tube.
Rush looked from the man on the stretcher to the water seal and back again in growing agitation. “He’s becoming cyanotic,” he said. “Increase vacuum pressure to negative fifty mmHg.”
“But such a high level-”
Rush rounded on the tech. “Damn it, just do it.” Then, walking briskly around the stretcher, Rush opened the now-motionless diver’s mouth and began administering artificial respiration. Fifteen seconds passed, then thirty. And then, quite suddenly, the diver’s limbs jerked; he coughed up blood and water and then took a deep, ragged breath.
Slowly, Rush straightened. He looked at the diver, then at the water seal. “Dial it back to negative twenty,” he murmured.
He glanced around at the assembled faces, then pulled off the gloves. “Keep an eye on the collection chamber,” he told the nurse. “I’ll go prep medical for a thorough evaluation.” And without another word, he turned on his heel and strode out of the Staging Area.
A s lunchtime approached, Logan found that his feet-he’d been wandering around the facility, trying to get his bearings-had brought him unbidden to what appeared to be the medical center. If there were really only a hundred and fifty people on the project, Medical seemed to him larger than necessary-until he recalled how far they were from any kind of help.
The center seemed quiet, almost somnolent. Logan walked down the central corridor, looking through the open doorways, at the empty beds and unused equipment. A woman at the nurse’s station was making notations on a clipboard. He passed a large open area labeled OBSERVATION. The injured diver was here, surrounded by various diagnostic machines.
Logan continued, stopping at the next room. This was apparently Rush’s office; the doctor was inside, his back to the door, speaking into a digital voice recorder.
“A catheter was inserted into the thoracic cavity and tension pneumothorax alleviated before the condition could degrade to a mediastinal shift or air embolism,” he recited, “either of which might have caused the case to terminate fatally, due to the fact that under the circumstances it would have been unfeasible to…”
Realizing someone else was in the office, Rush snapped off the recorder and turned around. Logan was shocked by what he saw: the man’s face was gray, his eyes puffy and red. It looked almost as if he had been crying.
The doctor gave a small smile. “Jeremy. Have a seat.”
“That was good work,” Logan said.
The smile faded. “An interesting way to usher in your stay.”
Logan nodded. “Yes. Witnessing an accident like that.”
“Accident,” Rush repeated. “ Another accident.” For a moment, he appeared lost in thought. Then he brightened slightly. “I’m sorry you had to-well, to see me like that.”
“You saved a life.”
Rush waved a hand as if to deflect this. “Ever since that experience with my wife, I’ve been dealing solely with people who have cheated death. This is the first time I’ve had to deal with a life-or-death emergency since… I guess since she was brought into the Providence ER. I didn’t know it would affect me like that.” He paused, then looked at Logan. “I wouldn’t say this to anybody else, Jeremy, but I hope Porter Stone didn’t make a mistake signing me up as chief medical officer.”
“No mistake. Stone chose a fine doctor. And you wait and see: this will be the only medical crisis you’ll face. From now on it’ll be clear sailing. Now, how about a bite of lunch before I have to face this Tina Romero?”
Another, more genuine, smile crossed Rush’s face. “Give me five minutes to finish up this report. Then I’m your man.”
11
Christina Romero’s office was situated in Red, the container facility devoted to the med center and the various science labs. It reminded Logan more than a little of his own office back at Yale: orderly and clean, with row after row of books sorted by author and subject matter on long metal shelves. A large desk in the middle of the room was littered with artifacts and notebooks, yet somehow managed to look tidy; more artifacts were stored against the rear wall in a stack of carefully labeled plastic containers. Several diplomas and framed prints hung on the other three: a photo of an Egyptian wall painting; a print of Turner’s Regulus, and-bizarrely-a very childlike depiction of the Sphinx.
If the office seemed vaguely familiar, however, Dr. Romero herself was a surprise. She was thin and very young-no more than thirty. Logan realized he’d been expecting a frowsy old woman in tweeds, a female Flinders Petrie. Romero could not have been more different. She was dressed in blue jeans and a black mock turtleneck with its sleeves pushed up to her elbows. She had kinky, shoulder-length black hair, parted in the middle, and it flared away from her face, looking not unlike the headdress of an Egyptian king. As Logan entered, she was seated behind the desk, absorbed in filling a fountain pen from a bottle of blue-black ink.
He knocked politely on the doorframe. Romero jerked in surprise, almost dropping the pen.
“Shit!” she said, grabbing for a tissue to wipe up the spilled ink.
“Sorry,” Logan said, remaining in the doorway. “Get ink on yourself?”
“That’s nothing,” she said. “I might have ruined this.” She held the pen up for him to see. “You know what this is? A Parker Senior Duofold in mandarin yellow, vintage 1927, the first year of production. Very scarce. Look-it even has the yellow threads on the barrel, before they switched to black.” She waved it at him like a baton.
“Very impressive. Although I always preferred Watermans, myself.”
She put the pen down and looked at him. “The silver overlays?”
“No. The Patricians.”
“Oh.” She screwed the cap onto the pen and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans, then stood up to shake his hand.
The handshake told Logan even more about Romero than the office decor did. He held her grasp just a shade longer than was typical.
“What do you want?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you around before.”
“That’s because I just got here last night. The name’s Jeremy Logan.”
“Logan.” She frowned.
“We have an appointment.”
She brightened. “Oh, of course. You’re the ghost-” She fell silent, but her green eyes twinkled with private amusement.
The same old silliness. Logan was used to it. “I prefer the term ‘enigmalogist,’ myself.”
“Enigmalogist. Yes, that does lend an air of legitimacy.” She looked him up and down, an expression on her face somewhere between skepticism and veiled hostility. “So-where is it? In that duffel bag you’re carrying?”
“Where is what?”
“Your stuff. You know: the ectoplasm detector, crystal ball… and a dowsing rod. Surely you’ve got a dowsing rod around somewhere.”
“Never carry one. And by the way, crystal balls can be very useful-not for clairvoyance necessarily but for emptying the mind of needless thoughts and distractions, say prior to meditation, depending, of course, on the impurities in the stone and its refractive index.”
She seemed to consider this a minute. “Won’t you come in and have a seat?”
“Thanks.” Logan stepped inside, chose a seat before the desk, and placed his bag on the floor.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be flippant. It’s just that I’ve never met an… enigmalogist before.”
“Most people haven’t. I’m never at a loss for conversation at cocktail parties.”
She shook out her black hair and leaned back. “What is it you do, exactly?”
“More or less what it sounds like. I investigate phenomena that lie outside the normal bounds of human experience.”
“You mean, like poltergeists?”
