Blowout

pointed him to the coffee machine, a European thing that looked like you’d need a degree in French engineering to figure it out.
    Callie said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “Let me go upstairs and check on Mom. Thing is, I’m still worried about her. I’ll be back in a minute.”
    “Yeah, go on up, make sure she’s really asleep. If she wakes up, hears us moving around down here, it might scare her since she’s expecting to be alone.”
    “I’ll be right back.”
    “I’m right here,” Margaret said, smiling at both of them as she walked into the kitchen. She looked pretty good, Ben thought, as he nodded to her.
    “You having any problems with the coffeemaker, Ben?”
    “He’s a guy, Mom. It’s in his genes.”
    Margaret laughed. “Stewart never had that particular gene.” Her voice dropped off, but she didn’t start crying. She walked to the cabinet and reached for coffee mugs.
    Ben’s cell phone rang. “Raven here.”
    Both women watched him as he listened for several moments. When he punched off, he said, “I’m sorry, but something’s come up. Mrs. Califano, Callie, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    And he was gone.
    Callie started to go after him, then stopped. “I wonder what’s going on?”
    “He’ll tell you tomorrow.”
    “Yeah, but in the meantime I’ll miss all the fun.”
    Margaret said, “I think I’d rather have tea. Will you join me?”

CHAPTER
36
    B ETHESDA N AVAL H OSPITAL
S URGICAL I NTENSIVE C ARE U NIT
    T HE LARGE ROOM was filled with shadows except for the semicircular workstation where six nurses and three clerks manned computers and monitoring equipment, filed reports, and wrote notes in the patients’ charts in the muted light of their individual desk lamps. Conversation within the group was low but frequent, just above the hum and repetitive beeping of the monitoring equipment.
    Only the curtain to cubicle twelve was pulled back slightly.
    At eleven-thirty, an X-ray technician slid her I.D. badge through the slot reader in the SICU door and maneuvered in, pushing the portable X-ray unit in front of her. She was wearing rubber-soled shoes and made no sound when she walked over to the dry erase board to find the cubicle of her patient. She nodded to one of the nurses, who looked at her from behind the console, nodded toward cubicle twelve, and looked back down at the chart she was checking. The X-ray tech located the patient, and disappeared inside uncurtained cubicle number five. There was a soft murmur of voices, the sound of a machine being positioned, then silence.
    The X-ray tech emerged from the cubicle five minutes later, gave a small wave to the staff behind the large workstation, and wheeled out her equipment. Minutes later, another I.D. badge slid through the door slot. A tall older man walked in silently, wearing a white lab coat over green scrubs, carrying a plastic tray with blood-drawing paraphernalia. He was whistling under his breath. The nurse gave only an infinitesimal start, then shook her head at the obvious black dye job on his hair and mustache. Her fingers moved away from a small button at her side.
    The lab tech smiled at her, and then, like the x-ray tech, checked the dry erase board for his patient. “You’d think,” he said, “that docs would try to schedule these nonemergent blood draws when the patient has a chance of being awake.”
    “Nah,” one of the nurses said, “better to catch them half asleep, they don’t worry as much.”
    The lab tech carried his tray to cubicle number four and quietly pushed the door open, disappeared inside.
    After the lab tech left, it was silent again in the large room, and in fact hardly anything seemed to happen in the SICU for the next two hours. The monitors continued their repetitive low-hum vigil, and the patients’ heart rates and blood pressures read out as curiously stable for an intensive care unit. None of the nurses left the central workstation.
    At a quarter to one in the morning, the door to cubicle twelve opened. Agents Savich and Sherlock came out stretching.
    Savich said, “It’s time for a shift change. Are all the new patients ready?”
    “I got a buzz from Agent Brady. He says all’s clear, and they should be arriving as a group just about now.”
    In the next moment, the door to the SICU swung open and three men and two women dressed in hospital nightgowns came walking in, behind them a score of new nurses, clerks, and techs.
    “Hurry,” said one of the patients.