In the shadow of truth s.., p.31
In the Shadow of Truth: (Shadow Series Book 3), page 31
“Here we go,” said the doctor. He seemed to be the only one not traumatized by the situation. He looked at the empty oxygen tank next to the body in the corner. “Where’s that damn tank?”
“Where’s that damn tank!” Smitty bellowed down the hallway. An orderly nearly ran him down as he barreled around the corner with a large oxygen tank strapped on a dolly.
“Coming through!”
* * *
They hooked up the equipment, and Kathryn clung to the mask placed on her face, the only lifeline to save her from her closing respiratory passages. She moaned into the soft plastic, first in relief, then in pain, as more coughing ensued, and then in fear when the oxygen didn’t ease her breathing. The nurse briefly removed the mask to clean it of blood, and Kathryn’s fear turned to panic, as she realized the oxygen wasn’t going to save her and it was becoming harder to breathe by the second. This was it. She would suffocate in her own blood, like Sergeant Johnson had beside her.
“Just relax,” the doctor commanded sternly. “You are not helping yourself by panicking.”
Then help me! she would have screamed if she could. She imagined he saw the terror in her eyes, because he softened his demeanor.
“We’re going to help you,” he said, as he rubbed her back. “Hand me that,” he said over his shoulder as he held out his hand. A nurse quickly handed him a syringe, while another cut off Kathryn’s wet sleeve.
“This is going to help you relax, and then we’re going to help you breathe, okay?”
Kathryn nodded, clinging once again to the mask as she ignored the searing pain it caused against her chemically burned skin.
The doctor calmly injected the contents of the syringe into her arm and addressed his assistant. “Bring it here,” he whispered sternly.
“But, sir—” The assistant eyed the dead body in the corner.
The doctor snapped his eyes to him in a warning and didn’t have to tell him again. The assistant glanced at the audience in the hallway before producing a small vial and a fresh syringe from a flat brown leather case on the counter.
The doctor emptied the contents into her arm and straightened. “Keep her on her side until you’re sure her airway stays clear,” he instructed the nurse.
The nurse pressed her lips into a grim line. “If the blood continues?”
The doctor glanced to the hallway and then back to the nurse. “Make her as comfortable as possible until it’s over.” He handed her some vials of morphine from his pocket.
* * *
Jenny and Smitty watched the doctor go into the outer room and shed his mask, gloves, and gown, and wash his hands. He turned his back to them as he dried his hands and surveyed the scene before him and then tossed the towel onto the floor beside his gown and slowly emerged.
Smitty still had his arms wrapped around Jenny’s shoulders, and only when the doctor held out his hand in greeting did he let her go and step forward. “What’s happening, doctor?”
“I’m Dr.—”
“I don’t care who you are,” Smitty said anxiously. “What is happening?”
“This woman—”
“Kathryn,” Jenny interjected.
The doctor paused, acknowledging her name. “Kathryn was exposed to something called Lewisite.”
Jenny frowned. “What the hell are we doing with Lewisite here?”
“That’s not my concern, miss.”
Smitty looked at Jenny and then the doctor like they were from Mars. “What the hell is Lewisite?”
“It’s a vesicating gas.”
“Look, Doc, speak English, for crying out loud,” Smitty complained.
Jenny took it for the sake of expediency. “It’s a blistering gas developed by the Germans at the end of World War I.”
“Like mustard gas?”
“Quicker.” She turned to the doctor. “Please, how is she?”
“We’ve made her as comfortable as we can for the time being.”
“What does that mean?” Smitty asked.
The doctor turned to him. “We’ve made her as comfortable as we can.”
“Did you have BAL on hand?” Jenny asked. “How soon was it administered?”
“Bee … what?” Smitty asked.
“British Anti-Lewisite.” She turned back to the doctor. “Did you have it?”
The doctor blinked at her in surprise. “Yes, we did. Within the first twenty minutes.”
Jenny rubbed her forehead. “God. Better within the first five.”
Smitty and the doctor exchanged looks, both wondering how she knew so much about it.
Jenny peered into Kathryn’s room, satisfied they’d done all they could. “What’s her prognosis?”
“She was lucky. It was a relatively small exposure to the gas, and the rain helped dilute its effect on her skin until we could get her into a decontamination shower. She’ll have some blurred vision and some upper respiratory issues for a couple of weeks, but that should clear up completely.”
“Her skin?” Smitty asked.
“I feel we acted soon enough and that there will be no blistering. Consider it a very bad sunburn.”
Jenny wandered back to the window and watched as one nurse was coating Kathryn’s eyelids with some sort of salve and another was coating her burned skin, which was an easier task now that the patient was quiet.
“What else was she exposed to?”
The doctor came up behind her. “What?”
She looked at the body in the corner. “That man didn’t die of Lewisite exposure, and such a small amount of the gas wouldn’t cause expectorating blood. What else was she exposed to, Doctor?”
“I assure you, miss, Lewisite can, and did, cause those injuries. Excuse me.” He left abruptly, disappearing down the hall.
* * *
Smitty moved to Jenny’s side. “He’s lying.”
“Yes.”
“She will be all right, though, right?”
“From the Lewisite? Probably.”
They both eyed the assistant discarding his gown in the room in front of them.
“I’m on it,” Smitty whispered. He watched the man leave and then turned to follow him.
They wound up in the men’s room, where Smitty slammed the small bespectacled man up against the wall. “What was she exposed to?”
“Lewisite!”
He leaned in harder. “What else?”
“N-nothing!”
Smitty pulled his gun. “What else?”
The frightened man looked to the hall and whimpered, “They’ll kill me.”
Smitty forced his gun into the soft underside of the man’s chin. “I’ll kill you! What else?”
“It … it’s some sort of experiment … a virus! I don’t know! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“But you gave her something for it.”
“It doesn’t work! The serum doesn’t work! You saw that man die!”
He did see it. Bleeding out of every pore, it seemed. The man died in agony, and he was thankful Jenny wasn’t there to see it.
He pressed even harder. “Will she die like that?”
“I don’t know!”
Smitty had thought Kathryn was out of danger, but now he started to panic, imagining her writhing in the throes of a horrible death while he leaned on this worm for information.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“She should have died already. It’s not affecting her like it did him. I don’t know! Please!”
Smitty loosened his hold and the man slid down the wall.
“Please, they’ll kill me if they find out I’ve told you anything.”
“Then I suggest you get out of here and forget the whole thing.”
The little man nodded and scampered to the door.
Jenny was leaning against the wall outside the men’s room when Smitty stepped into the hallway, straightening his tie. “It’s a virus.”
“I heard.”
“How is she?”
“Seems to have stabilized. They wouldn’t let me see her. They’re getting her ready for transport in twenty minutes.”
“Let’s get back.”
They took purposeful strides, side by side, down the hall.
“Thanks for calling me, Smitty.”
He looked at her strangely. “I didn’t call you.”
She stopped walking. “Well, then who—?” They both looked at each other and had the same paranoid thought. They took off at a run and came upon an empty room where Kathryn and the body used to be. They immediately headed for the exit, only to be intercepted by armed MPs.
“Come with us, please.”
“Where have you taken her?” Jenny shouted.
“Come with us, ma’am.”
“Bullshit!” Smitty shouted. He tried to push past but found himself the target of their weapons.
“On the floor, sir, now! Do it!”
“Okay, okay.”
They settled on hands in the air and a calmer attitude.
“Just tell us where they’ve taken her.”
“Come with us, sir, and everything will be explained to you.”
They knew it was a lie, but they had no choice. They waited in an empty room for over an hour before some private informed them they could go. Due to the nature of her exposure, Kathryn would be kept in isolation for evaluation, they were told. No time frame, no information about her condition, no visitations—just a phone number to call for inquiries.
* * *
Dawn was breaking as Jenny pulled into her driveway. She couldn’t remember the drive home. She was haunted by Kathryn’s screams and her panicked eyes, pleading for something, anything, to be done. Jenny didn’t know if she even knew she was there. She never got to say I’m here, I love you, you’ll be okay—all the things that give hope and comfort in times of distress.
Once inside her front door, she was confronted by her mother’s belongings, strewn where they fell down the foyer hallway. It was too much for her. It was all too much. The door closed behind her and she collapsed to her knees in tears. She picked up her mother’s scarf and held it to her heart, wishing she were with her now for strength. She sank the rest of the way to the floor and curled up on her side, sobbing uncontrollably into a musty silk scarf as she tried to find comfort in the scattered remains of a stranger.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jenny was scrubbing the kitchen floor on her hands and knees when the doorbell rang. She’d cleaned her house from top to bottom in the last two weeks, trying to keep from going insane with worry about Kathryn. She’d tried everything to locate her, even threatening brass with writing to the president, if she had to. It was a matter of safety and national security, she was told. To hell with that. She just wanted to be with Kathryn, to see her with her own eyes and know that she was all right. Even Smitty, with all his contacts, had come up against a brick wall in his search, and she knew if he couldn’t find her, no one could. When she asked, “Now what?,” he simply said, “We wait.”
So, she waited, but she couldn’t get the horrific images and sounds out of her head. She couldn’t sleep or eat. She went through her days on automatic, doing what she had to do before coming home to a dreadfully empty home, where every excruciating minute reminded her of what had happened and the pain and suffering Kathryn was going through.
Jenny called the number they gave her three times a day, every day, begging to speak to Kathryn, but each time, she was refused, with the person on the line claiming the nature of Kathryn’s injuries had rendered her unable to speak for the time being.
“Then just let me hear her breathe,” she pleaded, desperate for any contact. “Or at least let her listen to me. I need to speak to her. Please!”
Her pleading fell on sympathetic but deaf ears. She had received a letter after the first week. It was supposedly from Kathryn, but it was not in her hand, and Jenny couldn’t help but doubt its provenance. The letter claimed she was all right, but they wanted to keep her for tests and observation to be sure. She claimed she couldn’t see well yet, so she had a nurse write the note for her. She asked her to please not worry and said she missed her like crazy, and she signed it K, which seemed like Kathryn, but without actually seeing her handwriting, Jenny was wary. She had seen enough of the spy world to doubt everything and anything unless she had concrete proof, and concrete proof would be nothing less than Kathryn safely in her arms again.
Her incessant calling paid off in the middle of the second week, when she actually got to speak to Kathryn on the phone. She sounded terrible, her voice barely audible and painfully raw, but she assured her she was doing well and should be fine soon. She had no idea where she was or when she would be coming home, but the thought of it, and thoughts of her, kept her going. Their call was cut short when Kathryn suffered an awful coughing fit, and the nurse took over the phone, complaining she shouldn’t be talking at all.
Kathryn managed to wrangle the phone back long enough to say she missed her and loved her and would call her back soon. It was some measure of relief to finally speak to her, but she needed to see her, to have her home, to take care of her until she was completely well.
Jenny let the doorbell go. Whoever it was could come back another time. She was filthy from cleaning, had suds up to her elbows, and was in no mood for some Joe selling vacuum cleaners.
The bell tolled on until Jenny finally threw down the scrub brush and struggled to her feet.
“For crying out loud,” she complained, as she slogged down the hall, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. She yanked open the door.
“This better be—” She stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh my God.”
“Not quite,” Kathryn whispered, as she removed her dark sunglasses. “Sorry, I don’t have my key.”
Jenny fell into her open arms and held on for dear life.
“Kat. Oh my God. Oh my God,” she kept repeating as she rocked her back and forth.
She abruptly let up and held her at arm’s length. “Am I hurting you?”
Kathryn smiled. “Best thing I’ve felt in weeks.”
Once inside, Kathryn put her glasses on the console table in the foyer and slowly took off her light jacket and hung it on the hall tree. Jenny watched her carefully. She looked tired but, otherwise, seemed all right, except for her strained voice. Her skin looked normal again, albeit slightly darker from the burns, she imagined, but she saw no signs of blistering or scarring. Outward appearances aside, Jenny couldn’t hide her concern for what was going on inside after such a traumatic experience. She knew she was a mess. She couldn’t imagine what Kathryn had gone through emotionally.
Kathryn put her arms around her again and whispered, “I’m fine.”
* * *
As they stood in the hallway, Kathryn found her embrace becoming tighter and tighter. Jenny became the only thing in her world she could believe in. She tried to hold herself together, but anger at what had happened to her, fear, and the relief of finally being home, all washed over her at once, and suddenly, Jenny was the only thing holding her up. Her strength drained, and her brave front evaporating with it, she broke down and sobbed.
Jenny held her tight. “Oh, baby, I know. Let it go. I’m here. Let it go.”
She did let it go. They both did. There would be time enough to sort out the bigger picture, but for the moment, they had each other.
Their tears washed away the horrors of the past two weeks, and they would sleep the night fitfully, but thankfully, in each other’s arms, gathering strength for whatever was to come.
Jenny let the drawn curtain in the living room fall back into place. “Smitty’s here.”
“I’ll get the door,” Kathryn whispered, as she got up from the couch. She had spoken to Smitty on the phone, but Jenny hadn’t left her side since she’d gotten home the previous afternoon, and she desperately needed some private words with him.
She opened the door and found him with his hat in one hand, a beautiful spray of red tulips in the other, and the widest smile she’d ever seen.
He kissed her cheek and embraced her gently, holding the flowers to the side. “It’s so good to see you, honey. I looked everywhere for you.”
“I need to talk to you,” she whispered in his ear.
He backed off, a little surprised at the urgency.
She flicked her eyes in Jenny’s direction, indicating it was business related, and he nodded.
Jenny approached from the living room and took the flowers. “Oh, how pretty.”
Kathryn caught a whiff of the bouquet and nearly retched.
Smitty took her arm. “What’s wrong?”
“The flowers—”
“Shit.” Jenny took them away immediately.
“What?” Smitty asked.
Jenny was already halfway down the hall with them when she called out, “Lewisite smells like flowers.”
He turned to Kathryn. “I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t know. We’ll throw them out.”
“No, they’re beautiful, just—” She swallowed her nausea and stepped outside for some fresh air.
“You sure you’re okay?”
She nodded and shielded her sensitive eyes against the bright afternoon sun.
“Say, you’re a wreck,” Smitty joked.
“You have no idea.”
Before they could talk, Jenny stuck her head out the door. “Everything okay?”
Kathryn nodded, and they all moved into the darkened living room, where Jenny played the perfect hostess.
“Can I get you something? Water? Tea?”
Kathryn saw an opportunity. “I’d like some tea, honey. Thanks.”
“You got it.”
As soon as Jenny was out of earshot, Kathryn turned to Smitty.
“Bouchaule is back,” she whispered. “He took my blood while I was in that facility.”
“What?”
She’d been in isolation for a week when she was awakened from sleep by someone taking blood, which wasn’t unusual. She rarely got more than a half hour’s rest at any given time, due to all the poking and prodding of the medical staff, but this person lingered long after the vial was filled. She opened her eyes, which was an exercise in futility since her vision was still blurred, but she smelled a familiar cologne, and on the off chance, uttered Bouchaule’s name. The man didn’t move for a second, but then he gently placed his hand on her wrist, just above the burns on her exposed hands, before disappearing. He did not visit again.
