Coma

The guard at the other end of the room slouched over, watching the monitors as usual, as he had been doing for two hours since his last break, as he had been doing for almost a year. The picture of the main ward appeared on screen number 15; moving as the video camera slowly panned from one end of the huge room to the other. The dangling nude patients held no interest for the guard. He was finally accustomed to the gruesome scene. Automatically screen number 15 shifted to the intensive-care visitors’ ward as its camera started to scan.

The guard sat up suddenly, looking at the screen of number 15. He reached for the manual mode switch and returned the scan to the main ward. The video camera scanned the enormous room again.

“The visitor is no longer in the main ward!” said the guard.

Michelle turned from the computer display screen and squinted to see screen number 15 of the monitor, “No? Well check the visitors’ ward and the corridor. Maybe she had enough. The main ward is usually a shock for first-time visitors.”

Michelle turned and looked out through the glass to the waiting room, but Susan was not there either.

The display screen on the computer flashed: Sample 323 B4

terminated. 0310 Feb. 26. Cause of death: cardiac arrest. STOP.

“Well if she came here for Berman, she’s too late,” said Karen without feeling,

“She’s not in the visitors’ ward,” said the guard, activating a series of switches. “And she’s not in the corridor. It’s not possible.”

Michelle got up from the chair, her eyes staying on screen 15 until she was at the door. “Calm down. I’ll locate her.” Michelle turned to the nurse at the computer. “Maybe you should try to call the director again. I think we’d better get rid of this girl.”

Thursday, February 26, 5:20 P.M.

As soon as Michelle left the main ward, Susan had removed the Xeroxed copies of the Jefferson Institute floor plans she had folded in her notebook. She oriented herself from the entrance, traced their route to the main ward, and then checked the routes for gaining access to the second floor. She saw two choices. There was a stairway from MG or an elevator from M Comp R. Susan glanced down at the key in the lower right hand corner. MO stood for morgue; M Comp R was the main computer room. Susan quickly decided that the stairs would be safer than the elevator, she thought that the computer room might well be occupied.

She walked toward the far end of the ward, where there was a conventional door, and tried the knob. It turned and Susan opened the door into the corridor beyond. It seemed to be quite dark; then she remembered the goggles. She took them off and put them in her uniform pocket. The corridor was like the others she had seen, starkly white with the illumination coming through the floor. At either end of the corridor was a large mirror, and its multiple reflections made the corridor seem infinitely long.

There were no sounds and no one in sight. Susan checked the floor plan, which indicated that the morgue and the stairs were to the right She closed the door to the ward behind her. Moving quickly, she made her way down to a door at the end of the corridor. There were no markings on the door, but at least it too had normal hardware. Susan tried the knob; the door was unlocked.

As silently as possible, she opened the door, just a few inches at a time.

She could see the tiles of the near wall. Then she began to see the upper part of a stainless steel dissecting table. A corpse lay naked on it. Susan heard some voices and a laugh, followed by the sound of a scale.

“So much for the lungs. How much should we say the heart weighed?”

said one of the voices.

“Your turn to guess,” laughed the other.

Nudging the door an inch more, Susan could just glimpse the head of the corpse. She squinted, then felt weak. It was Berman.

Letting the door close without a sound, Susan stood in the doorway for a few deep breaths. She felt slightly nauseated but it passed. She realized that she had very little time. The elevator.

Susan’s pause in the doorway had been perfect timing. The TV scanner behind the one-way mirror finished its five-second scan as Susan stepped back into the corridor. It would resume its scan in ten seconds.

She hurried back into the main ward and reached the doorway to the computer room. Hesitantly she tried it. It too was unlocked. She opened the door about ten inches and looked into the room. To her relief, it seemed unoccupied. As she pushed the door farther she could see a fantasy of computer consoles, input-output equipment, and tape storage systems.

A movement in the far corner near to the ceiling caught Susan’s eye.