stuff, Percocet’ll
keep you happy till March, pass the Ketchup please?” His curly brown hair
bobbed as he banged on the near empty bottle. He’d probably be wiry all his
life. Even on no sleep he was usually amped and stumbling over his words.

Tricia, watching his Ketchup smother his half-eaten burger,
said, “I know I’m going to have nightmares about that snake. Just
hearing
about it…”

MacIntyre grimaced. “Just as well you didn’t see it.”

Jill and David traded glances.

David looked gravely at Sam and Woody. “You haven’t heard
the whole story.”

Jill listened as he filled them in. The SPAWN OF THE DEVIL
sign, maybe connected to the seven-headed rubber garter snake found in the
anatomy lab. The Bible passage Carl Hutchins read them about a seven-headed
serpent representing evil. Jenna Walsh’s real garter snake.

“Impaled on her crucifix,”
David said. “Subtle, huh?
Think it’s the same guy?”

Tricia saw the whole picture. “My God,” she breathed.

Sam was very still, except for one hand making a fist on the
tabletop. “So now we have a religious zealot to deal with?”

Woody pushed his plate away, wordless.

“And is this guy
done
?” David asked, leaning forward.
“He went to a lot of work sewing that rubber seven-headed snake. His attack on
Jenna was planned. He brought his real snake and pin.”

“And probably knew she was headed here.” Jill put her Coke
down. “Had a four o’clock appointment in the clinic. The two snakes
and
the attack - think they had anything to do with Jenna being a surrogate
mother?”

She got stares that understood.

“Surrogacy’s a huge no-no for Catholics,” Tricia said.

“Not for Protestants,” from Sam.

“Hutch says Baptists are against it,” David said.

“Oh, right, and fundamentalists,” Sam said grimly. “They
don’t like Harry Potter either. Witchcraft, y’know.”

David was unhappily stacking Advil packs like a house of
cards. “I don’t think Jews are against surrogacy,” he said. “What was that
story In the Bible? Sarah was infertile so she asked her maid to bear Abraham’s
child? So…that was the first surrogate baby.”

“Recorded
baby,” Woody said. “It must have been done
throughout history.”

Jill listened as the others started talking at once. Do you
realize most wars have been fought in the name of religion? Yeah, each side
claiming
they
and they alone could interpret the Bible and God’s will.
The Reformation! Catholics and Protestants killing each other for centuries!
Queen Mary I executing Protestants, burning them at the stake? The Inquisition,
oh, don’t go there. Pulled apart on the rack, then getting burned alive! Wasn’t
Galileo tortured during the Inquisition?

“I read Galileo’s biography,” Woody said, watching David
piling Advil cards. “He was declared a heretic, forced to recant his
outrageous
idea that the earth revolved around the sun…instead of the Church’s position
that the sun revolved around the earth. He was old and sick and forced to spend
the rest of his life under house arrest.”

Jill knew Galileo’s story. Abruptly the others switched back
to an emotional discussion of the SPAWN OF THE DEVIL sign, and she felt a new
tightness in her chest. A sense of fear and loss at once, knowing that David
was right about Jesse because she and David were magnets for every weirdo. Her
eyes stung and she wanted to cry.

Do stalkers ever quit?

He’d be safer adopted anonymously.

A zealot now to deal with?

Tricia took another Advil. Woody somberly started collecting
their plates, stacking them onto a plastic tray. And David’s house of cards
fell.

His eyes were grave. “Two snakes in one day,” he said. “This
creep’s got a ritual that excites him. What’s he planning next?”