It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The hospital staff on duty stopped what they were doing and watched as the tented gurney, carrying the patient in room 224, slowly and carefully was rolled back to his room. A portable ventilator was being rolled on a small cart right next to the gurney. Tubing from the ventilator disappeared under the tenting, connecting the gurney to the ventilator. This was the second time the mystery patient had come back from the operating room since his arrival eight weeks ago. To say the staff was curious would have been an understatement. They had never seen a patient so closely guarded. The tenting on the gurney completely covered the patient. Not even his head could be seen.

The guard at his door made sure that only authorized staff could enter his room. There were only a handful of hospital staff that had that authorization and none of them were talking. Nobody was talking. There was no water-cooler gossip or idle chatting. This was a high-security hospital and everyone knew better than to talk. But they all thought about it. They remembered the staff meeting they had eight weeks ago. They were told that a special patient, simply identified as Patient X, had arrived and that his room would be off limits to most of them. They were used to seeing guards at the front gate of the Colorado complex, but a guard in front of a patient's room was almost unheard of.

To make matters even more fascinating, the director of the agency, Oscar Goldman, had been seen several times entering and leaving Patient X's room. Although Oscar Goldman had an office at the complex and was sometimes seen around the complex, he was not in the habit of visiting patients. But ever since Patient X had arrived, Oscar Goldman had been spending more time than usual at the Colorado complex.

The door to room 224 opened and the gurney carrying Patient X disappeared into the room. How long before he would come out again, if he came out again, was unknown. But he had just gotten out of eight hours of surgery, so they speculated that it would be several weeks.

The new doctor, Dr. Wells, came out of the operating room. He was still in scrubs and looked exhausted. As he walked slowly down the hallway, he pulled the surgical scrub cap off his head and with his fingers tried to comb the hairs that were sticking up. This new doctor was a curiosity. He wasn't known in the medical community, yet he had gotten his own lab. And it wasn't a little lab. No, he had gotten the entire second floor of the South Wing. For what they couldn't fathom because he only had one patient. What kind of doctor only has one patient? They watched Dr. Wells slowly make his way down the hallway, stopping once at a water fountain to take a drink. When he got to room 224, he pushed open the door and went in.

Carla Peterson, the new nurse, came out of room 224 a few minutes later. She headed straight for the supply closet and they saw her come out with her arms full of bandages, tape, IV solution, and other supplies. The other nurses envied this new nurse. She didn't have to attend staff meetings; she only reported to one doctor; and she only had one patient. What a cushy job, they thought. They would have loved to have asked her how she landed that kind of a job, but they didn't dare.

Fifteen minutes later, Oscar Goldman was seen walking down the hall, his long legs carrying him at a brisk pace. When he got to room 224, he stopped and said something to the guard. They couldn't hear the conversation. Then Goldman pushed open the door and walked in.


"How's he doing, Rudy?" Oscar looked worried as he looked down at the unconscious Steve.

Steve hadn't looked this poorly since he first saw him at Edwards. He was hooked up to the electro-sleep machine. A breathing tube reaching down from his lungs and coming out of his mouth was attached to a ventilator. His chest was covered with bandages and a small tube protruding from his chest was connected to another machine.

"He's stable," Rudy sighed wearily. "He gave us all a scare in the operating room. His right lung collapsed as we were attaching the third Vitallium rib and, as you can see, we had to insert a chest tube into the pleural space. He's been intubated and the ventilator is breathing for him right now. But all five ribs have been successfully replaced so he now has chest wall stability."

"How long is he going to be in this condition?"

"I'm going to keep him unconscious for at least three weeks. This type of surgery makes breathing very painful so it's best to keep him unconscious. The chest tube will probably stay in place for the entire three weeks, maybe longer. And the ventilator will continue breathing for him for as long as he is unconscious."

Rudy turned to Carla. "He's not to be left alone at all. I want someone in this room at all times monitoring him."

"Yes, Doctor," Carla replied.