Chapter 26

 

In Fort Myers Hospital, the newly hired nurse reported to the neurosurgeon assigned to operating room two. He had three difficult neurological operations scheduled for the day. His new nurse performed well beyond his expectations. She anticipated his needs, handing him the appropriate surgical instrument at the proper moment in each of the complex surgeries. At times she noted something that even the surgeon had overlooked, and she delicately pointed it out to him.

At the end of the day the surgeon congratulated her on a job exceedingly well done. He confessed that he wished she could assist him permanently, if he could only get rid of his regular assistant who was on maternity leave. 

The next two days she performed just as flawlessly as she had earlier in the week. The following three days, the surgeon she had been assisting was scheduled to be off. That evening after work she returned to her trailer home. She took off her dark wig, letting her flowing blonde hair escape from its day of confinement. “Thank God,” she said, “that wig was damn hot.” She also removed the cloth inserts that she had placed in her cheeks to alter her appearance.

Polish asked, “How did you perform today?”

“Great, a self taught cram course on operating room instruments, a basic understanding of the practice of neurosurgery and familiarity with the hospital’s layout—everything is working out perfectly. I’m already a well-known face there, so the next few steps should be easy.”

She turned to Anderson, and asked, rhetorically, “You don’t mind if we abandon you, do you?” She and Polish went into the bedroom and closed the door. 

“Now, Polish, this will be a short indoctrination of what I’ve learned. You’re not going to have to know a lot of technical terms or the like; but you need to learn enough to know if our good friend Doc Anderson is doing all the right things when he operates on me. If he tries anything out of the ordinary, I want you to kill him on the spot, understood?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Good.” She picked up the neurosurgery book she had stolen out of the National Institute of Health Library. She pointed to several photographs in the center of the book. “Okay, to start, this is what neurosurgeons’ instruments look like.”

On into the night she lectured him and then tested him with key questions about the process she was going to go through. Finally, at three in the morning she was exhausted, and he had to be up at seven to go to work. “I’ll go over this one more time when you get home from work,” she said. 

She had always been a quick study even with the most difficult of subjects; it was stressful for her to remain patient as Polish moved at glacier speed, attempting to pick up the complex process.

“Christ, you’re killing me,” he said. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep my eyes open at work.” 

“Don’t worry about it, we’re almost there.”

The next day after he returned from work, Donna went over his lessons in greater detail. He was now learning more quickly and satisfactorily enough that she trusted him to watch over her during the operation. After all, she thought, he’s not going to be the one operating on me –thank God.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I still don’t understand fully the details of what we’re going to do.” 

“Its simple, dear. The hospital I selected is the one our friend Dr, Anderson had applied to after he resigned from AU. He has been accepted in the capacity of a neurosurgeon. Two days from now he will be going to work in his new surroundings. I suspect the first day will be one of orientation, completing papers and the like. I will be with him, not as Donna, but as Nurse Sally Ryan. By now, they know me; I will tell them I’m his long time friend. The good Doc will nod yes because I will have a gun positioned next to his side. The beauty of that hospital is that it services the women’s prison nearby. The prison has limited medical facilities, just enough to deal with minor illnesses. That’s the limit of their capability; they have to transfer prisoners to the more sophisticated medical facility where Anderson is employed if the medical problem is more complicated.” 

“I understand, but how does that get you there for surgery?” 

 “I will contact the hospital on the phone as Warden Alice Stevens, who is the warden heading up the Fort Myers prison for women. A policeman will accompany me to the hospital for the removal of a non-malignant brain tumor; it will be an emergency surgery. The urgency of the need for the operation will eliminate the need for any prior bureaucratic paper work. I will be the patient, but I won’t be either Donna or Nurse Sally. Instead I will be wearing a prison uniform, have much shorter hair and contact lenses which will change the color of my eyes. They’re short handed at the hospital, and the neurosurgeon I have been working for will not be on duty that day. Dr. Anderson will be the attending physician.” 

“I get it so far, but how will I get in to watch Anderson during the operation?” 

“You idiot, I’ve told you a dozen times. You’ll be wearing a police uniform that morning. I obtained some articles of identification that you’ll need. You will accompany me and Dr. Anderson to the operating room. I’ll be identified as a dangerous criminal, so you will have to stay with me during the operation. That will be our scenario.”

“That doesn’t make much sense, how the hell could you possibly escape when you’re undergoing a major operation? My presence in the operating room is bound to be questioned.”

“The tack you will take is that you were told to guard the prisoner at all times, including during the period of surgery. Your position will be that, hey, I’m just a low-grade cop following orders. If challenged, you will say that it makes no sense to you either, but rules are rules. They won’t know enough to contradict you, nor will they care.”

“What about the anesthesiologist and the nurse in the operating room? Won’t they know immediately the type of operation that Anderson is trying to perform? 

“Hardly. You have to recognize that no one has seen this operation preformed, except for Dr. Anderson. I’ll have the doc manufacture a story that the ESP device is necessary to re-establish some brain function based on the tumor’s removal—it’s recently been developed by the Mayo Clinic and has been highly successful with a zero mortality rate. So far it’s been used exclusively at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. Of course he won’t refer to it as an ESP device, just a mechanical insert to help in brain functioning. He will stress that if the operation is not performed immediately, the prisoner will die. Remember, many medical people are highly specialized and only trained in a select area; they follow the chain of command just like the military. Nurses don’t make decisions during operations, surgeons do. And anesthesiologists don’t operate, they are solely concerned with maintaining the proper amount of chemicals to keep the patient alive but unconscious. Once Dr. Anderson makes his case and re-enforces the fact that the operation has always been successful, both the nurse and the anesthesiologist will go along with it. Of course, if they don’t, you will be there to make sure they do what’s appropriate; but it will never come to that. Above all, I want you to make sure Anderson is doing the right thing and I don’t want your attention diverted—not for a second.”

“Damn it, Donna, this is too complicated! There are a lot of things that could go wrong.”

“We have no choice. We both know that Harris has made sure I can’t get back into the AU medical area. We have to go somewhere else; and what better place, with all the neurosurgery facilities, than the hospital in which Dr. Anderson has selected for his practice?”

“Won’t you need some medical attention after the operation?”

“That has to be accomplished in this trailer by you and Anderson. My recovery period was swift the last time I had the thing implanted –there’s no reason not to believe it won’t be just as fast this time. I had no complications then, and I won’t this time either.”