Resuscitation (42 page)

Barely awake, occasionally dozing off for brief periods, Sami and Al sat in the hospital ICU waiting room with two vacant chairs between them. Silent as two heavyweight fighters mentally preparing themselves for a title fight, they seemed totally disconnected. Sami knew why she wasn’t talking, but she wasn’t sure if Al’s tight lips were voluntary or a matter of exhaustion. Whatever the reason, she was glad he hadn’t continued his speech about how sorry he was. With her wounds still raw, she didn’t want to hear it. She looked at her watch just as the hour hand hit four.

She did not understand why Captain Davidson insisted that both of them remain at the hospital, like sentries guarding a palace. What was the point? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to alternate shifts, so both could get some rest? If McKenzie did regain consciousness, what could two detectives do that one couldn’t?

To make the wait even worse for Sami, this particular waiting room evoked bitter memories. She had sat in this exact chair only a short time ago after her mother had a heart attack. She didn’t even want to think about the days she’d waited in this prison, biting her fingernails while her father fought a losing battle with cancer.

Now sitting in this quiet, dimly lit room with Al, her lover gone astray, she felt uncomfortable. Although they’d been intimate in so many ways—physically and emotionally—he now seemed like a stranger, a man about whom she knew nothing. After her troubled marriage with Tommy DiSalvo, a dirtbag who could have authored a textbook on infidelity, she never thought a man would earn her trust again. Then Al came along and she thought he was different. Sami anticipated that his battle with alcoholism might strain their relationship. Never in her wildest dreams did she think Al would sleep with another woman. Here she sat, broken-hearted and revolted by the mere thought of him ever touching her again. How could she hope to survive this? How could she ever trust him again?

No one from the hospital—nurses or doctors—had come to the waiting room to update them on McKenzie O’Neill’s condition. Sami and Al had impressed upon the medical staff the critical importance for them to be informed if McKenzie showed even the slightest sign of consciousness. The physician she initially spoke to—Sami couldn’t remember his name—didn’t look old enough to vote, let alone like a man qualified to treat critical patients in the ICU. Oh, how she wished Doctor Templeton were here. But considering his high rank in the hospital, she didn’t expect that he worked many graveyard shifts unless it was an extreme circumstance.

At five fifteen in the morning, Sami awoke when someone walked into the waiting room and gently shook her shoulder. Disoriented and suffering from a severe case of the shakes, Sami tried to clear her head and focus her eyes on the young man wearing a white lab coat.

“Detective Rizzo, I am Doctor Chung, one of the physicians treating Ms. O’Neill.” He glanced at Al, who appeared to be sound asleep. “Perhaps you wish to wake your partner?”

Sami leaned toward Al, stretched her arm past the two chairs separating them, and not so gently grasped his arm and squeezed. He jumped and his eyes sprang open. “What the hell is going on?” Al twisted his knuckles into his squinty eyes and blinked like a man who had just walked out of a dark movie theatre into bright sunlight.

“This is Doctor Chung,” Sami said, pointing to the man who barely stood five feet tall.

Doctor Chung bowed to both of them in a respectful manner. “May I speak to both of you?”

Al stood and stretched. Sami didn’t move.

Doctor Chung clasped his hands and shook his head ever so slightly. “Doctor Hastings and I have been examining Ms. O’Neill for several hours, and we have performed a number of diagnostic tests.”

“Has she regained consciousness?” Sami asked.

“I’m afraid that is highly unlikely,” Doctor Chung said. “Both Doctor Hastings and I are amazed she’s alive.”

“Is she going to make it?” Al asked.

“Not without extremely complicated heart surgery.”

“What’s the prognosis?” Sami asked.

“That is a very difficult question to answer until we actually perform the surgery. We believe she suffers from a condition called stress-induced cardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome. It is a rare condition—usually temporary—brought on by severe stress, and it mirrors the characteristics of heart failure.” The doctor’s lips tightened to a thin line. “Under normal circumstances, we would treat this condition with medication and in a week or two the patient usually recovers. With Ms. O’Neill, we have multiple issues—all serious. The echocardiogram and angiogram show a malfunction of both the mitral valve and aortic valve. Repair or even replacement may be necessary. But this is a temporary fix. Frankly, she may need a heart transplant. As I said, we cannot answer these questions until we perform the surgery. Until we find a suitable donor, we may have to temporarily install a heart pump called a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD. This procedure makes the surgery even more difficult.”

Not having a clue what the doctor just said, and not wanting a long complicated medical explanation, Sami opted for the obvious question. “How quickly can you operate?”

“As soon as we get a team together. This is not your everyday open heart surgery,” Doctor Chung said. “We’ve already consulted the chief of cardiothoracic surgery, and he will be part of the team.”

“Doctor Templeton?” Sami asked.

The doctor nodded. “Have you heard of him?”

“He performed bypass surgery on my mother,” Sami said.

“That is most fortunate,” Doctor Chung said. “He is one of the best bypass surgeons in the country.”

Al stepped closer to the doctor. “How many times has Saint Michael’s Hospital performed this kind of surgery?”

“If we replace both valves
and
install a heart pump, to the best of my knowledge, it will be the first time. We have already put in a call to Doctor Jonathon Fisher in San Francisco, the foremost heart surgeon for this type of procedure.”

“And if he’s not immediately available?”

“We can keep the patient stabilized for at least a week if we have to wait a few days for Doctor Fisher.”

“Isn’t that a little risky?” Sami asked.

“Not as risky as trying to perform this specialized surgery without the benefit of Doctor Fisher’s vast experience.”

“Have you spoken to Ms. O’Neill’s family?” Sami asked.

Dr. Chung nodded. “They requested a private waiting room near ICU. In situations like this, many family members want total privacy.”

“I ask that you suppress any information about Ms. O’Neill from the media,” Sami said.

“I’m afraid it’s too late. I understand that several local news stations were present when Ms. O’Neill was found.”

Bad news, Sami thought. It would be an advantage if the killer thought O’Neill was dead. Then again, if he learned that the victim survived her ordeal, the perp might panic and make another attempt on her life. Not that Sami would want the victim to be used as bait, but it could help them grab this guy.

“I want to be clear on one point, Doctor,” Sami said. “You’re saying that the damage to this woman’s heart resulted from severe stress?”

“The cardiomyopathy, yes. But the valve problems, no. Someone seems to have performed some unexplainable procedures on this young lady and I can only guess that he’s some sort of mentally unbalanced person.”

Sami didn’t need to hear the doctor’s confirmation to understand the type of monster she was dealing with.

After he had dropped McKenzie’s body at Torrey Pines Park, Julian turned off his cell phone, something he rarely did. Doctors, particularly cardiologists, needed to be available for emergencies day or night. But after his outrageously disappointing situation with McKenzie, he didn’t want to speak to anyone no matter how critical the issue.

As he usually did in the early morning, he turned on the local news, half paying attention, half dozing off. After a restless night, an evening that yielded little sleep, he could barely keep his eyes open. But when he saw the Breaking News banner crawling across the bottom of the television screen, and next to it a photo of McKenzie O’Neill, it grabbed his attention. He turned up the volume.

“
McKenzie O’Neill, a young woman apparently left for dead at Torrey Pines Park, a woman who may have been the Resuscitator’s intended fifth victim, miraculously survived her brush with death. Doctors are working feverishly to save her life. However, based on a statement from an undisclosed source at Saint Michael’s Hospital, the prognosis is grim. Stay tuned to KTAK Action News for the latest on this breaking story.
”

Julian felt like someone had jammed the butt end of a two-by-four into his stomach.

She was
alive
?

How was it possible? Her heart had flat-lined for more than ten minutes while he’d worked frantically to resuscitate her. Julian’s mind searched for answers. It just didn’t make sense. He carefully reconstructed everything he’d done to McKenzie. Coming up empty, he walked over to the heart monitor and attached the ten electrodes to his body. Wrists. Ankles. Chest. He turned on the monitor and EKG device and lay on the bed. It took a few seconds before the mechanism interpreted the signals from Julian’s heart and deciphered them.

At first, everything seemed normal: heart rate 81, EKG normal. Suddenly, the warning alarm blared in his ear, and when he looked at the monitor, he watched in shock as a flat line crawled across the screen. According to the monitor and EKG, he was in full cardiac arrest.

In his panic to resuscitate McKenzie, Julian now realized that he never took a moment to check her pulse or listen to her heart—an action that should have been as fundamental as taking a patient’s blood pressure. In his disoriented state, Julian had ignored prudent medical practices and relied solely on the heart monitor, never even thinking that it would malfunction. These were the actions of a fool, not of an experienced cardiologist. He had no idea whether or not she was conscious, and if she was, what she might have told the police. He had plenty of contacts at the hospital and could discretely inquire about her condition. After all, would it seem strange for a heart doctor to be interested in the welfare of a heart patient?

Julian disconnected the ten electrodes and turned off the heart monitor. He felt a rush of rage coursing through his body, an uncontrollable urge to scream. Instead, he kicked the monitor like an awkward martial arts student and could feel the muscles in his groin area pulling. His kick knocked the monitor off the stainless steel stand and he watched it bounce against the wall and crash to the floor. The EKG device, still wired to the monitor, bounced on the floor as well. His hands were trembling and he felt enraged by his carelessness.

Calm down. Keep your cool. Think clearly
.

He turned on his cell phone and decided to check in with the hospital to see if he could get any information on McKenzie’s condition. But before he could speed dial the number, his voice mail music, a tune by Kenny G, alerted him that several messages waited for him. He punched in his password and waited to hear the first message.

Julian, this is Ted Hastings. We have a situation at the hospital and need you as soon as possible. It’s too lengthy to give you a complete explanation, so give me a call on my cell and I’ll explain. Thanks.

Situation?
Ted Hastings, a fellow cardiologist, could only be calling for one reason. And that reason had something to do with McKenzie O’Neill.

The next three messages were also from Doctor Hastings, each one a little more panicky than the prior one. In Doctor Hastings’s last message, he gave Julian the details about McKenzie and the surgical plan, but he didn’t say whether or not she was conscious.

He had little choice but to go to the hospital and see for himself.

When Peter J. Spencer III watched the morning news and connected the dots, he no longer wondered if the mysterious John Smith and the Resuscitator were one in the same. He’d been kidding himself into believing that the whole thing was merely a bizarre coincidence, when all along he’d been denying the truth. Through his own self-preservation instincts and selfishness, he’d chosen to ignore the obvious and not call the police hotline. He now felt directly responsible for McKenzie O’Neill’s circumstances. His blatant negligence and cowardice placed the young woman in a life-threatening situation, one Spencer could have prevented.

Having lost his appetite, he set down his bowl of oatmeal, grabbed the remote control, and turned off the TV. He could no longer ignore what he needed to do, regardless of the consequence. But he wasn’t sure if he should call the hotline or try to reach Detective Rizzo directly. After careful consideration, he feared that even with modern-day technology, messages still occasionally get lost in cyber-space, and he realized that each moment he wasted put another innocent person at risk. He had to take action.

After Doctor Chung assured Sami and Al that the probability of McKenzie regaining consciousness before her surgery was highly unlikely, Captain Davidson agreed to let the detectives leave the hospital—at least for the time being. The captain arranged for a uniformed policeman to be stationed outside McKenzie’s hospital room twenty-four hours a day. By now, the Resuscitator had most certainly heard that the young woman had survived, and Sami was relieved that the department offered her protection.