Brainwaves, page 29
part #8 of Joanna Blalock Series
“That’s possible,” Shipman had to admit.
“How can we tell for sure?”
“We’ll wait and watch. If your weakness disappears, it was caused by trauma to the muscles.”
“And if the weakness persists?”
“We’ll start you on physical therapy.”
Joanna turned her head away, fighting back tears. “And I’ll limp for the rest of my life.”
“Now look here, young lady,” Shipman said, his voice sharper. “You’ll be a very fortunate woman if you come out of this with just some weakness in one leg. You can thank your lucky stars for Karen Crandell’s catheter device, because without it you wouldn’t be moving anything at all at this moment.”
“I guess,” Joanna muttered, dreading the thought that she’d need a leg brace. “Is the catheter still in me?”
Shipman reached over to the night table for the
catheter and held it up. “I removed it while you were asleep. It’s been in for two days, and that’s longer than we usually go. But I wanted to be certain no more clots were forming.”
The catheter in Shipman’s hand was a very thin, transparent tube with wires and sensors attached. So simple, she thought. Yet it had probably saved her life.
Her thoughts returned to the murder of the device’s inventor, Karen Crandell. “And I fell down the stairs, just like Karen,” Joanna said, more to herself than to Shipman.
“Do you remember that?” Shipman asked promptly.
“I remember flying through the air.”
Shipman looked at her strangely. “But you tripped. Right?”
“Propelled would be a better word,” Joanna said, and immediately regretted saying it. She was talking too much without thinking.
“What do you mean, ‘propelled’?”
Joanna’s eyelids began to close. She tried to keep them open but couldn’t.
“Did you say ‘propelled’?” Shipman asked, his voice louder.
“I think I’ll sleep for a while,” Joanna said drowsily, and then drifted off.
Shipman wondered if Joanna’s mind was playing tricks on her. Sometimes that happened after a severe concussion. He left the room and signaled to Lori she could go back inside. He didn’t see Christopher Moran turning into the corridor less than thirty feet away.
Moran abruptly spun around and went back in the opposite direction, patting his coat pocket as if he’d
forgotten something. He had heard that Joanna had awakened and had a full return of her senses. But how much did she remember about the fall? That was the important question. Not much, Moran guessed. After all, she had been only starting to turn around when he pushed her. But then again, she might have caught a glimpse of him. Goddamn it! That was a very real possibility and it was eating at him.
Moran walked into the doctors lounge and went over to a large basin where he washed his hands. Briefly he looked up at the wall clock. It was 11:20 a.m. He would give Shipman another few minutes to finish up at the nurses station. Then Moran would go there and scout things out. He grumbled to himself, thinking about his missed opportunity to get to Joanna Blalock late last night when a skeleton staff was on duty. But a motorcyclist with massive head injuries had kept Moran in surgery for twelve straight hours.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Joanna and her fall. She must not have seen him or remembered seeing him. If she had, the police would be talking to him by now. No, she didn’t remember being pushed. But she might remember eventually. He knew that memories of the recent past could sometimes return weeks after the traumatic event.
There was no way to be sure. Not as long as Joanna Blalock was alive.
Moran dried his hands with a paper towel and headed back to 6 East. Down the corridor he saw the police officer sitting outside Joanna’s room. The cop scrutinized anybody who came near the door he was guarding.
Moran reached for a lab report in his pocket and appeared to be studying it as he passed by Joanna’s room. The door was cracked open, but not enough for him to see inside.
Moran came to the nurses station on 6 East. It was deserted except for a ward clerk on the phone and a nurse in the IV room. Shipman was gone.
The ward clerk cupped her hand over the phone and asked, “Is there anything I can do for you, Dr. Moran?”
“No, thank you,” Moran said.
He waited for the clerk to go back to her phone conversation, then scanned the charts scattered on the countertop until he spotted Joanna’s chart. It had a green tag on it, indicating that a doctor had written orders that had not yet been carried out.
Moran opened Joanna’s chart and quickly read the progress note Shipman had just written.
Vital signs are stable. Patient is now alert and oriented in all spheres. Neurologically she is intact except for 3/5 weakness in her left lower extremity. This is most likely the result of a small stroke, although traumaric injury to the leg is a possibility. Her thought processes and memory seem unimpaired. She can recall her fall down a flight of stairs and believes she was somehow propelled into space. I am not sure what this means. Perhaps it will become clearer with time. For now, we’ll watch and wait, and schedule her for additional diagnostic studies as needed.
Alan Shipman, M.D.
A streak of fear shot through Moran. She knows she was pushed! She knows! And with time she might remember who did it. Goddamn it! I should have gone down those stairs and stomped her head into mush while I had the chance.
Moran hurriedly reread the note. The only good news was the weakness in Joanna’s leg. It was probably caused by a stroke; and in most cases that impeded the patient’s mental processes. Maybe the stroke would dull Joanna’s mind permanently. But this was only wishful thinking, Moran told himself sourly. As long as Joanna was alive, she was a threat to him. He needed an opening to get to her.
Moran flipped through Joanna’s chart until he reached the order page. Shipman had written orders for a soft diet, routine blood work, and a physical therapy consultation. Then Moran saw the fourth order. Joanna was to be scheduled for an MRI with arteriography tomorrow afternoon. They were going to inject contrast media into the blood vessels in Joanna’s brain. And since Joanna was a staff physician at Memorial, they would push her to the front of the line. They would do her first.
Moran had his opening.
32
“Well, look who is sitting up,” Kate said happily as she entered Joanna’s room.
Joanna grinned. “I think I’m slowly returning to the world of the living.”
“How do you feel?”
“Tired,” Joanna replied. “I’ve been in this chair for twenty minutes and I’m already worn out.”
“She’s doing great,” Lori joined in. “Even her leg is better.”
Kate’s expression turned serious. “What’s wrong with her leg?”
Joanna waved away Kate’s concern. “It was weak yesterday, but it’s stronger now. I can even put some weight on it.”
“Are you sure?” Kate asked skeptically.
“I am,” Joanna said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “And Alan Shipman will be too when he reexamines me. I’ll bet you ten bucks he cancels the MRI I’m supposed to have today.”
Kate looked over to Lori. “Does she limp when she walks?”
“Some,” Lori answered, unwrapping a lollipop and placing it in her mouth. “But that’s better, too.”
“Are you telling me everything?” Kate asked, still worried about her sister.
“Everything I know,” Lori said, and then pushed herself up from her chair. “I have to run over to my office and try to get some work done.”
Joanna said, “Your desk must be stacked ten feet high.”
Lori nodded. “And growing.”
“Concern yourself only with the urgent matters,” Joanna advised. “The other things can wait.”
Lori rolled the lollipop from side to side in her mouth, wondering if she should bother Joanna with the new findings in the brains of Elizabeth Ryan and Marci Gwynn. It could wait, she decided. It wasn’t urgent.
Joanna stared at the moving lollipop in Lori’s mouth, knowing it signaled indecision. “Say what’s on your mind while I’m still sitting up.”
Lori hesitated. “It’s probably not that important, but it’s something I sure as hell can’t explain.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Remember those tiny smudges in the brains of the two girls who died?” Lori asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, I had them examined under a high-powered microscope. Those little things are really microchips with miniaturized electronic circuitry.”
Joanna squinted an eye. “Are you saying they’re silicon chips?”
“They’re similar to silicon chips, but they’re made of some type of semisolid gel,” Lori replied.
“How many of them are present?”
“A bunch. And they’re all located around the periphery of the resected tumor.”
Joanna blinked rapidly as she recalled that Karen Crandell and Christopher Moran were working together on a semisolid microchip that was a hundred times smaller than the routine silicon chip.
“What do you think?” Lori asked. “Are they part of some new procedure?”
“Maybe,” Joanna said thoughtfully, as the pieces began to fall into place. “There are a number of things I’d like you to do.”
“Fire away.”
“First, don’t mention this to anybody,” Joanna began. “Not a word to anybody. Understood?”
“Got you.”
“Next, I want you to take all the silver clips Moran used to mark off the tumor area and see if they’re hollow.”
Lori looked at Joanna oddly. “Hollow?”
“Hollow,” Joanna repeated. “And if they are, flush them and see if a semisolid gel comes out.”
Lori’s eyes widened. “And see if it’s toxic?”
“That, too.”
“Jesus,” Lori hissed quietly, then glanced over to Kate. “I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll hold down the fort until Mack Brown arrives,” Kate said.
“He’s not coming in today,” Lori told her. “He had to fly to Texas to see a sick relative.”
“Then I’ll take his shift,” Kate said.
“Good.” Lori reached for the door. “Walk with me down the hall and we’ll set up a schedule between the two of us.”
Joanna watched Lori and Kate leave, still thinking about the microchips in the brains of Elizabeth Ryan and Marci Gwynn. She was certain Moran
had inserted the chips, but she didn’t know why. One possibility was that he wanted to remove a large margin of normal brain tissue around the tumor to hopefully cure the patient. But this would have left the patient with terrible neurological deficits. So he inserted the microchips, hoping they would reestablish the neural pathways he had disrupted at surgery. My God! Was that it? If it was, it was the work of a surgeon gone mad.
There was a brief knock at the door. It opened and Jake walked in. He was carrying a vase of flowers.
Jake stopped at the sight of Joanna sitting up in a chair. “You’re making a comeback, huh?”
“Slowly but surely,” Joanna said, thinking that Jake was just about the most handsome man she’d ever seen. “The tulips are beautiful.”
“California grown,” Jake told her. “Where do you want me to put them?”
“On the windowsill,” Joanna said. “Then draw up a chair and listen to a real horror show.”
“Are we talking about a crime?” Jake asked, setting the tulips down.
“We’re talking about a surgeon killing two patients.”
Jake took out a notepad and sat close to the bed. “Fire away.”
“Christopher Moran had two sudden deaths in the OR recently, both unexplained and both involving young women with brain tumors.” Joanna told Jake about the peculiar syndrome the women developed just prior to dying, then described in detail the tiny black smudges discovered in the brains at autopsy, which turned out to be semisolid microchips. “I think
Moran was attempting to rewire these women’s brains.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“Because the only way to remove the tumor entirely is to do a wide resection,” Joanna explained. “And when you do this, you disrupt neural pathways which can leave the patient with terrible neurologic deficits. These microchips could conceivably reestablish those pathways.”
“Does it really work?”
“It’s never been done before,” Joanna said. “Except perhaps in laboratory animals. And chances are, the patients had no idea this was going to be tried on them.”
“Are you saying he experimented on those patients?”
Joanna nodded firmly. “And probably killed them. I think those semisolid microchips are going to turn out to be toxic to brain cells.”
Jake tapped his pen against his notepad, digesting and assimilating the new information. “Assuming the chips were poisonous, can you prove Moran did it?”
“That’s the big problem,” Joanna had to admit. “Even if we found that the silver clips are hollow and contain toxic semisolid chips, we can’t prove Moran was behind it all. He could simply say the clips weren’t his but the hospital’s and that he knew nothing about their contents.”
“But the semisolid chip business was his area of research,” Jake argued. “That’s what Bondurant told us.”
“Moran’s and Karen Crandell’s,” Joanna countered. “They worked together on the project, but Karen was
the real expert on the subject, and when she died the research stopped. That’s what he’d say.”
“Or maybe he’d somehow try to blame it on her.”
“That, too.”
Jake considered the matter at length before speaking again. “What if we could track down the manufacturer of the silver clips and show that Moran ordered them?”
“You could try, but I think that will be very difficult to do,” Joanna said. “He probably had the hollow clips made overseas, in a country where the origin couldn’t be traced.”
“If you want to nail Moran,” Jake advised, “you’ve got to track down the origin of those clips.”
“That’s at the top of my things-to-do list.”
Jake closed his notepad. “Do you think Moran knows you’re close to figuring everything out?”
“He knows I won’t stop until I do.”
“This guy has got a lot of reasons to want you dead, doesn’t he?”
“So it would seem.”
“Well, we’re going to keep a tough cop outside your door twenty-four hours a day,” Jake said hoarsely. “If Moran tries to get in, he’ll wish to God he hadn’t.”
Joanna sighed wearily, thinking there were a dozen ways to kill patients in a hospital without the killer ever touching them. “Who would believe that a distinguished institute like the BRI would harbor murderers and thieves?”
“And spies.”
“Spies! What are you talking about?”
Jake pulled his chair in even closer. “I’m talking about something that will really blow your mind.”
Joanna leaned forward. “I’m listening.”
“The goddamn NASA business was a front.” Jake went into detail about how a shadowy unit at the CIA had used Memorial’s BRI to do its research. “They want to be able to read your thoughts using something called neural-computer interfacing.”
“Jesus!” Joanna hissed under her breath. “They want to get inside your head and stay there.”
“Twenty-four hours a day.”
“How far along are they?”
“My source tells me they’re not there yet, but they’re getting closer.”
Joanna thought about the matter carefully. “Can you prove any of this?”
“There’s some pretty good circumstantial evidence.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the machines in Karen Crandell’s office that were connected to some outside computers. Want to guess who owns those computers?”
“Don’t tell me the CIA.”
“You got it.”
Joanna’s face hardened. “I hate it when they do things like that.”
Jake nodded. “Everybody does. They go and do whatever the hell they want in the name of national security. And soon that will include reading your mind.”
“It’s more than just reading people’s minds, Jake,” Joanna said darkly. “Much more.”
“Like what?”
“Like neuronal-computer interfacing can work like a two-way avenue. On the first track, the brain’s activity is fed into a computer that converts the activity
into thought. On the second track, the computer can take a set of instructions, convert them into electrical impulses, and send them to the brain.”
Jake’s jaw dropped. “Are you saying they’re going to use this thing to program people?”
“That’d be my guess.”
“Those sons of bitches! Those meddling sons of bitches!”
Joanna crawled back into bed and, closing her eyes, began to drift off. “Welcome to the brave new world Jake.”
33
“Dr. Blalock! Dr. Blalock!”
Joanna heard someone calling her name. She slowly opened her eyes but saw only a blurred bright light overhead. Gradually the face and uniform of an X-ray technician came into focus.
“We need you awake, Dr. Blalock,” the technician said. “We don’t want you twisting and turning during the MRI.”
Joanna blinked, quickly clearing her mind. She had thought that she was just going to have routine X rays. “What MRI?”
“A repeat MRI of your brain with contrast.”
“That’s been put on hold,” Joanna said at once and tried to sit up, but she was strapped to a gurney.
“That’s not what the orders say,” the technician told her. “Now, we’ll get this study done and then get you back to your room.”
“The MRI has been put on hold,” Joanna repeated, raising her voice.
The technician shook her head. “Not according to Dr. Shipman.”
“Would you get Dr. Shipman on the phone?” Joanna requested. “I want to talk to him.”
