10:35 A.M.
COLUMBIA-PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL
168TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY
The helicopter carrying Dellenbaugh slashed down toward the helipad atop Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan.
The helicopter was met by a large rolling bed and a team of nurses, surgeons, and, in the backdrop, security. An Asian man with black hair stepped forward, carrying a metal briefcase.
Dewey climbed from the chopper as it touched down and grabbed the president, lifting him up and carrying him to the bed, where he set him down. The man with the briefcase looked quickly at Dellenbaugh, saying nothing, then the team whisked him inside the hospital.
Dewey turned and went to the open door of the helicopter. He lifted Murphy up from the floor of the chopper as another team came running across the helipad with a bed. He put Murphy on it as the Asian took a quick glimpse at Murphy. His face was emotionless. With his free hand, the man grabbed Murphy’s shirt at the neck and ripped violently, exposing the wound.
“I’ll handle both men,” he said to a nurse. “Same room,” he added. He nodded at Murphy. “Irrigate the wound, debride it, get a full spectrum of antibiotics moving through him.”
He looked at Dewey.
“Who are you?” said Takayama.
“No one.”
“Hi, no one. I’m Dr. Hiroo Takayama,” he said. “Are you my main contact as it relates to the president?”
“No,” said Dewey. “Actually, I guess until someone gets here, yes.”
“I’ll try and keep you posted.”
Takayama walked to the door through which Dellenbaugh and Murphy had just entered, catching up with the team taking Murphy inside.
Takayama stepped into the operating room just behind the teams carrying the president and Murphy. He waited, arms crossed, as they hooked Dellenbaugh up to life monitors, then Murphy. Murphy was still alive, but a dull monotone beeping noise repeated in concert with the green digital flatline on the other monitor. Technically, Dellenbaugh was dead.
“Timing now,” said Takayama in a Japanese accent. “Thirty-second intervals.”
“I have that,” said one of the nurses. “Starting now, Doctor.”
Takayama looked right. An ER trauma nurse was already holding a tray of scalpels. He grabbed a long, slightly curved scalpel from the tray, and cut fast and hard with the thin blade down Dellenbaugh’s right side, slashing away like gutting a fish. There was nothing kind about this cut. When he’d serrated a foot-long section of Dellenbaugh’s torso, he handed the scalpel back to the nurse.
“Optics,” said Takayama and, already anticipating the possibility, a nurse moved a set of optics to Takayama. She strapped them on Takayama from behind as, with his bare hands, Takayama dug down into the folds and veins of Dellenbaugh’s stomach, pushing slowly by organs.
“Thirty seconds,” said the nurse.
“Move in, twelve by six,” said Takayama.
Suddenly, his view of the area that he was examining inside Dellenbaugh’s gut was magnified.
“Right three, less one,” said Takayama.
“One minute,” said the nurse.
He examined the area, but saw nothing. Takayama focused in on an area near the pancreas, studying it.
“One minute thirty seconds,” the nurse repeated.
Though Murphy’s monitor made a steady beeping noise, the horrible-sounding flatline of J. P. Dellenbaugh’s life monitor was the only thing Takayama could hear.
“In sixty-six, right four, in twelve, left one,” said Takayama.
The view was magnified by thousands, and then Takayama found a small shard of glass, stabbed into the pancreas, invisible to the human eye.
“I need five-and-a-half-inch tissue forceps, and bring the briefcase over here and hand me the syringe,” said Takayama.
“Two minutes,” said the nurse.
He was handed a specialized set of surgical forceps. Takayama quickly shimmied the razor-thin shard of glass from Dellenbaugh’s pancreas. He set it on the tray and dropped the forceps next to it. A nurse opened the briefcase and held it out for Takayama.
“Open the box,” he said.
Another nurse reached for a thin rectangular box, made of lead. She opened it. Inside was a misshapen silvery-black object that looked like a piece of graphite. It was several inches long and shiny.
But it wasn’t graphite. In fact, the thin piece of rock was plutonium.
Takayama had the nurses irrigate the opening of the wound over and over. He quickly sewed up the torn area around the wound.
“Two and a half minutes.”
With his own hand, Takayama picked up the shard of plutonium, leaned down, and held it near the wound.
One of the other surgeons in the OR was shaking his head as Dellenbaugh’s life monitor continued to show a flat green line and sound a single-note monotone beep.
“At three minutes it’s too late, Hiroo,” said the surgeon.
Takayama held the plutonium near where he’d retrieved the piece of glass.
“Three minutes,” said the nurse.
There was no movement or activity.
“Hiroo,” the surgeon said again.
“Three and a half minutes,” said the nurse.
Gently, Takayama removed the fragment of plutonium and placed it in the lead case. He nodded to the woman holding the box, telling her she could shut it.
Takayama took not one but two suture needles and—as every eye in the room watched—sewed up both sides at the same time with each hand, in a weave of suture, almost too fast to see, tying the suture off seamlessly, as he reached to his right.
“You’ve killed him,” said the same doctor.
Takayama didn’t acknowledge him.
“Paddles,” said Takayama.
Takayama walked to the defibrillator machine.
“Four minutes, Doctor.”
He looked at the settings on the defibrillator. It was set for a 150-joule charge. Takayama, with bloody hands, spun the dials around as high as they would go, amperage, torque, frequency. He put it up to 360 joules, the max it would go. Takayama walked back to Dellenbaugh as he waited for the monotone telling him they were charged. When the incessant beep hit, Takayama leaned down and looked closely at the president.
“For God’s sake,” said the surgeon.
Then the nurse: “Four and a half minutes, Doctor.”
He reached out his hands and the nurse handed him the paddles. Still, Takayama waited. Then he placed the paddles down on Dellenbaugh’s chest and hit the chargers. A fierce shock slammed through Dellenbaugh’s limp body, bouncing him. There was no response.
Takayama hit him again.
Still, nothing.
“You waited too long,” said the surgeon.
“You’re relieved,” said Takayama to the surgeon. He glanced to a man at the door. “Get him out of here.”
Takayama hit him one more time; the life monitor started making noises and showing a pulse and heart activity.
Takayama looked at one of the nurses.
“Let’s get something down his throat so he can breathe,” said Takayama, turning to the second surgical table, where Murphy lay unconscious and bleeding.
Murphy’s heart monitor was still producing blips, indicating life.
Takayama took a clamp and spread the wound out. He dug in with forceps and pulled out a long, misshapen piece of steel, the bullet, then looked at one of the nurses.
“Where’s anesthesia?” said Takayama.
“Right here,” said a doctor to Takayama’s left.
“We need to get him on a heart-lung,” said Takayama. “I want to go in through the femoral and I’ll cut in through the sternum.”
“Ten-four,” said the anesthesiologist.
Takayama turned to Dellenbaugh. He’d been intubated and was breathing, and alive.
He turned back to Murphy as a team cut into his femoral artery, at his groin, and inserted a device. A long, rectangular, futuristic-looking machine was rolled into the room. Takayama watched as they began the process of rerouting Murphy’s heart and lung functions through the heart-lung machine, then stilled Murphy’s heart chemically. He had several minutes before he could operate. He stepped out into the hallway. It was hushed. Takayama looked around and found the man who’d accompanied both the president and the second injured man to the hospital.
“The president is alive and should make it,” said Takayama to Dewey. “Who’s the other guy?”
“His name is Mike Murphy,” said Dewey.
“His heart got nicked,” said Takayama. “I’m going to try and repair it but he already had a coronary.” Takayama looked at Dewey’s thigh. He stepped forward and ripped Dewey’s pants where the wound had occurred. Beneath was a mess of blood, still oozing. Takayama looked at one of the attending medics. “Get this guy sewn up,” he ordered, pointing at Dewey. “Make sure there’s nothing in there.”
Takayama turned and went back into the OR. He made eye contact with a surgeon hovering over Dellenbaugh.
“Please move him into ICU,” said Takayama. “Run cloxacillin and sulbactam, along with painkillers.”
Takayama focused in on Murphy. He took something that looked like a regular drill—a sternum saw—and began sawing into Murphy’s chest plate.
“Please, I need a twelve and mosquitos,” he said as he cut down and across, as another surgeon and a nurse inserted retractors and gave Takayama room to work.
A nurse handed him a curved scalpel and forceps.
He took the tiny curved blade and cut into Murphy’s heart. “Could I also get a drink of water,” said Takayama as he went to work. “This is going to take a while.”