Under the Knife(65)

“What was that?” he said aloud.

He tapped the side of the tablet again.

“Boss,” Sebastian whispered over their link, “I think we have a problem.”

“Well that’s—huh. Strange. Strange. Um. I believe I just lost contact with Dr. Wu.”

“Interference. Something’s blocking your transmission, boss. We’ve seen this before. During the tests.”

“Yes,” Finney said, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the desk, a cheap, lightweight type found in office cubicles. The man had an infuriating talent for stating the obvious. The pertinent issue was: What was causing the interference? And the runner-up: How do we fix it?

Finney placed his hands on the desk, interlaced his fingers, and stared at the ugly interference patterns, squeezing. His knuckles turned red. Then white. His hands shook. They knocked loudly on the desktop.

No.

“I don’t think I need to emphasize that this is a very inopportune moment for this to happen, Sebastian.”

The knocking of his hands escalated into a violent rattle.

Not now.

“Right. I’ll try to figure it out from my end, boss,” Sebastian said.

I’ve waited too long for this.

“Please, Sebastian.”

NOT …

… NOW.





RITA


She stood there, still as a statue, listening to the silence.

It was a silence different from the one she’d experienced while taking a shower, when Finney hadn’t been talking to her. It seemed to her a quieter kind of silence. Was it her imagination? She also found it strange that he’d cut off midsentence, as if in the middle of a phone conversation, and the call had dropped.

For the first time since he’d so disturbingly reentered her life in the locker room, she sensed his absence.

She cocked her head to one side. Yes. She was growing more certain of it. Like being on an airplane, growing numb to the steady thrum of the engines as you drank your Diet Coke at thirty-five thousand feet, then arriving at your destination and realizing later, on the car ride home, that the thrum was gone.

Her heart hammered against the back of her sternum and ribs.

Could he really be gone?

And to where? And why? Was this thing in her head no longer working? And if not, how about the one inside Darcy?

“Dr. Wu?” Lisa whispered. “Why are you stopping?”

Chase had also noticed the pause. “Rita?” he asked. “How are things going over there?”

“Everything’s perfect!” she sang back.

And, for the moment, it almost felt like it was.

Because he’s gone.

She pushed the second Swiss Army a little farther into Mrs. Sanchez’s abdomen. On the video screen, its tip appeared next to the tip of the first one.

He’s gone! She wanted to shout it.

Feeling almost euphoric, Rita took her hands off of the Swiss Army, and said, “Delores, initiate laparoscopic cholecystectomy protocol for Swiss Army number two.”

She waited for Delores to respond.

Nothing happened.





SEBASTIAN


Sebastian’s eyes searched the room, trying to identify a source of the interference.

What the hell was going on?

“Delores, initiate laparoscopic cholecystectomy protocol for Swiss Army number two,” Wu repeated.

A flashing red light on the side of the robot’s central cylinder appeared.

“System error,” Delores said. “Wireless connection broken.”

Interesting. Whatever was screwing up Finney’s signal also had to be messing up the robot. Good. It gave him time to size up the situation.

Which would not be easy. This goddamn crowd. It had swelled a lot, with curious hospital employees trickling in to watch. Had to be upwards of thirty people here now, all angling for a glimpse of the action. Like the mosh pit of a goddamn rock concert. Locating the source of the interference would be a bitch, if not damn near impossible.

“Sebastian?”

“Working on it, boss,” he said quietly, swiveling his head this way and that.

Where’s that goddamn interference coming from?





SPENCER


“System error,” the robot said again. “Wireless connection broken.”

Shifting of feet. Murmurs. Someone coughed.

Spencer caught Rita and Montgomery sharing a look.

Montgomery said, “Ah. Is anyone, perhaps, carrying some kind of electronic device with them? Certain kinds of energy waves can interfere with Delores’s wireless signals. Microwaves, for example. Anyone have a microwave oven on them?”

Chuckles.

“Are cell phones okay?” someone asked.

“Normally, yes. But perhaps for today, if everyone could just please turn theirs off…”

More murmurs. Hands patting pockets and digging into them; phones powering down with electronic chirps and musical cues. Spencer dutifully shut his off.

The red light on the robot continued to flash.

“System error. Wireless connection broken.”

Montgomery said, “Yes. Well. Anything else? Is everyone sure they’ve turned off everything?”

People looked around at each other, shook their heads, shrugged.