Fallen Masters Page 8

  “If I told you, you would just mark it down as another example of my—what did you call it? Unbridled self-assurance, I think you said.”

  “No, I think I called it conceited.”

  “Yes, well, I was just trying to make it sound better,” Tyler said. “Anyway, I think he is jealous of me.”

  “Why should he be jealous? He is a fine doctor with an outstanding record,” Karen said.

  “I won’t argue with that. But be that as it may, he has put me on a type of academic probation for what he has labeled a few bad judgment calls over the last few months.”

  “What sort of bad judgment calls?”

  “Nothing specific, other than the way he says I present myself to the patients, and the hospital staff. It seems that Emory sees me as an egotistical hot shot in a lab coat and he wants to make an example out of me. Poor, innocent me. Can you imagine that?” Tyler made a face, still trying to use his boyish charm on Karen, but she did not seem affected in the least.

  “How long has this been going on?” Karen asked.

  “How long? I don’t know. The better part of a year, I suppose.”

  “A year? This has been going on for a year and you are just now getting around to telling me about it?”

  “Suppose I had told you, what would you have done? Called him, and asked him to please not be so hard on your husband? Karen, do you think I want that?”

  “I could at least get his side of it,” she said.

  “Why in heaven’s name would you want his side?” Tyler asked. “I’m your husband, for crying out loud. Isn’t my side of it enough?”

  “It might have been, if you had told me before now,” Karen said.

  Tyler sighed in frustration. “This discussion isn’t getting us anywhere except to make matters worse,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “Look, the page was an emergency. There was a bad accident out on 285. Multiple collisions, multiple traumas, and the hospital is understaffed. I’ve got to go. You can see that, can’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” she said. She looked at him, hoping that he would say something gallant, like: “You know what? How about I drive you home first, just to stretch this moment out a little longer.”

  But that’s not what he said. Instead, he kissed her on the forehead and said, “You take the car home, I’ll grab a cab out front. When I get to the hospital, I’ll call you if it looks like it’s going to be an all-nighter.”

  Karen nodded without responding. The one thing her mom always told her was that “great expectations lead to greater disappointments,” and that was certainly the case now.

  For auld lang syne, my dear,

  for auld lang syne,

  we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,

  for auld lang syne.

  “You do understand, don’t you, Karen?” Tyler asked. “Please tell me you understand.”

  “I’ve been married to you for seven years,” Karen replied. “I understand.”

  Tyler looked at Karen as if trying to decide whether that was an expression of understanding or continued frustration. He had no choice but to consider it as an expression of understanding, and again, he kissed her on the forehead. “Do you have your keys, or do you want mine?”

  “I have my keys,” she said, fishing them from her purse.

  “You are an angel.”

  We two have run about the slopes,

  and picked the daisies fine;

  But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,

  since auld lang syne.

  Karen watched Tyler move quickly toward the lobby with an enthusiasm for healing and a passion for the adrenaline rush. Could she deny him this? Was there anything more pathetic than the wife who has been jilted by a husband for his mistress? Even if that mistress is his work?

  Karen started down the hallway past an abstract piece of artwork that was hanging in the corridor. She could still hear the music behind her, though the words and melody became more and more indistinct as she walked away.

  For auld lang syne, my dear,

  for auld lang syne,

  we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,

  for auld lang syne.

  She walked through the dark parking lot until she found the Volvo S80 that they had bought two years ago. She had picked the car out because he was so entranced with his 1967 Corvette that he really didn’t care what sort of “family” car they owned.

  She clicked the opener and saw the parking lights flash and the interior light come on. Out here she could hear fireworks, and looking down toward Turner Field she saw them bursting through the air in a myriad of colors and shapes.

  After opening the door, she slipped in behind the wheel, feeling somewhat embarrassed that she would have to push the seat back farther than Tyler had it. Nothing to be embarrassed about, she told herself. “I’m pregnant and he isn’t.”

  She rubbed her slightly aching tummy and said aloud, “Happy New Year, Jeremy. Let’s go eat ice cream. How about a pint of Rocky Road and Phish Food?”

  CHAPTER

  19

  Snow was not rare in Atlanta anymore, what with climate shifts in recent years, but it was infrequent enough that, unlike northern cities, Atlanta had no snowplows or salt reserves to deal with it. That, coupled with the fact that the citizens of Atlanta were still not used to such driving conditions, made the roads extra hazardous.

  There had been no snow when Tyler and Karen had left home earlier tonight, and now he was having second thoughts about sending Karen on home alone. He thought about calling her on the cell, but knew that making her answer her phone while she was driving in this weather would make things even worse. Tyler made a mental note to call her after he got to the hospital, just to make certain she got home all right.

  “Driver, could you hurry it up a bit more?” Tyler said.

  “Maybe you ain’t heard, mister, but there was a big pile up out on 285. This ain’t the kind of weather to be hurryin’ in.”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry. But please, drive as fast as you think it is safe. The reason I’m going to the hospital is because of that wreck. I’m a doctor.”

  “Okay, Doc, I’ll do what I can,” the driver replied.

  The driver did go faster, and Tyler could feel the car slipping from time to time as the wheels lost traction. It made him worry all the more about Karen.

  When the driver reached St. Agnes, he started to turn into the front entrance, but Tyler called up to him.

  “Go to the emergency room entrance around to the side,” he said.

  “You got it,” the cabdriver replied.

  Inside the hospital it looked like a plane had crashed. There were patients everywhere. The more serious cases were lying on gurneys in the halls; the less serious ones were sitting in the waiting areas. Some were weeping; some were shouting for attention. There was a frenetic activity of nurses triaging patients and instructions being called back and forth. The noise and chaotic activity would discombobulate most people, but it served to give Tyler a clarity that many would love to develop.

  Tyler’s ability to think and act rationally during chaos was a gift, though he didn’t see it that way. And just as some military geniuses could react brilliantly to challenging situations in combat, Tyler could react to medical crises. He was blessed with the ability to prioritize, to listen, and to plan, which made him a perfect doctor for emergency room medicine.

  Because of that, Dr. Emory wanted Tyler to take the position of head ER doctor, but Tyler loved to cut. He needed to be a surgeon; it was how he defined himself, and when he declined to take the position Emory offered him, the troubled relationship between the two men escalated.

  Though he was not the chief resident, his commanding attitude and energy caused other doctors to come him with questions about their own patients. And now he was exercising the authority that came so naturally to him, barking off orders, demanding tests, and deciding where the patients should be. Having come straight from the party, Tyler was st
ill wearing his tux, his hair was perfectly styled, and he looked like a glossy magazine advertisement for “the good life.”

  Though wearing a tux added to the illusion of emergency, his energy and his sense of control of the situation enabled him to calm the troubled seas with no more than a word and a touch. He dived into the thick of things, and every concern in the world took a backseat to the event at hand.

  * * *

  For Karen, it had been a harrowing drive home. One of the cars coming toward her started sliding on the snow; then it turned broadside and she was sure it was going to slide into her. Instead, it slid all the way across the road until it was finally stopped by hitting the curb. Twice she thought she was going to slip into a skid, but she remembered her father’s instructions to always “turn your wheels into a skid,” and that worked for her both times.

  She was sweating by the time she got home, partly because she had the defroster going at full blast and it was blowing hot air into her face, but partly because the drive itself had been so taxing. Then, to make matters worse, when she turned into the driveway, the remote would not open the garage door.

  “Ohh! I don’t need this!” she shouted as she pushed the button several times with the same negative results. Now, instead of being able to exit the car in the protected confines of the garage, she was going to have to go through the snow.

  With a sigh of frustration, she opened the car door, stepped out into ankle-deep snow, and because, as a very pregnant woman, she was wearing flats, felt the frigid snow on her feet immediately. She had felt guilty about paying so much for the shoes, which were beautiful on the ballroom floor but beyond useless in six inches of snow.

  Karen started toward the front door; then disaster struck, and she fell.

  Though she tried to turn her body, she was unable to do so, and she fell facedown with her pregnant-protruding stomach taking the brunt of it. She had never experienced such pain. It went all through her, from her stomach down her legs and around her back. She managed to get up onto her hands and knees, but a wave of nausea overtook her, and she threw up.

  Finally, shakily, she was able to regain her feet and she managed to make her way unsteadily to the front door. It wasn’t until she reached the door that she realized she had dropped the keys in the snow when she fell, and she had to go back out, in the dark, and search through the cold snowdrifts for them. It took her at least two minutes until she found them; then once again, she had to work her way back to the front door.

  She was shivering with cold and her hands were shaking so badly that she was barely able to get the key in the lock.

  Stepping into the foyer, she turned on the light. Then she walked over to sit on the sofa. Her head was spinning, and she was still in pain. Pain. Pain! She didn’t realize until that moment that she was having labor pains and they were severe.

  “No, no, no!” she cried. “Oh dear God, no … Tyler, I need you now!” In her mind, she cursed Tyler for not being with her, for abandoning her. She didn’t want to feel such anger at him, but it welled up inside regardless.

  She had thought that he might have called her to check on her, but he hadn’t. She couldn’t call him; she knew there was an emergency at the hospital, so there was no telling where he might be right now. If he was just cutting into someone, the last thing he would need is for his cell phone to ring.

  Another pain hit her, this time so severe that it doubled her over. She picked up the phone and dialed 911.

  “Nine one one,” the operator answered.

  “My name is Karen Michaels. I need an ambulance right away,” Karen said, her voice strained.

  “What is the nature of the emergency, Karen?” the 911 operator said, her voice pleasant, caring, and calm.

  “I’m in labor.… I’ve fallen, and I’m in labor! Please, send an ambulance to 2117 Peach Blossom Terrace. Tell them I want to go to St. Agnes Hospital. My husband is a doctor there and he is on duty now.”

  “An ambulance is on the way, Karen,” the 911 operator said. “I want you to stay on the phone with me until they get there.”

  “All right,” Karen said.

  “Karen? Karen? Karen, are you still there? Answer me, please.”

  Karen blinked her eyes a couple of times and realized she had passed out momentarily. “How long was I out?” she asked.

  “Oh, thank God you are still there,” the operator said. “About a minute, no longer.”

  “I’ll try and stay with you,” Karen said.

  “How long are you pregnant, Karen?”

  “Eight … almost nine months now.”

  “That’s long enough, don’t you think? Do you know if the baby is a boy or a girl?” the operator asked, trying to keep Karen engaged.

  Karen carried on a conversation with the operator, though it was difficult to do so, until she heard the ambulance out front. She dropped the phone then, and stopped fighting to stay conscious.

  She came to once in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and was aware of an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth.

  “Hang in there, Mrs. Michaels,” the EMS technician said. “We’re almost there.”

  She could hear the siren and for one disconnected moment wondered what unfortunate person was being rushed to the hospital.

  CHAPTER

  20

  New York

  “To various and sundry of you out there, I bring greetings,” Dave Hampton said, holding his hand up, palm out. His worldwide cable news broadcast reached millions each day on TV and via the Internet. Over the past few years, especially, his audience had grown exponentially as he delved into the “news behind the news” from his own unique perspective. Of late, he had been delivering a particularly powerful message that some of his critics called a “doomsday” message, dismissing him as a scaremonger. But his audience only got bigger the worse the news got.

  “You don’t want to miss the show today. Call your relatives and friends, call anyone that you care about, and tell them that they must watch this show today.

  “Why?

  “Because today I am going to lay out for you, as clearly as I can, the danger—no, ‘danger’ is not a strong enough word—the perils facing us. And folks, when I say facing us, I mean every man, woman, and child who is of good heart.

  “I now know, though I am not at liberty to reveal my sources, that the President has hosted meetings with people of religion and science to deal with this crisis that faces us.

  “Religion and science together?” Dave smiled at the camera. “Isn’t that a little like matter and antimatter?

  “A preacher and scientist went into a bar. The bar disappeared in a puff of smoke.”

  “Okay, that was a weak joke, I’ll admit. It might even have been a sick joke.

  “But you do get my point, I hope. Normally the Big Bad Wolf is the budget or lobbyists or right-wing or left-wing conspiracies. I’ve been a whistle-blower on many topics, but none has scared me half as much as this black cloud. If something is out there, some deep, dark, sinister shadow, a force of evil that is threatening us, it is threatening scientist and preacher alike, is it not? And is it not in the nature of man to form alliances for survival?

  “This, I can tell you from a scientific viewpoint. A few weeks ago, a scientist at NASA, while studying pictures of space, noticed an anomaly. The redshift of Abel 2744 moved from z equals 0.308, to z equals 0.512.”

  Dave chuckled. “Z equals zero what? Dave, what on Earth are you talking about?

  “Well, that’s just it. I’m talking about nothing of this Earth. I’m talking about a cluster of stars, officially Abel 2744 but referred to as Pandora’s Cluster. And from that cluster a mysterious cloud of dark matter is coming toward Earth. If you don’t understand dark matter, then you can just refer to it as I have been. That’s why I think of it as a dark or sinister shadow, without real substance but very real nonetheless.

  “Interesting, don’t you think, that this evil would be coming from Pandora’s box? O
r, in this case, Pandora’s Cluster. And it is evil, my friends. It is more than just a scientific observation; it is a manifestation of evil.

  “On another but related note, in recent days all eyes have been focused on the heavens, and I have reported to you from this desk on the strange goings-on that even our top scientists have had trouble following.

  “It seems that billionaire Roger C. Bracken’s attempt to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon blew up shortly after launch this morning in rural Oregon.

  “Was this attempt by man to answer some of our most troubling questions thwarted by forces we do not—and perhaps cannot—understand?

  “Pandora’s Cluster, anyone? You make the call.”

  The broadcaster held his hand up, palm out. “From New York, this is Dave Hampton. Good night, America and the world.”

  Off camera, the news broadcaster slumped in his chair. For the entire program he had kept it together as he reported on the dire events he saw unfolding on the planet and beyond. Now he felt the weight of the danger the world was facing and the choices—good, bad, and indifferent—that mankind had made in the past. And the choices that would have to be made in the very near future.

  CHAPTER

  21

  Melbourne, Australia

  After Mary Beth was killed, Dawson quit his job. He could no longer face going to work in the same place where he had shared that final thirty minutes with Mary Beth. For a while he did consultations with writers, and he took jobs writing for hire, doing several Westerns under a house name.

  Then he wrote The Cain Collage. In this book he introduced the character of Matt Matthews, an Indiana Jones type. On the day the planes hit the World Trade Center towers, Dawson saw the curtain pulled back to reveal evil, the dark forces of the world, and “good versus evil” was the theme of his book. The Cain Collage became a runaway bestseller, and he followed it with The Mizraim Montage, using the same character and the same good-versus-evil theme.