Do No Harm

His pounding footsteps alarmed her. The lighter dropped on the asphalt and bounced up, almost knee-high. Her face spread in a scream and both arms went up, intercepting most of the blue liquid. A spurt found its way through, dousing the left side of her face as she turned. She yelped and fell over, her palms slapping the asphalt.

Clyde pulled to a stop right above her and watched, head cocked. Gasping, she kept her eyes squeezed shut, evidently unaware that the alkali had struck only the side of her head. Her arms and legs scrabbled on the ground. She found a knee, then her feet, and then she ran back toward the ER doors, arms flailing blindly in front of her.

Clyde tossed the Pyrex beaker aside. It bounced twice but remained stubbornly intact. Walking briskly back to the ambulance, he removed his sweatshirt, revealing a worn scrub top. He threw the sweatshirt through the open ambulance window, aiming for the back, then pulled off his corduroy hat and tucked it in the band of his scrub bottoms so his top hung down over it. His pallid face tingled with a blend of horror and perverse gratification.

The woman ran into the wall a few feet to the left of the ER entrance and toppled over. She rose again, mouth down-twisted, chin slick with drool, and felt her way along the wall toward the doors, sobbing louder now. She kept her lips pressed tightly together, so her crying sounded muffled and throaty. Oddly, she still did not scream.

The doors swung open automatically before her hands could find them, and she stumbled through. Clyde followed her in silently as she navigated the small, deserted hall, so close behind her he could have stroked the soft fabric of her scrub top. She missed the turn and banged against one of the pay phones, knocking the receiver from its perch. She felt her way back to the open air as the dangling phone began to bleat.

He tried the stairwell door to the side of the pay phones. It was locked and did not budge. He returned to his position behind her, a running back floating behind a blocker. She fumbled forward, her breathing harsh and rasping, that of a dying animal's. Her hand went to her face and came away with a clump of hair. Her shoulder struck the wall and she half turned, enough for him to see the white blisters rising in patches on the soft skin around her ear.

She stumbled through both sets of glass doors and collapsed on the lobby floor, wheezing. He stepped past her quickly before anyone noticed her. Someone screamed, and all at once the room was a whirlwind of scrubs, ringing phones, running patients. Putting his head down, he turned through the swinging doors into the ER proper and strode purposefully through the hallway.

Two nurses blew by, wheeling a gurney, then the security guard he'd observed outside ran past, shouting into his radio, "Call for all officers! Zones Two and Six! Call for all officers!"

A doctor dashed from an exam room, barely clipping his shoulder. Clyde glanced down just in time to notice his ID badge: DR. DAVID SPIER. Without so much as a backward glance, the doctor ran toward triage.

Keeping his eyes on the cheap tile, Clyde turned right at the radiology suite and threaded back into the huge maze of hospital corridors, leaving the commotion behind.

Chapter 14

DETECTIVE Yale signaled the ambulance to stop as it came down the ramp. The driver hit the brake, nonplussed. A criminologist snapped photographs by the curb and Dalton stepped around him and picked up the Pyrex beaker with his pen. It slid easily into the plastic bag another officer held open for him.

The paramedics struggled to offload the patient but were having difficulty yanking the gurney out uphill. A security guard appeared at the top of the ramp and gave them a hand. Yale pulled his arm away when David grabbed it. "You should've learned by now not to handle a police officer like that," Yale said.

David was impressed by the coolness of his eyes. "Sorry. I'm a little tense."

Another cop approached David immediately and thrust a clipboard at him. It carried a Crime Scene Attendance Log, and David signed it as he continued to address Yale. "You can't shut down this ambulance bay. It's an emergency entrance-it's imperative that we get patients down here and through those doors in a hurry."

The paramedics wheeled the gurney down the ramp, leaning back to slow it. An old woman wearing an oxygen mask sat up, gripping the metal rails, her eyes bulging almost comically. They passed Yale and David and were slowed by Dalton, who steered them wide of the scene, then through the doors, ensuring they didn't touch anything.

"I haven't shut anything down," Yale said. "But I can't have people contaminating the area. We need to preserve the integrity of the scene. Surely I don't have to explain to you that this is a serious matter we're dealing with."

"No more serious than having patients with acute conditions delayed en route to the ER."