scrubbed under his nails with a stiff brush. The three who had come in with him stood in the hall about ten feet away, their huge bodies dressed in black with a lot of bulges.
Guns, no doubt. Maybe knives. Possibly a flamethrower or two, who the fuck knew.
Kinda cured a guy of the whole government-is-just-full-of-paperpushing-pencil-necks idea.
"Where're her consent forms?" the nurse asked. "There's nothing in the system."
"I've got all those," he lied. "You have the MRI for me?"
"Up on the screen - but the tech says that it's with errors? He really wants to redo."
"Let me look at it first."
"Are you sure you want to be listed as the responsible party for all this? Doesn't she have money?"
"She has to be anonymous, and they'll reimburse me." At least, he was assuming they would - not that he really cared.
Manny rinsed the brown blush of Betadine off his hands and forearms and shook them off. Keeping his arms up, he hit the swinging door with his back and entered the OR.
Two nurses and an anesthesiologist were in the room, the former double-checking the rolling trays of instruments set on blue surgical drapes, the latter calibrating the gases and equipment that would be used for keeping his patient asleep. The air was cool to discourage bleeding and smelled like astringent, and the computer equipment hummed quietly along with the ceiling lights and the operating chandelier.
Manny beelined for the monitors - and the instant he saw the MRI, his heart jumping-jacked on him. Going slowly, he reviewed the digital images carefully until he couldn't stand it anymore.
Looking to the windows in the flap doors, he remeasured the three men standing right outside the room, their hard faces and cold eyes locked on him.
They were not human.
His stare slipped to his patient. And neither was she.
Manny went back to the MRI and leaned in closer to the screen, like that was somehow going to magically fix all the anomalies he was seeing.
Man, and he'd thought the Goateed Hater's six-chambered heart was odd?
As the double doors opened and shut, Manny closed his lids and took a deep one. Then he turned around and confronted the second doctor who had come into the room.
Jane was scrubbed in so that all you could see was her forest green eyes from behind a plexi-surgical mask, and he'd covered her presence by telling the staff she was a private doctor for the patient - which was not a lie. The little ditty that she knew everyone here as well as he did he kept to himself. And so did she.
As her eyes shifted to his and locked on without apology, he wanted to scream, but he had a goddamn job to do. Refocusing, he pushed the things that weren't immediately helpful out of his mind, and reviewed the damage to the vertebrae to plan his approach.
He could see the area that had fused following a fracture: Her spine was a lovely pattern of perfectly placed knots of bone interspersed between dark cushioning disks ... except for the T6 and T7. Which explained the paralysis.
He couldn't see whether the spinal cord was compressed or cut through completely, and he wouldn't know the true extent of the damage until he got in there. But it didn't look good. Spinal compressions were deadly to that delicate tunnel of nerves, and irreparable damage could be done in a matter of minutes or hours.
Why the hurry to find him? he wondered.
He looked over at Jane. "How many weeks since she was injured?"
"It was ... four hours ago," she said so quietly no one else could have heard.
Manny recoiled. "What?"
"Four. Hours."
"So there was a previous injury?"
"No."
"I need to talk to you. Privately." As he drew her over to the corner of the room, he said to the anesthesiologist, "Hold up, Max."
"No problem, Dr. Manello."
Angling Jane into a tight huddle, Manny hissed, "What the fuck is going on here?"
"The MRI is self-explanatory."
"That is not human. Is it."
She just stared at him, her eyes fixed on his and unwavering.
"What the hell did you get pulled into, Jane?" he demanded under his breath. "What the hell are you doing to me?"
"Listen to me carefully, Manny, and believe every word I say. You are going to save her life and, by extension, save mine. That's my husband's sister, and if he ..." Her voice hitched. "If he loses her before he gets a chance to even know her, it's going to kill him. Please - stop asking questions I