Deficiency (20 page)

In a panic she punched out 911 and gasped her words. The dispatcher needed her to repeat it all and she did, fighting the hysteria in herself to slow down and be sensible.

"They're on her way!" she shouted to Griffy. He was standing back. The car door was open, and he was just gaping at Paula Gilbert as if he was terrified of touching her or talking to her.

"You better see to her," he said.

"What's going on?" Darlene heard from behind. Griffy's wife Dorothy was there in her bathrobe. "What are you two doing? What's all the shouting for? What's happening?" she followed, delivering her questions in shotgun fashion.

"Paula Gilbert," Darlene said nodding at the car.

She walked to it slowly and joined Griffy to look in.

"Oh my God," she cried, but unlike Darlene and Griffy, she went forward and tried to rouse Paula. Her eyelids fluttered.

"She's alive!" she screamed. "Did you call for help?"

"They're on the way."

"Go get a blanket for her," she ordered Griffy, and he turned, happy to have a reason to get away from the scene. He charged past Darlene and into the restaurant.

Now feeling ashamed at her own response, especially in light of how quickly Dorothy had moved into action, Darlene joined her and they both looked in on Paula Gilbert.

"What happened to you, Paula?" Darlene asked her.

She opened and closed her eyes and moved her lips. Reluctantly, still feeling as if she was getting too close to a leper, she lowered her head to turn her ear like a cup catching the soft, nearly inaudible words.

Darlene's eyes widened as she listened to her speak, gasping out her incredible tale.

"What happened to her? What is she saying?" Dorothy asked.

Darlene shook her head.

"She must be delirious," she said. "She's making no sense."

"God only knows what really happened to her," Dorothy said, "but whatever it was, I hope to hell it's not catching."

He was in an unusually disturbed state of mind. He had set out this evening
believing he was in a vigorous, healthy state, never feeling more energized and
contented. That was why he was so charming in that saloon and why he was so
poetic and philosophical with Paula. He had really intended to have a simple
romantic evening, make love, and bring her back as contented as he was. Despite
some of the disturbing things that had recently happened, he still harbored the
belief that he could transfer wonderful things to women when he didn't have to
take what he needed from them. In a sense he was truly the world's greatest
lover. Not only did women have difficulty turning him away, but they were ruined for other men, always dissatisfied afterward since none could come up to his level of satisfaction. It was a delicious sort of arrogance that put vigor in his strut and power in his eyes.

But something very unexpected happened when he began to make love to Paula Gilbert. He had a need he had been unaware of until he was actually making love to her. Usually, this was a feeling he experienced before he went looking for prey. Something in his body always first sent signals to his brain to tell him to go on a hunt. He hadn't had any such signal all night. What was going on? Why were his periods of contentment getting shorter and shorter? At this rate, he'd be hunting day and night and never have a rest. It was like those batteries running cell phones and the like, he thought. After time, they held a charge for less periods of time and had to be recharged so often, it was cheaper or easier to throw them away and start with a new one.

But how was he to do that? He couldn't throw away his body and start with a new one, could he?

Or could he?

Something was rising toward the surface of his memory. He sat in the dark and waited patiently for it to break out. It was coming, coming up out of his past. Something to do with his body. What?

It stopped coming up.

He grimaced as if he could squeeze his brain like an orange and force the memories to drip out.

It was sinking again, going deeper and deeper into the blackness. Wait, he wanted to shout. Don't give up. Come back to me.

Tell me who I am.

Exhausted with the effort, he finally gave up and started the engine of his vehicle. Paula was still in the rear seat, breathing with such great difficulty, he could hear her gasps clearly. The sound was haunting him.

"Stop it!" he screamed at her. "Just die quietly like the others."

It occurred to him that he had never spent this much time with a woman afterward. He would take what he needed and leave them. It was his own fault now, of course. He had taken her in his car. He could have left her on the side of the road, he realized, left her in the bushes by the lake if she had begun to die immediately.

For a while he was surprised by what happened but she didn't show signs of anything detrimental, so he told her to dress and he would take her back to her car. She was quiet, but he interpreted that simply as her sense of contentment. Let her savor the lovemaking, he thought proudly.

Then he looked into the rearview mirror and saw she basically hadn't moved.

"Get dressed. We'll be back at the tavern soon," he ordered. She didn't respond so he pulled over to the side of the road and leaned over the front seat. He flipped on the overhead light and saw what was happening.

"Damn it," he shouted at her as if it was entirely her fault.

Cars whizzed by, even at this hour. He was back on a busy highway. A few hundred yards down was the first of those houses he had pointed out to her on the way to the dam. So he turned around, shifted into drive, and shot forward, now speeding toward the tavern. When he arrived, he saw a pickup truck with three men crowded in the cab pulling out of the lot. He waited until they were gone and then he drove in, pulled alongside her car, and deposited her in the front seat. He flung her clothes into the rear of her car, got back into his, and drove off thinking maybe no one would find her until morning at least and by then it would be far too late. She would be unable to tell anyone about him, not that anyone would believe her if she did.

When he pulled into the driveway of the rooming house, he hesitated before driving around back. There was something stuck in the front door, a piece of paper. It waved gently in the breeze. He looked around cautiously, his sixth sense triggered like the instinct of a wild animal. He could practically smell the presence of someone else. It was faint. Whoever it was had been here and gone.

He got out of his car, leaving the engine running, and went to the door to pull the sheet out from between the screen door and the front door.

It was from the minister, a Reverend Dobson.

Dear Mrs. Martin,

I hope you are all right. I came by to comfort you and discuss the funeral to see if there was anything special you would like me to do. Please call me as soon as you can.

God Bless,

Reverend Dobson

He had forgotten about that; he had forgotten there would be a funeral. How stupid of him. He was taking too much pleasure in all this and making too many mistakes. Of course, he would have to leave this place now. There was no doubt anymore. He really was enjoying the area, the peacefulness, the easy pickings. He had been feeling like a fox in a rabbit warren. All he had to do when he was hungry was reach out.

After he parked his car behind the house, he went in through the backdoor and up the stairs. He went to the old lady's bedroom and looked in on her corpse again almost as if he had expected she had moved.

"Thanks," he said. "Now I have to go."

Blaming her made him feel better even though he knew how ridiculous it was. He felt drunk, intoxicated. The evening had been full of ups and downs and it left him giddy. He might even have trouble sleeping, he thought. He was too wired.

He went to his room and packed his bag reluctantly. This place was really very comfortable and he had so looked forward to the morning, to sitting by the lake. It had been so relaxing. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. It was the old lady's fault. If she hadn't been so pathetic, he wouldn't have killed her.

Of course you would have, he told himself. She would have pointed you out. You had to be sure she couldn't do that.

He continued to argue with himself, even considering remaining one more day, and then, suddenly, it began as always, a slight ringing in his ear. He went to the window and looked into the night.

It was out there… something threatening. It was coming in this direction. He couldn't stay here any longer, no matter what he wanted.

He hurried now and then he rushed out and started down the stairs, still regretting his quick exit. He paused at the foot of the stairs. An idea occurred to him. Confuse the trail, keep whatever it was from following his scent. He went into the kitchen and looked around. The old gas stove was perfect, he thought.

Carefully, he prepared the flammable oils and put them in a frying pan. He started the fire and then he let it spread to the molding on the floor. He watched the fire, fascinated with how quickly it invaded the heart of the old wood and crept in behind the walls. He could hear the crackle and the small explosions. The home was as brittle as old bones.

He was saddened by it all as he walked away. By the time he got into his car, he could see the hot illumination in some of the windows. It wouldn't be long, he thought. The fire was ravenous.

He drove away slowly, looking back when either a gas pipe or the heating oil set off an explosion. The flames were crawling out the windows and up the sides of the house now. What a parasite fire is, he thought.

It never occurred to him that he was one too.

"Hey," Steve Battie called to Terri as she was going through the corridor and the emergency room. He was in an examination room. "You've got to stop and see this."

"What do you have?" she asked stepping into the room.

The sight before her stopped her cold. Her first thought was it looked like a patient who had overdosed on Coumadin, an anticoagulant drug to help prevent the formation of blood clots in the blood vessels or dissolve them by decreasing the blood's ability to clump together. Because they prevent clotting, they can, if poorly managed, cause severe bleeding.

Terri had never seen a case like this, even in her textbooks. Two lines of blood trickled out of the young woman's eyes like red tears. The trauma appeared all over her body. It looked like an explosion of arteries and veins. There was no question she had intracranial bleeding as well.

"She expired about ten minutes ago."

"Was she a hemophiliac?" Terri asked.

"Don't know yet. She has been in the hospital before, so we're tracking down her medical history, but if ever I saw an example of a congenital or Acquired Factor II deficiency, this is it," Battie replied.

Terri nodded. She knew, of course, that normal blood coagulation was a complex process involving as many as twenty different plasma proteins, or blood coagulation factors. The complex chemical reactions using these factors took place rapidly in a healthy person to form an insoluble protein called fibrin that stops bleeding. To be congenital, the woman would have inherited it from both parents. What triggered alarms in her mind, however, was that acquired Factor II deficiency resulted from one of three possibilities: a severe liver disease, the mismanagement of the anticoagulant drug, or a vitamin K deficiency.

A nurse came into the room and handed Battie a file.

"Hold on," he said to Terri. She watched him read. He flipped a page. "She was brought in here for an appendectomy. No history of bleeding, a normal blood workup. She wasn't put on any anticoagulant for any reason here."

"How long ago?"

He looked up again.

"Just three months."

"My God," she whispered. "I've got to get to a phone."

She went out to the desk and called Will Dennis.

"Sorry," she said, "neither of us are getting any sleep tonight," she began, and then told him what she feared.

"No, you go get some sleep, Doctor," he told her. "I'll call you at your office tomorrow, or should I say, today, as soon as I have anything definitive."

She agreed. There really wasn't anything more she could do here anyway.

She debated going to her own home, but the memories of Curt collapsed at her door were still too vivid. Why the police impersonator would be coming for her, she did not know. In his madness, he was convinced perhaps that she wasn't telling him something she knew. The chances of a so-called normal villain returning to her home after having a confrontation with someone like Curt were probably very slim, but they weren't dealing with anything like a normal villain here, so when the cross streets came up at which a right turn would take her back home or a left would take her to Curt's, she turned left.

The key was under the flowerpot to the right of the front door as usual. She let herself in and then paused. Being here now with Curt hurt and in a hospital room suddenly brought tears to her eyes. Maybe if she had been more forthcoming at the hospital parking lot, they wouldn't have argued and he wouldn't have felt it necessary to come to her house to patch things up. She should have been less the doctor, and more the
fianc�e, she concluded.

Curling up in his bed gave her a sense of security and contentment, however. The scent of his cologne and hair dressing was there and it was something she welcomed. She had crawled in naked too. Pretending they had just made love, she turned over and closed her eyes. She hadn't realized just how exhausted she was until that moment. It took only seconds, it seemed, for her to fall asleep.

Sometime before morning, she woke with a start. Whether it was a nightmare or what, she wasn't sure, but the echo of what sounded like someone at a window remained in her ears. She shuddered and then slowly sat up and listened hard. If he found her home, why wouldn't he be able to find Curt's, knowing he was her fiancé?

Why didn't she consider this and go to a motel?