The Select (47 page)

Tim grimaced as he watched it slink
over the side rail and fall to the floor.

Now the IV.

His fingers pushed aside the overlying
gauze on his forearm and fumbled with the tape over the IV site.
His gross motor control was returning but his nervous system didn't
seem ready for fine manipulation yet. No matter. He'd simply have
to bull through this. One way or another that IV was coming
out.

He wriggled his index finger under the
tape and ripped it up, exposing the hub of the IV needle and more
tape. He guided his twitching fingers around the tape and hub,
grasping them as one, then he yanked back. The needle pulled free
painlessly, dribbling clear fluid across the sheet while a droplet
of blood welled in the puncture site.

Tim jabbed the IV needle into his
mattress, then dammed the blood flow with his thumb. He didn't want
any telltale red splotches on his arm. He maintained the pressure
for what he guessed was a minute, then checked the site: No more
bleeding. He sucked the blood off his thumb, then pushed the tape
and gauze back into place.

Okay, he was ready. But first he
decided to try something radical: he pushed himself up on both
elbows, grabbed the side rails, then pulled himself to a sitting
position.

The room pinwheeled clockwise while
the bed did its own tilt-a-whirl in the opposite direction. He felt
seasick and ridesick, he closed his eyes but the feeling of
spinning into the void pursued him. He'd figured his inner ear
would pull this sort of stunt on him after his being flat for so
long, but he hadn't imagined it would be this bad. He clenched his
teeth against his rising gorge and held on for the duration of the
hellride. He wasn't going to let go.

Finally the vortical movement slowed.
When it stopped, Tim dared to open his eyes. The room was steady.
He dropped back onto the mattress, gasping, sweating. He'd done it.
In a couple of minutes he'd try it again. In the meantime he'd keep
working his limbs, keep stretching and contracting those muscles.
And all the while he'd be waiting.

Tim was surprised at how good he'd
become at waiting.

*

As tired as Matt was—exhausted was
more like it—sleep would not come.

He lay among the mute
shadows of the motel room and listened to a snow plow scrape by on
the road outside. He knew why he couldn't sleep—because he
shouldn't
sleep. He
should be up and out and doing something.

Because the more he lay here and
thought about it, the surer he was that Quinn was in trouble. Big
trouble. She'd sounded so frightened on the phone, and now it
looked as if she'd disappeared.

He'd replayed their fragmented
cellular phone conversation countless times in his mind, looking
for an answer, and with each run-through it sounded progressively
more disjointed and bizarre. But the last two words he'd heard kept
nudging him.

...Sheriff...Southworth...

Matt threw off the covers and sat on
the edge of the bed. It was obvious he wasn't going to get any
sleep, so he might as well get up and do something. Get into
motion. Even if he wasn't accomplishing anything, at least he'd
feel better about himself. He pulled out the slim Frederick County
phone book, looked up the number of the sheriff's office, and
dialed. A man who announced himself as Deputy Harris answered and
Matt asked for Sheriff Southworth.

Harris laughed. "The
sheriff's name is Clarkson. But there's a
Deputy
Southworth."

"Is he around?"

"Won't be in till eight."

"Could you call him at
home?"

"I don't think he'd appreciate a call
at this hour. Can I help you?"

Matt hesitated, then figured, What the
hell. He told Deputy Harris about Tim's disappearance—Harris was
familiar with that— and about his phone call to Quinn.

"And now Quinn's gone too," Matt
said.

"We don't know that yet," Harris
said.

"But she did mention the name
Southworth. Couldn't you give him a call? Maybe Quinn told him
something."

"I guess I could give Ted a buzz,"
Harris said slowly. "He's been following the Brown
case..."

"Please do."

Matt gave Harris his room number at
the motel should he or Southworth want to get back to him, then
hung up and waited.

Not a long wait. The phone rang three
minutes later.

"You the one who just called the
Sheriff's Office?" said a deep voice.

"Yes. Deputy Southworth?"

"That's me. Start talking."

*

Tim froze as the door opened and the
lights came on. Ellie, the skinny nurse, entered, pushing a wheeled
tray ahead of her. Tim watched the door swing shut behind her. She
was alone. He was relieved to see her instead of Doris. He didn't
know if his plan would work on the bigger woman.

As she headed in the direction of
Number One, she glanced Tim's way and stared. Tim kept his face
slack and expressionless.

"Well, look at you, Number Eight.
Looks like you've been busy while I'm out."

She turned and wheeled the tray toward
Tim. He noticed a row of filled and tagged syringes lined up on the
tray—eight of them. She stopped the tray beside the bed and gazed
down at the feeding tube on the floor.

"Now how did you manage
that?"

Tim's right arm and the IV line were
under the sheet. His left arm lay on top. He moved his left index
finger back and fourth.

"Oh, I see. Getting a teeny bit of
movement back, are we? So are the others. Well, we'll fix that.
Looks like the new supply arrived just in time."

Tim watched her check the IVAC flow
rate, then shut it off and swab the rubber injection port on the
Y-adaptor with alcohol. She then selected a syringe from the tray,
pulled off the needle protector, jabbed the point into the port,
and pushed the plunger home, emptying the barrel's contents into
the line.

As she restarted the flow, Tim pulled
the IV needle out of the mattress with his right hand. Then he
reached up with his left hand, grabbed a fistful of the starched
white uniform over Ellie's breast bone, and yanked her toward him.
Her eyes widened with shock that changed to pain and fear when Tim
rammed the IV needle through her uniform and into her
abdomen.

She started shouting, struggling, but
Tim pulled her further over the bed rail, levering her kicking feet
off the floor, and pressing her face against his chest, muffling
her cries in the gauze that swathed him. He watched the IV continue
dripping, hoping the 9574 was flowing into her abdominal cavity,
hoping it was being absorbed into the bloodstream via the
peritoneal lining, praying it would work soon because he didn't
know how long his weakened muscles could keep this up.

Suddenly, as if someone had pulled her
plug, Ellie went limp. Tim loosened his grip, saw her eyes looking
out at him from a slack face, and knew the 9574 had gone to work.
Ellie would not be a problem for the next six hours.

He released the nurse and let her slip
to the floor like a stuffed toy. He propped himself up on an elbow
and grabbed one of the syringes from Ellie's tray.

Then Tim lay back and began waiting
again. He hoped it didn't take Doris too long to come looking for
her co-worker.

*

"Elliot!" Verran said to the slim,
dark man who had just arrived. "What took you so long?"

Still feigning unconsciousness and
watching through her barely-parted lids, Quinn immediately
recognized the newcomer as the exterminator who had been in her
room with Verran.

"In case you forgot, Chief," Elliot
said, "there's been some snow."

"Never mind that," Whitney said. "Did
you bring the car?"

"Left it in one of the public lots by
the hospital."

"Very good." Whitney turned and looked
at the others. "You all know what to do. I'll return to Washington
now. I'll be expecting a call imminently, informing me that this
matter has been satisfactorily disposed of. I will pass the news on
from there."

Then he brushed past Kurt and Dr.
Alston, and strode through the door.

"There's a guy in a big hurry," Elliot
said.

Verran nodded. "Yeah. A rat deserting
the ship. He wants to be out of state when it goes
down."

"When what goes down?" Elliot
said.

Verran jerked his thumb at Quinn. "Her
and the Brown kid. They're going to have an accident in that car
you just brought in."

"Shit," Elliot said. His gaze darted
nervously about the room. He was visibly upset. "I didn't sign on
for anything like this."

"None of us did," Verran said. He
rubbed his upper abdomen, as if in pain.

"We've no other choice," Dr. Alston
said. "We've been given instructions and I'm afraid we're stuck
with them."

"Right," Kurt said. "So let's stop
standing around like a bunch of biddies and let's figure out how,
when, and where we're gonna do this. We haven't got much darkness
left."

Quinn listened in horror as they
discussed the mechanics of situating the two of them in the front
seat of Griffin, running it off the road into a tree, and making
sure the gas tank blew up. She looked for a way out but there were
four men between her and the exit. No way she could get past them.
But a chance might present itself later if they thought she was
still out cold. Maybe she could get free and get to a phone, or
find somebody who could get a message to the sheriff's
office...

A lump formed in her throat as she
remembered Dr. Emerson, and how she'd thought he'd called the
sheriff for her...

"All right," Verran said. He sounded
tired and unhappy. "We can't put this off any longer. Let's get it
over with. Elliot, get up to Five and wheel Brown down here. I'll
call up and have Doris transfer him to a gurney for
you."

With Elliot gone, there were only
three men left in the room. Come on, Quinn thought, mentally urging
the rest of them to leave. Don't any of you have someplace to
go?

But Verran and Dr. Alston sat in glum
silence while Kurt whistled, clipping his fingernails.

*

"Ellie?"

Tim closed his eyes as he saw Doris
stick her blond head through the door and scan the ward. He heard
her step inside and walk over to the prep room.

"Ellie, where are you?"

He heard Doris's footsteps turn in his
direction, stop abruptly, then—

"Oh, my God! Ellie! Ellie, what's
wrong?"

He opened his eyes then and saw Doris
beside the bed, bending over the unconscious nurse. The white
fabric of her uniform was stretched across the expanse of her back.
The strap of her bra was a whiter band across her ribs. Holding the
syringe like a dagger, Tim snaked his arm through the bars of his
bed's safety rail and poised the needle over Doris's back. He
hesitated. This was a gamble. He didn't know if the 9574 would be
absorbed from the pleural cavity. But that wouldn't matter if he
hit a rib and bent the needle.

He clenched his teeth and
remembered Doris's words to him earlier
.
And who knows? Maybe your girlfriend will be up here by then, and
she'll be getting her own dose of it.

Here's
your
own personal dose, bitch, he
thought, and plunged the needle into the right side of her back,
just above the bra strap. He felt the point graze a rib, then pop
through into the lung cavity. Immediately he rammed the plunger
home.

Doris jerked and reared up, clutching
at her back, reaching around her side and over her shoulder, trying
frantically to get to whatever was causing the sudden stabbing
pain. When she turned and saw Tim up on his elbow, looking at her,
Doris's eyes bulged.

"You!"

She began to gasp for air. And then
she saw the tray of syringes next to the bed. She
coughed.

"Oh, no! Oh, NO!"

Tim grabbed for her as she lurched
away from the bed but his fingers only managed to brush her sleeve,
then she was tottering out of reach toward the door, wheezing
loudly, her hands still clawing at her back, trying to reach the
syringe that was still buried to the hub between her ribs. She
staggered against the door and almost fell, but leaned on the frame
and pulled it open. She squeezed through the narrow opening and
stumbled out to the nurses station.

"Damn!" Tim croaked as she disappeared
from view. If she got to a phone...

He fumbled at his side rail, found the
release, and lowered the rail. Slowly he pushed himself up to a
sitting position. Everything remained stable—the practice runs had
helped. He let his legs drop over the side of the bed. The room
spun for half a minute and he grabbed fistfuls of sheet to keep
from falling off. When his equilibrium returned he slowly slid his
legs down to the floor. His knees wobbled but held as they accepted
the unaccustomed burden of his weight. The tile floor was cold but
Tim wouldn't have cared if it had been ice—it felt wonderful to be
on his feet again. All around him, his fellow Ward C residents were
moving under their sheets.