Tom waved them off and went on to the surgery.
When he opened the door, he froze, stunned by a scene so unexpected that it paralyzed him for a few critical moments. Frank Knox lay on the floor, half propped against a cabinet, his mouth gaping, his face blue. Viola stood five feet away, staring down at Knox like a vengeful goddess watching the death of a mortal who had offended her. In her hand was a 60 cc syringe, one of the big ones Tom used to drain swollen knees, far too large to be of any use in Knox’s situation.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Tom asked in a shocked whisper. He shut the door behind him. “What’s he doing on the floor?”
“Dying,” Viola said in a monotone.
“Fuck!” He shoved her out of the way and knelt beside Knox, holding his stethoscope to the man’s chest. He heard no heartbeat or breath sounds. “Help me get him up, Viola!”
“No.”
“What!”
Tom frantically examined Knox’s head and torso, searching for the most serious injury. The airway seemed to be open, but Knox had a massive contusion on his skull, which almost certainly meant a concussion. As Tom felt his way along Knox’s chest, he realized that the falling batteries had not only crushed ribs on his left side, but had also torn open his chest wall. Morehouse and Thornfield had no business bringing this man to a clinic. He should have gone straight to the hospital.
“Go check on the ambulance,” Tom ordered.
“No,” Viola said again, her voice almost lethargic.
Tom scrambled to his feet, enraged by her lack of professionalism. He might be an emotional wreck due to their affair, but he wasn’t about to let a patient die because of it, no matter who the man might be.
“Go check on the ambulance!” he repeated.
Viola didn’t even look at him. Like a little girl who’d pulled the wings off some insect, she just watched Knox turning blue.
Tom slapped her face. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Viola didn’t respond.
He slapped her again, hard.
At last she looked up, her eyes cold and dead. “He raped me.”
Something curdled in Tom’s stomach. “What?”
“He—raped—me.” Viola’s eyes seemed to focus at last, and they held an accusatory fire that cut through Tom’s bewildered anger. “That man there,” she said. “He raped me. His friends helped. The ones outside. Plus one more. They had a fine old time … yes, sir.”
Tom suddenly felt as though he were trying to think and move underwater. The man on the floor seemed far less important than he had only a moment ago. “When was this?”
“Two nights ago.” Viola cocked her head as though trying to discern some detail of Knox’s mortal suffering.
Tom almost staggered under the rush of awareness that resolved every question that had been torturing him since yesterday. “Why?” he asked.
“They couldn’t find Jimmy,” she said in the same monotone. “They did it to flush him out of Freewoods. This one did, anyway. The rest of them just wanted me. You know what that feels like, don’t you? To want me?”
Tom looked down at Knox, who was gaping like a landed fish on the floor. To his surprise, he felt no urge whatever to save the man. Not even in Korea had he felt this emotion, or lack of it. Indeed, in Korea he had helped to save wounded North Korean and Chinese soldiers, despite seeing horrors they had inflicted upon American prisoners. But if what Viola said was true—and Tom had never been more certain of anything—then he wanted Frank Knox to die where he lay.
The sound of a distant siren pulled Tom out of his trance. He took hold of Viola’s wrist and held up the oversized syringe. “What’s this for?”
“Air,” she said. “Like those dogs you told me about, in medical school.”
Tom went dizzy for a moment. One of his worst memories from medical school was having to euthanize dogs with air injections after medical experiments. About a month ago, he had told Viola about that experience, and she had just used the information to murder Frank Knox. Tom wondered how much air it had taken to cause a vapor lock in the Klansman’s heart. At least 200 ccs, and probably more.
“We’ve got to get him up on the table,” he said in a detached voice.
“I’m not touching him.”
“We’re going to the gas chamber if you don’t help me get him up.”
“I don’t care.”
“Your brother will. Help me!” Tom was trying to communicate the idea that he was no longer working to save Knox, but Viola. “It has to look right when the ambulance men get here.”
At last Viola seemed to grasp the import of his words. Together, they wrestled Knox’s limp body onto the examining table. Tom put the stethoscope to his heart again. There was no heartbeat, not even a whisper of a pulse.
“He’s gone,” Tom said, grabbing the syringe from Viola’s hand and removing the needle. “Where did you inject him?”
“Twice internally. Once in the antecubital vein.”
“Christ.” Tom stuffed the syringe into the bottom corner of a cabinet. “Which arm?”
Viola pointed to the crook of Knox’s right elbow.
Tom opened a fresh syringe, drew two milligrams of adrenaline from a vial, then carefully injected it into the hole where Viola had injected the air.
The drug had no discernible effect on the prostrate man.
The siren was screaming now, just outside the clinic. Then the crew cut it and the wail began to drop in pitch, like a child’s top spinning down to stillness.
“When they come in,” Tom said, “we’re going to be working our asses off. Get a blood pressure cuff on him, and I’ll be treating him for a tension pneumothorax. Do you hear me?”