ceiling. It was a drop ceiling, made with large blocks of acoustical tile.
The wastebasket provided an intermediate step. Susan moved from the wastebasket to the sink to the top of the lockers. The ceiling was about three feet above the top of the lockers. Crouching on all fours, she tried the first ceiling block. It would not lift up because of some piping immediately above it. She tried another. Same problem. The third tile, however, lifted easily, and Susan slid it to one side. She then stood up on top of the locker, projecting half of herself into the ceiling space.
Contrary to her estimate, the ceiling space was generous in its size.
There was almost five feet of vertical space from the dropped acoustical ceiling to the cement of the floor slabs above. A myriad of pipes and ducts ran through this space, carrying the hospital’s vital supplies and wastes. The light was very poor, with only pencil-like beams seeping up from below in scattered locations between ceiling tiles.
The dropped ceiling was composed of the cardboard tile, held in place by thin metal strips, which were in turn hung from the cement slab above. Neither the tiles nor the metal strips were strong enough to carry any weight. In order to enter the ceiling space, Susan had to pull herself up onto the pipes, which she found either ice cold or very hot.
Once up in the ceiling space, she replaced the ceiling tile she had moved.
It fell back into place, cutting off the direct source of light.
Susan waited until her eyes made the adjustment from the fluorescent world below to the semidarkness above. Eventually outlines took forms and Susan could move ahead along the pipes. She noticed a row of studs which continued through the ceiling space to connect with the concrete above. She guessed that they marked the wall of the corridor.
Progress was slow; it was difficult to move on the pipes, treading on one, keeping hold of another or, here and there, a stud for support. She did not want to make any noise, especially when she guessed she was over the area of the main desk. Once over the OR area itself, the going became definitely easier. The ceilings over the OR and the recovery room were fixed and made of prestressed concrete. Susan could move at will provided she avoided tripping on the piping and provided she bent over considerably, for the space here was only about three feet high.
Susan found a concrete wall which she guessed housed the elevator shafts. Then she discovered that the corridor of the OR area had a dropped ceiling. Beyond the OR corridor, over what was probably part of central supply, Susan could see that the maze of pipes and ducts running through the ceiling space converged in what seemed a tangled vortex.
Susan guessed that was the location of the central chase which housed all the piping and ducts coursing vertically in the building.
Susan was interested primarily in locating room No. 8. But that was not easy. There were no specific demarcations from one OR to the next The pipes seemed to spread out and dive through the concrete to the operating rooms below in utter anarchy. The corridor ceiling led to a solution. By carefully picking up the edges of the ceiling blocks over the corridor, Susan was able to orient herself and locate the ceiling area of rooms No. 8 and No. 10. Susan satisfied herself that the number and configuration of the pipes to and from the two rooms were identical.
The gas lines corresponding to the painted intake connectors she had seen down below in the ORs had the same color codes in the ceiling space. Over room No. 8, Susan found the oxygen line with a splash of green paint. Susan traced the oxygen line from room No. 8. It coursed back to the edge of the corridor then bent at a right angle to run parallel to it, alongside similar oxygen lines coming from other ORs. As Susan passed additional OR rooms, more lines joined the oxygen line she was trailing. In order to be sure she was still following the pipe from No.
8, Susan kept her finger on it all the way to the edge of the central chase. Then her finger hit something. In the dim light she had to bend over to see what it was. She saw a stainless steel female connector. Just over the edge of the chase carrying the pipes up from the hospital depths was a high-pressure T-valve on the oxygen line leading to room No. 8.
Susan stared at the valve. She looked at the other gas lines coming up the chase. There were no similar valves on any of the other lines. With her finger she examined the valve. It was obvious that the oxygen could be tapped from the line at that point. But equally as possible was that something, another gas, could be bled into the oxygen line at the same point.
Keeping to the fixed ceilings of the ORs, Susan worked her way back to the area of the main desk. Then she began the difficult part of crossing the large expanse of non-fixed ceiling. Wishing she had dropped some bread crumbs in the forest of pipes, Susan was forced to reconnoiter.
She lifted a corner of a ceiling tile, but it was over the hall. She lifted another tile only to find herself over the doctors’ lounge. The third tile was over the nurses’ locker, but too far from the lockers she needed to step on. The fourth tile was perfect, and Susan descended with little difficulty.
Thursday, February 26, 1:00 A.M.
Like any major city, Boston never completely goes to sleep. But unlike many a major city, Boston becomes almost silent. As Susan settled back in the taxi speeding along Storrow Drive, only two or three cars passed, all going in the opposite direction. She was very tired, and she craved sleep. It had been an unbelievable day.
The laceration of her lip and the bruise on her cheek had grown more painful. Gingerly she touched her cheek to see if the swelling had increased. It had not. She looked out over the Esplanade and the frozen Charles River to her right The lights of Cambridge were sparse and uninviting. The taxi banked sharply left off Storrow Drive onto Park Drive, requiring Susan to steady herself with her arm.
She tried to assess her progress. It wasn’t encouraging. To keep within a reasonable limit of safety, she thought she had another thirty-six hours or so to press her search. But she was stymied. As the cab crossed the Fenway, Susan admitted to herself that she had run out of ideas on how to proceed. She felt she could not chance the Memorial by day with Nelson, Harris, McLeary, and Oren all lined up against her. She doubted the nurse’s uniform would work on a direct confrontation.
But she wanted more data from the computer. She needed the other charts, too. Was there a way to do it? Would Bellows help? Susan doubted it. She now knew that he was truly anxious about his position. He really is an invertebrate, she thought.
And what about Walters’s suicide? How could those drugs be tied in?
Susan paid her fare and got out of the taxi. Walking up to the door, she decided that in the morning she would try to find out as much as possible about Walters. He had to be related. But how?
Susan stood by the front door with her hand on the knob, expecting to be buzzed in by the watchman at the front desk. But he wasn’t sitting there. Susan cursed as she rummaged in her coat for her keys. It was uncanny how the man at the desk seemed to disappear whenever you needed him.
The four flights up to her floor seemed longer than usual to Susan. She paused on several occasions, because of a combination of physical fatigue and mental effort.
Susan tried to remember if Bellows had said succinylcholine was among the drugs found in the locker in the doctors’ dressing room. She distinctly remembered his saying curare but she could not remember succinylcholine. She got to the top of the stairs still very much lost in thought. It took another minute to find the correct key. As she had done countless times, she inserted the key in the lock. It took a bit of effort.
Despite her deep thought and exhaustion, Susan remembered about the wad of paper. Leaving the key in the door she bent down to look.
The paper was not there. The door had been opened.
Susan backed away from the door, half-expecting it to open suddenly.
She remembered the horrid face of her assailant. If he was within the room, he was undoubtedly poised, expecting her to enter as usual. She thought of the knife he had not used the last time. She knew that she had very little time. The only factor in her favor was that if he were in the room, he would not know Susan suspected his presence. At least for a few moments.
If she called the authorities and the man was found, she’d be safe for some hours perhaps. But she recalled the threat about telling the police, the photograph of her brother. Did that suggest a burglar or a rapist?
Not likely. Susan understood that the man who attacked her before was both professional and serious, deadly serious. She should run, perhaps even leave town. Or should she call the police anyway, as Stark had suggested?
