Chapter Seven: Plans Gone Awry

"What meds is he on?" Jesse asked quietly.

"Linezolid and vancomycin," Mark replied, without looking up. His voice was also soft, even though a drum and bugle corps could have been playing right there in the room and not disturbed his son. About an hour after dinner, Steve's fever had spiked extremely high again, and he'd spit up the vivid green Jello he'd had for dinner. About an hour after that, he'd gone into respiratory arrest and had to be put on a ventilator. Since then, he had been moved to the ICU and slipped into a coma.

"Both? Really?" Amanda asked, surprised.

"Yeah," Mark replied, still watching Steve's chest rise and fall in time with the sounds coming from the ventilator. "That's another reason I think he was deliberately infected."

"Wait a minute, Mark, I don't think I understand," Cheryl whispered, looking over to her partner.

Mark didn't answer her, but reached out and took his son's hand instead.

"Staphylococcus bacteria is fairly common," Jesse explained. "It lives harmlessly on the skin in many people. For others, it causes boils, infected hairs and infected hangnails, sometimes pimples, and the like. An overabundance of staph in the system can overwhelm the body's ability to cope with the toxins it produces and cause Toxic Shock Syndrome."

Cheryl nodded. "That's what brought him back to the hospital in the first place."

"Right."

"But he was getting better."

"Yes, I know. But there are some strains of staph that are resistant to the drugs we commonly use to get rid of the infection," Jesse patiently explained. "They're called MRSA, or methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus."

"You mean like the flesh-eating bacteria?"

"Well, that's a very melodramatic way of putting it that the media has used to sell papers and boost ratings," Amanda responded, "but yes, exactly like that."

"Well, of course that is awful, but I still don't see why it's suspicious," Cheryl replied.

"There are different strains of MRSA, and they each respond best to a different antibiotic," Jesse took over the explanation again. "They are becoming more common, but they are far from being epidemic diseases. The fact that Steve is on linezolid and vancomycin indicates that he has contracted two different MRSAs."

"Which means someone wanted to make sure that he not only got sick," Cheryl was able to conclude now, "but also that the bug they gave him finished the job."

Amanda and Jesse nodded. Mark just continued watching his son.

"Ok. I'm going to get onto someone in the LVPD," Cheryl said, glad there was something she could do now that she understood what had happened. "I can't see a judge signing an arrest warrant based on such circumstantial evidence, but if you can collect something this guy throws away, like gloves or a syringe, we can get them to match it to the prints in our folder. Then we will have proof that he is who we think he is, and we can arrest him."

A nurse padded silently into the room on her soft-soled white shoes. "Folks, I'm sorry, I know you are all worried about Mr. Sloan, but patients in ICU are only allowed two visitors at a time."

"It's all right, nurse," Jesse said, "we'll be going soon. I promise." He flashed her a very worried version of his charming, boyish grin, and got a smile back.

"Five minutes," she told him softly, "and see if you can't get his father to go get some rest, would you? Becoming a patient himself won't do his son any good at all."

"I'll take care of it," Jesse told her. "You have my word."

Amanda and Cheryl nodded to the woman as she left, and then Cheryl crossed the room to where her partner lay unmoving in the bed. She felt something twist in her chest, and she silently warned him, Don't you dare die on me, Sloan. It was hard to believe that just two days ago, she had lain on the bed beside him and watched him sleep.

She had to swallow hard and blink back tears for a moment when all of the possibilities she had considered that day threatened to overwhelm her again. Years ago, when he'd injured his knee and then been deliberately poisoned with bacteria, she hadn't felt the same way because she hadn't known him so well. Now, though, the thought of losing all their potential, as friends, partners, and maybe someday something more, nearly broke her heart.

Leaning over, she kissed him gently on the temple and whispered, "Don't you dare die on me, Sloan. I have plans for you."

Straightening up, she turned sharply on her heel, and walked briskly out of the room, not speaking, but simply nodding goodbye to Jesse and Amanda as she headed off, intent on her mission with the LVPD.

Moving over to his friend's bedside, Jesse said, "Leave it to you to get in trouble on a vacation."

Of course, there was no response, but then, he wasn't expecting one.

"Look, buddy, I'm going to try to get your dad back to the hotel for some rest, but I will see you bright and early in the morning." He swallowed hard, hating the way he was feeling, hating that it seemed to happen so often with his friend. "You just focus on getting better."

He put a hand on Steve's shoulder and gave it a squeeze, and repeated, "I'll see you in the morning."

"I'm staying here," Mark said petulantly when Jesse turned to him.

"Mark, you need some rest," Jesse tried to cajole him.

"I'll rest right here," Mark insisted, never looking away form Steve's motionless form. "This chair is perfectly comfortable. We need some like it at Community General."

"It's not the same a lying down in a bed," Jesse argued. "You need some real rest."

"I'll rest here, Jess. Don't worry, I'll be fine."

"Mark, this isn't Community General," Jesse reminded him. "You don't have an office couch to catch a nap on, you can't have a cot brought into ICU, and you can't wander into the on-call room for some sleep."

"Mark," Amanda joined the discussion. "I'll stay with him overnight. I won't leave his side until you come back in the morning. He'll never be alone. I promise."

"It's not just that," Mark told her, his voice sounding strangled. "I can't not be here if . . . What if I'm not here and . . . " He couldn't continue the thought.

"Oh, Mark," Amanda said compassionately, taking him into her arms for a moment. "If that happens, and we have to believe it won't, but if it does, it won't matter whether you're here or not. He won't be alone, because I'll stay with him, and he knows how much you love him."

"But I need to be here," Mark protested again, still watching Steve as if to take his eyes off him for one moment would mean disaster, "in case . . ."

"Mark," Jesse interrupted, wanting his mentor to think about something besides the worst case scenario, "how is Steve gonna feel when he wakes up and finds out you have been hospitalized with exhaustion because you never left his side? Worrying yourself sick isn't going to help him at all now, and it will only upset him later."

Finally, Mark looked up, taking his eyes off his son for the first time, and desperate look on his face made something twist in Jesse's chest.

"You know he expects us to take care of you."

Mark nodded and stood up slowly. "O-ok, but we come back first thing in the morning, right?"

"Absolutely. I wouldn't have it any other way," Jesse agreed.

Finally, the old doctor moved around Amanda, bent over to give his son a kiss on the forehead, whispered something to him that neither Jesse nor Amanda could hear, and reluctantly left.

Amanda watched Jesse and Mark as they made their way down the hall of the ICU and out the double doors into the main corridor. Then she went back into the room, settled into the chair beside her friend's bed, and said softly, "Steve Sloan, you're my friend and I will love you forever, but if you . . ." She stumbled over her words, took a breath, and continued. "If you . . . leave us while your dad is resting, I will never forgive you."

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS

"Just before I left, the boys reminded me of a story we had seen on TV about the Palms casino changing its name to PAM for a night in honor of Pamela Anderson and her fur-free, cruelty-free fashion show," Amanda told Steve in a conversational tone. It didn't matter that he wasn't answering, she just hoped that on some level he would know she was there and not feel so scared or alone. It was two in the morning, and talking to him helped her not to feel so scared and alone, too.

"She's a spokesperson for PETA, you know, which I think is a good thing. I want the boys to learn that everyone, even larger than life people," Of course she's larger than life, thanks to the wonders of cosmetic surgery! should believe in and support something bigger than themselves. Then, the next thing I know, they show her in a sort of mini-crop top that shows the bottom half of her breasts, just sort of hanging out there for the world to admire. Oh, and they showed Tommy Lee licking her face and her in some provocative pictures, too. Of course, I should have known that the video of the two of them in the bedroom would make an appearance, as well, but I swear, the blurb in the TV Guide only mentioned her work with PETA."

"Hello there." Amanda jumped at the unexpected but respectfully quiet greeting, but managed not to cry out. The man in the doorway wore surgical scrubs and a friendly smile on his bearded face. "I'm Wilfred Erickson, Mr. Sloan's surgeon, but you can call me Wil."

Amanda blushed, embarrassed that the tall, tanned man had probably overheard her monologue. "I know he probably can't hear me," she said, "but there is always the chance. I am sure, somehow, he knows I am here and that he is not alone."

"I'm sure you're right, and you are?"

Smiling, she stood up to greet the handsome surgeon. As she moved around the bed, she extended a hand for him to shake. "Amanda Bentley. I am a close friend of Steve's. I work at Community General Hospital with his father, as head of pathology and Adjunct County Medical Examiner for Los Angeles."

"Well, Amanda, I'm sure Steve knows you're here, and if he does hear you, you have probably given him some very pleasant dreams."

Amanda blushed again, and, not knowing what to say, she looked back to her friend's still form.

"I was just going to check Steve's surgical wounds," Wil explained as he moved further into the room to take some latex gloves from a dispenser on the wall and a box of gauze sponges from a shelf nearby. "I need to make sure everything is all right under those bandages. I won't be more than a few minutes if you want to step out for a cup of coffee or something."

"Oh, that's ok," she said, remembering her promise to Mark that she wouldn't leave Steve's side. "I work with dead bodies all day. A little wound drainage doesn't faze me."

Wil looked at her dubiously, but then shrugged his shoulders and said, "Suit yourself." Then he went to work, moving back the covers and lifting Steve's hospital gown so he could remove the bandages and examine Steve's incisions.

As he was working, Amanda came to stand beside him, looked over his shoulder, and gasped. Wil hardly spared her a glance as he continued going about his business, gently pressing on the sides of the small cuts, forcing a bloody yellow substance out and wiping it away with the gauze pad.

"It's looking a little better this evening," Wil commented. "There isn't as much discharge as there was last night, and the striations are receding a little. He might just beat this thing without further surgery to clean it up."

"Oh, uh, that's good," Amanda said, and moved away to sit down because she was feeling a bit queasy.

Wil finished up what he was doing, covered Steve's wounds with fresh bandages, peeled off and discarded his gloves, and took the empty seat beside Amanda. "He really is doing better."

Amanda sniffled and dabbed at a tear. "I believe you," she said, "and I'm sorry. Things like that usually don't affect me, but I guess, because he's a friend . . . "

"It's always harder when it's someone you care about." He sat with her in silence for a little while, then, needing to fill the void, he changed the subject, "You know, Vegas is so over-the-top most people around here didn't even notice when they changed the Palms to PAM."

Amanda chuckled, snuffling back the last of her tears as she did so. "LA is kind of like that, too."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah. You can always spot a tourist because they'll do a double take and then whisper to their friends when they see a celebrity." As she sat there enjoying the companionship of the dashing physician, Amanda remembered that she was supposed to speak with him about something particular. "By the way, I wanted to ask you something about Steve's surgery."

"Ok, what did you want to know?"

"Well, I was just wondering, with all of Steve's old scars, did you ever consider using the open procedure, or did you just decide automatically to use the scope and do the best you could with that?"

Wil's posture became more erect, and his speech grew more clipped and formal. "Well, Doctor Bentley, as I am sure you are well aware, there was really no way of knowing how much trouble the adhesions from his previous injuries would present until we began working on him. As it turns out, while they did cause some resistance, they really weren't a problem, per se. The operation did take a little longer than most laparoscopic cholecystectomies, but I can assure you my decision to continue with the scope had nothing to do with his condition now. I wonder, Doctor, would you be questioning my judgment if I had used the open procedure and he had become sick? What if I had used the scope and he had recovered with no problems? Would you still be second guessing me then?"

Amanda turned on her most serene look, hoping it would hide the suspicion, anger, and fear that were surging through her now. "I'm sorry, Doctor. I really wasn't doubting you, it's just that, as a pathologist, I am always curious about why other doctors do the things they do."

Wil stood abruptly and tugged down on the top of his scrubs. "Yes, well, I apologize, too, but when you have a perfectly healthy patient just lying there in a coma," he gestured emphatically toward Steve, "you spend a lot of time second guessing yourself. Hearing someone else ask the same questions you have been asking yourself kind of makes you feel a little defensive."

Looking at his watch, he told her brusquely, "My break is over. Perhaps we shall see each other again before you leave Las Vegas."

"I'm sure we will." Amanda smiled and hoped it looked convincing. She didn't need the fingerprints from the gloves she was about to retrieve from the trash for Cheryl. She knew exactly who this man was and why he was trying to kill Steve.

"Yes, well, goodbye."

Amanda smiled slightly. "I'll see you later, Doctor." She leaned forward and took Steve's hand again, and, as the would-be killer walked briskly down the hall, she said to her friend. "Don't worry, Steve, we've got him now. That man won't hurt you again."

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS

Captain Jim Brass hated this time of morning, when the night was over but the day hadn't yet begun, because too many things, bizarre, obscene, and criminal, could happen; but this was, according to the woman who had roused him out of bed with an urgent phone call, a matter of life and death. He strode briskly through the halls of the Las Vegas Crime Lab on his way to the conference room where he was supposed to meet Warrick Brown regarding the gloves that Cheryl Banks, the cop from LA, had brought him from Desert Springs Hospital. He actually knew Doctor Erickson, thought he was a likeable guy and a competent surgeon, and couldn't believe he might be the escaped that killer she was looking for, let alone that he was poisoning her partner with staph bacteria after removing his gallbladder; but he had seen stranger things happen, so he kept his own counsel on that matter. He also hadn't figured on bringing quite so much company with him to this meeting, but, while Cheryl was trying to appeal to his natural sympathy for a worried father, FBI Agent Kathryn Wakely had told him that she, Cheryl, and the two doctors were coming whether he liked it or not. There was a reason local cops never cared for the Feds.

When they entered the conference room, Brass realized that there weren't enough chairs for all of them, but that problem solved itself as three of his companions gently shepherded the old doctor, who looked as if he had slept in his clothes and only just rolled out of bed minutes before, into one of the seats. Brass took the other, and the third was left empty for Warrick.

"This place is so incredibly cool," the younger doctor, Jesse . . . Travers . . . no, Travis, said as he paced back and forth to the window trying to see what was going on out in the hall. "I wish I could look around some of the labs, see what they're doing."

"It's nothing we don't have in LA," Detective Banks said.

Doctor Sloan sat stoically quiet and Agent Wakely rolled her eyes impatiently.

"I know, but I have never really had the chance to tour the crime lab in LA," the young man almost pouted. After a quiet moment, his expression brightened and he asked, "Hey, I don't suppose you could . . . "

In the tone of someone who knew him all too well, Banks responded, "No, I could not."

Brass barely repressed a laugh. "Actually, Doctor Travis, Gil Grissom, the head of our crime lab got his start in LA," he told the young man. "Apparently he was a real wunderkind there. I guess he was the youngest coroner in the history of LA County or something like that."

"Really?" Looking back at Detective Banks, he said, "I'll bet Amanda would enjoy meeting him."

"Oh, I'm sure it would be a thrill for her," Brass said, and his sarcastic tone perplexed the young man and finally got him to be still for a moment.

"Actually, Doctor Travis, I don't care who works here or what cool toys they have!" Agent Wakely snapped. "I just want the proof we need to get a warrant so we can make an arrest and be sure Steve is safe."

Suddenly the young doctor looked like a whipped puppy, and Brass really felt for him. He could tell the kid was worried about his friend, and that the endless chatter was just an effort to keep the fear at bay. Wanting to reach out him, Brass said, "Look, kid, as soon as CSI Brown gets here, we'll know if this is your guy, and if it is, we'll go arrest him."

Before Jesse could respond, Warrick Brown walked in, and, after the introductions he said, "You gotta love latex. It holds prints like nothing else."

"And?" Cheryl pressed.

"I got ten perfect fingerprints off the gloves, and they match exactly with what's in your file," Brown said. "There's a multiple murderer practicing medicine at Desert Springs Hospital."

There was a collective sigh of relief from the four interlopers, and Brass said, "Ok, the four of you can go back to your hotel and get some rest or go to the hospital and look in on your friend. I'll have one of my men pick up a warrant and meet me at Doctor Erickson's house. He'll be back in prison within the hour."

Detective Banks, Agent Wakely, and Doctor Travis exchanged delighted, relieved grins, but the old man, Doctor Sloan, said gravely, "No, I want you to get him for trying to kill Steve."

"What?"

"Look, Doctor Sloan . . . "

"Mark, just let them send him back to jail," Doctor Travis said. "Steve will be safe then."

The old man looked up at his young friend and said, "Jesse, for whatever reason, in spite of the fact that he killed three people, the judge didn't sentence him to death. I guess he was hoping a man that intelligent would decide that he wanted to contribute something of value to society again someday, I don't know why! You know as well as I do that a life sentence doesn't really mean life anymore. If the parole board ever releases him, all of you, you, Amanda, Cheryl, and Steve, will be in danger again. If we get him for this though, for trying to kill Steve, Nevada will try and sentence him, too, and if California grants him parole, he will still have to be transferred here to do his time on those charges. This way, he will be in jail for the rest of his life, and Steve will be safe."

"But Mark, Steve will be in danger until we can prove what he did."

Doctor Sloan shook his head. "Steve will be fine. I have a plan."

For reasons he could not explain, Jim Brass had an eerie feeling that these people had done this before.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS

It was six o'clock Sunday morning, and Amanda sat in the chair at her friend's bedside with an extra blanket the nurse had brought her draped around her shoulders like a shawl. She yawned and stretched and shook her head in an effort to wake herself up. It had been a long night for her, and she knew Mark had a long day ahead of him. She wondered if he or Jesse had managed to get any sleep at the hotel.

"I wish you had a window in your room," she told Steve. "If I could see the sun rising I wouldn't be so sleepy. Of course, I suppose it could just make me want to play cat and curl up in a patch of light and doze for the next eighteen hours."

"Maybe a cup of coffee would help," a voice from the hall suggested.

Amanda looked up and smiled, "Agent Wakely, I thought you had gone back to Washington."

"I did, but Winnie met me there with a suitcase full of clean clothes and sent me back."

"Because Mark called and told him Steve's condition was worse?"

"Yeah, and he knew I would want to be here."

"This Winnie must be a very understanding man," Amanda said, her tone implying that she knew there was more to the story.

"Oh, he is," Kathryn replied, making it clear that she didn't want to discuss the matter. "What do you say we go have that cup of coffee?"

Amanda smiled down at her sick friend and brushed some hair off his forehead. To her relief he felt noticeably cooler than the last time she had checked. "I won't be gone long, Steve. I promise." Then she adjusted the privacy curtains around his bed. "Coffee sounds wonderful, Kathryn," she said. "And I could do with a muffin or some toast, too."

"Come on, then," Kathryn jerked her head in the direction of the door. "My treat."

The two women spoke quietly as they walked down the hall together. When she saw a familiar face, Amanda slowed down and steered Kathryn across the hall.

"Doctor Erickson, this is Kathryn Wakely," she said, "a friend of Steve's from Washington."

The doctor smiled and nodded in recognition. "We've met," he said.

"Oh? I hadn't realized."

"Yes, he did Steve's gallbladder surgery," Kathryn explained, "and he beat the pants off of all of us at poker the next day."

"You're kidding me, even Steve?"

"Especially Steve," Kathryn gleefully affirmed. "It was quite a blow to his ego."

"Oh, I'm sure it was," Amanda agreed. Then turning to Wil, she said, "Doctor, I owe you an apology for last night. As a pathologist, it is my job to look for the cause of disease, and as a friend, well, I was worried and looking for someone to blame. I'm sorry."

"Don't give it another thought," Wil said, shaking his head. "I deal with worried friends and relatives all the time, and trust me, many of them have been much harsher with me than you were. How is he doing?"

Amanda smiled brightly. "Last night was uneventful. I think his fever is down some. He's doing well enough that I feel ok about slipping out to have some breakfast with Kathryn."

Wil looked surprised. "Really? That's good. I'm going to check on him as soon as I am done here. Perhaps I'll see you there after you've eaten."

Kathryn inclined her head and said, "Count on it."

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS

Mark sat in the office on the floor above Steve's ICU room intently watching his son on the closed circuit television. It had only taken the LVPD's technical guy about fifteen minutes dressed as a hospital maintenance worker to install the miniature camera and run the cable through the conduit that carried the information from Steve's various monitors out to the nurses' station. The cable had then made a detour somewhere in the middle of the hall outside ICU, and instead of going across the ceiling and down to the ICU desk, it had run down the hall a few yards and up through the ceiling to where Mark was now.

While the tech was doing his technical things and Captain Brass was briefing his people, Mark had called Amanda on the hospital phone and told her to go along with Kathryn when she came to Steve's room. Now, Steve was alone and helpless, and Mark was having second thoughts. If Steve's doctor was the person Mark believed him to be, the man knew how easy it would be to determine that there was foul play involved if he introduced something directly into the IV bag or tubing. An intramuscular or subcutaneous injection would be a little harder to spot, but would just as certainly prove attempted murder. That could only mean that he would have to find another way to kill Steve, and Mark was worried that he couldn't possibly anticipate everything the man might try to do. If he missed something, if he didn't see what was happening in time, then his son could well be dead and his murderer could get off.

"He's coming," Brass said into the telephone when he spotted Wil on another screen that had been rerouted from a security camera in the hall.

That was another with his plan, Mark realized. With Steve in the ICU, the police couldn't employ their usual transmitters any more than the average person could make a cell phone call. That meant everyone involved in the operation had to be on a landline phone or in direct eye contact with someone who was.

"Ok," Brass said, "he's in the room. Wait for my order."

"What's he doing?" Jesse wondered aloud as Wil looked at each of the monitors and duly made his notations on Steve's chart.

"It looks like business as usual," Cheryl commented as he pulled back the covers and lifted Steve's hospital gown.

"Let's just wait and see what happens before we call off the dogs," Jesse suggested when the doctor on the screen gently pulled the bandages away from Steve's infected wounds.

"I knew it," Mark said darkly as Wil pulled out a glass vial and started sprinkling its contents onto the fresh bandages he had laid out to dress Steve's wounds. "I'm sure that is how he infected him to begin with."

Wil put a strip of adhesive tape on one of the contaminated sponges and, rising from his seat and heading for the door with more spryness than one would expect from a man his age, Mark said, "Stop him now."

"Now!" Brass barked into the phone. "Now! Now! Move! Take him!"

Brass' monitor showed people scrambling in the hall and a second later, on the monitor Mark, Jesse, and Cheryl had been watching, those same people piled into Steve's room and knocked the doctor to the floor. By the time they had him cuffed, Mark, Jesse, and Cheryl had joined them, and, because the room was now too full, Amanda and Kathryn stood at the door and looked in.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS

By the time Jim Brass got down to the ICU, most of his people had gone back out into the hall to assure the nurses and visiting relatives that everything was ok. Wil Erickson was sitting sullenly in a chair in the corner with Detective Banks and Agent Wakely guarding him, and an officer from the LVPD was bagging the vial and bandages for evidence. Doctor Travis was cleaning his friend's wounds with a new bottle of betadine, and Doctor Bentley was preparing fresh bandages to cover them when he was done. Doctor Sloan was stroking his son's hair and speaking softly to him.

Walking up to the doctor who sat in the corner, Brass began the only job that apparently wasn't already taken. "Wilfred Erickson, a.k.a. Frederick Wilson, you are under arrest for practicing medicine without a license and the attempted murder of Steve Sloan."

"Add to that the unauthorized possession of hazardous biological materials," Jesse said, coming over to them with the bag that contained the vial Wil, now known to be Frederick, had used to contaminate the bandages.

"What was in it?" Brass asked.

"VRSA," Jesse informed him, "vancomycin resistant staphylococcus aureus."

"What happened to the other stuff?" Cheryl asked. "What was it before? M . . . "

"MRSA," Jesse supplied. "Steve still has a methycillin resistant staph infection, but the linezolid and vancomycin he is on are handling it."

"But why wouldn't they have handled that, too?" Kathryn indicated the container in Jesse's hand.

"Because some of these bugs only respond to a specific antibiotic," Cheryl said. "They're immune to others."

When Kathryn and Brass both looked at her in surprise, she just grinned and shrugged. "They explained it to me earlier."

"And she remembered it correctly," Jesse said. "But this particular strain of staph wouldn't have responded to the drugs Steve is on now. As weak as he is, it would have overloaded his immune system and killed him before we even realized he wasn't responding to treatment anymore."

Brass nodded, understanding now, "It would have entered his body through the open wounds and looked like he just couldn't cope with the infection he already had, so there wouldn't have been an autopsy, and no one would have suspected a thing."

"Except for Mark," Jesse beamed across the room at his friend, but Mark was too concerned with Steve to notice. "We're gonna have to find out later what tipped him off to begin with."