Robin Cook Read Free

Fortunately, before she could dwell on the fact that she would remain childless forever, one of the nurses took her hand and said, “Candy, we’re going to move you over onto the gurney now.”
    In the adjoining auxiliary room, Dr. Foley directed his attention to the stainless-steel pan neatly covered by a white towel. To be certain that the specimen was unharmed, he lifted a corner of the towel. Satisfied, he picked up the pan, walked down the corridor, and descended the stairs to the pathology department.
    Ignoring the residents and technicians, though several of them spoke to him by name, he walked through the main surgical area and entered a long corridor. At the end he stopped in front of an unmarked door. Balancing the specimen pan in one hand, he got out his keys and opened the door. The room beyond was a small and windowless laboratory. Dr. Foley moved slowly but deliberately as he stepped into the room, closed the door behind him, and put down the pan.
    For a few moments he stood paralyzed until a sharp pain in his temples made him stagger backward. He bumped the countertop and steadied himself. Glancing at the large institutional clock on the wall, he was surprised to notice that the minute hand seemed to have jumped five minutes.
    Swiftly and silently Dr. Foley performed several tasks. Then he stepped over to a large wooden crate in the center of the room and opened it. Within was a second, insulated container. Releasing the latch, Dr. Foley raised its lid and looked in. Resting on a bed of dry ice were a number of otherspecimens. Dr. Foley carefully placed the newest addition on the ice and closed the lid.
    Twenty minutes later, an orderly dressed in a white shirt and blue pants pushed a dolly into the small unmarked laboratory and picked up the ice chest and packed it in a wooden crate. Using the freight elevator, he took it down to the loading dock and put it into a van.
    Forty minutes after that, the wooden crate was taken off the van and placed in the luggage section of a Gulf Stream jet at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

CHAPTER
1
    Adam Schonberg’s eyes blinked open and in the darkness of his bedroom he heard the undulating scream of a siren announcing yet another catastrophe. Gradually, the noise diminished as the police car or ambulance or fire truck or whatever it was receded into the distance. It was morning in New York City.
    Snaking a hand out from beneath the warm blankets, Adam groped for his glasses and then turned the face of the clock radio toward him: 4:47 A . M . Relieved, he flipped off the alarm, which was scheduled to go off at 5:00, then pulled his hand back under the covers. He had fifteen more minutes before he had to haul himself out of bed and into the icy bathroom. Normally, he’d never take the chance of turning off the alarm for fear he’d oversleep. But as charged up as he was this morning that was not a possibility.
    Rolling onto his left side, he pressed against the sleeping form of Jennifer, his twenty-three-year-old wife of one and a half years, feeling the rhythmical rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.Reaching down, Adam ran his hand lightly up her thigh, which was slim and firm from her daily dance workouts. Her skin was soft and remarkably smooth with hardly a freckle to mar its surface. It had a delicate olive tone that suggested southern European descent, but that was not the case. Jennifer insisted that her genealogy was English and Irish on her father’s side of the family, German and Polish on her mother’s side.
    Jennifer straightened out her legs, sighed, and rolled over onto her back, forcing Adam to move out of her way. He smiled; even in her sleep she had a forceful personality. Although her strong character could at times present itself to Adam as frustrating stubbornness, it was also one of the reasons Adam loved her so much.
    Glancing at the clock, which now said 4:58, Adam forced himself out of bed. As he crossed the room