Coma

Thinking about the man carrying the heart and the kidney from the auxiliary room between the ORs made Susan opt for the dispatch room despite the proximity of the supply room. She thought that perhaps they were planning on transporting the organs. She knew that transplant organs should be used as soon as possible.

Replacing the floor plans, Susan pulled herself to her feet. Her dress was now badly soiled and torn. She kept to the fixed ceiling over the basement corridor as she made her way in the direction of the dispatch room. The going was comparatively easy because it was not totally dark.

Like the machinery space, large sections of the basement had no ceiling at all, and enough light was transmitted along Susan’s path that she could move at a regular pace, avoiding the pipes and ducts with ease.

She arrived at the extreme corner of the building and guessed from another glance at the floor plans that she had reached her goal. She lay supine on the fixed corridor ceiling with her head over the dropped ceiling of the dispatch room. As carefully as she could, she lifted a tile until she could just get her fingers under its edge. With effort she pulled it up until she could just see below. The room was occupied!

Not daring to let the ceiling tile go for fear of noise, Susan watched the man below, bent over a desk, filling out a form. He was dressed in an unzipped leather coat. On the floor were two insulated cardboard boxes.

They were boldly labeled: “Human Transplant Organ—This side up—

Fragile—Rush.”

A door which she could not see opened below. A second man appeared.

It was one of the guards.

“Let’s go, Mac. Let’s get these things loaded and out of here. We’ve got work to do.”

“I’m not taking nothing until the proper papers are done.”

The guard left by a swinging door on the far side of the room. Susan got a glimpse of another area before the door closed. It looked like a garage.

The driver finished his forms and tossed a copy into a basket on the counter. The other copy he put into his pocket. He loaded the cartons onto a dolly and backed through the swinging doors.

Susan let the ceiling tile fall back into place. Quickly she moved over to the wall at the far end of the corridor. She could hear the noise of a truck door being shut and latched.

It was darker near the wall, and Susan ran her hand along the wall expecting to feel concrete. Instead she felt vinyl tile, oriented vertically. Susan could plainly hear a truck engine turning over. She pushed against the tile but it seemed to be securely held in place by a metal flange. The truck engine caught, coughed, and quit. The starter began to whine again.

Desperately Susan pushed against the metal flange, feeling it bend up.

She repeated the maneuver in several locations. The truck engine caught again, rattled and coughed and then roared, finally sinking back to a controlled idle. Susan then heard the distinctive rumble of a massive and heavy garage door being elevated. Her fingers clawed for the top of the vinyl tile. She pulled it toward herself but it stayed firm. She raised more of the flange and pulled again. The tile came in suddenly, causing Susan to fall backward. She recovered quickly and stared through the vertical opening into an underground garage area. Directly below was a relatively large truck belching exhaust. By the entrance stood the guard, activating the overhead door switch. He was watching the door ascend.

Susan leaped into space and hit the top of the truck with her feet and hands at the same time. The noise of the impact was lost within the echo of the truck engine and the rumble of the garage door. She flattened herself spread-eagled as the truck lurched forward. She felt the inertia of her body cause her to slide backward. She tried to grip something, anything, but the top of the truck was smooth metal and her hands groped in vain. She managed to clear the garage door, but as the truck mounted the incline to the street, Susan’s backward slide became more uncontrollable. Her feet actually slipped over the rear of the truck as she tried to press her hands flat against the smooth surface.

The truck reached the street and the driver braked before turning left. Susan’s body then slid forward, careening counterclockwise. The frigid cold struck her. The driver picked up speed, and Susan felt a sense of helpless terror. She inched toward the cab and clamped her numb fingers over a low ventilator. Then there was a bump and Susan’s body flew up, only to slam down on the metal roof a moment later. Her chin and nose hit the surface so hard that it dazed her. She was only vaguely conscious of what happened after that.

Susan became lucid rather suddenly. She lifted her head and recognized that her nose and lip were bleeding. She watched the buildings and recognized the area. It was the Haymarket. Of course, she thought the truck was heading for Logan Airport.

The truck halted for a traffic light. Traffic was still rather heavy.