Deficiency (10 page)

"I hope there's plenty of antioxidants," she countered.

"Antioxidants? Why?" he asked, his fork poised.

"Keeps brain cells healthy," she said.

"Very funny. I can see it's going to be interesting being married to a doctor," he said, but it didn't come out sounding like something positive. She swallowed down the feeling along with her food.

Although they had come in later, Mark and Eileen left before she and Curt. On their way out, Eileen glanced back. Terri smiled at her and she smiled back.

"Are you coming over or what?" Curt asked when he paid their check.

"I'll be there tomorrow. I'm tired," she said.

"No better rest than the rest you'll have at the farm lying in my arms," he insisted.

"Somehow, I don't think it will be just cuddling."

"So?"

"Tomorrow," she repeated with a firmness he had gotten used to knowing was rarely unhinged.

"Right. Tomorrow," he muttered.

They kissed at her car, where he tried to be softer, apologetic, and loving. She let him try and then she repeated her desire to go home and get a good night's sleep. Disappointment was masked poorly with a perfunctory smile and another quick, obligatory goodnight kiss and then he got into his Jaguar and sped into the night.

She followed out of the driveway and turned slowly toward Centerville. These rural mountain roads were quiet even during the summer months. Miles of forest was interrupted by an occasional house and lawn, but real development didn't begin until she was five miles or so from the hamlet proper.

She was driving slowly, almost totally by rote, not thinking much about the route itself. The sight of a police car's bubble lights flickering ahead brought her out of her daze. She slowed and saw the patrol car was parked behind a black Jeep Cherokee. The patrolman was on the driver's side. The door was open and he was leaning in. He turned as she pulled up beside.

"Anything wrong?" she asked. "I'm a doctor."

"A doctor? Christ," he said, "am I glad you're here!"

The young dark-haired woman in the Cherokee was totally naked and slumped low in the driver's seat. Even her shoes and stockings were off. Her eyes were bulging and she was in a heavy sweat. She looked like she was slowly pouring onto the floor as if her body was liquefying. Terri immediately saw she was hyperventilating.

"Miss, can you talk? Can you tell us what's happening to you? Do you have any pain, any serious ailments? Are you on any medication? Why are you naked?"

Terri hated firing questions like this at the obviously distressed woman. It was like throwing everything in her repertoire against the wall and hoping something stuck, but she needed something, some helpful information to help her start a sensible protocol. From the looks of the woman, she needed it quickly.

She opened and closed her mouth without uttering a sound. She was either too weak or a mute, Terri thought. Then she smelled alcohol on her breath.

"How much did you drink?" she fired at her, sounding almost like an angry parent.

The woman shook her head.

"I just found her like this," the highway patrolman said. "Her clothes are on the rear seat and on the floor. Actually, I was off duty and heading home myself and I saw this vehicle pulled over with the lights still on," he continued, ranting. He looked very young and Terri imagined he hadn't had all that much experience.

He continued to talk as Terri went back to her car to get her bag.

"The engine was running so I pulled up to see if anything was wrong. She wouldn't speak. I don't see any blood, although she's very red."

"Did you call for an ambulance?" she fired back at him.

"Not yet."

"Do it!" she screamed.

The patrolman lunged toward his car and got on the radio.

Terri moved in on the woman and began to wrap her blood pressure cup on the woman's arm. She was gasping for breath like someone who had been under water too long.

"Jesus," Terri said when she went to feel the woman's pulse. "She's got a water hammer pulse."

"What's that?" the policeman asked, returning.

"It's pounding. You don't have to press much to feel it. I think she's going into cardiac arrest!"

Terri checked the woman's blood pressure, which revealed a high systolic and a low diastolic. Her arm felt very warm as well.

"Her heart can't keep up!" she said.

"What should we do?" the policeman asked.

"I need some more light."

The patrolman brought his flashlight and reached in and over her to flip on the interior light. The illumination highlighted all the swelling in the woman's face and neck, as well as on her chest, breasts, and stomach. She looked as if she had been attacked by a hive of bees.

"I didn't see that before," the patrolman said. "Maybe she was stung."

"Were you stung? Axe you allergic to bees?" Terri asked quickly.

The young woman managed to shake her head. Her eyelids were trembling with her effort to keep them open as her gasping grew more desperate.

"He," Terri thought she whispered.

"Do you have any oxygen in your car?" Terri asked the policeman.

He nodded and hurried back to get it as well as a blanket. Terri fit the mask over the woman's face, took her pulse again and then her blood pressure. Everything was worse.

Suddenly she went into a violent convulsion. Terri moved quickly to keep her tongue from going back in her throat. The woman's body was shaking so vigorously, the vehicle seemed to be swaying.

"Holy Jesus!" the young patrolman cried and actually stepped back as if he expected the woman would explode. Terri held on, trying her best to comfort her.

A few moments later, the woman stopped convulsing and her whole body sunk in Terri's arms.

Terri felt for a pulse and then moved back slowly. The woman's head fell to her right side. She looked as if she had just fallen asleep.

Terri ripped away the blanket and began to administer CPR. She worked frantically over her, pumping, blowing air, pumping, and then, exhausted from the vain effort, stopped and sat back.

"Is she all right?" the patrolman asked.

It seemed like such a ridiculous question. Terri almost laughed.

"No. She's expired," Terri replied and closed her bag. She hated using that word. It sounded like she was talking about a parking meter and not a human being, but it was the word the medical community employed, more, in her opinion, to make it easier for themselves than the loved ones waiting for news.

"Expired? She's dead?"

"I'm afraid so," Terri said looking at her bag. Inside, she had prednisolone, specifically for serious insect stings. She could have injected it, but there had been so little time. If this woman died of an insect bite and she hadn't done that… her thoughts trailed off.

The patrolman stood there with his hands on his hips, looking in and shaking his head. Then, as if remembering he was a law enforcement officer, he tapped Terri gently on the shoulder.

"Better not touch anything in the car," he said. "We don't know the situation yet. It's strange, to say the least, for her to be totally naked."

Terri nodded and stepped out. The patrolman began to search around the vehicle. She watched him with a strangely detached curiosity. She was actually feeling numb, in a daze herself. Two young women had died in her presence within a week's time. One dying almost immediately after she had touched her, and now this one dying in her arms. Maybe I'm cursed, she thought.

Of course she realized this was a very small community, especially during the off-season. The chances of knowing about or confronting a serious situation were very high. This woman, too, looked familiar, but her features were distorted.

The patrolman carefully searched the glove compartment and stood back with his flashlight to read the documents.

"Who was she?"

"Kristin Martin," he said. "It's a Loch Sheldrake address."

Terri shook her head. At least she didn't know this woman personally.

"There's a paycheck stub in here from Diana's Restaurant," he added.

"I know it," she said. Great veal Parmesan, she thought, and then shook her head at how ridiculous the mind could be at times like this.

He opened the rear door and directed his flashlight over the seat and the clothes. He shook his head at how everything was strewn about and then noted the panties were torn.

"It looks like a rape to me," he muttered loud enough for Terri to hear. "Think she had some sort of a reaction to that?"

Terri shook her head.

"No. This is too much to blame on emotional trauma. We'll have to wait to see the exact cause of death. We need to know the level of blood alcohol and what other possible poisonous element is in her."

She returned to her own vehicle and sat staring at the dead woman's SUV. She thought about calling Curt on his cell phone, but then imagined him saying something cold like she should have followed him home. Then she would not have confronted this nor been a part of it. She thought about calling Hyman, but she hated the idea of sounding as if she was in a panic, even though to be truthful she was. She was a doctor. She was supposed to be able to confront and handle situations like this and remain cool, efficient, effective. All she could think of was some idiot saying her reactions were a result of her being a woman and that's why men were better suited to the profession.

She decided to call no one.

Fifteen minutes later, another patrol car arrived and then the ambulance, its bubble light swinging like a multicolored light bulb on the end of a string, ripping through the darkness, slicing trees and bushes and waking the sleeping birds, who rose from branches and like chips of shadows dissolved into the night.

He returned to the chair facing the pond and sat quietly, relaxed. The sky was clearing. A westerly wind was pushing the low out. Tomorrow would be another spectacular day. He felt reinvigorated. He always did after a good feed. Early tomorrow, right around the rising of the sun, he would be out jogging again, filling his lungs with fresh air, feeling his blood being pumped into every extremity, restoring cells, replenishing.

These country roads were wonderful for a morning run. He had noted that as soon as he had driven into the area. As always, his senses would be heightened the morning after. He would be able to smell every plant, every wildflower and hear insects crawling as well as the flapping of bird wings. The anticipation was so great, he almost felt like doing it now.

Lately, however, the wonderful after-effects of a good feed were not lasting as long as they used to last. He found his needs developing faster and his hunger growing more and more intense. He was far more impatient during the process than he remembered and barely went through any foreplay anymore. It was almost going right for the kill with no delicious preparations. The sexual aspects were nearly eliminated.

All this was evidenced by his choosing a victim too soon after the previous one and too close in actual proximity. He knew this was not intelligent, but there were forces at work in him now that were overpowering. He would admit it to no one, not that there was anyone to whom he could confide, but he was a little frightened of himself these days, frightened of his loss of control.

Control over everything was what gave him a sense of himself, an identity. It provided him with his radiating self-confidence, what he thought was his attractive arrogance, the magnetism that drew women to him, often despite themselves. Few that he could recall put up much resistance, and even those that had, capitulated soon enough. Suddenly he recalled a woman back in New York City, a magazine editor who almost got away. She called his romancing condescending. She distrusted compliments and began with the assumption every man was a predator. Well, of course he was. How to disguise it well or make it look insignificant was his problem to solve. In the end he pretended to agree, to confess, and to throw himself upon her mercy. She liked that, and she remained within his reach.

So many of them had been so similar in their composition. It was often like paint by numbers, but occasionally, there was a real challenge, someone like the editor who for one reason or another had the potential to escape. None had up until now. He took pride in that and it didn't seem to matter that he had no one with whom to share it. Companionship, friendship, society itself was a vague concept, a shadow that hovered out there somewhere along with all the other shadows, none so dark and distant as the one that surrounded his birth.

Once again he wondered. Did he have a birth? Did he have parents? Siblings? Was there someone else out there who was like him? Who even knew about him?

Often when his instincts were as sharp as they were after a feed, he sensed that he was being pursued, but by what or by whom he did not know. Asleep, he would waken suddenly with a jolt and lift his head from the pillow to listen. He was like a dog, disturbed by sounds no ordinary human could hear or like a wild creature alarmed by that evasive sixth sense, that mysterious animal power mankind had lost through civilization and evolution. If it was still within them, the women especially would know to run from him. Fortunately for him, it was not, or it was too dormant to ever be awoken.

Some, however, were trying to rediscover or restore it or something akin to it. He had read about and even met people who talked about positive and negative energy forces around them. It wasn't something tangible, but they claimed they could sense it. They were right of course, but they had no idea how right they were. One woman (he could no longer remember her name or even her face) told him she deliberately avoided people who were full of negativity. They were a threat to her own happiness and well-being, she said.

For a while he thought she would sense the danger to her that was in him, but she didn't have that much ability, none of them had. They were on the right track, but they had a long way to go and in his opinion, they would never reacquire what had been lost. It was too late for them. The truth was they were becoming less and less of what they were created to be. Their technologies, their artificiality, their virtual reality, all of it was quickly turning them into just another part of the machinery they were creating. Pure beings like himself would be so rare, one could search the globe and produce only a handful, he concluded with that delicious arrogance he so enjoyed.