Operation Subdue
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Operation Subdue
A Medical Suspense Novel
Operation Subdue
A Medical Suspense Novel
By: R.J. Castille
Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement (including infringement without monetary gain) is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. Please purchase only through authorized electronic editions and do not participate in any kind of piracy of copyrighted materials. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of writer or publisher.
©2019 R.J. Castille
DEDICATION
For Richard
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Erica Bankston Stokes, my editor, for always taking on my projects, even if I am a pain in the ass.
Trish Adelsperger, my mother, for always being there for me, for listening and for helping me through.
Love Jones, my official plot-twist consultant, you never let me down.
Contents
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-Epilogue-
-1-
Ragan
The hard, rubber surface of the waiting room chair I sat in was uncomfortable. I had already been waiting over an hour, my head pounding and my chest full of strange fluttering sensations, yet it still seemed everyone in the place was being called back before me. That was the exact reason I never went to what we, the patients, referred to as Eventual Care.
It was a joke, for the most part. They took your vitals, announced that everything was in order and shuffled you out the door. Despite the obvious symptoms: slightly elevated blood pressure; a pulse that seemed a little racier than normal; and a handful of other small things that may lead someone to believe something was amiss. Not at Kellogg Premier Healthcare. It was always the same, making the patient feel maybe it’s all in their head.
I knew it was rude as hell to lay down in the waiting room, so I leaned as far over as I could to rest my head on the top of the waiting room chair without encroaching on what would be considered another patient’s seat. Closing my eyes tight to shut out the nauseating sensation caused by the false lighting overhead, I concentrated on breathing and hoped the time would pass a lot faster than it was.
According to the marquise-type sign fixed to the wall above my head, there was approximately an hour and a half wait time to be pulled to the back. I almost sighed out loud when the door cracked open underneath it and a short, pudgy nurse stuck her head out. Her eyes scanned the waiting crowd of people that grew by the minute for a brief moment before she opened her mouth to announce who the lucky patient was that would no longer have to wait. Grumblings of disappointment echoed across the space as each person realized it was not yet their turn. I, myself, just closed my eyes again and attempted to remain as comfortable as I possibly could.
When the same nurse finally peered out of the doorway and called my name, I almost jumped up as quickly as I could, but thought better of it. I was still quite dizzy and was unsure how my body would handle the sudden change of position. Instead, I acknowledged her with a slight nod and eased myself off the seat cushion. Making my way across the waiting area, I noticed several patients glare up at me but stuffed the images of their disappointed stare into the recesses of my mind as I passed. I must say, I was overjoyed to finally be pulled to the back.
Once I breached the doorway and followed the nurse down the hallway, it was the same old routine. Weight, temperature, blood pressure, which I suspected by the way I was feeling was only slightly improved since I had a nurse where I worked take it, discovered it to be higher than I was comfortable with and was shuffled out the door by the CFO who stated that he would inform my boss why I had left work.
“I’ve seen higher,” was all the woman said as she scribbled the numbers 145/103 onto a scrap of paper and shoved it into the front pocket of her scrub top. I almost rolled my eyes at her, just enough to make her feel bad for saying things like that to a patient who had come to their establishment in order to seek relief, only to find sarcasm and disbelief from the medical professionals who were charged with my care. She was the epitome of why I hated Kellogg Premier. To them, I was just a medical record number and a dollar sign, and nothing more. They made it quite obvious when everything I ever went to them for help with was summarily shoved under the proverbial rug with the rest of peoples’ concerns and ignored. Instead of looking for the source of the problem, they tended to mask the symptoms with a prescription or two and call it a day.
Shaking my head in disappointment, knowing that I was just wasting my precious time there, I followed her the rest of the way down the corridor to an exam room where she announced that the doctor would be with me shortly. I nodded in her direction, not feeling the usual gratitude I felt toward people in our industry and watched as she spun around on her heel, closed the door behind her and disappeared from sight.
Quite some time later, a soft knock at the door alerted me that someone was preparing to enter the room. Immediately after the knock, a short, Asian woman cracked the door enough to push her tiny head through the opening. She made eye contact with me before she finished opening the door and slowly entered the room.
“Ms. Jensen?” there always seemed to be a question when it came to the medical world. Since I worked in healthcare, I knew how important it was to ensure that you were talking to the right patient, however, it always made me feel like they were disconnected and aloof, not even extending the courtesy of looking at the chart of whomever they were seeing next.
“Yes, that’s me,” the sound of slight irritation escaped my lips as I looked on, waiting for her to continue. She shifted her weight between her feet nervously as she looked from me to the computer monitor across from the exam table and made her way to it. Without another word, she typed a few things onto the keyboard below the monitor and pulled up what I could see was my medical record.
“So, you are here for chest pain and elevated blood pressure?” another set of questions spewed forth as her eyes shifted between me and the screen in front of her. Again, I simply nodded as she typed a few more things onto the computer before looking up at me, an expectant look on her face, impatiently waiting for me to elaborate.
“I know that you wouldn’t necessarily consider my blood pressure high, doctor, but for me it really is,” I watched her nod, a half-smile frozen in place on her face, as if it were a rehearsed reaction. I dismissed the notion and continued to explain what happened. “I started feeling it on Saturday, my chest felt strange, almost a fluttering sensation followed by intermittent headaches, shortness of breath and sometimes blurred vision. I did my best to relax over the weekend, figuring it must have been stress-related, but it did no good. By this morning, it was still there, and I was getting quite nervous about it, so I stopped at a local Wal-Mart by my house on my way down this morning to take my blood pressure. It was higher then, but as you can see, it is still slightly elevated.”
“It’s not really that high, Ms.
Jenson,” again with the dismissive attitude. I was beginning to feel like the entire trip had been a waste and I rarely went to the doctor’s in the first place. That was part of the reason. It seemed that no matter what was going on, no matter how horrible I felt, there was “nothing wrong,” and they would shove me out the door with another bottle of pills in my hand that was probably just to make me feel better in the first place. “Just to be safe, and because you are stating you are having chest pain, I am ordering an EKG be done right away and we will go from there.”
I went through the motions of course, even knowing I was just wasting my time there. My boss had called me as I pulled into the parking lot and instructed me to go home from there after I had finished. I was a little relieved because I definitely was not feeling my best and knew that something was off. I also knew that it would likely be dismissed, as it usually was, and written off as something in my lifestyle that created the symptoms and not something more serious. That’s how it seemed to go at Kellogg Premier and I unfortunately could not afford to pay the out of pocket for the PPO health insurance at my place of employment, or I would have fired them a long time before. The doctors, nurses and specialists there were nothing but a source of distress for me, which seemed counter-productive, and they never seemed to get to the bottom of…anything.
After the urgent care physician left the room, I was alone with my thoughts, lamenting the fact that it didn’t matter what I went in for, all they ever cared about was whether or not I had my Pap smear. That was another source of angst for me, something I experienced in the past that caused me to avoid the procedure altogether, but they didn’t care about that, they just wanted their bonus from the government for meeting their quota of screenings. I happened to know that for each one a healthcare provider does, the government kicks back at least three-hundred dollars in incentive monies and it didn’t matter what you were being seen for, if you had not had yours in the allotted time frame, you were targeted. That’s how it always went, and I expected nothing different that time. I had only gone because my employer insisted on it and in order to avoid having my time off converted to unscheduled sick leave, I had to produce a document saying I had actually gone. I otherwise may have gotten up and stormed out of the back office.
Instead, I sat waiting again. Time slid by as I listened for any indication that someone was coming back to my room in the far corner of the urgent care exam room area. I picked up my cell phone that I had stashed away as soon as the doctor entered the room knowing that it was frowned upon to be on your phone while the doctor was in the room trying to record your primary complaint and all the pertinent details. Touching the screen, it quickly came to life and I opened my messages and looked for the last one that had come in from my boss. Finding it quickly, I tapped the message thread and crafted an update to her that I was waiting on the nurse to get an EKG and then the doctor would come back and see me. Before closing the messages, I sent a quick update to my boyfriend as well, letting him know I was alright and what was happening at the moment. As I finished the message and hit send, a quiet knock at the door alerted me to someone’s presence.
“Hello, Ms. Jensen?” a tall, slender, scrub-laden female with beautiful blonde hair peeked inside the room. I would normally have been annoyed by yet another question, but her very presence was for some reason quite soothing. As she opened the door the rest of the way and smiled at me, I noticed it. Her smile, unlike the others, was genuine. The way she approached me, bringing her positive energy into the room that wrapped me in a blanket of comfort, instantly had me at ease. “I’m Elaine Cooper, a Registered Nurse here at Kellogg Premier. I’m here to do your EKG.”
I looked on as she smiled at me again, her eyes lighting up as she glanced in my direction before busying herself with some packaging she held in her hand. After sticking the leads on my chest and on top of my ribcage, she looped the longest one down and had me pull down my stockings before sticking one to either ankle. That part struck me as strange. I had no clue why they had to place leads on my ankle when they were targeting my heart. Dismissing the thought, I glanced to my right as Ms. Cooper brought the EKG machine to life which scribbled away, its arms jumping each time my heart beat, drawing a line on the continuous stream of paper on the surface of the machine. After several seconds, Elaine stopped the machine, pulled the paper free from the EKG and glanced at it quickly before making a few notes directly on it.
“You can put your stockings back on, Ms. Jensen. I will get this to the doctor right away and she should be back in to see you soon.” Elaine’s calming voice washed over me, soothing me from the inside out as she spoke. I nodded at her and mumbled something even I could not comprehend as I lay back and closed my eyes. I heard the door click as she exited and shut it securely behind her as I breathed slowly through pursed lips, trying to relax again.
As I waited for an eternity for the doctor to return, I couldn’t help but think about Elaine. Her disposition was quite different from any of the other nurses I had encountered at Kellogg Premier, one of the largest health care organizations in the United States. Most of the staff were disconnected and seemed to be just going through the motions. Ms. Cooper, on the other hand, had a different air about her completely. There was something about her that I could not quite place and not in a bad way. It occurred to me that she could be new, not yet poisoned or programmed, whatever it was that made them all seem so sterile and dismissive. I silently wished that there were more Elaine Coopers in the organization.
A short time later, the doctor returned, my EKG paper in her hand. She entered my room in a flurry, her intensity immediately apparent as she glanced between the paper in her hand, me and the waiting computer monitor that still had my medical record up. Instead of regarding me again, she went immediately to the computer and started typing. After several minutes, she finally glanced over her shoulder at me, regarding me out of the corner of her eye.
“Ms. Jensen, your EKG looks normal, but since you are reporting experiencing chest pain along with the slight elevation of your blood pressure, I need to order a few tests to rule out some things. I am putting in a lab order, you need to get a chest x-ray and I would like you to come back for a treadmill stress test,” she never looked at me as she spoke, she just kept typing, her eyes glossing over me as if I was just furniture in the room. Her instructions were clear, but I could not help but notice how disinterested she appeared in what she was doing. My mind was screaming that something was wrong with that picture, but I stuffed it back down into the recesses of my brain for later. It was not the time to panic and make a scene. I knew I was, yet again being dismissed, and could do nothing about it. They were in control there and unless something was glaringly obvious, I knew it would just be overlooked yet again.
The doctor finished up, clicked a few buttons on the mouse and informed me my paperwork will be waiting for me at the nurses’ station. She further advised me that everything will be sent to my primary for follow-up and that I should make an appointment to see her in the next few weeks. I thanked her for her time, although I felt it wasn’t really necessary seeing as she had done next to nothing for me and watched as she sauntered out the door.
I gathered my things, sighing out loud to the empty exam room. Once I had my personal belongings in hand, I opened the door and made my way to the long counter we had passed on our way in. I stood for several seconds waiting for someone to acknowledge me, the nurses and support staff were scurrying about, some staring blankly at a computer screen in front of them, some had a phone propped up in between their ear and their shoulder. Finally, after waiting for quite some time, I cleared my throat loudly to get their attention.
“Yes, how can I help you?” stated a younger gentleman who finally looked up from what he was doing and practically shot daggers in my direction with his eyes for interrupting him. Whatever he was staring at on the glowing computer screen in front of him was obviously far more important than I was, and he made that quite clear.
“I am just waiting for my after-visit summary and instructions,” I tried to keep my tone neutral, void of the irritation that I was feeling with the whole group. With the exception of Elaine Cooper, every single person in the place had practically brushed me off. It made me feel like, unless I was falling out on the floor, practically dying, I would be glossed over and that part had me fuming. I made a mental note to check on the cost of switching to the better insurance as soon as open enrollment came.
The young man sighed loudly, clicked a few things with his mouse and spun around on his chair to retrieve several pages that printed out behind him. He circled and highlighted several things before pushing the stack of papers across the counter toward me and went back to what he was doing. Without another word, I turned and made my way to the exit, reading the instructions he had highlighted as I went.
I checked in at the lab and took my seat amongst numerous people who were waiting their turn to be pricked by the house vampires. A large screen above an open doorway had several names listed, first initial followed by last name, with a number next to the listing. As more names flashed across the screen, several people hopped up from their seats and walked toward the opening. It was almost robotic the way they moved across the space; their eyes glazed over as if they had been waiting forever for their name to be announced.