Authors: Tina Folsom
I looked at them suspiciously, and had no intention of swallowing them.
“It doesn’t hurt that badly,” I lied.
“If you say so.” He seemed oddly resigned, but wasn’t pressing me.
“I’ll go get your suitcases. Do you need anything else while I’m out?”
Here was my chance. If I could keep him out long enough, I could figure out a way to escape. What other errand could I send him on so he wouldn’t be back too soon? My stomach growled as if on cue.
“I’m hungry.” I knew that except for steaks he had virtually nothing in the refrigerator.
“Would you like a steak?”
“Sorry, I’m a vegetarian,” I lied again. I would have loved a juicy steak, but instead I needed to send him on a fool’s errand. “Do you think you could stop by somewhere for some Chinese?”
He raised his eyebrow. “You know that stuff’s no good for you; it’s full of MSG.”
I gave him a pleading smile.
“But if you want Chinese, I’ll get you Chinese,” he conceded only too easily.
“Thanks. Here’s some money for it.” I wanted to hand him one of the twenty dollar bills I had on the coffee table, but he waved me off.
“On the house,” he smiled. “I’ll see you in a little while.”
Not if I can help it!
He turned and walked out the door. I heard his footsteps on the stairs. Seconds later I heard what sounded like a garage door opening and then the roaring sound of a car engine.
I was alone again.
There was no time to be wasted. First I needed to find something to wear. Since I had no idea where I was, I had to be prepared to be out in the cold for a while. I peeled myself out of the couch and staggered to his walk-in closet.
With each move my leg throbbed harder. I looked at the coffee table where he had left me the painkillers, but I wanted to stay alert, and the pain helped. When I opened the closet, I didn’t know what I had expected, but the contents were entirely normal for a man. A few suits, lots of pants, jeans, shirts and t-shirts. I knew all his clothes would be way too large for me, but luckily it had come into fashion for girls to wear their boyfriend’s jeans. I wouldn’t be out of place.
I took one of his jeans from the hanger and limped back to the couch.
Lying down on the couch it was easier to slip the jeans over my injured leg. I was careful not to touch my wound. It was expertly bandaged. I had to give him that. Whatever he was, he was a pretty good doctor, if he really was a doctor.
The short walk back from the closet had exhausted me. I took a brief break, just breathing in and out. I could feel how weak I was and knew I had to eat something before I left. As I got up, I had to hold up the jeans with my hands. I would have to get a belt or something to hold it up.
But now all I could think of was eating something. I opened the fridge and took out a steak. It was huge, but I was hungry. It wasn’t hard to work out how to turn on the grill and it didn’t take long for it to heat up.
I slapped the meat onto the hot grill and it sizzled. The smell made me even hungrier. I looked at the clock on the oven and realized I hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours, since my late breakfast the day I had left Carmela’s flat.
No wonder I felt weak. I liked my steak medium and it didn’t take long for it to cook to perfection. As I finally took the first bite, I felt better. The steak was delicious. I hadn’t had a good steak in a long time. My meager wages didn’t quite allow me to splurge like that.
After I had devoured the entire steak, I suddenly felt tired. There was no harm in resting for a few more minutes, I told myself as I hobbled back to the couch. I needed all the strength I could muster, so shutting my eyes for a few minutes couldn’t all be bad. I wouldn’t sleep. I would just rest my eyes for a few minutes.
No!
I had to stay alert. I pulled myself up and got up from the couch. Realizing that the jeans were slipping down my thighs, I knew I needed to get to his closet once more. He had to have a belt which I could use to hold up the jeans. I searched through his drawers: underwear, socks. There, belts.
I picked one and pulled it through the hooks on the jeans, but when I tried to close it I was out of luck. There weren’t enough holes in the belt. I threw it back into the drawer. Maybe a tie would do the trick. I opened the next drawer, but found no clothes.
The drawer was filled with stacks of photos. Curiosity got the better of me. As I dropped myself to the floor I took out a stack and looked through them. I was fascinated by one of the photos. It showed a group of people in their late twenties, Vince amongst them, who were at some party. They were dancing. Vince was laughing.
I noticed their clothes were awful. The colors seemed out of place. I had never seen so many people showing no taste in clothing whatsoever. Then I realized it was a theme party: they all wore seventies style clothing. It was strange to see him like that. He was maybe five years younger then and his face looked carefree and happy. Was this really the face of a maniac?
I looked through more of the photos. It appeared they had taken lots of photos at that party, or maybe it was more than one seventies theme party. I knew that for a while after the movie Boogie Nights had hit the cinemas, theme parties were quite the rage.
I pushed the drawer shut again. I had to go. After I finally found a tie, I used it to tie the jeans tight so that they wouldn’t drop down. I found my sweater in the bedroom area and remembered Vince had left my sneakers by the door. I put them on.
As I stuffed my money into the jeans pocket I realized I didn’t know where my handbag was. I remembered I had slung it over my shoulder like a messenger bag, the way bike messengers did, so I knew the attacker couldn’t have grabbed it. And it couldn’t have easily fallen off me either.
This meant most likely my bag was in the lab where he had treated me. I couldn’t leave without it. I needed my ID and my ticket to Des Moines. With a bit of luck I could exchange it for a ticket for another day.
It wasn’t easy to navigate the stairs and consequently it took me longer than I thought to get to the lab. The door was unlocked. For the fact that Vince was a psycho, he was surprisingly trusting. Or had he thought I wouldn’t be able to make my way down the stairs due to my injury? Or maybe the pills he had left me were meant to knock me out while he was gone. Had he counted on me being in too much pain and therefore taking his
pain killers
sooner or later?
Whatever the reason, I had no trouble entering the lab. There was a lab stool close to the door and I made use of it. I was able to roll myself around without difficulty. I saw the surgery table and realized this had been the place where I had woken up after the attack and first looked into Vince’s eyes.
I spotted my bag. It lay next to the computer. I took it quickly, but the strap got caught with the computer mouse which moved. The screensaver which had displayed on the computer screen suddenly disappeared and a document became visible.
I glanced at the screen briefly and was about to turn around when my name jumped out at me. I looked at the sentence which contained my name.
The blood test confirms Annette’s blood was infected with the serum.
I couldn’t stop reading.
I have not yet been able to confirm its molecular structure.
There was more medical jargon which I didn’t understand.
Dr. Entwhistle’s research turns more dangerous daily and if he is indeed doing what I suspect him of I have no choice but to stop him before he endangers more lives.
Dr. Entwhistle was the doctor whose clinical trial I had participated in. I remembered his name now from the card I had given to Vince. I continued reading until I got to the last sentences.
I can’t allow anything bad to happen to her. I have to protect her until it is safe for her to leave. I am still concerned about the irregular heart beat she presents with and am unsure as to the cause of it. I hope my antidote was not too late. The analysis of her blood should give me certainty in a few hours. I blame myself for not having caught Entwhistle’s serum earlier.
I understood now. He was protecting me. Whatever he had found in my blood, he thought it was a danger to me. He had every intention of letting me go. He hadn’t kidnapped me, not in the true sense of the word, and he wasn’t holding me against my will.
He was a concerned doctor who had discovered that another doctor was doing dangerous things, and he was prepared to stop it. I felt ashamed now for the thoughts I had harbored. In my mind I had called him a psycho, a maniac, a serial killer. What was I thinking?
Was it the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything and my blood sugar was so low I had started hallucinating?
He deserved my trust, not my suspicion. Had it been too long since I had met a decent person that I had forgotten to recognize one when I met one? It was inexcusable.
I had to trust him.
And I had to get back upstairs fast, before he got back and found me snooping around in his lab.
She had acted strange when I had left her. I was worried, truly worried I had blown it. She was like a delicate flower and I was only too aware that I was the elephant in the glass shop, but I had no time to think about how to remedy this now. I had things to take care of.
Picking up her suitcases from the lockers at Transbay Terminal took only a few minutes. I dropped them into the trunk of my BMW and got back into the driver’s seat. The car was black and its windows were tinted so dark nobody on the outside could see in. I avoided being seen and possibly recognized by some old acquaintances, as slim as the chance might be.
I took the back roads via Twin Peaks to get onto UCSF’s campus passing by the University’s Aldea housing units. Saturday was generally a quiet day at the University. All staff except for medical personnel was off work and those working were busy covering each other’s shifts. It would be easy enough to slip in and out unseen.
I parked my car behind a mobile construction office where it wouldn’t get noticed for a while. On weekends the perimeter access doors were all locked. It didn’t matter. I had
acquired
a key card shortly after the new system had been implemented on campus, and relied on the inefficiency of University administrative staff to cancel lost and stolen cards and cards of deceased employees. I could always count on the underpaid and underappreciated staff to lack morale and a sense of responsibility.
I swiped my card at the door and heard the familiar high pitched beep granting me access to the building. It was good to know nothing had changed in the years since I had worked here.
I knew where Entwhistle’s lab was and had no trouble finding it. I had a key to it, as I had a key to many of the labs at UCSF. It was just another loophole in the University’s control environment. Anybody who knew the number of the key they needed could order it via the University’s own lock shop and have it delivered to any University address.
The rest was easy. Their internal controls had more holes than Swiss cheese. I took advantage of the system, one I had once been so frustrated with. I regularly helped myself to the supplies I needed for my research and keys to the various labs were essential for that. It was not that I didn’t want to pay for the supplies, but certain things I couldn’t order without a valid medical license, and mine had expired almost thirty years ago. I therefore had to count on the University’s lax security systems to get the restricted supplies I needed to continue my research, especially drugs like morphine and other controlled substances.
I entered Entwhistle’s lab. It was a large room, divided by so-called benches lined with lots of cabinets, sinks and pipes for various gases and liquids. Boxes of extra supplies stood everywhere. It was the usual chaos I encountered in every lab I knew.
I knew most clinical trial records were kept in large ring binders. Entwhistle had several live studies and it took me a while to find the one Annette was enrolled in. I read through the protocol, but it didn’t involve any injection. It was just a regular blood study, nothing out of the ordinary. It was the wrong study.
I had seen the cash she had taken out of her jeans pocket: eighty dollars, which seemed too much for just one visit. I confirmed my suspicion when I found the page outlining compensation to the study subjects. It was only forty dollars per visit.
I went through more of his binders, but there was nothing. What if he was doing this study without approval? Then there wouldn’t be a binder. He would have to keep the records somewhere else. Each physician also had an academic office separate from his lab. So did Entwhistle.
I made my way up two flights of stairs and found his office in the newer part of the building. I knew they had recently renovated the floor and eliminated keys in favor of code entry systems. I didn’t know the code to his room, but I knew out of experience people liked something they could easily remember. There were enough passwords to keep.
I looked at the room number and punched it into the entry system. I heard a click. People were so predictable. I pressed the door handle down and slipped into his office.
His desk had lots of papers strewn around. Saying he was messy was an understatement. How could the man find anything he was looking for? And how was I going to find what I was looking for?
A cursory look through the papers on his desk indicated that nothing of importance was lying around. If he was doing something without proper human subjects approval, his findings would be locked up.
His desk drawers were locked. It wasn’t hard to pick the lock. In my many years of living below anybody’s radar I had acquired useful skills no school was teaching. I pulled the first drawer open and leafed through the files. Nothing regarding the clinical trial.
I closed the drawer and opened the bottom drawer. Again, nothing. This meant the only other place he could keep the files was at his home.
I put everything back into its proper place, and it looked like I had never been there, with one exception: the desk drawers were now unlocked. I had a fifty-fifty chance of him not noticing or thinking he had forgotten to lock them. I would take that chance. Even if he noticed that somebody had opened his desk drawers, he wouldn’t know who. He would probably suspect a staff member first. And besides, somebody as messy as he was would probably not even notice anyway.