***********************************************

* Title : #015 : MURDER WARD *

* Series : The Destroyer *

* Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *

* Location : Gillian Archives *

***********************************************

CHAPTER ONE

Dr. Daniel Demmet was a true professional. When he decided it was time to kill his patient, he first made sure that the critical body functions were doing well. He checked the electrocardiogram screen, as he had been checking it since the patient had been wheeled into the operating room of the Robler Clinic, one of the finer hospitals just outside of Baltimore. Dr. Demmet sat on a stool behind the patient's head, from which point, as a modern anaesthesiologist, he could best supervise and protect the patient's hold on life. The surgeon, working a few feet from him, was too busy rearranging the body with instruments to worry about him. The surgeon worked on the appendix; the anaesthesiologist worked on the patient.

The screen showed normal sinus rhythm, a sharp beeping line across the screen, which caught the electrical impulses from the heart. At the first stage of trouble, the wave would become ectopic, indicating cardiac malfunction.

On the screen, death was a smooth flowing line, with little hills; life was sharp and discordant. What Dr. Demmet continuously looked at was the line that guaranteed life. Perfect. A perfect sinus rhythm. The low hill, the deep valley, the high peak, another valley, and then the pattern all over again. All this in a beep. Life.

Perfect. But then, why shouldn't it be? The patient was healthy, and Dr. Demmet had done his job well, in the best tradition of modern, balanced anaesthesia. Gone were the days when good doctors would knock out a patient with a single massive dose of a potentially lethal chemical, with the inevitable residual toxicity that left the recovering patient nauseated, uncomfortable, and, sometimes, in pain.