Coma

Weird!” Johnston mouthed the last word as if it were some important secret message, as he went back to the recovery room desk.

Bellows went over and checked his gastrectomy patient. Vital signs were stable. Then he checked the chart. The orders had been written by Reid, and they were fine. He thought about the man in the freezer. The story seemed so bizarre. He wondered again if it really was the man that had been chasing Susan. But how could she have locked him in the freezer?

Why the hell hadn’t she mentioned it? Maybe he had never given her the chance. If she had locked the man in the freezer, she was now definitely in trouble legally. Could she have been the anonymous phone caller?

Bellows examined the dressing on the patient. It was still in place and not blood-soaked. The I.V. was running well.

Then he thought about Susan again and decided that the nut in the freezer must have been the man who chased her. And if he was, then it would be important for her to know that he was hospitalized and in critical condition.

Bellows dialed the medical school and asked to be connected to the dorm. He let Susan’s phone ring twelve times before giving up. Then he called back the dorm switchboard and left a message for her to call when she came back to her room.

After that, Bellows went to lunch.

Thursday, February 26, 4:23 P.M.

Thirty-six dollars plus tax seemed to Susan an awfully high price for the tasteless room at the Boston Motor Lodge. But at the same time it was worth it. Susan felt refreshed and rested—and safe. She had spent the time during the day rereading her notebook. All the information she had about the OR cases fit the idea of carbon monoxide poisoning. The information about the medical cases fit with the idea of succinylcholine poisoning. But still she had no motive, no rhyme or reason. The cases were too disparate.

Susan made a number of calls to the Memorial to try to learn Walters’s home address, but she was unsuccessful. At one point she had called the Memorial and had Bellows paged, but she hung up before he could answer.

Slowly but inexorably, Susan began to comprehend that she was at a dead end. She thought that it was probably time to go to the authorities, tell what she had learned, then take a vacation. She had a month’s vacation coming to her as part of her third year and she was sure that she would be able to get permission to take the time immediately. She’d leave, get away, for get. She thought about Martinique. She liked things French, and she longed for the sun.

The doorman of the motel whistled a cab for her and she got in. She told the driver the address: 1800 South Weymouth Street, South Boston. Then she settled back.

It was stop and go down Cambridge Street, a little better on Storrow Drive, but worse on Berkeley. The cab driver took her through the nicer sections of the South End to avoid traffic. At Mass. Ave. he turned left and the surroundings deteriorated. Once into South Boston, Susan knew she was lost. The housing became monotonous, the streets badly littered.

Soon the cab entered an area of warehouses, deserted factories, and dark streets. Nearly every streetlamp had a broken bulb.

When Susan alighted from the cab she found herself in an area that seemed isolated from life. Straight ahead, the only streetlight she could see emitted a beam of light from a modern hooded fixture which illuminated the door of a building, a sign, and the walk leading up to the door. The sign was fabricated in block letters of a deep azure. The sign read: “The Jefferson Institute.” Below the blue letters was a brass plaque. It said: “Constructed with the Support of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, US Government, 1974.”

The Jefferson Institute was surrounded by an eight-foot-high hurricane fence. The building was set back about fifteen feet from the street. It was a strikingly modern structure surfaced with a white terrazzo conglomerate polished to a high gloss. The walls slanted inward at an angle of eighty degrees, rising in a first story of some twenty-five feet. Then there was a narrow horizontal ledge before the wall soared another twenty-five feet at the same angle. Except for the front entrance, there were no windows or doors along the entire length of the facade on the ground floor. The second story had windows but they were recessed and could not be seen from the street. Only the sharply geometric embrasures were visible and the glow of lights from within.

The building occupied a city block. In a strange way, Susan found it beautiful, though she realized that its effect was enhanced by the surrounding squalor. Susan guessed that it was the centerpiece of some urban renewal scheme. It gave the impression of a two-storey ancient Egyptian mastaba, or the base of an Aztec pyramid.