Blue Labyrinth

“No.” She turned to Margo. “Did you get it?”

In response, Margo pressed the handbag slung over one shoulder.

A brace of ambulances were parked at the closest corner of visitors’ parking, lightbars turning. As they hurried toward them, Constance stopped to retrieve a small satchel, hidden in some bushes. The paramedics opened the rear of the nearest ambulance and rolled in Pendergast’s stretcher, climbing in after it. D’Agosta started to get in, followed by Margo and Constance.

The emergency workers looked at the two women. “I’m sorry,” one began, “but you’re going to have to take separate transportation—”

D’Agosta silenced the man with a flash of his badge.

With a shrug, the paramedic shut the doors; the siren started up. Constance handed Margo the satchel and the lily plant.

“What is this stuff?” one EMT said angrily. “It’s not sterile. You can’t bring that in here!”

“Move aside,” Margo said sharply.

D’Agosta put a hand on the man’s shoulder and pointed at Pendergast. “You two focus on the patient. I’ll be responsible for the rest.”

The EMT frowned, saying nothing.

D’Agosta watched as Margo went to work. She pulled open the ambulance storage compartment in the rear of the vehicle, slid out a shelf, opened Constance’s satchel, and began pulling out various things — old bottles filled with liquid, ampoules, envelopes of powder, a jar of emolument. She laid them all out in order. To these, Margo added the lily that Constance had handed her, and then some dried plant specimens from her own handbag, picking them out from among pieces of broken glass. Next to all this she smoothed out a wrinkled piece of paper, grabbing abruptly for a handhold as the ambulance pulled out onto Washington Avenue, its siren shrieking.

“What are you doing?” D’Agosta asked.

“I’m preparing the antidote,” Margo replied.

“Shouldn’t you do this in a lab or something—?”

“Does it look to you like we have the time?”

“How is the patient?” Constance asked the paramedic.

The paramedic glanced at D’Agosta, then at her. “Not good. B/P low, pulse thready.” He pulled open a plastic tray at one side of Pendergast’s stretcher. “I’m going to start a lidocaine drip.”

As the ambulance careered onto Eastern Parkway, D’Agosta watched Margo grab a bag of saline from a nearby drawer, pluck a tracheotomy scalpel from another drawer, and pull away its protective silver covering. She slashed open the saline bag, poured some into an empty plastic beaker, and dropped the leaking bag on the floor.

“Hey,” said the paramedic. “What the hell are you doing—?” Again, he was silenced by a warning gesture from D’Agosta.

The ambulance shrieked its way past Prospect Park, then through Grand Army Plaza. Steadying herself against the movements of the vehicle, Margo took a small glass jar from among the contents of Constance’s satchel, warmed it briefly in her hands, then removed its stopper and poured out a measure into the plastic beaker. Immediately the ambulance filled with a sweetish, chemical smell.

“What’s that?” D’Agosta asked, waving away the odor.

“Chloroform.” Margo re-stoppered the jar. Taking the scalpel, she chopped up the lily Constance had retrieved from the Aquatic House, mashed it, and added the pulp, along with the dried, crushed pieces of plant from her own handbag, into the liquid. She stoppered the beaker and shook it.

“What’s going on?” D’Agosta asked.

“The chloroform acts as a solvent. It’s used in pharmacology to extract compounds from plant material. Then I have to boil most of it off, as it’s poisonous if injected.”

“Just a moment,” Constance said. “If you boil it, you’ll make the same mistake Hezekiah did.”

“No, no,” Margo replied. “Chloroform boils at a far lower temperature than water — around a hundred forty degrees. It won’t denature the proteins or the compounds.”

“What compounds are you extracting?” D’Agosta asked.

“I have no idea.”

“You don’t know?”

Margo rounded on him. “Nobody knows what the active ingredients in these botanicals are. I’m winging it.”

“Jesus,” D’Agosta said.

The ambulance turned onto Eighth Avenue, approaching New York Methodist Hospital. As it did, Margo consulted her sheet of paper, added more liquid, broke an ampoule, mixed in two kinds of powder from their glassine envelopes.

“Lieutenant,” she said over her shoulder. “When we get to the hospital, I’m going to need some things right away. Ice water. A piece of cloth for straining. A test tube. Half a dozen coffee filters. And a pocket lighter. Okay?”

“Here’s the lighter,” said D’Agosta, reaching into his pocket. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

The ambulance came to a halt before the hospital’s emergency entrance, the siren cutting off. The paramedics threw open the rear doors and slid the stretcher out to the waiting ER staff. D’Agosta glanced down at Pendergast, covered in a thin blanket. The agent was pale and motionless as a corpse. Constance got out next and followed the stretcher inside, her attire and dirty appearance eliciting strange looks from the hospital staff. Next, D’Agosta hopped down and made his way quickly toward the entrance. As he did so, he looked over his shoulder. He could see Margo in the rear bay of the ambulance, brilliantly illuminated by the emergency lights, still working with single-minded purpose.

77

ICU Bay Three of the emergency room at New York Methodist Hospital resembled a scene of controlled chaos. One intern wheeled in a red crash cart, while a nurse nearby readied an ear, nose, and throat tray. Another nurse was attaching various leads to the motionless figure of Pendergast: a blood pressure cuff, EKG, pulse oximeter, fresh IV line. The paramedic workers from the ambulance had passed off their information on Pendergast’s condition to the hospital staff, then left; there was nothing more they could do.

Two doctors in scrubs swept in and quickly began to examine Pendergast, speaking in low tones to the nurses and interns.

D’Agosta took a look around. Constance was seated in a far corner of the bay, her small form now dressed in a hospital gown. It had been five minutes since he’d delivered the requested materials to Margo, back in the ambulance. She was still in there, working like a demon, using his lighter to heat a liquid in the test tube, filling the air with a sweet stench.

“Vitals?” one of the doctors asked.

“BP’s at sixty-five over thirty and falling,” a nurse replied. “Pulse ox is seventy.”

“Prep for endotracheal intubation,” the doctor said.

D’Agosta watched as more equipment was wheeled into place. He felt a terrible mixture of rage, despair, and distant hope gnawing at him. Unable to keep still, he began to pace back and forth. One of the doctors, who earlier had tried to throw him and Constance out, shot him a glare, but he ignored it. What was the point of all this? This whole antidote thing seemed far-fetched, if not completely nuts. Pendergast had been dying for days — weeks — and now the final moments had come. All this fuss, this pointless bustle, just made him feel more agitated. There was nothing they could do — nothing anyone could do. Margo, for all her skill, was trying to concoct an elixir whose dosage she could only guess at — and that hadn’t worked before. Besides, it was moot now; it was taking her too long. Even these doctors, with all their equipment, couldn’t do jack to save Pendergast.

“Getting a lethal rhythm here,” an intern said, monitoring one of the screens at the head of Pendergast’s bed.

“Stop the lidocaine,” the second doctor said, pushing his way between the nurses. “Get a central vein catheter ready. Two milligrams epi, stat.”

D’Agosta sat down in the empty chair beside Constance.

“Vitals failing,” one of the interns said. “He’s coding.”