Godplayer by Robin Cook Read Free Book Online

the five rooms so equipped. It had the newest equipment as well as its own built-in viewer screens. As Joseph entered, he saw that someone else’s X rays had been left up. If he’d told his technicians once, he’d told them a thousand times that he wanted his room cleared of previous films before he did a study. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Joseph noticed there was no technician.
    Joseph felt his blood pressure soar. It was a cardinal rule that no patients were ever to be left unattended. “Dammit,” snarled Joseph under his breath. The patient was lying on the X-ray table, covered by a thin white blanket. He looked about fifteen years old, with a broad face and close-cropped hair. His dark eyes were watching Joseph intently. Next to the table was an IV bottle, and the plastic tube snaked under the blanket.
    “Hello,” said Joseph, forcing a smile despite his frustration. The patient did not stir. As Joseph took the chart, he noticed that the boy’s neck was thick and muscular. Another glance at the boy’s face suggested that this was no ordinary patient. His eyes were abnormally tilted and his tongue, which partially protruded from his lips, was enormous.
    “Well, what do we have here?” said Joseph with a wave of uneasiness. He wished the boy would say something or at least look away. Joseph flipped open the chart and read the admitting note.
    “Sam Stevens is a twenty-two-year-old muscular Caucasian male institutionalized since age four with undiagnosed mental retardation, who is admitted for definitive work-up and repair of his congenital cardiac abnormality thought to be a septal defect ...”
    The door to the cath room banged open, and Sally Marcheson breezed in carrying a stack of cassettes. “Hi, Dr. Riggin,” she called.
    “Why has this patient been left alone?”
    Sally stopped short of the X-ray machine. “Alone?”
    “Alone,” repeated Joseph with obvious anger.
    “Where’s Gloria? She was supposed ...”
    “For Christ’s sake, Sally,” shouted Joseph. “Patients are never to be left alone. Can’t you understand that?” Sally shrugged. “I’ve only been gone fifteen or twenty minutes.”
    “And what about all these X rays? Why are they out?” Sally glanced at the viewers. “I don’t know anything about them. They weren’t here when I left.”
    Quickly Sally began pulling the X rays down and stuffing them in the envelope on the countertop. It was someone’s coronary angiogram, and she had no idea whatsoever why the X rays were there.
    Still grumbling to himself, Joseph opened a sterile gown and pulled it on. Glancing back at the patient, he saw that the boy had not moved. His eyes still followed him wherever he moved.
    With a frightful banging noise, Sally succeeded in loading the cassettes into the machine, then came back to pull off the sterile cover over the cath tray.
    While Joseph pulled on rubber gloves, he moved over closer to the patient’s face. “How are you doing, Sam?” For some reason, knowing the boy was retarded made Joseph think he should speak louder than usual. But Sam didn’t respond.
    “Do you feel okay, Sam?” called Joseph. “I’m going to have to stick you with a little needle, okay?”
    Sam acted as if he were carved from granite.
    “I want you to stay very still, okay?” persisted Joseph.
    True to form, Sam didn’t budge. Joseph was about to return his attention to the cath tray when Sam’s tongue once again caught his attention. The protruding portion was cracked and dried. Looking closer, Joseph could see that Sam’s lips weren’t much better off. The boy looked like he’d been wandering around in a desert.
    “You a little thirsty, Sam?” queried Joseph. Joseph glanced up at the IV, noticing that it wasn’t running. With a flick of his wrist he turned it on. No sense in the kid becoming dehydrated. Joseph stepped over to the cath tray and took the gauze out of the prep dishes. A high-pitched, inhuman scream shattered the stillness of