Chapter Five (Part One)

Campbell

Campbell stepped out of the operating theatre and headed habitually for the row of sinks. Pulling off his gloves, he tossed them into the bin and scrubbed his hands clean with soap and water.

‘Congratulations once again Doctor Campbell,’ said a stocky young man with a head full of blonde curls. He turned on the tap beside Campbell’s and began washing his hands. ‘That was another good save.’

Smiling, Campbell turned off his trickling faucet and grabbed a few paper towels from the nearby dispenser. ‘Thanks, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle.’

Operations such as the one he did earlier on were beginning to be old news to him. He had performed many of such incredible saves before, saves which earned him both respect and reputation inside and out of the hospital.

Chucking the used paper towels into the trash bin, Campbell gave his tired limbs a slight stretch. ‘There’s something I want you to do for me, David.’

The stocky doctor’s focus snapped immediately to attention. ‘Sure. Anything for you.’

The guy would gladly lick my toes if I ask him too.

‘Remember the new nurse I told you about, the one who’s in charge of patient Matt Peters… Paige, if I remembered her name correctly.’ Campbell said aloud instead.

David nodded earnestly. ‘Of course I do.’

‘I want you to remove her from the special patients’ cases. Transfer her to another department, another unit. Whatever you do, I want this seen to as soon as possible.’

‘You can consider it done, Doctor Campbell.’

‘Good. I also want you to keep a closer watch on those patients from this day on. We can’t afford for another to go missing like that.’

While David responded with a series of ‘sure’ and ‘of course’, Campbell drifted off for a moment. He wondered where those missing ‘special patients’ went, and who took them away. Matt Peters was the most recent to join the others. It was very worrying, especially after news had gotten out, creating a spate of discussion. The hospital management wasn’t too happy to learn about that.

It was dirty laundry meant to be kept from the public – patients going without a trace from a reputable hospital isn’t exactly something glorifying.

Campbell knew the top management has a threshold for this absurdity. It was only a matter a time before they start conducting internal raids and investigations, all to solve this ‘disappearing mystery’ once and for all.
Campbell can’t blow his cover, not when he knew he was getting closer to the success he had been working painstakingly towards for years.

‘Doctor Campbell?’ David’s nasal voice piped back up amidst Campbell’s thoughts, ‘the confidential files you’ve requested earlier this morning are already on your desk.’

‘Good.’

‘And don’t forget you have an appointment at 4 today with the journalist from Newsweek.’

‘Will do, thanks.’

Giving David a pat on his shoulders, Campbell left the washroom for the privacy of his own office. Sure, his eager understudy Doctor David Hartman had been more than a capable assistant, but there had been times where Campbell suspected his enthusiasm to be driven by personal agendas.

You had better not want to play me out, David. The black doctor thought to himself. I’m a lot smarter than that.

Locking the office door behind him, Campbell strode to his desk chair and sank into the fine cushioning. All these research for the cure; all these constant guardedness, it was taking a toll on him.

The whitewashed walls of his office interiors were lined with framed articles – all snipped out carefully from various newspapers and magazines.

Doctor from Salvation City salvages victim of car accident… The doctor with the miraculous healing hands… Salvation City Hospital: Outstanding Doctor of the year – Doctor A. Campbell…Miracle neurosurgeon Campbell saves again.

It was undisputable that Campbell was the most renowned neurosurgeon in the entire state.
Reaching for the small stack of confidential files David had piled neatly upon his desk, Campbell opened the oldest one from the lot.
Crisp pages of his ex-patients details were turned. His ex- special patients that had gone without a trace.

Meghan Jones…Talan Adams…Taylor Adams…
These were the few that had inexplicably gone missing during, or shortly after their stay in the hospital.

It seemed simple enough: a patient in critical conditions is rushed into the hospital. The hospital management, aware of Campbell’s reputation as the miracle healer, would alert him of the case.
With David Hartman and a few other trusted helpers, Campbell would gear up for the operation, employing his specially formulated techniques on the dying patient.

In its primitive stages, his techniques didn’t work quite as well.

But as of late, with constant research and improvements, it has brought even the most hopeless patients sputtering back to life.

The technique – or the solution – was working.

The only loophole now was that these patients Campbell saved with the solution all suffered bizarre side-effects.
Their body could do things normal human beings couldn’t. It was as though they were mutants created by the solution.
Campbell certainly couldn’t let the management or the rest of the world know about the patients and their side-effects; or the fact that they had all been subjected unknowingly as white mice to test out the workability of the solution.

He could be sued; jailed. It was not legal.

And so he concocted reasons for patients subjected with the solution to return constantly for follow-up appointments: if they show signs of the side-effects, he would re-admit them into the hospital and engage them in phase two immediately.
And until he save his first patient with the solution, without him developing any side-effects thereafter, would he then achieve the perfect cure he was after.

He knew he was getting close.

It so seemed like Campbell had everything under control, until some of his special patients began to disappear mysteriously: either vanishing from their wards shortly after their operations, or not turning up ever again for their follow-up appointments.

Matt Peters was the latest to join the group.

Campbell swore to himself he wouldn’t give up the search for these runaways. He would get them someday.

Matthew Forbes.

Torrents of emotions surged through Campbell’s head when his name reached the last on the ‘missing patients’ list. Forbes was once his best friend in the hospital, and also his very first test subject. He had then ran away and remained in hiding after realizing the whole of Campbell’s agenda.
Campbell had tried, but had gotten no news of Matthew Forbes ever since.
As long as news of his decease has yet to reach Campbell’s ears, he knew Forbes and what he knew could be his greatest danger.

He has to find Forbes and kill him.

(to be continued)