Peril (34 page)

“Why?” Lilly asked.

“To enhance their memory. To give them superior autobiographical memory to be exact.”

“How would you classify that exactly?”

“A very minute percentage of the population has some extraordinary memory capabilities. Photographic memory might be the simplest form.” A whimsical lightness spread over his face. “Imagine being able to recall events from each day of your life like a video camera. Not just those significant moments that mark our lives, but
all
the data. The weather, who we visited with, the faces of those people who touch us for only a moment in passing but impact us in infinite ways.” He took a deep breath and reached for her across the desk. “Imagine being able to see the threads of our decisions like a road map and how they got us to where we are today.”

Lilly raised her head slightly as she contemplated what her father was saying.
Is this experiment of his really a grasp at redeeming his life? Has Thomas Reeves developed a scientific protocol as a way to analyze and repair his mistakes?

His voice drew her back. “The military applications are extraordinary. Just the multitude of maps, reports, data on targets, it's amazing. Having to carry computers just adds to a soldier's load—and it's a potential source of secrets leaking out if they get into enemy hands. It's really not practical. But if you could supercharge someone's memory so that analyzing and memorizing these battle plans, this minutia of how to capture the enemy, is built in, you'd have—”

“A real life Captain America.”

“Exactly.”

“Worth a lot of money.”

“Of course.”

“And fame . . .” Lilly let the rest of the phrase drop. It was the first she'd seen him look defeated. As if all he hoped to accomplish was disintegrating around him. “So what went wrong?”

He flopped the notebook in front of her. “I think my associate was on to something. I just can't figure out what it is.”

Lilly pulled the notebook closer. It was a list of patients and what appeared to be their adverse reactions to the graft. Seizures. Development of cranial masses that on biopsy turned out to be the grafted cells—sometimes they even wandered from their original place of implantation. Nightmares. Hypersensitivity.

“With the exception of the seizures and tumors, their symptoms are reminiscent of classic post-traumatic stress disorder. That's your field of expertise.”

“I know. I can see that, but the majority of these men hadn't seen battle.”

“How do you explain it?”

Reeves flipped the notebook forward several more pages. “This is another list Tyler was making. A significant percentage of the men began to exhibit truly bizarre symptoms.”

“Such as?”

“Well, nonuse of limbs.”

“That shouldn't be so surprising. They had brain surgery. A stroke is the most likely explanation.”

Reeves shuddered. “But there wasn't any medical evidence to back it up. Nothing on CT or MRI scans. Intact nerve impulses. There wasn't any clear medical reason for them to—” He stopped, smoothing his palms over his face. “To act as if these limbs were amputated.”

“Stroke patients can act like that though. After a while, they'll just ignore the extremity that doesn't work anymore.”

He shook his head, grabbed the full bottle of cognac and lifted the glass stopper.

Lilly reached forward and eased the bottle away. “Not until we think through this. Come up with an answer.”

A tremor took hold of Reeves.
Is he going through withdrawal?
Regardless of Lilly's personal feelings toward her father, she ached to see him unraveling in front of her.

“What is it you're not telling me?” Lilly asked.

He reached to the floor beside him and picked up another notebook. Sleek and black. He opened the front cover and began to leaf through the pages. “This is a list of the conditions of the donor specimens and who got their cells.”

Reeves plopped it open in front of her and then grabbed Tyler's notebook. “In the donor notebook, the graft was denoted by a tracing number. Dr. Adams's patient notebook had the graft number paired with the patient. That's what Tyler had been matching up. Read to me what he wrote.”

“Patient Brad Winters exhibits intermittent nonuse of left arm. Medical testing revealed absence of any sign of stroke. EMG and nerve conduction testing don't reveal any evidence as to why the patient claims he doesn't have an arm anymore.”

Reeves tapped the other notebook. “Now look at the condition of the donor.”

“During retrieval of the neural graft, donor specimen delivered”—dread filled Lilly's chest—“without left arm . . .” Lilly raised her head, her body felt weak, tired. Was Thomas Reeves thinking what she was thinking?

Reeves raked his fingers through his beard. “What makes us human, Lilly? What marks our distinction from every other biological creature on the planet?”

This was certainly traveling down an unexpected road.

If she spoke about God to an atheist, about his weaving evidence of his existence into human DNA, surely Reeves would just laugh. He'd view her beliefs as the musings of a tortured soul gone astray looking for anything—scientifically provable or not—to make sense of what happened to her.

“Why don't you tell me what you think,” Lilly offered, folding her hands to quell their trembling.

“I would say
memory
. Awareness of self. The ability to process pain and know what it means.”

“Okay.”

He rustled through the papers. “What is this? You use it every day.”

“The Glascow Coma Scale?”

He tapped the scale again. “Yes, the neuro part.”

“What about it?”

“Patients score higher the more aware of self they are. A patient who can obey commands?”

“Gets the highest score.”

“And what's the next highest level?”

“Localizing pain.”

“Which means?”

“They reach across their midline to remove a painful stimulus.”

“Which means pain receptors have to be intact, an awareness of self, the instinct for self preservation.”

“Okay . . .”

Reeves yanked the bottle of liquor back his direction and then sloppily poured it into his tumbler. He motioned her direction. Lilly waved him off.

She wanted to stop him. “What is it you're not telling me?”

“They're fused,” he gulped the liquor fast.

“What's fused?”

“Their memories.”

“Whose?”

“The donors' and recipients' memories! It's the only explanation as to why a grown man would have any knowledge of an amputation that took place in a donor not yet born.”

Chapter 38

1410, Saturday, August 11

M
ORGAN RACED THE
short distance to Tyler.

“Go ahead and try, Morgan. See if you can save him.” Scott walked around Tyler's fallen body and met Dylan in the middle of the room.

Dark liquid bloomed through his thin blue scrubs from the left side of his chest.

“Drew! Bring the crash cart. Now!”

She could hear the roar of the wheels over the tile, the metal drawers clanging against one another as he hurried from the other side of the unit. From her pocket, Morgan grabbed her trauma shears and cut up the middle of his shirt, pushing each side away to expose his torso. The wound gaped open, a mocking hole of hellish destruction as Tyler's life poured out. Morgan used the palms of both hands, one over the other, to stem the rush of blood.

She felt a small shudder race up her arms. She couldn't tell if it came from Tyler exhaling his last breath or from her sheer panic at the thought that her husband had died right in front of her.

As Morgan leaned heavily into the wound, Tyler opened his eyes and grabbed her hand to shove it off, his face wild with confusion. Drew began to toss needed items onto the floor from the cart. Morgan slammed her knees down on Tyler's arm to keep him from rolling away from her and further injuring himself.

Relief washed over her.
Movement is good. Movement means life
.

“Tyler. Stop! Look at me.”

He slammed his head several times against the tile, his eyes bunched tight against the pain. “Get off me!” He began to buck against her and she wondered if he truly realized what had happened. Patients in severe pain couldn't think clearly.

Drew wrapped a tourniquet tight around his arm.

Keeping pressure on the wound, Morgan bent down and set her cheek against his. The lightness in her chest that he was alive brought untold joy. A sensation she hadn't felt since before Teagan's death. That effervescent giddiness that all could still be right with the world. His cheek was cool and doughy against hers. “Tyler . . . shh . . . listen to me. You've been shot. Drew and I are helping you.”

He rolled over and threw her off.

Another reason to work with kids
.
They're so much easier to drop-tackle.

She scrambled back. The floor was becoming a horrific finger painting of Tyler's blood as he attempted to get up. She and Drew both pushed down the good shoulder.

“Tyler!” Morgan yelled. Finally, he opened his eyes to hers. She smiled. Something he likely hadn't seen in months. She eased her palm back down onto the wound. “Please, look at me.” His dilated pupils engaged hers. “Hold still. Drew's going to put a line in.”

He reached up with his right, bloodied hand and grabbed the side of her face. “Morgan . . .” Her name faint, distant.

She shook her head. His eyes were wide, glassy, the red veins even lightened, almost gray, as the blood leaked from his body.

Tyler barely registered the needle in his arm. Drew grabbed for the bag of IV fluids and tore at more packages to get tubing.

A moan escaped from Tyler's lips. He licked at the drying skin. “I'm . . .”

She wanted to clamp her palm over his mouth. Drew connected the fluids and ran to an open bedspace, snatching an IV pole to free his hands. As he grabbed that, he also unclamped a patient monitor from the wall and set it on the floor next to Tyler.

Tears coursed down her cheeks. She squinted against them. How could it be that God would allow her husband to die here—in the same place she'd lost Teagan?

“I won't let you say it,” she whispered.

His eyes grew heavy, and his hand slipped from her face. He jolted, his eyes opened, locking on hers again. “I love you.”

“Then stay with me.”

His hand slid to the floor. Morgan kept pressing against his wound. She leaned her head onto her bloodied hands. She felt her soul awkwardly tearing in half.

She'd begged God over and over to save her little girl, to save Teagan's life. And she still died. Now she didn't trust God to do anything on her behalf. But in that moment, it was all she could think to do.

Jesus, please save Tyler. You can't do this to me again! If you do and there is hell, I will gladly go there, because I can't imagine loving a God who would do this to me twice. Whatever it is you want from me—surrender? I give up. I give in. Just please, not Tyler, not here, not now.

Drew grabbed her shoulder and shook it. “Morgan, I need you. Tyler needs you. We have to think through this.”

Morgan lifted her head. It was true. There was never any time in the PICU for tears. At least not in the moment of crisis.

She swiped her hands over her cheeks and glanced around the room. She wanted to be aware of where the hostage takers had gone. Scott and Dylan were both by the door, looking at the death photo on Dylan's phone.

“Morgan! I need your help!” Drew's voice sounded so far away. “I don't know where everything is.”

The warmness of Tyler's blood still leaking from under her palms somehow was the catalyst that kicked her clinical mind back into gear.

“Right,” she said. “Right. Let's get a pressure dressing on this.”

Drew ripped open several packages and began to layer the 4x4s into a big stack. Morgan lifted her hand as Drew slipped the pile into place. From the code cart, Morgan grabbed thick, elastic tape and layered it over the gauze. Groping again through the drawers, she pulled out an oxygen mask. “Under the bed over there, grab the oxygen tank.”

Drew scurried across the tile and slid the heavy, green metal tank along the floor toward her. She handed him the tubing for the tank and slipped the mask over Tyler's face. The rush of oxygen as it fed into the tubing was the only sound in the space for that moment. Like the faint hint of air escaping a balloon as it slowly shriveled up and died.

Morgan pointed to the monitor. Drew flipped it on as she pulled ECG patches and a pulse ox probe from the second drawer. She could see Tyler's breath misting inside the mask at a quickened pace.