Projection by Keith Ablow

Author:Keith Ablow [Ablow, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Psychological, Thrillers, Suspense, General
ISBN: 9780312975746
Google: LPT3oBf5LAwC
Amazon: 0312975740
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2000-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

I spun around to gauge the toll of the assault. Most of the patients were standing or getting up, adding their voices to those still chanting. Others huddled in the corners of the room. The male social worker was on the ground, clutching a wound in his leg. There was glass everywhere. The plaster walls were marred by craters where bullets had landed. Kashoor, the huge man Lucas had kept from attacking me, was slumped against the wall nearest the door, shot in the head. I looked for Gabriel Vernon and spotted him face-down, spread-eagled in a pool of blood. I ran to him and used all my strength to turn him onto his back. His head flopped to one side. I saw that he had been struck twice in the chest. I called out for help. "C’mon, Gabriel," I muttered. "Don't die." I tilted his head back and listened for breathing. I ripped his shirt open and watched his chest for movement. There was nothing. I checked his pulse. His heart had stopped. I knelt by his side and tried to deliver CPR, but I heard the fractured pieces of his sternum crack against one another with each of my compressions. My breaths bubbled through the holes in his chest. I knotted his white orderly's top and jammed it into the wound, but air still escaped through the fabric. I yelled for help again. No one responded. Half a minute later he hadn't drawn a breath of his own, and I was gasping for air myself. I brushed my hand over his eyes to close his lids.

I looked up and saw Kaminsky and Zweig huddled together, whispering. They began reorganizing a row of patients across the center of the room, seeming prepared to face a second assault. They separated the hostages into their own row, backs against the shattered windows, facing the others. I worried they might be planning to execute them. I struggled to my feet and ran into the hallway, looking for Lucas. I believed what he had told me. He was the keystone in the arch that kept the unit from collapsing into a wholesale carnage. There were still lives to be saved — more than a dozen patients and six hostages.

I raced to check each room on the left and the right, revisiting the horror of Laura Elmonte's ‘surgery’ and Richard Tisdale's planned neurosurgery. I fell back against Tisdale's doorjamb, exhausted. I was most of the way toward collapse. I gathered the last bit of my cocaine-fueled fortitude and headed back up the hall. I stopped at the medication room door, knocked, but got no response. I put my ear to the cold metal surface. Someone was moving around inside. "Trevor?" I yelled. "Are you in there?" I was answered by silence. I pounded on the door. "Trevor!"

"Get away," he snarled.

"Open the door."

He cried out in pain.

"Let me in!"

"I can't!" he screamed. His voice descended to despair. "My arm."

"What about your arm?"

There was silence again.

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