Silent Treatment Read Free Page A

proclaimed as good as any Chinese food they had ever eaten when Ron stopped in mid-sentence and began rubbing his abdomen. With no warning, severe cramps had begun knotting his gut, accompanied almost immediately by waves of nausea. He felt sweat break out beneath his arms and over his face. His vision blurred.
    “Ronnie? Are you all right?” his wife asked.
    Farrell took several slow, deep breaths. He had always handled pain well. But this ache seemed to be worsening.
    “I don’t feel well,” he managed. “I’ve … I’ve just gotten this pain, right here.”
    “It couldn’t be what you ate,” Susan said. “We all shared the same—”
    Susan’s face suddenly went ashen. Beads of perspiration sprang out across her forehead. Then, without another word, she lurched sideways and vomited on the floor.
    Standing by the kitchen door of the crowded restaurant, the young assistant chef watched the commotion grow as one by one, the four customers at table 11 became violently ill. Finally, he reentered the massive kitchen and made his way nonchalantly to the pay phone installed for the use of the hired help. The number he dialed was handwritten on a three-by-five file card.
    “Yes?” the man’s voice at the other end said.
    “Xia Wei Zen here.”
    “Yes?”
    The chef read carefully the words printed on the card.
    “There are four leaves on the clover.”
    “Very good. You know where to go after your shift. The man in the black car will take the empty vial from you in exchange for the rest of what you are now owed.”
    The man hung up without waiting for a reply.
    Xia Wei Zen glanced about to ensure no one was watching, and then returned to his station. Work would not be nearly so taxing for the rest of his shift. For one thing, there was a good deal of money awaiting him. And for another, there would be many fewer orders coming in from the dining room tonight.
    The call came into the emergency room of Good Samaritan Hospital at 9:47. Four Priority Two patients were being transported by rescue squad from a Chinese restaurant twenty blocks away. Preliminary diagnosis was acute food poisoning.
    Priority Two
. Potentially serious illness or injury, non-life-threatening at the moment.
    It was a typically busy Friday night. The nurses and residents of the large teaching hospital were already threehours behind The twenty available treatment rooms were full, as was the waiting room. The air was heavy with the odors of perspiration, antiseptic, and blood. All around were the sounds of illness, misery, and pain—moans, babies crying, uncontrollable coughing.
    “Ever eat at a place called the Jade Dragon?” the nurse who took the call from the rescue squad asked.
    “I think so,” the charge nurse answered.
    “Well, next time you might want to consider Italian. One rescue is on the way in with two probable food poisonings. Two more will be leaving shortly. Altogether, two men, two women, all in their forties, all on IVs, all vomiting.”
    “Vital signs?”
    “The numbers are okay for the moment. But according to the crew on the scene, none of them are looking all that good.”
    “Fun and games times four.”
    “Where do you want them?”
    “What do we have?”
    “Seven can be cleared if you can talk Dr. Grateful Dead, or whatever the hell his name is, into writing a few prescriptions.”
    “Perfect. Put whoever looks worst in there and the rest in the hall. We’ll move them into rooms as we can. Might as well order routine labs and an EKG on each of them, too.”
    “Chop chop.”
    Ron Farrell grunted in pain as his litter was set on the emergency bay platform and telescoped up into transport position. He was on his side in a fetal position. The pain boring into his stomach was unremitting. Jack Harmon, who had quickly become even sicker than Susan, had been transported in the ambulance with him. Now, Ron saw him wave weakly as the two of them were wheeled through the automatic doors and into the commotion and