Arsenic for the Soul Page 7
Bryan stomped away but Crenshaw lingered. He looked Vivian up and down as if he was assessing a failed specimen.
The wicked curve of his lips said it all.
“I’ve seen my share of sloppy students but you take the prize. I’m giving you two months at best before you slip up so horrendously that there’s no undoing your mistakes. You’ll never make it through this program. You’ll be out of this hospital on your ass faster than you can—”
“Vivian, just who I needed to see!”
They both looked up as Milo approached. He was never without a smile, but he seemed ready to sprout wings at the sight of Vivian.
“Hello, Crenshaw. I need to borrow Vivian for a moment. You don’t mind, do you?”
Crenshaw didn’t bother to reply. He glared at Vivian and called for a nurse to take over the suicide watch.
“Thanks for saving me back there,” Vivian said as they put as much possible distance between them and the surly surgeon.
“You didn’t need any saving. You could handle him.”
“No, you don’t understand. You saved me from stamping my fist on his forehead. That might postpone my graduation, don’t you think?”
Milo winked.
“Too right you are.”
Vivian was still ruminating over Crenshaw’s warning. You’ll never make it through this program.
She knew better than to entertain threats from a bitter old man. Still, a vulnerable part of her let those warnings inside, and once they nested in her heart, they grew. Too often she left doubts dismantle her dreams. This time would be different.
Crenshaw or not, she would show the world what she was capable of.
Milo held the door open for her, revealing a lush paradise outside. The charming parks and castles seemed an altogether different dimension from the hospital.
“You should be on your way. Get some rest and forget about what Crenshaw said today. Maybe skip that extra cup of coffee and take a nap.”
She wondered why he was gentle and kind to her. Instinctively, those signals put Vivian on her guard. She couldn’t get a read on this man or his aura.
There was something almost inhuman about Milo, as if he came from a different world. She marveled at him.
Once more, she lost herself in the random details of his face that she didn’t see before. When the sight of his lips made her squirm for him, she bolted for the door. She needed to escape not only this hospital but this insanely attractive and kindhearted man. Such a creature couldn’t possibly exist.
Such a creature would pose all kinds of dangers.
“Yeah, a little rest would take my mind off things.” She smiled and retreated one step at a time. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Milo. Take care.”
He only watched her as she cut a path to the nearest park. She wondered if he, too, felt this magic playing out between their dangerous hearts.
* * *
Camilla grabbed her mail on the way out of the office. Tomorrow’s issue of Blaze would finally show what a week’s worth of research into Prague’s criminal syndicates could result in.
Despite her flavor for crime reporting, she never wanted to get any closer to the nature of this evil. Fortunately, the apparition of her stalker seemed to become less real over time. She wasn’t visited by any more threats, warnings, or strangers peeking through her window.
The calm after the storm had finally arrived. Perhaps she would return to her apartment just to assure herself the threat was over.
She tripped on her way out of the office, spilling the letters from her readers onto the sidewalk. Instead of letting anger best her, she chuckled at her clumsiness.
She bent down to scrape up the letters before the wind could snatch them.
One of the envelopes felt unusually heavy between her fingers. It conspicuously lacked a sender’s address. It tingled in her fingers like an angry pulse.
She ripped it open. The key to her apartment fell out. Her breath was wrenched out of her lungs in violent sobs. The sight of that key was more than enough to convince her that she would never be safe. He was still watching her, plotting against her. Something else was tucked inside the envelope.
She retrieved a photo depicting an isolated bench in a forest. She flipped it over, expecting more taunts or jeers from her stalker.
Did you like my memento in the Black Atrium?
Meet me in Kunatrice Forest to see my face.
SEVEN
Camilla’s research into the seedy underbelly of Prague rarely took her to the medical examiner’s office. She always maintained a special distance from the morticians and the bodies. Now that buffer didn’t exist. At least Vivian was at her side as she traversed the sterile halls that ultimately led to the pathology lab. She had to yet to meet this Gavin that Vivian spoke so fondly of, but she prattled about him as though he was her personal celebrity.
The only thing Camilla cared about was the test results of the umbilical cord.
“He’ll be in here.” Vivian chirped.
The roguish girl didn’t look the least bit bothered by the morgue. As of late, she only listened to half of her conversations with Camilla, as if something was always distracting her. She suspected it had more than a little to do with the man she fancied at the hospital.
Maybe I should find myself a crush, too. That would certainly take my mind off stalkers and morgues.
A strange guttural noise greeted her when she entered the lab. The walls themselves droned with the souls roiling in the drawers.
“Vivian has told me much about you.” She turned around to see a man with blades jutting from his head. Even in the morgue he wore his signature spectacle, flaring brightly in the shadows.
“It’s all right,” Vivian laughed. She pushed Camilla toward the frightening man extending his hand in friendship.
“You must be Gavin,” she smiled sheepishly, gripping his skeletal fingers. She couldn’t take her eyes off the metal blades fused with his skull. Judging by the stains on his shoes, he had recently wrapped up an autopsy.
“In the flesh. I do wish we could meet under better circumstances, however. Before we peel back the layers of your family, I must ask you something… How badly do you want to know the truth?”
Camilla’s first instinct was to laugh.
“That’s the only reason I would come down to the medical examiner. Why wouldn’t I want to know?”
Gavin’s shoulders sagged.
“I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you. I have more questions than answers.” His eyes lit up as if a stroke of genius occurred to him. “I’ll go fetch the umbilical cord and we can begin! Make yourself comfy. Well… just don’t sit down on anything. Don’t lean up against anything either. Actually, just stay put.”
He tossed bloodied saws, hammers, and knives in the sink as if he was tidying his home for guests. Camilla watched with wide eyes as he dashed off.
“He’s a weird one.”
“He’s adorable, isn’t he?”
“I’m starting to see a pattern among your mentors.”
“What’s that?”
Camilla grinned.
“Let’s just say I see where your incredible fashion sense comes from.”
Gavin returned not a moment too soon with the umbilical cord that sparked this disaster. He set the coil down on a steel tray.
“Thanks to the blood sample you provided, I can unequivocally say this umbilical cord is yours. I can’t explain how it has been preserved for so long, though. It seems strange that your stalker would be in possession of this.”
“That’s why I believe he’s related to me by blood. At this point it’s fair to assume this stalker is somehow connected to the Magdalene asylums, too. He wouldn’t have any other reason to leave that article about the Magdalene Midnight Mission—bloody warning and all—in my apartment.”
“So who among your family knows that you exist and would target you?” Vivian asked. “A parent? A sibling?”
Camilla shrugged.
Gavin cleared his throat.
“I can think of one reason why your umbilical cord was kept.” He lifted the cord with a pair of toothed forceps. “In some cultures, it is traditional to keep the umbilical cord as a sign of good luck. That brings me to the subject of your family…”
“What did you learn about the Veselys?”
Gavin began to rummage through a briefcase she didn’t notice before. After digging through a few books of Renaissance poetry and symbology, he produced several files.
“I’ve compiled a list of your immediate relatives, both deceased and living.” Gavin’s bony fingers slid the death certificates across the table as though he, too, wished to distance himself from her tainted bloodline. Camilla blanched as she roved across the names of family members long forgotten and rotten.
“Deceased,” she uttered. “I had no idea I had this many relatives. Almost everyone is deceased. Except…”
“The only relative unaccounted for is your mother.” Gavin adjusted his spectacle gleaming in the iridescent light. “James Vesely, Lily Vesely, and their sons and daughters are dead.”
“Do I have any cousins?”
“None.”
Camilla chewed her lip.
“And you can’t confirm whether my mother is dead or alive?”
“Unfortunately not. Without a name, there is little I can do in the way of locating her.” Vivian looked over Camilla’s shoulder at her family tree.
“Thank you.”
“If I might add, your family died very young. You might be interested to know how. It draws an eerie parallel to something Vivian brought to my attention.”
“I don’t know if I can stomach that now.”
Camilla wanted nothing more than to take a liberating walk, but even that pleasure seemed sinister. Her stalker could be prowling in the parks, the gardens, anywhere that brought him one step closer to his prey. The only solace he couldn’t take from her was her journal and tea.
She knew how to put an end to this, but it would be messy. She still had a gun hidden away in her apartment—but that meant stepping over the police tape and setting foot inside. She never imagined actually pulling the trigger. That gun only represented a precaution against the unlikely scenario of a rapist or stalker. Who would have guessed that threat would manifest in the form of her family?
She almost left the cadaver lab when Vivian stopped her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. She sighed and turned to Gavin.
“How did they die?”
He chewed his lip.
“Tuberculosis.”
The proclamation stopped Vivian’s heart.
“Just like the outbreak in the hospital… I saw another case of skin tuberculosis yesterday. Do you think your family is somehow connected to this? Or is it just a coincidence?”
The latest letter from Camilla’s stalker seemed to burn a hole in her pocket. She would know soon enough when she faced him in Kunatrice Forest tomorrow.
EIGHT
Vivian returned to the University Hospital after spending a chilly evening at the medical examiner. She was more than a little disturbed by Gavin’s findings. The umbilical cord belonged to Camilla but it still didn’t explain who was hunting her or why. She sided with Camilla’s suspicions about a zealous relative seeking revenge for the closure of the Magdalene asylums.
Adding to this twisted tale, the last generation of Veselys succumbed to tuberculosis. That fact, coupled with the recent outbreak of tuberculosis at the hospital, didn’t sit well with Vivian. She wasn’t sure if Vivian’s family was connected to the hospital cases or not.
Her instincts were telling her to look deeper. All she could do now was keep an eye on the evolving situation.
Still, there was something more terrifying than Camilla’s family or a tuberculosis epidemic. That something happened to be a person walking gracefully down the hall.
Milo.
To hell with the consequences, today she would ask him to meet her for coffee sometime. This was the third time she failed in that mission. Every time she passed him in the hallway or traded coy glances, the words she longed to say dried on her tongue. How bad could the outcome be? The worst he could do was reject her with an awkward smile and avoid her until the end of time.
“Milo!”
The word came out before she could stop herself.
The young man skidded to a halt.
“Fuck,” Vivian said, looking for a place to hide. Too late. Milo’s eyes flickered as he spun around and spotted her.
“Vivian! So good to see you.”
“As always? Anyway, where are you sneaking off to in such a hurry?”
“Just heading down to the lab to run some more tests. Do you have any plans for the weekend?”
“No, my friends are out of town.” Maybe the lonely demeanor would set the stage. Even better, perhaps he would nip at the bait and ask her on a romantic outing.
“I didn’t think nursing students had time for friends. Soon you’ll be doing nothing but homework and reading. That’s not so bad, considering it all. Come to think of it, you won’t have any downtime for absinthe and clubs.”
How easily he skirted her hints. It both irritated and thrilled Vivian as they strung out this game of cat and mouse. No matter, she was patient and, with enough time, she would find an opening in his armor.
“Wow, your weekends must be a blast.”
She tried to prolong his walk to the blood lab. She certainly wasn’t in a hurry to let him off her hook.
“So what do you do with your free time? Perfect your mysterious, brooding persona and read Nietzche in the trendiest café?”
“Me? Brooding?”
Damn it, are you really going to make me ask you? Fine.
Vivian’s heart slugged her chest and she felt sweat breaking out.
“Anyway, I was wondering if you would like to—”
She bit off her next words as a siren screeched through the hall. Her schemes for Milo would have to wait.
Vivian rushed to the trauma bay, where she heard someone shouting orders. She quickly donned sterile gloves, a mask, and a gown.
She examined the victim on the gurney. An oxygen mask had been applied to his mouth. The bandages on his chest were quickly erupting into red, sodden strips as though a geyser was bubbling up from inside. The stabbing instrument would have easily pierced the muscular walls of his chest and compromised the organs.
Vivian glanced at the paper ID bracelet around the patient’s wrist. Dominik Ambroz.
“What’ve we got here?” said Dr. Crenshaw, sweeping into the trauma bay behind Vivian.
Their eyes met and the look he shot Vivian could have mortally struck down a man. Of course he remembered her as the silly girl ranting about tuberculosis.
Unfortunately for her, he reigned supreme in the trauma room and she would be subject to his every whim. He relished the control that came with his authority and he expected nothing less than perfection. He knew how to jerk everyone’s leash and add to their misery if they didn’t comply.
“Fourteen stab wounds to the chest,” said the trauma nurse, shattering the tension between Vivian and Crenshaw. “A hemothorax showed up on the X-ray.”
Hemothorax. The word twisted Vivian’s stomach. A hemothorax occurred when blood pooled in the cavity surrounding the lungs, mostly as a result of penetrating chest trauma. If the victim didn’t die of severe blood loss from the rupture in the membranes, he would face the untimely threat of impaired lung or heart function.
“Let’s move fast and get him intubated. Now!” The nurses scattered as though Crenshaw snapped a whip.
Vivian stood still for a moment, unsure of herself. Crenshaw skewered her with a stare and she scurried off to fetch more bandages—anything to appear useful or at least get out of the way.
“BP’s ninety over sixty!”
“B positive
blood is on the way!”
The trauma crew scrambled for damage control, everything from fluid resuscitation to changing the blood-soaked bandages. Vivian glimpsed the wounds on Dominik’s pale chest as they peeled away the dressings. The wounds were surrounded by bruises inflicted by the hilt of a knife.
Dr. Crenshaw whirled on the trauma team.
“Where the hell is the blood? We’re losing him!”
Vivian hurried to Dominik’s side to comfort him.
She saw the startling awareness in his eyes and he knew his life was hanging by a thread. She tried not to project her worst fears as blood gushed from his perforated lung. If she projected a façade of confidence, everything would be fine.
“It’s going to be all right.” Dominik’s bottom lip trembled in what she decided was the faintest of smiles.
Vivian took comfort in the up’s and down’s on the EKG monitor. At least his heart was still clinging to life, no matter how discouraging the odds.
A trauma anesthetist prepared an injection of propofol. The medication would induce a partial paralysis to allow them to proceed with the endotracheal. Finally, the man’s eyes slid shut and the team swept into action.
“Ready to intubate!”
A nurse slid the laryngoscope blade into Dominik’s throat and inserted an endotracheal tube. The ventilator would pump air into his lungs while the anesthesiologist listened through a stethoscope to monitor the position of the tube.
“We need to evacuate the hemothorax!”
“I can’t stop the bleeding!”
“Prep him for an emergency thoracotomy!”
“Take over for her,” Crenshaw said, nodding at the nurse compressing his chest. Vivian rushed over and began to apply chest compressions. One-two, one-two. Come on, hang in there!
His flesh felt cold and slimy as she pumped. Vivian tried to focus on the mechanical tasks around her. She saw Milo setting up an IV line for a blood transfusion.