Runaway Heart by Stephen J. Cannell Read Free Book Online Page B

defib
paddles, put them against Herman's chest, and let him have it.
          Susan jumped; she actually cried out when her father arched his back
under the current. Then she leaned forward, trying desperately to read the
faces of the people in the room. Did it work? She couldn't tell.
          They did it three more times and Susan thought she was going to faint.
Tears of relief came to her eyes when Dr. Shiller turned and gave her the
thumbs up. A few minutes later he left the room, joining her outside where she
was still glued with her nose to the window.
          "Okay. He's converted," Dr. Shiller said.
          Susan nodded and smiled, but she couldn't speak. Her eyes were still on
her father, who was being disconnected from the negative ground and getting the
goop cleaned off his hairy chest.
          "We'll keep him here overnight on an EKG monitor to make sure he's
all settled down. Then you two can go roll the bones with his life, if that's
still your plan. Go fight your damn lawsuit, Miss Strockmire, but this is, in
my opinion, an extremely high-risk idea. So you keep your eye on him. Here's my
pager number. If he goes into an arrhythmia I want to know immediately."
          She took his card. "Thank you, Doctor." She said, finally
looking away from her dad and fixing her reef-water blues on Dr. Shiller,
seeing anger flash in his dark browns. "Don't be mad at him; he's only
trying to do what he thinks is right."
          "So am I," the young heart surgeon said.
     
    Susan brought Herman a tuna sandwich on
a tray from the cafeteria. The cardio unit food was bland, vitamin-enhanced
pabulum. While she went over the pretrial briefs and motions Herman revised his
opening statement, eating and scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad. He had a
nine o'clock appointment to prep the last of his three butterfly experts.
          Dr. Deborah DeVere was a world-renowned entomologist Herman had flown in
from the University of Texas. He was going to put her on the stand first, to
explain the monarch butterfly's eating and migration pattern. He had another
doctor and a university professor on retainer to describe the deadly effects of
bio-corn on the monarch's genetic structure and reproduction. Dr. DeVere, whom
he hadn't actually met but had briefed over the phone, was scheduled to arrive
in about twenty minutes.
          Herman continued scribbling on his yellow pad, scratching out phrases,
reconstructing ideas and arguments, while Susan worked on her laptop retyping
the new version and printing it out on her portable printer. She glanced at the heart monitor
beeping ominously from his bedside table.
          "Stop looking at that thing, it's not going to go off. It is in my
control," Herman said, switching to his spooky Outer Limits voice:
"We control the horizontal. We control the vertical."
          She reached out and took the hand that was still finger-clipped with
several electrical feeds. She squeezed it carefully. "I still don't see
why you won't just ask for a continuance."
          "Honey," he said, "you know we don't have a choice here.
You know we have to go now. This is really important. If I ask for a
continuance with the federal docket so congested we'll never get back in front
of a judge before the monarch migration."
          "I know, Daddy. It's just. . ." She wanted to say how
frustrated he made her sometimes, how her own heart was aching right along with
his, and how desperately she needed him to be alive and there for her.
"It's just—I don't want to lose you." He turned, pulled his half
glasses off his nose, and looked at her.
          "Understandable. Why would anybody want to lose something as
beautiful as this?" he spread his hands out to include his fat, hairy
body. "I'm just too big and sexy to lose."
          "You know what I mean, dummy." She smiled at him.
          "Honey, I'll make you a promise, okay?"
          "Yeah, sure," she said, knowing what