Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [154]
Without a word she turned and fired up the engine; they backed out of the channel and then returned at high speed to the camp. As they approached, a small, silent man wearing hospital whites came into view, standing at the dock with a stretcher. Pendergast and Brodie lifted Hayward out of the boat and placed her on the stretcher; the man then rolled her along the platform and into the main parlor of the lodge. He and Pendergast carried the stretcher up the stairs, down the hall, and into the bizarrely high-tech emergency room, positioning it beside a bank of critical care equipment.
As they moved her from the stretcher onto a surgical bed, June Brodie turned to the little man in white. “Intubate her,” she said sharply. “Orotracheal. And oxygen.”
The man leapt into action, passing a tube into Hayward’s mouth and delivering oxygen, both of them working with a swift economy of action that clearly attested to years of experience.
“What happened?” she asked Pendergast as she cut away a mud-heavy sleeve with a pair of medical scissors.
“Gunshot wound and alligator bite.”
June Brodie nodded, then listened to Hayward’s pulse and took her blood pressure, examining the pupils with a light. The movements were practiced and highly professional. “Hang a bag of dextran,” she told the man in scrub whites, “and run a 14g IV.”
While he worked, she readied a needle and took a blood sample, filling a syringe and transferring it to vacuum tubes. She plucked a scalpel from a nearby sterile tray and, with several deft cuts, removed the rest of the pant leg.
“Irrigation.”
The man handed her a large saline-filled syringe, and she washed the mud and filth away, plucking off numerous leeches as she did so and tossing everything into a red-bag disposer. Injecting a local around the ugly lacerations and the bullet wound, she worked diligently but calmly, cleaning everything with saline and antiseptic. Lastly, she administered an antibiotic and dressed the wound.
She looked up at Pendergast. “She’ll be fine.”
As if on cue, Hayward’s eyes opened and she made a sound in the endotracheal tube. She shifted on the surgical bed, raised a hand, and gestured at the tube.
After briefly examining her, June ordered the tube removed. “I felt it was better to be safe than sorry,” she said.
Hayward swallowed painfully, then looked around, her eyes coming into focus. “What’s going on?”
“You’ve been saved by a ghost,” said Pendergast. “The ghost of June Brodie.”
74
HAYWARD LOOKED AT THE VAGUE FIGURES IN turn, then tried to sit up. Her head was still swimming.
“Allow me.” Brodie reached over and raised the backrest of the surgical bed. “You were in light shock,” she said. “But you’ll soon be back to normal. Or as close as possible, given the conditions.”
“My leg…”
“No permanent damage. A flesh wound and a nasty bite from a gator. I’ve numbed it with a local, but when that wears off it’s going to hurt. You’re going to need a further series of antibiotic injections, too—lots of unpleasant bacteria live in an alligator’s mouth. How do you feel?”
“Out of it,” said Hayward, sitting up. “What is this place?” She peered at June. “June… June Brodie?” She looked around. What kind of hunting camp would contain a place like this—an emergency room with state-of-the-art equipment? And yet it was like no emergency room she had ever seen. The lighting was too dim, and except for the medical equipment the space was utterly bare: no books, paintings, posters, even chairs.
She swallowed and shook her head, trying to clear it. “Why did you fake your suicide?”
Brodie stepped back and gazed at her. “I imagine you must be the two officers investigating Longitude Pharmaceuticals. Captain Hayward of the NYPD and Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI.”