Alex Morse charged through the lobby of the new University
Medical Center like a doctor to a code call, but she was no
doctor. She was a hostage negotiator for the FBI. Twenty
minutes earlier, Alex had deplaned from a flight from
Charlotte, North Carolina, to Jackson, Mississippi, a
flight prompted by her older sister's sudden collapse at a
Little League baseball game. This year had been plagued by
injury and death, and there was more to come -- Alex could
feel it.
Sighting the elevators, she checked the overhead display
and saw that a car was descending. She hit the call button
and started bouncing on her toes. Hospitals, she thought
bitterly. She'd practically just gotten out of one herself.
But the chain of tragedy had started with her father. Five
months ago Jim Morse had died in this very hospital, after
being shot during a robbery. Two months after that, Alex's
mother had been diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. She
had already outlived her prognosis, but wasn't expected to
survive the week. Then came Alex's accident. And now Grace -
-
A bell dinged softly, and the elevator opened.
A young woman wearing a white coat over street clothes
leaned against the rear wall in a posture of absolute
exhaustion. Intern, Alex guessed. She'd met enough of them
during the past month. The woman glanced up as Alex entered
the car, then looked down. Then she looked up again. Alex
had endured this double take so many times since the
shooting that she no longer got angry. Just depressed.
"What floor?" asked the young woman, raising her hand to
the panel and trying hard not to stare.
"Neuro ICU," said Alex, stabbing the 4 with her finger.
"I'm going down to the basement," said the intern, who
looked maybe twenty-six -- four years younger than
Alex. "But it'll take you right up after that."
Alex nodded, then stood erect and watched the glowing
numbers change above her head. After her mother's
diagnosis, she'd begun commuting by plane from Washington,
D.C. -- where she was based then -- to Mississippi to
relieve Grace, who was struggling to teach full-time and
also to care for their mother at night. Unlike J. Edgar
Hoover's FBI, the modern Bureau tried to be understanding
about family problems, but in Alex's case the deputy
director had made his position clear: time off to attend a
funeral was one thing, regularly commuting a thousand miles
to be present for chemotherapy was another. But Alex had
not listened. She'd bucked the system and learned to live
without sleep. She told herself she could hack the
pressure, and she did -- right up until the moment she
cracked. The problem was, she hadn't realized she'd cracked
until she caught part of a shotgun blast in her right
shoulder and face. Her vest had protected the shoulder, but
her face was still an open question.
For a hostage negotiator, Alex had committed the ultimate
sin, and she'd come close to paying the ultimate price.
Because the shooter had fired through a plate-glass
partition, what would have been a miraculous escape (being
grazed by a couple of pellets that could have blown her
brains out but hadn't) became a life-altering trauma. A
blizzard of glass tore through her cheek, sinuses, and jaw,
lacerating her skin and ripping away tissue and bone. The
plastic surgeons had promised great things, but so far the
results were less than stellar. They'd told her that in
time the angry pink worms would whiten (they could do
little to repair the "punctate" depressions in her cheek),
and that laymen wouldn't even notice the damage. Alex
wasn't convinced. But in the grand scheme of things, what
did vanity matter? Five seconds after she was shot, someone
else had paid the ultimate price for her mistake.
During the hellish days that followed the shooting, Grace
had flown up to D.C. three times to be with Alex, despite
being exhausted from taking care of their mother. Grace was
the family martyr, a genuine candidate for sainthood. The
irony was staggering: tonight it was Grace lying in an
intensive care unit, fighting for her life.
And why? Certainly not karma. She'd been walking up the
steps of a stadium to watch her ten-year-old son play
baseball when she collapsed. Seconds after she hit the
stairs, she voided her bladder and bowels. A CAT scan taken
forty minutes later showed a blood clot near Grace's brain
stem, the kind of clot that too often killed people. Alex
had been swimming laps in Charlotte when she got word
(having been transferred there as punishment duty after the
shooting). Her mother was too upset to be coherent on the
phone, but she'd communicated enough details to send Alex
racing to the airport.
When the first leg of her flight touched down in Atlanta,
Alex had used her Treo to call Grace's husband, whom she'd
been unable to reach before boarding the plane. Bill
Fennell explained that while the neurological damage had
initially not looked too bad -- some right-side paralysis,
weakness, mild dysphasia -- the stroke seemed to be
worsening, which the doctors said was not uncommon. A
neurologist had put Grace on TPA, a drug that could
dissolve clots but also carried serious risks of its own.
Bill Fennell was a commanding man, but his voice quavered
as he related this, and he begged Alex to hurry.
When her plane landed in Jackson, Alex called Bill again.
This time he sobbed as he related the events of the past
hour. Though still breathing on her own, Grace had lapsed
into a coma and might die before Alex could cover the
fifteen miles from the airport. A panic unlike any she had
known since childhood filled her chest. Though the plane
had only begun its taxi to the terminal, Alex snatched her
carry-on from beneath the seat and marched to the front of
the 727. When a flight attendant challenged her, she
flashed her FBI creds and quietly told the man to get her
to the terminal ASAP. When she cleared the gate, she
sprinted down the concourse and through baggage claim, then
jumped the cab queue, flashed her creds again, and told the
driver she'd give him $100 to drive a hundred miles an hour
to the University Medical Center.
Now here she was, stepping out of the elevator on the
fourth floor, sucking in astringent smells that hurled her
four weeks back in time, when hot blood had poured from her
face as though from a spigot. At the end of the corridor
waited a huge wooden door marked neurology icu. She went
through it like a first-time parachutist leaping from a
plane, steeling herself for free fall, terrified of the
words she was almost certain to hear: I'm sorry, Alex, but
you're too late.
The ICU held a dozen glass-walled cubicles built in a U-
shape around the nurses' station. Several cubicles were
curtained off, but through the transparent wall of the
fourth from the left, Alex saw Bill Fennell talking to a
woman in a white coat. At six feet four, Bill towered over
her, but his handsome face was furrowed with anxiety, and
the woman seemed to be comforting him. Sensing Alex's
presence, he looked up and froze in midsentence. Alex moved
toward the cubicle. Bill rushed to the door and hugged her
to his chest. She'd always felt awkward embracing her
brother-in-law, but tonight there was no way to avoid it.
And no reason, really. Tonight they both needed some kind
of contact, an affirmation of family unity.
"You must have taken a helicopter," he said in his resonant
bass voice. "I can't believe you made it that fast."
"Is she alive?"
"She's still with us," Bill said in a strangely formal
tone. "She's actually regained consciousness a couple of
times. She's been asking for you."
Alex's heart lifted, but with hope came fresh tears.
The woman in the white coat walked out of the cubicle. She
looked about fifty, and her face was kind but grave.
"This is Grace's neurologist," Bill said.
"I'm Meredith Andrews," said the woman. "Are you the one
Grace calls KK?"
Alex couldn't stop her tears. KK was a nickname derived
from her middle name, which was a family appellation:
Karoli. "Yes. But please call me Alex. Alex Morse."
"Special Agent Morse," Bill said in an absurd interjection.
"Has Grace asked for me?" Alex asked, wiping her cheeks.
"You're all she can talk about."
"Is she conscious?"
"Not at this moment. We're doing everything we can, but you
should prepare yourself for" -- Dr. Andrews gave Alex a
lightning-fast appraisal -- "you should prepare for the
worst. Grace had a serious thrombosis when she was brought
in, but she was breathing on her own, and I was encouraged.
But the stroke extended steadily, and I decided to start
thrombolytic therapy. To try to dissolve the clot. This can
sometimes produce miracles, but it can also cause
hemorrhages elsewhere in the brain or body. I have a
feeling that may be happening now. I don't want to risk
moving Grace for an MRI. She's still breathing on her own,
and that's the best hope we have. If she stops breathing,
we're ready to intubate immediately. I probably should have
done it already" -- Dr. Andrews glanced at Bill -- "but I
knew she was desperate to talk to you, and once she's
intubated, she won't be able to communicate with anyone.
She's already lost her ability to write words."
Alex winced.
"Don't be shocked if she manages to speak to you. Her
speech center has been affected, and she has significant
impairment."
"I understand," Alex said impatiently. "We had an uncle who
had a stroke. Can I just be with her? I don't care what her
condition is. I have to be with her."
Dr. Andrews smiled and led Alex into the room.
As she reached the door, Alex turned back to Bill. "Where's
Jamie?"
"With my sister in Ridgeland."
Ridgeland was a white-flight suburb ten miles away. "Did he
see Grace fall?"
Bill shook his head somberly. "No, he was down on the
field. He just knows his mother's sick, that's all."
"Don't you think he should be here?"
Alex had tried to keep all judgment out of her voice, but
Bill's face darkened. He seemed about to snap at her, but
then he drew a deep breath and said, "No, I don't."
When Alex...