Rupture Page 26
“You’ll have to do it for me,” he said. “I can’t move.”
With his good arm, Eli lifted the patient’s head until his chin rubbed against his tracheostomy tube. Eli nudged the pillow with his bandaged arm until it was wedged beneath the boy’s head.
“Thanks.”
Eli looked at the patient’s swollen face for another moment.
“What’s your name?” Eli asked.
The boy stared at the ceiling.
“Tynes. Scott Tynes.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
SURGICAL ICU
MONDAY
7:20 A.M.
The young nurse assigned to Eli was shocked to find his bed empty. Melissa Case blamed the guard, who then explained that Dr. Branch was ambulating. By then, the nurses were coming out of report, and they all went looking for the missing patient. One of the nurses knew that Scott Tynes had been Dr. Branch’s patient. They clustered outside room fifteen.
“He’s just a few hours postop, and already he’s checking on his patients?” Melissa asked.
“If I need a surgeon, I want Dr. Branch,” another nurse said.
They watched the doctor leaning against the bed rail and talking with the young boy. Eli’s gown was tied in the back, and it parted open below his waist. His nurse went into the room and pulled his gown together.
One of the nurses outside the door said, “Melissa girl thinks she needs a surgeon right now.” This released a round of nervous laughter from the group. The nurse for Scott Tynes and Henry entered the room behind Melissa and the other nurses scattered to care for their own patients. But none of them knew that the other patient in room fifteen was Eli’s brother.
When Eli returned to his room, escorted by his nurse, Lipsky was waiting for him. He was not alone. Two official-looking men in dark suits stood behind Lipsky, having passed by his hospital guard, who so far had proven ineffectual.
Eli stopped in the doorway and looked at Lipsky. “Are you going to shoot me too?”
“No, I thought I’d wait until after these fellows got through with you.”
One of the suits stepped forward. “Dr. Branch, please, sit down.”
Melissa helped Eli to a bedside chair and hung his bag of intravenous fluid on the pole.
“We know you’ve been through a lot, so we’ll make this short and to the point.” He flipped open his wallet. Eli didn’t find the man’s name because he was so focused on the words Federal Bureau of Investigation before the man slipped it back in his coat.
“We’ve been asked by the president to pay you a visit.”
Melissa stopped writing in Eli’s chart. Eli looked at Lipsky, who had a big grin on his face as if he was finally in the middle of something important.
The FBI doesn’t mess around. They’ll come after you straight from surgery. “Let’s just say the president was rather impressed with your actions this morning.”
Eli looked at the stone-cold face of the other FBI agent and asked, “Impressed?”
Lipsky butted in. “Dr. Branch hasn’t seen much television over the last few hours.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” the agent continued. “We’ve been tracking suspicious activity within the biotech industry. RBI was at the top of our list. You just made our investigation much easier.”
The second agent handed Eli a business card. “We need someone like you, with your skills, on the inside.”
Eli felt a throbbing pain in his injured arm and wondered if he would ever be able to operate again. He studied the card a moment and looked up, his eyebrows raised. “You’re telling me the president of the United States sent you down here to offer me a job?”
Both men turned toward the door. “You’ll be hearing from us. Just take care of yourself.”
Lipsky approached Eli’s chair, removed a folded newspaper from his back pocket, and handed it to him. “Before you leave us small town boys behind, thought you might want to know what happened to your medical school buddies.”
Eli opened the paper to front-page headlines:
RBI LINKED TO UNAUTHORIZED HUMAN EXPERIMENTS UNIVERSITY SURGEONS ARRESTED AFTER DEADLY GATES MEMORIAL SHOWDOWN
He scanned the article. It told of Sister Frances D’Aquila’s television appearance in Washington, her denunciation of RBI’s stem cell therapy, and the swarm of federal agents deployed to Memphis. Eli let the newspaper fall to his lap. He thought about Fisher and Korinsky, and he tried to grasp the magnitude of the events.
Lipsky waited to let the news sink in, until he couldn’t hold it any longer. “Remember that wacko employee of yours and the skin we found under her fingernails?”
“Yeah?” Eli said, eager to know who had killed Vera, his lab tech.
“It matched the RBI scientist woman, Tsarina. She’s the one who stole the cells from you; she had them tucked away in her lab.”
Eli thought of the final moments in the OR before he lost consciousness, when Tsarina was standing at the operating table.
“She’s the one sabotaging RBI’s fancy little device,” Lipsky told him. “Orchestrated the whole thing.”
“The gunshot,” Eli asked. “What happened?” “It’s a damn shame.” Lipsky shook his head as he turned to leave. “She didn’t make it.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
GATES MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
9:14 A.M.
Meg Daily pushed the wheelchair out of Eli’s room in intensive care. After a single night’s stay, he was being transferred to the ward and was expected to be discharged in a couple of days.
“There’s no reason I can’t walk to the elevator.”
Melissa scolded him. “You know the policy. We don’t have many patients that can just walk out of the ICU.”
Meg joined in. “You’re starting a fight after all the nurses have done for you?”
“What did they do?” Eli asked. “Let me walk around with my bum hanging out?”
A group of nurses had gathered at the central desk to say good-bye. They all heard Eli’s last statement and started cheering and clapping. Meg stopped the wheelchair in front of them and they cheered even louder.
“I thank each and every one of you.” Then Eli tilted his head sideways and said, under his breath, “Now get me out of here.”
As Meg wheeled him by the door to the nurse’s lounge, Eli noticed that it was empty. “Stop a second.”
“I thought you wanted out of here?”
Eli raised himself from the wheelchair. “I left something.”
He walked to the cabinet beneath the coffeemaker, pulled out the oversized envelope, and returned to the wheelchair. “The next thing I have to do is hire a lawyer,” Eli said. He turned the envelope so that Meg could see the legal address as she pushed toward the elevator.
“The Tyneses are suing me.”
“I thought you said the boy was alive. That you talked to him.”
“Doesn’t matter, he’s still paralyzed.”
Meg backed the wheelchair inside the elevator next to an elderly couple. The man held onto his wife, who was hunched over with severe osteoporosis. Eli greeted them, then opened the envelope. He dreaded what he was about to read.
To Eli Branch, M.D.
From the Law Offices of Belosi and McCrumb
As the attorneys representing Mr. Roger Tynes, we are contacting you based on his request dated 14 July. Mr. Tynes has informed us that on the night of July 13, you assumed care of his son, Scott, who was critically injured in a motorcycle accident. Mr.Tynes likewise informed us of his son’s life-threatening injuries and certain paralysis. Mr. Tynes is convinced that your surgical skill was crucial in saving his son’s life.
Based on this information and Mr. Tynes’s urgent request, we initiate the following:
Here it comes, Eli thought.
A gift in amount equal to one million dollars will be given to the University of the Mid-South Medical School in your honor.
Eli read the sentence again before going to the next line.
These
monies will be restricted for the purpose of research, programmatic enhancement, or faculty endowment. Further use of this financial gift, within these categories, will be at your discretion.
As per Mr. Tynes’s instruction, we are contacting you privately to avoid further media intrusion during this difficult time for the Tynes family. We ask that you honor his request for silence until Mr. Tynes desires to come forth with a public announcement. Please contact our office to arrange transfer of funds at your earliest convenience.
The elevator stopped and the elderly couple slowly walked off.
“Did you see that old man?” Meg asked. “How sweet.”
Eli finished reading the letter and looked up at Meg, who was still going on about the sweet old couple. “You won’t believe this.”
“That bad, huh?”
Eli decided to skip the million dollar part, for the moment.
“He wants me to take his yacht for a cruise.”
“Yacht? Who’s he?”
“Roger Tynes.” Eli reread the lines out loud.
On a more personal note of his gratitude and appreciation, Mr. Tynes would like you, and a guest, to make full use of his private yacht, which is docked in Miami Beach, Florida. We will arrange a flight for two according to your schedule.
Meg grabbed the piece of paper. “What?”
“Read for yourself.”
The elevator doors opened to the ninth floor. Eli had to roll himself out because Meg was completely absorbed in the letter.
In the hall, Eli wheeled around to face her. Meg’s mouth was half open with a developing smile.
“Something about a sailing partner,” Eli said, “or am I mistaken?”
Meg read the lines verbatim. “You and a guest.”
Eli smiled. “I’ve never seen a pathologist in a string bikini.”
Meg threw the letter in his lap. “If you don’t take me on this trip, you never will.”