Timeline - Michael Crichton [9]
Beverly was already running across the room. Wauneka ran after her. “Turn the head!” Nieto was saying, coming up to the bed. “Turn it!” Beverly had pulled off the oxygen mask and was trying to turn the old man’s head, but he struggled, fighting her, still gurgling, eyes wide with panic. Wauneka pushed past her, grabbed the old man’s head with both hands and wrenched hard, twisting him bodily to the side. The man vomited again; blood sprayed all over the monitors, and over Wauneka. “Suction!” Beverly shouted, pointing to a tube on the wall.
Wauneka tried to hold the old man and grab for the tube, but the floor was slick with blood. He slipped, grabbed at the bed for support.
“Come on, people!” Tsosie shouted. “I need you! Suction!” She was on her knees, shoving her fingers in the man’s mouth, pulling out his tongue. Wauneka scrambled to his feet, saw Nieto holding out a suction line. He grabbed it with blood-slippery fingers, and saw Nieto twist the wall valve. Beverly took the neoprene probe, started sucking out the guy’s mouth and nose. Red blood ran up the tubes. The man gasped, coughed, but he was growing weaker.
“I don’t like this,” Beverly said, “we better—” The monitor alarms changed tone, high-pitched, steady. Cardiac arrest.
“Damn,” she said. There was blood all over her jacket, her blouse. “Paddles! Get the paddles!”
Nieto was standing over the bed, holding the paddles in outstretched arms. Wauneka scrambled back from the bed as Nancy Hood pushed her way through; there were people clustered all around the man now. Wauneka smelled a sharp odor and knew the man’s bowels had released. He suddenly realized the old man was going to die.
“Clear,” Nieto said as he pushed down on the paddles. The body jolted on the table. The bottles on the wall clattered. The monitor alarms continued.
Beverly said, “Close the curtain, Jimmy.”
He looked back, and saw the bespectacled kid across the room, staring, his mouth open. Wauneka yanked the drapes shut.
:
An hour later, an exhausted Beverly Tsosie dropped down at a desk in the corner to write up the case summary. It would have to be unusually complete, because the patient had died. As she thumbed through the chart, Jimmy Wauneka came by with a cup of coffee for her. “Thanks,” she said. “By the way, do you have the phone number for that ITC company? I have to call them.”
“I’ll do that for you,” Wauneka said, resting his hand briefly on her shoulder. “You’ve had a tough day.”
Before she could say anything, Wauneka had gone to the next desk, flipped open his notepad, and started dialing. He smiled at her as he waited for the call to go through.
“ITC Research.”
He identified himself, then said, “I’m calling about your missing employee, Joseph Traub.”
“One moment please, I’ll connect you to our director of human resources.”
He then waited on hold for several minutes. Muzak played. He cupped his hand over the phone, and as casually as he could, said to Beverly, “Are you free for dinner, or are you seeing your granny?”
She continued to write, not looking up from the chart. “I’m seeing Granny.”
He gave a little shrug. “Just thought I’d ask,” he said.
“But she goes to bed early. About eight o’clock.”
“Is that right?”
She smiled, still looking down at her notes. “Yes.”
Wauneka grinned. “Well, okay.”
“Okay.”
The phone clicked again and he heard a woman say, “Hold please, I am putting you through to our senior vice president, Dr. Gordon.”
“Thank you.” He thought, Senior vice president.
Another click, then a gravelly voice: “This is John Gordon speaking.”
“Dr. Gordon, this is James Wauneka of the Gallup Police Department. I’m calling you from McKinley Hospital, in Gallup,” he said. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Seen through the picture windows of the ITC conference