ordeal admirably.
Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Adam led Alan across the roof to the outer building and then down the stairwell.
At that point Adam was stumbling more than Alan. His arms felt limp, his thighs quivered from exertion, and the palms of his hands were raw. When they reached Adam’s room, he dropped the doctor on the bed and collapsed beside him.
Adam was out of shape for such rigorous physical activity.
He would have liked to have rested, but he knew the danger of discovery increased with every minute that passed. He helped Alan out of his hospital gown and quickly dressed him.
Fortunately, the two men were approximately the same size.
Then he tucked Alan into bed and prayed that he was still sufficiently drugged to go back to sleep. As a precaution, Adam locked the door behind him when he left the room to see if he could find a car. As he hurried down the hall, he wished once again that he had made better plans for escape.
• • •
Selma Parkman yawned and glanced at the clock over the medication locker. It was only one-fifteen. She had over five hours’ more duty, and she was already bored to death.
Glancing over at the two orderlies, she wished she had a little of their patience. From the moment she had arrived at the center she had been amazed at the staff’s placid acceptance of the dull routine.
“I think I’ll take a walk,” she said, flipping closed her Robert Ludlum novel. The orderlies didn’t answer.
“Did you hear me?” she asked petulantly.
“We’ll watch the ward,” said one of them at last.
“You do that,” said Selma, working her feet into her shoes.She knew that nothing would happen while she was gone.
Nothing ever happened. When she’d taken the job, she’d expected a bit more excitement than baby-sitting a bunch of automatons. She’d left a good job in Philadelphia at the Hobart Psychiatric Institute to come down to Puerto Rico, and she was beginning to wonder if she had made a mistake.
Selma left the nurses’ station and, desperate for some conversation, took the elevator to the OR floor and entered the gallery. Dr. Nachman smiled when he saw her. “Bored?” he said. “I can see we’ll have to get you a more exciting schedule.” In reality, he was irritated by her restlessness and had put her on the list for a course of Conformin treatment.
Selma watched the computer-generated images appearing on the screen in front of the operators, but she had no idea what she was seeing and soon became as bored as she’d been downstairs. She said good-bye, but no one responded.
Shrugging her shoulders, she left the gallery, descended a floor, and retraced her steps to the nurses’ station. The orderlies were as she’d left them. It wasn’t time for her rounds, but since she was already up, she got the flashlight and went into the ward.
The job wasn’t demanding to say the least. About half of the patients were on IVs, and she was supposed to check them at least twice during her shift. Otherwise all she had to do was shine her flashlight into the face of each patient to make sure he was still alive.
Selma stopped, her light playing on an empty pillow.
Bending down, she looked along the floor. Once a patient had fallen out of bed, but that did not seem to be the case here.
She moved over to the chart and read the name: Iseman.
Still thinking that the patient must be nearby, she went back to the nurses’ station and flipped on the ward’s overhead lights. A harsh fluorescent glare flooded the room.
Summoning the orderlies, Selma quickly checked the room herself. There was no doubt about it: Iseman had vanished.
Selma began to worry. Nothing like this had ever happened.
Telling the orderlies to keep searching, she hurried back up to the OR.
“A patient is missing,” she said, spotting Nachman and Mitchell as they were about to leave.
“That’s impossible,” said Dr. Mitchell.
“It may be impossible,” said Selma, “but Mr. Iseman’s bed is empty, and he’s nowhere in sight. I think that you’d better come down and see for yourselves.”
“That’s the patient that was operated on yesterday,” said Dr. Nachman. “Wasn’t he on a continuous Conformin drip?”
Without waiting for Mitchell’s answer, he hurried off downstairs. As they entered the ward, Selma gestured triumphantly toward the empty bed.
Dr. Mitchell picked up the IV line and looked at the catheter. It was still slowly dripping. “Well, he can’t be far.”
After exhausting all possible hiding places on the floor, Dr. Nachman and Dr. Mitchell tried the fetology floor, then the roof, and finally the garden.
“I think we’d better call out all the orderlies,” said Dr.
Nachman. “We have to find Iseman immediately.”
“This is incredible,” said Dr. Mitchell with disbelief.
“I’m surprised the man could even walk.”
“If we don’t find him right away,” asked Dr. Nachman,
“what would happen if we were to activate his implanted electrodes? Would that let us home in on him?”
Dr. Mitchell shrugged. “The patient has not started conditioning. If we activate him, the signals could cause either pain or pleasure but without any specific control on behavior. It could be dangerous.”
“Dangerous to whom?” asked Dr. Nachman. “The patient or people around him?”
“That I can’t answer,” admitted Dr. Mitchell.
“Well, that’s a worst-case scenario,” said Dr. Nachman. “I hope he’ll be found in short order. Maybe the dosage in his IV was wrong. In any case, let’s alert all the orderlies.
Tell them to carry full hypodermics of Conformin so that when he is found there’s no trouble.”
• • •
Adam was beginning to get desperate. There were plenty of cars in the parking lot opposite the main building, but no keys. Adam had assumed that with the tight security, people would be careless. But unfortunately, that was not the case.
He cursed himself again for his casual planning.
Not quite sure what he might find, he made his way down the secluded walk to the beach and over to the club. A handful of cars were in the parking lot behind the clubhouse, and Adam went from one to another without luck. Then he noticed a good-sized Ford truck parked at the delivery entrance.
The door was open and Adam swung himself into the cab. He started to search for the ignition, but before he could find it, an alarm went off with an ear-piercing wail. Adam fumbled for the door and leapt out in panic.
The club door opened and Adam ran around the building to the shelter of a stand of pines. The alarm was turned off, but the sound of approaching voices made Adam realize he would have to keep moving. Seeing the masts of the Hobie Cats, Adam raced to the beach and slid under the nearest one.
He could hear the men returning to the club. They had obviously decided it was a false alarm, but Adam knew he only had a few more hours before daylight to figure out how to get Alan out of the compound. He wondered if anyone had noticed the patient was missing.
• • •
Dr. Nachman’s face appeared more haggard than usual. His eyes seemed to have visibly sunk into their sockets.
“He has to be here,” said Dr. Mitchell.
“If he’s here, then he should have been found,” said Dr.
Nachman humorlessly.
