chart. This name. This patient.” Her eyes were wide.
“What? What do you mean? I thought you worked in Maternity.”
Before she could answer, the young nurse returned with a set of keys to unlock the refinished wing. She opened the doors and handed Blake a small sealed plastic bag, which had Hancock printed across the side. He hung it on the back of the chair, thanked the nurse for her help and rolled Abby into the closed-off wing. The farther they got into the hallway, the more the blood had drained from Abby’s face. He stopped the chair and walked in front of her. He took her arm and checked her pulse.
“Your heart is racing and you look really tired, Abby. This is too much. Let’s go back down and rest. As you can see, the hallway is empty. There’s no one else here.”
“That doctor was here.” Abby, white as snow, pushed him aside. She stood and began to move through the dim hallway. “He was here. In this hallway with that patient.” She pointed at the chart. “He gave him an injection. Blake, I saw it. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did. That’s why he injected me, too.”
“What doctor? What are you talking about?” Blake moved quickly around the wheelchair and put a hand under her shoulder to support her. He took the chart from her hands and tossed it back onto the wheelchair so he could take her hand. “I really think this is too much for you right now. Please sit back down. You’re not really making a lot of sense.”
“He tried to tell me that patient had a highly contagious disease, but I knew it wasn’t true. There was no indication of it on his chart.” Her pulse quickened as she pressed against him.
Blake didn’t answer. She was already too worked up. He should never have let her talk him into this stupid excursion. “You need to be resting. Come on.”
Abby continued, ignoring his efforts to make her return to the wheelchair. Her persistence was admirable, he supposed. But as a doctor, he had to object to the way she was putting herself at risk. But she would not stop. She continued down the hallway without his help.
“So how did he die?” She looked back at him.
“Cardiac arrest.”
“Too much epinephrine?”
“Too much adrenaline. Yeah. Probably epinephrine. We saved the IV tubing—that’s what’s in the bag that the nurse brought to me. We might be able to get some idea of what the patient was given...but...” He caught up to her, trying to make sense of what she was saying. “Abby, are you saying you saw another doctor inject Hancock with medication? Here? Not in the patient’s room?”
Click.
The doors behind them, the ones they’d come through, closed tight. The lock popped and the sound of it echoed down the dead, dark corridor. It was pitch-black.
Abby shuddered against Blake’s supportive arm.
“Let’s get you back. I think you’ve remembered enough for now.” Blake started to redirect them the way that they’d come. “I’m sure someone will hear us if we knock.”
But Abby pulled against him. “We are much closer to the stairwell. You said that’s where the custodian found me, right?”
“Right.” Blake shook his head, following behind her in the darkness. “Really, please, let me get you back to that wheelchair.... Are all Amish women this stubborn?”
“Most are much worse.” She pushed open the door of the stairwell. There was some dim lighting.
“I’ll keep that in mind in case I have any more Amish patients.” Blake linked an arm gently under hers, supporting most of her weight. He led her carefully down the stairs. Shadows seemed to dance above them in the dim lighting. Twice she stopped and looked up.
“Do you...?” Were his eyes playing tricks on him? He could have sworn he saw someone above them. A shadow. A movement. Someone dressed in white.
“Yes,” Abby said. “I see little...”
Blake frowned at her words. She was seeing it, too. He wasn’t imagining them. A shadow passed over the wall beside them. “Lights? Shadows?”
She nodded. They continued a few more steps.
He tried to hurry her down to the ground floor. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I guess our eyes are not adjusting to the bad lighting.”
A loud clanging sounded overhead. Abby, startled by the sound, slipped on the next step. Blake helped straighten and steady her. He had to get her back to bed. She was about to collapse.
Clang. Metal against metal. Louder and louder. Something was falling. The sound echoed through the space, coming closer and closer.
He looked up, as did Abby, who was growing faint. He could feel her legs buckling. Blake wrapped himself around her and pushed them both under the cover of the second-floor landing. Something was coming down in a hurry and they had to move or get hit.
A magnificent crash sounded behind him.
A stainless-steel surgical tray landed in the very spot where they’d stood, complete with an assortment of sharp scalpels and other surgical instruments, which rattled down around them like a metal rainstorm.
Once the stairs were quiet, Blake lifted his hands to Abby’s shoulders. “You okay?”
“No. I’m not.” Her body trembled under his hands as she shook her head from side to side. “I think someone is trying to kill me.”
THREE
An hour later, Blake’s thoughts were swimming as he sat with Abby and two policemen in a special conference room of the hospital. The more time they spent going over the particulars of the assault and the incident in the stairwell, the more confused he felt.
He shook his head. Nothing seemed to make sense these days. His parents’ accident. The revelation of his adoption. His inheritance. His arrival in Lancaster to search for his birth parents. He couldn’t even decide if he wanted to find his birth parents or not...and he might not have a choice. The search, after all, could very well lead to nothing.
Then again, it could change his life.
Blake wasn’t sure which of those results he wanted. The future seemed so muddled. He wasn’t used to that.
In any case, working on his search wouldn’t be happening today. He wasn’t even sure if he would be able to leave the hospital anytime soon. The more he and Abby repeated their stories to the police, the crazier and crazier the whole thing sounded. If it hadn’t actually happened to him, he would not have believed it himself.
“And the name of the patient that died from cardiac arrest?” Chief McClendon scratched his thinning red hair. He was tall and lean and looked like a man you did not want to cross.
“Hancock. Nicolas Hancock.” Blake shook his head. “I had an extra copy of his transfer chart, but I left it on the wheelchair when we went to the stairwell, and—”
“Someone swiped it,” Abby said. “That was right before the tray of scalpels came down on us.”
