When eighteen-year-old Gloria Summers dies unexpectedly after undergoing an elective tubal ligation at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital, the mortality review committee can't determine what went wrong. But three more unexplained deaths of young women sends the hospital administration reeling. Desperate measures ensue, and surgical privileges are suspended. The administration hires renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Cole Buchanan to investigate these suspicious deaths. After reviewing the cases and performing additional autopsies, Buchanan determines that the deaths were murders, but he is stymied by the perpetrator's method. Detroit Police Department investigator Detective Joe Braun joins Buchanan in the murder probe; this pairing of a forensic specialist with a seasoned murder investigator provides unique insight into the case. Several possible suspects come to the forefront as the investigation focuses on the victims' backgrounds. Could the suspicious deaths be tied to the women's Catholic religion? Or is someone on the hospital staff to blame for the murders? Will Buchanan and Braun be able to unravel the mystery before more women die needlessly after surgery? As the investigation continues, friends become enemies, one involved physician commits suicide, and an old romance is rekindled within the police department.

The Death Pit

A NovelBy Michael F. Wright

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 Michael F. Wright
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-5494-2

Chapter One

Dr. Dan Evans had just settled into the doctors' station and completed "11/1/13" on his first progress note when the hospital PA system blared.

"Code Blue-Code Blue-Recovery Room. Code Blue-Recovery Room." Glancing at the ceiling, he pursed his lips, shook his head, and allowed his gaze to drift back to the page he was writing on. The instant the pen's tip touched the paper, his pager number broke the silence. "Two-O-Seven, Two-O-Seven, call 1322-stat! Two-O-Seven, call 1322-stat!"

After lifting the headset of a black desk phone in the doctors' station, Dan hesitated for a moment and dropped the receiver back into its cradle. He jumped to his feet and headed directly for the recovery room rather than calling first.

Dan decided to bypass the elevator and pushed open the door to the staircase. He began a rapid three-flight descent. By turning his body toward the railing at a thirty-degree angle and holding on with both hands, he was able to descend two steps at a time, somewhat similar to how a mountain goat on two legs would descend. Dan's gray hair flipped up and down in harmony with his white coattails as he hit each step. He had a lean athletic build, indicating nearly unlimited endurance, but his chest had already begun to heave. Halfway down the second set of stairs, he stopped to remove his glasses and wipe his forehead with his right coat sleeve.

After he made it to the first floor landing, Dan's strained respiration forced him to lean against the wall gasping for air. His hands seized his chest in a crossed-arm position, a maneuver his mind had conjured to keep his chest from exploding as he waited for his blood oxygen to reach a sufficient level again. Once his dyspnea began to settle and the pounding in his chest subsided, he took hold of the doorknob, sucked in one last long-drawn deep breath, and entered the main hospital corridor.

As Dan wove his way through the crowded hospital corridors, he knew that physicians in his specialty were not usually beckoned to Code Blues. This awareness intensified the stern gaze he sent down the hallways as he moved with long strides, making it obvious to hospital personnel that they needed to get out of his way. Visitors unaccustomed to the meaning of such loud speaker announcements or to the expressions of serious men in white coats forced him to shift his course, even to stop now and then, and to pardon his way through a family blocking the hall in conversation.

It's my patient, Dan thought, his irritation mounting as he swerved back and forth. He knew that, if a senior staff physician were required, it would have been an internist who had received the stat call, not an ob-gyn surgeon.

Without slowing, he stiff-armed his way through the windowless entry into the recovery room, only to be stopped by what confronted him. My God, it's Gloria! I just completed her surgery thirty minutes ago, he thought as he glanced through a space between two of the dozen or so people surrounding his patient.

Nancy Nolan, the recovery room head nurse, rushed to him and took hold of his arm.

"Dr. Evans," she said with an anxious tone. Her green eyes, almost an exact match of the color of her cap, flashed with intensity. "She was okay five minutes ago, and then I found her unresponsive. There was no warning."

Dan Evans walked to the bedside with a furrowed brow; his pale blue eyes scanned the situation. He nudged his arm between two nurses to grip Gloria's hand, whose limp coldness sent a shiver through the length of his body. After discharging a long sigh, he released the feel of death and moved to the foot of the bed.

Dan's gaze jerked randomly from person to person. An anesthesia resident, whose green surgical mask dangled under his chin, was straining with a laryngoscope in his left hand while guiding an endotracheal tube into the patient's airway. A nurse who was bent over the left side of his patient repeatedly smacked her limp arm in an attempt to find a vein for a second IV. A surgery intern stood poised over Gloria's chest with an ampoule of intracardiac adrenaline, its four-inch needle aimed directly at her heart.

Glancing at his patient's right arm, he noticed the original pre-surgery IV line remained rooted and functional.

"Who's in charge here?" Dan shouted.

"I am," answered Bryan Waterhouse, a third-year internal medicine resident, who looked out of place in his white coat, shirt, and tie within the sea of green uniforms, "unless you want to take over."

Dan remained silent, knowing he had not directed a Code Blue since he was an intern. On that night, he had been the first trainee to arrive at the patient's bedside. To his chagrin, he instantly learned that the first doctor on the scene was the one the nurses turned to for orders until a more senior trainee arrived or, on the rare occasion, when a staff physician showed his face. Even though the patient had survived, Dan had learned a valuable lesson from the experience, especially for a doctor who intended to study obstetrics-never run to a code. From that time on, he always delayed his approach long enough to allow an internal medicine resident to beat him to the bedside.

Dan looked up at Gloria's monitor and noted the ventricular fibrillation trembling across the screen. No sense asking about her vitals, he thought. Looking down at her exposed chest, the glistening electrode jelly told him that cardioversion had already been attempted. After approximating the number of empty medication vials lying on the medication cart, the impending doom of his patient became apparent.

Dan glimpsed the nurse working the defibrillator when Bryan blurted out, "Three hundred watt-seconds." He watched Bryan apply a fresh supply of green electrode gel to the paddles and deftly place them on Gloria's chest.

All those surrounding the bed instinctively took a step backward when Bryan yelled out, "Clear!"

The word "clear" echoed through Dan's brain. Halfway through his internship, he had not noticed a nurse who was so intent on starting an IV that she had failed to heed his command to remove her hands from the patient before he pushed the buttons on the electricity-emitting paddles. The electrical charge entered the patient's chest a nanosecond before shooting up the nurse's arms, throwing her six feet across the room and onto an adjacent bed. Dan had rushed to the unintended victim while everyone else stood and stared in astonishment at her quivering body. Trying to calm her screaming, Dan had leaned over and attempted to raise her off the bed. To his surprise, she instantly clamped her arms around his neck, and he was unable to uncouple them before he blacked out.

This time, to Dan's relief, all the hands stationed around Gloria's body sprang into the air moments before an electrical snap caused her body to convulse. CPR resumed immediately when her body settled limply onto the bed. A nurse bounded onto the bed, straddled Gloria's body, and restarted rhythmic chest compressions while the anesthesia resident returned his attention to the rubber Ambu bag. Dan watched as the resident in charge aggressively rubbed the two-day stubble on his cheeks, searching his brain for a scheme to reverse his patient's downward spiral.

The electrical charge that shot through Gloria's body also proceeded into the silver-coated electrodes on her chest and up through their lead wires to the...