Within: A Medical Suspense Novel Read online

  within by ben scott craig

  ..

  within

  ben scott craig

  ..

  First eBook Edition: May 2012

  Copyright © 2012 Ben Scott Craig

  This is a work of fiction. This publication may not be reproduced, redistributed or transmitted in any form without express permission by the publisher and author. All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-0615643281

  ISBN-10: 0615643280

  WITHIN is a fictional novel. Any names, characters, corporations, events, institutions, organizations and incidents are either created by the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, corporations, events, institutions, organizations or occurrences is completely coincidental. Doctor Lydia Bailey and her treatment do not exist.

  within by ben scott craig 1

  part one: UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS 5

  CHAPTER ONE 7

  CHAPTER TWO 13

  CHAPTER THREE 18

  CHAPTER FOUR 22

  CHAPTER FIVE 31

  CHAPTER SIX 43

  CHAPTER SEVEN 53

  CHAPTER EIGHT 58

  part two: THE KILL SWITCH 62

  CHAPTER NINE 64

  CHAPTER TEN 72

  CHAPTER ELEVEN 79

  CHAPTER TWELVE 84

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN 87

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN 91

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN 97

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN 106

  part three: RELEASE 108

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 110

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 114

  CHAPTER NINETEEN 119

  CHAPTER TWENTY 121

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 127

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 129

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 138

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 141

  part one: UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS

  Andy closed his eyes and tried to slow his frantic, shallow breaths. He wasn't quite sure why he was going to make his next move. He didn't weigh any other options. He didn't think about the rational thing to do. With his brother involved, it was instinct. He briefly looked up to the heavens and prayed that one of them would make it alive.

  ..

  CHAPTER ONE

  It wasn't that Andy Stone wanted to die. He was just more conscious of death lately. As he walked along the sidewalk leading to the Denver Journal, he realized that a shift of his body two feet would send him careening into oncoming traffic. Only two steps to the right and the bus charging at him would end his life. Just like that, the tension would release.

  Despite these thoughts, he knew he wasn't anywhere close to the edge. Those two feet could have been twenty. Perhaps it was the phone call he was anticipating; perhaps it was his newspaper's grim future. The thought of death was creeping into his life.

  Andy walked into the glass-encased entry of the Denver Journal. He hastily smacked the glowing elevator button a few times. His phone buzzed to life. Andy's hand trembled just slightly as he reached into his pocket. He was desperately waiting for a call from his father. Whether the call would bring encouraging news, or whether he would need to board a plane immediately, he needed to know. Even bad news was better than the uncertainty. He recognized the number, but it wasn't his dad. He quickly ignored the call. He had more pressing issues in the newsroom on the second floor.

  The elevator was stuck on a higher floor. Andy’s heart was pounding. Nervous energy drove him toward the stairs. Andy waved his identification card in front of a scanner next to a thick gray door. A light flashed from red to green. He pulled open the door and climbed the metal stairs, skipping steps along the way. His long toned quads still burned from an epic day of snowboarding a few days before. A foot of new snow, open powder fields and steep cornice drops, graceful turns etched into a blank canvas like a form of snowboarding calligraphy. He loved the holy cathedral of the Rocky Mountains.

  Andy rushed through the newsroom. He passed stacks of abandoned promo materials once destined for the old music editor. Campaign signs from an indicted state representative were scattered around another empty cube. As he searched the vast room for Lucas Smith, he passed the arts and entertainment reporter who collected small figurines. Hundreds of trolls, elves and army soldiers encircled her chair, as if they were all sitting in an arena and she was the main attraction. A core of reporters and their cluttered desks remained in the middle of the newsroom, but empty desks were rapidly expanding inward. The occupied desks shrank into a circle in an Alamo-like last stand.

  Several editors were gathered in a meeting room encased in glass. Andy saw his friend and mentor, Lucas, one of the last guys at the paper who was really fighting to keep Andy Stone on staff. His job as a full-time investigative reporter had been cut. For a while, he was appointed as the web editor, then demoted to freelance reporter. His investigative pieces were time-consuming and expensive. Although they brought traffic to the paper and its website in the past, the paper was choosing a different direction. Several of the editors who Andy knew weren’t supporting him also sat in the conference room with Lucas. Raised voices rattled the glass panels of the meeting room. Powerful people—the ones who were left—were engaged in a contentious debate. Arguments at the Denver Journal had become more common lately. Andy was called into the paper this morning. He had no idea why, but his gut told him that it wasn’t good. He locked eyes with one of the editors in the meeting room. Andy could tell he was debating whether to wave Andy into the conference room. He didn’t want to go in there right now. Nothing good could come of it.

  Andy angled away from the room and ducked into the bathroom. As he leaned next to two sinks, he caught his breath. Bright blue cakes rested inside three white urinals. Hand towels were piled over the top of the garbage bin. A daily cleaning crew was a luxury the newspaper could no longer afford. Andy slapped some water on his face. He scanned his reflection in the broad mirror above the sinks. The bathroom illuminated from the intense sunlight penetrating through the skylights above. Most people first noticed his eyes. His hair was somewhat long and purposely disheveled. He had a slender build. His face displayed angular, attractive lines with a round nose and childlike cheeks that disguised his age. He had just turned thirty.

  Andy sought refuge inside the back stall. He sat on the edge of the toilet. Through a small window, he could see the city and mountains to the west. The front door of the bathroom swung open. Andy's breaths shortened. He pulled his feet closer to the base of the toilet.

  Andy peered through the small window. The urban center of Colorado, known as the Front Range, had been booming for the last decade and a half. But the wave had finally crashed, and its growth was receding from its peak. Two cities anchored the Front Range: Denver and Boulder. Sharp, distinct rock formations known as the Flatirons rose to the northwest. At the base of these mountains was Boulder. It was a city full of unique brilliance and innovation, but also disturbingly isolated. It seemed like everyone in Boulder discovered within the last ten years that they were allergic to gluten. Denver was different. More blue collar, less money. More people ate bread.

  “Andy?” Lucas asked.

  Andy’s chest froze. He recognized his friend’s voice and emerged from the bathroom stall. “Yeah.” When he looked up at his editor and mentor, he could tell that the news wasn’t good.

  “Will you walk with me?” Lucas asked. This question is rarely a lead-up to anything positive. In newsrooms, it’s a statement that feels similar to “We need to talk.”

  Back outside, Lucas motioned for them to walk down a narrow sidewalk next to the parking lot. It led to a vast open plot of grass and wildflowers.

  Andy scanned the parking lot. Sporadic cars dotted the spaces. Thin c
lumps of densely packed snow were melting. It was a mild day in March. Tributaries of water flowed out of the small mounds of snow, over the pale concrete and into the budding grass. Spring was coming.

  Lucas cut to the point. “They’re not going to run your feature. I tried to fight for you, Andy. A lot of people did, the higher-ups believe that we need more page views. It’s not a shock. I just didn’t think this would happen so fast.”

  Andy asked, “I’m not sure I know where this leaves me.”

  “It’s not good, Andy. You could keep working on your own. You could continue to pursue investigative material for the Journal, but I don’t know how much they will take. Or how much they will pay going forward.”

  Andy shook his head. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked up at the Big Sky of the West. It was concave and majestic, awe-inspiring and humbling. As he looked up at the incomprehensible bigness of the universe, he wondered how his problems could seem so big. Still, they seemed pretty big.

  “I think you might be better off selling your stories elsewhere. National news outlets are always looking for stories,” Lucas spoke carefully. He knew that these ideas were a small consolation for essentially terminating his friend’s employment.

  “So that’s it?” Andy asked. “Just like that, the slow bleed is over.”

  “Yeah,” Lucas answered. “All the rest of us are still bleeding.”

  “How about you?” Andy asked his mentor.

  “They want me to do dual reporter and editor roles. They want me to contribute a lot on the blog too.” Lucas looked at Andy. “Are you still bartending?”

  Andy laughed. “I have to work tonight.”

  “Maybe I’ll stop by. I could use a drink.” Lucas ushered Andy back toward the building that housed the Denver Journal. He could already see the place in some sort of immediate nostalgic spot in his past, as if he had known that this was coming.

  Andy walked over to his car. Lucas walked next to him. They barely spoke. At the car, they embraced and Lucas added, “Listen, everyone wants you to keep working at the office. You don’t have to clean out your desk or anything like that. Even if you’re working on stories for other outlets, you can still work in the newsroom. They just can’t guarantee that they will run any of your stories. It isn’t very likely.”

  Andy popped open the car door. “I’ll have to think about that. This may take some time to absorb,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Goodbye, Lucas.”

  “Bye, my friend.”

  Andy left the parking lot and found a quiet side street. He checked his phone again. His tear-filled eyes appeared to beg the phone for an answer to his growing concern. He needed a call from his dad telling him that his mother was going to be fine. It had none.

  The sun descended below the snow-capped peaks to the west. The planks were cold. They creaked reluctantly with the weight of footsteps. Andy and his fellow bartender, Jeff, had prepped the bar below for the night's concert. He found temporary comfort in the predictable ritual of working behind a bar. Mary's Tavern expected about 300 people this evening. The building was a music venue throughout the year and a rooftop party deck when the weather got milder. The two bartenders had climbed the back stairs and walked onto the dormant rooftop for a break. Collapsed umbrellas and plastic chairs were stacked on the wooden walkways between two tiki bars.

  Andy walked away from his friend for a minute, raised his phone to his ear and whispered, “Dad, I was just wondering if there's any news. Is your phone on? Please call me back whenever you know anything. Please. I love you, Dad.”

  The city was thawing. Rooftops dripped. Cold water pooled all around creating glossy mirrors and a hint of a parallel city in reflection. Across the street at Coors Field, workers in purple golf shirts marched back and forth on the terraces. The whitecaps on the mountains were receding back into their peaks.

  The deck was eerily still. Jeff lit up a cigarette and offered one to Andy. Although this day made him crave vices, Andy held up his hand in polite refusal.

  “Nice sunset,” Andy said. His breath rose in a rapidly dispersing fog.

  Jeff agreed, “It is.” He had a chin beard that knifed down to the ground like a frozen icicle of hair. He looked tired.

  “Is something wrong?” Jeff asked, having heard Andy’s message to his dad. He looked at Andy through narrow eyes.

  “I don’t know. It’s my mom. She’s having some minor health issues. She’s had complications before. Occasionally these days, she needs small surgeries. But there’s always the giant elephant in the room with my family.”

  “Elephant in the room?” Jeff asked.

  “Cancer,” Andy told him. “Always the threat of cancer coming back with my mom.”

  “She’s had it before?” Jeff asked.

  “Twice.”

  “I’m sorry, Andy.”

  “Nothing’s wrong yet. I don’t even want to consider that right now. Let’s just sit in silence for a few more minutes. A few more precious minutes of quiet before we go back down.”

  Andy sat with his friend and watched the close of another day, as a spellbinding sunset stretched above the Rocky Mountains.

  For the next few hours, Andy poured drinks with his phone set to vibrate in his pocket. During a particular lull in patrons, Andy crawled under the bar top and leaned against the side of the sound booth. An energetic bluegrass band had everyone’s attention. He sipped a clear plastic cup of water.

  “How you doing, my friend?” Chuck the sound guy asked.

  “All right. Just need to rest for a second.”

  Chuck gazed out to the stage and said, “Good show.”

  Andy nodded. Chuck’s understanding smile made him feel a little better.

  Chuck climbed back to his perch and gazed down at the vast soundboard in front of him. Andy liked Chuck. He was old school. He wore skinny black jeans and a black denim shirt. His dark hair and eyes, and intimidatingly-bushy goatee gave a misleading first impression. He was a peaceful, understated, thoughtful guy. Late one summer night as the rest of the staff was drinking rum on the roof, Chuck shared his philosophy with Andy. Although he just looked like a guy passively standing in front of a board, he was a composer who conducted a symphony through megahertz and decibels. Always shifting, always moving. In this soundboard Chuck saw life. He saw an endless series of dials that needed attention and adjustment. Just when he thought one was perfectly balanced, another one fell out of tune. It was a dance in a world of spectrum. Chuck saw his work as a romantic dance, an art in itself, an expression of awareness during sacred moments of musical creation.

  Day after day, cycles of patrons sauntered up to the bar, ordered drinks and faded into the background. Hundreds of them. Through the years, thousands. And then one night, one person is completely different. She emerged out of the crowd at the end of the bar. Her smile and energy magnetically drew Andy's attention, and his chest thumped, even at the distant sight of her. Andy continued to nod as he made drinks for a couple of guys talking to him. They wore pressed business-casual garb with their sleeves deliberately rolled up. He was pouring them a couple of vodka tonics. On the second drink, his eyes drifted back to the lovely woman at the end of the bar. Andy looked hypnotized. He missed the second glass and poured vodka onto the bar top. It trickled off the other side. Tonic gurgled from the soda gun into the second glass. It was overflowing.

  The two guys yelled in unison, “Whoa!”

  Andy returned to them. “Yeah, twelve dollars.”

  The taller guy debated. “This one's all tonic.”

  Andy poured half into a pint glass and filled it with a ridiculous amount of booze. “That better?” Andy's eyes locked onto him with a suppressed tension. It was rising to the surface now.

  “That's just fine, man.”

  “Twelve.” Andy stated, flatly.

  “Here's twenty. Keep it.”

  Andy closed his eyes for a moment as he turned to the register. The rush of emotions
of this day was taking a toll. He kept looking at the end of the bar for his strange new woman. He waited for a glance, anything. Then she looked at Andy with a curiously familiar compassion and acceptance. On this night, he needed someone to assure him that everything would be fine.

  She leaned on the bar and motioned to him.

  She said, “I promised I wouldn't drink tonight.”

  Andy replied, “A wise man once told me that there's nothing wrong with a little escapism every once in a while.” Lines like this usually elicited condescending looks from flirtatious women. It was a survival mechanism to a statement many of them didn't totally get.

  “But what am I running from?” Andy's head skewed ever so slightly. He tried to repress a smile. His eyes squinted with cautious amusement.

  “So what brings you here?” Andy asked, trying to mask the rush of energy he felt in his chest.

  She explained, “I'm staying with a friend down the street. She dragged me out tonight.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “San Francisco,” she said.

  Normally this answer would be a deal-breaker. But not tonight, not with her. “Well, I'm glad you're here.”

  Emma said without hesitation, “I'm glad too.”

  Others waved money at Andy and pleaded for drinks. His fellow bartender, Jeff, was struggling to keep up with orders at the other end of the bar. Andy couldn't see any of this. He was lost. Andy and Emma talked for a few more precious stolen moments. She spoke with intelligence and poise. She spoke with a wide smile.

  He said, “I'm Andy.”

  “Nice to meet you, Andy. I'm Emma” Her voice, her smell rang through him like a tuning fork, as if he had only heard the perfect tone a moment ago.

  Andy leaned over the bar the next time she came back for a drink. They exchanged a few words. He was smashing his phone in his pocket. He pulled it out and laid it in the corner under the bar. He inhaled the entrancing scent of her skin where her neck met her shoulders.