Vitamin Sea

by Maia Ross

  “They must think we misconfigured Scooter’s IV machine and overdosed him. But I wrote the order and checked the flow rate, and Emily checked it as well. He wasn’t even on that high of a dose...” Julian trailed off, looking around helplessly.

  “Everything will be all right, dear. We have to listen to what they have to say. Everyone just wants to know what happened. Listen, don’t talk, all right?” I was sure Julian hadn’t done anything wrong. Certainly, doctors made mistakes. I’d been peripherally involved with a witness whose surgical team had removed the wrong testicle, but those types of mistakes were rare. Plus, that particular individual kind of deserved it. In any case, life was not about being perfect, it was about doing one’s best, and Julian and the EMTs had. I’d seen them work the code.

  A knock on the door. Nettie DeWitt opened it a smidgen, then closed it quietly behind her.

  “Nettie!” I said, jumping up. “It’s been ages. Thank you for coming.”

  “Irma, darling,” she said in that airy way of hers as she kissed both of my cheeks. “So wonderful to see you.”

  I stood back and looked at her. She was an inch taller than I, an accident of nature I tried not to hold against her. She was Black, her hair done in short, elegant twists, a stylish linen summer suit wrapped snugly around her trim figure. She wore sensible shoes, carried a big briefcase, and was one of the best malpractice lawyers in North America. And she just happened to owe me a favour.

  “Nettie DeWitt, this is my good friend, Dr. Julian Harper. Julian, this is Nettie.”

  She reached out her hand, tilting her head to indicate me. “Did you know we used to go clubbing in New York City in the seventies?”

  I laughed, and a smile almost—almost—hatched on Julian’s face. I thought about telling him she also hired me to break into her island estate once or twice a year and test its security. Just for fun, really. I read the room and decided to tuck the thought away for later.

  “Irma, darling, I need to speak to my client for a minute.”

  “Of course. You’re in good hands, Julian.” I slipped out and made my way to the squad’s kitchenette, thankful Nettie had been available. I couldn’t be sure that the local police wouldn’t try to railroad Julian to explain away Scooter’s overdose. They were a good lot, but the new chief had inherited a stellar set of crime closure stats, and I didn’t want Julian to end up sucked into a difficult situation to keep those numbers sweet.

  Also, I was a firm believer in not speaking to local law enforcement without the very best legal representation. Plus, I was annoyed after being up half the night to protest my innocence in Mr. Doe’s untimely demise. I had come home to retire and have a bit of peace and quiet, but I had to say I was experiencing a wider range of emotions than I usually did when summering on Beaver Island.

  I warmed up the kettle and fished a tea bag out of my purse.

  “So nice to see you again, Mrs. Abercrombie,” Mavis Pickle—Chief Mavis Pickle—said.

  I’d seen her come into the room out of the corner of my eye—people sometimes thought I had eyes in the back of my head, but the reality was I had excellent peripheral vision and a small head. Just lucky, I guess. “How are you, Chief?” I plopped my tea bag into the water.

  “Dr. Harper is conferring with an attorney?” she replied, in an equally saccharine tone. She was late forties, olive-skinned, husky but in a feminine way, and had the tiniest feet I’d ever seen on someone taller than me. Her eyes were sharp, just like her features, and her dark hair was pulled back from her face tight enough to give her a mini-facelift. I wondered if that was the source of her perpetual crankiness and I briefly considered, then dismissed, the idea of suggesting a hairdo re-tooling. I didn’t want to seem too familiar. Chief Pickle, formerly of Wawa, Ontario, had only been in town for four months.

  “Just Nettie DeWitt.” I arched my brows pleasantly. “She happened to be around. Any leads on Mr. Doe’s identity?”

  She didn’t glare at me right away, which was nice. On top of my not exactly pleasant questioning last night, she’d recently arrested a dear friend of mine for barely any reason at all, and we were going to be chilly to one other for a while, I could see. It was a shame.

  “An investigation is underway, Mrs. Abercrombie.”

  I nodded, blowing on my teacup. “Lovely.”

  She stepped closer to me, so I stepped closer to her. If this kept up I’d be able to see up her nose soon. She made a frustrated noise deep in her throat. “And may I ask you why you want to sit in on this discussion?”

  “Julian asked me to come. He’s here as a courtesy, is he not?”

  There was a beat.

  “Let’s see if Julian is finished conferring with his attorney,” the Pickle said, a tense expression settling over her face. I tried not to sigh. It was hard to run a police department as a young woman, I was sure. And I knew on good authority she was both smart and capable. She was just a little too by-the-book and seemed, for some reason, to have a bee in her bonnet about me.

  “After you,” I said.

  “You first,” she replied, a little bite in her words. “I insist.”

  I flashed her a smile. “Of course, dear.”

  We proceeded to the meeting room, where I took a seat beside Julian and sandwiched him pleasantly between me and Nettie.

  The Pickle settled herself opposite us. “Well, this is all a bit odd, I have to say,” she said.

  “In what way?” Nettie asked. She had her game face on: a pleasant smile, her expression purely one of helpfulness. At her core? Molten lava.

  “We don’t normally see malpractice attorneys showing up for routine discussions.”

  “But it’s well within Julian’s rights, so we don’t need to dwell on that,” Nettie said smoothly.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t bring in the clinic’s attorneys.”

  “Do we need to?” Nettie asked. “Because I can get them.”

  There was a pause while a distinct undercurrent of unfriendliness lodged itself in the room.

  “Well, thank you for coming in, everyone. This is just a casual conversation at this point in the investigative process. Our only goal is to determine what happened to Mr. Van Oot.” Mavis cleared her throat before continuing. “Julian, can you please recount what happened after Sean Van Oot was admitted to your clinic?”

  Julian ran her through the stats; Scooter’s left lung was partially collapsed but he’d been stable and ready for transport. They had given him blood and were administering oxygen and pain management meds until he went into distress. They’d discontinued the propanifen at the clinic after determining an overdose and administered Narcan while they transported him to a mainland hospital.

  “And who was responsible for configuring and administering Mr. Van Oot’s IV drip?” the Pickle said, her tone a bit too forced to be the casual inflection she was aiming for. She was good, though.

  “Emily Park,” Julian said. He looked, suddenly, ten years older. “It’s standard protocol for the nursing staff to administer meds. I wrote the orders; she administered them.”

  “And did you check on the drip yourself?”

  Julian nodded.

  “Is that normal procedure?” Mavis added.

  Nettie’s shoulders twitched slightly. I could see she was weighing the thought of telling Julian not to answer.

  “At my clinic, yes. We don’t get a lot of critical patients, so it’s generally all hands on deck when we do.” Julian’s tone was firm, and I felt a flash of pride. What a lovely young man he’d turned into.

  Nettie put her hand on Julian’s. “He’s a conscientious medical professional with a strong sense of duty. That’s not a crime, is it?”

  I could see the chief was considering rendering it illegal. I itched to say something, but the only way Nettie had allowed me to be in this meeting at all was if I promised to keep my mouth shut. Which I’d done. Twice.

  “And nurse Emily did as well?” the Pickle continued.

  “Yes.
We were concerned about—”

  Again, Nettie reached out for Julian’s hand. “He was concerned about his patient. Which is why he is such a good doctor. Certainly, you thought so when he splinted your ankle after you twisted it at the Easter Egg Roll at the Club a few months ago.”

  That hung in the air nicely for a moment.

  “Why propanifen and not morphine or another, more common pain reliever?”

  “Scooter is allergic,” Julian said.

  “No chance you picked propanifen because it’s manufactured by Scooter’s family, was there?”

  “Part of the reason the Van Oots developed the drug was because most of the family is allergic to morphine and its derivatives. If prescribed judiciously, it is the correct clinical choice.”

  “I see. And how long had he been medicated by the IV drip?”

  Julian pressed his hands on the table in front of us. “A little over an hour.”

  “And how much propanifen would have been administered to him during that time?”

  “Probably two or three millilitres.”

  “And would they have administered any more propanifen at the mainland hospital?” Mavis was sitting forward in her chair now, and it took all of my energy for me to not do the same. What intel was she sitting on?

  “It would have been contraindicated at that point,” Julian said.

  “But it’s possible they might have made an error at the hospital,” Nettie interjected smoothly.

  “How much propanifen was in the IV bag Scooter was connected to at the clinic?”

  “Fifty millilitres.”

  “Why so much? If he was only given one or two?”

  “We don’t have a pharmacist on duty. We have pre-filled bags. And fifty millilitres of liquid is about the size of a large shot glass. It’s not a significant amount.”

  “I see,” Mavis said, and when she continued, her voice was pleasant and friendly, which made something cold zing right up the back of my spine. “And do you know how much medication was left in the IV bag when you disconnected it from Scooter?”

  Julian looked down at his hands, his shoulders bowed. Sometimes the weight of horrible events made innocent people act guilty, which was what was happening right now. The silence stretched on until I was almost bursting out of my clothes.

  Thankfully, Nettie stepped in. “I expect Dr. Harper will have to refer to his notes on that point.”

  Mavis shifted in her chair. If we were playing poker, would that be her tell? “Emily Park relayed to me that the propanifen IV bag was empty when we questioned her last night. We all just want to get to the bottom of this, Dr. Harper. No one is accusing you of anything.”

  So she’d already known the answer when she’d asked the question. Sneaky. Was it wrong that it made me like her more?

  “What happened to Mr. Van Oot was that he’s a sedentary diabetic with sleep apnea who was shot in the lung, and had lost a fair bit of blood.” Julian’s voice was too loud for the small room.

  Nettie held her hand out. “What Dr. Harper is saying is that these are complex medical matters, Sergeant Pickle. A hasty answer now serves no one. Maybe the kidnapper administered some narcotics to Scooter. To keep him docile. Maybe some of the clinic equipment was faulty in some way. We just can’t know definitively at this moment.”

  The Pickle’s lips thinned. “Chief Pickle.” After a deep breath, she said to Julian, “Is that what happened—a problem with the equipment? It’s the only clinic on the island, and everyone passes through there at one time or another. If there’s trouble with any of the medical devices, it’s in everyone’s best interests if it’s dealt with immediately. Don’t you agree?”

  “Not faulty equipment.” Julian was still looking down at the table.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “No, it was not faulty equipment.” Julian met the new chief’s eyes.

  “Julian,” Nettie singsonged, putting her hand on his arm. To Mavis, she said, “We obviously, logically, can’t know that at this point, so my client retracts his statement.”

  “We returned to the clinic after we got the call about Mr. Van Oot’s overdose, and we reviewed the room he was treated in,” the Pickle said. “We’ve closed the clinic for now and taken the IV stand into our custody.”

  “That’s fine,” Julian replied.

  “We also took the propanifen IV bag.”

  “Also fine.”

  “And empty.” She paused. “What would you say if I told you that it had no holes or tears or anything wrong with it at all?”

  Nettie glanced at me. Both of us knew the police were allowed to lie to suspects. Between us, Julian took a deep breath, and another. Then he opened his mouth again. In my mind, I took a running leap at the table and flew through the air until I knocked the words out of his mouth and him out of his chair. To protect him, obviously. But in reality, he exclaimed, “We—”

  Nettie put her hand over Julian’s with enough force to make him wince. “I’m advising my client not to answer that question,” she said, her voice as casual as if she was asking about someone’s apple pie recipe.

  But Julian couldn’t be stilled. “That IV stand is cutting-edge technology. It was not faulty equipment.”

  The silence after that was agonizing.

  Softly, Chief Pickle said, “The results from the bloodwork at the hospital show that Mr. Van Oot’s blood opioid saturation was at an almost lethal percentage. How do you explain that, Dr. Harper?”

  “The test to determine propanifen levels takes a few days to complete. Once the hospital runs some more complex bloodwork, the results will speak for themselves,” Julian said. But his left foot was tapping the floor like it did when he was nervous.

  “I certainly hope so,” the chief said, a friendly expression that did not cheer me up at all now pasted on her face. “Well, thanks for your time, everyone. It’s been very edifying.” Then she informed us that she’d be in contact when the next round of test results was in. A little melodramatically, if you wanted my opinion.

  Nettie left us outside after reassuring Julian everything was going to turn out just fine. For one long moment, I wished his mother was here. Julian’s bravado from the meeting was gone, and he was standing on the sidewalk in a suit and looking down like he did when he was eight and he’d been naughty, like he could hide in one of the cracks.

  “Why don’t you come stay with me for a few days?” I said gently. “I have lots of room.”

  He raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed and sadness shot through me. I didn’t like to dwell on negative emotions—they were a waste of energy—but I let myself wallow for a brief moment.

  And then it was over. “What do you say?” I prodded.

  “Chief Pickle was right that the IV bag was empty. I noticed it when Scooter coded.”

  I tried to keep the alarm out of my voice. “Could it have been leaking?”

  “That’s what I assumed during the code. The medicine bags have a valve, and I thought maybe it wasn’t closed properly, that the meds had leaked onto the floor somehow. And I was so focused on the fact it’s impossible to overdose someone using those IV stands it never occurred to me the propanifen was at fault when I was treating Scooter. I assumed either he or the kidnapper had dosed him with another narcotic before he came into the clinic.”

  “I’m sure that’s what happened, Julian.”

  “I have to look at the machine. I have to see what went wrong. The chief is right—if there’s a problem with the IV machines, it has to get sorted out right away.”

  “The police have it, dear.”

  “I know what to do.” He met my eyes, a glimmer of an idea in his. He was so intense I felt a little startled.

  “What?”

  “One of the same IV machines is getting fixed at Stu’s hardware store. All the machines the clinic bought should all set up exactly the same and I can go through the interface of the one at Stu’s to verify everything was configured correctly.” He started moving away f
rom me, down Main Street. The overstuffed flower baskets hanging from the old-fashioned gas lampposts swayed in the wind, a riot of purple and pink and green over our heads. I followed him.

  After a few blocks of lovely fast-walking that really got my cardiovascular system going, Julian stopped in front of the hardware store and opened the door with so much force I was surprised it stayed on its hinges. Attached to the front door was an illustrated poster of a beaver wearing a jaunty captain’s hat, standing on the deck of a wooden cartoon sailboat, flashing me a toothy grin.

  Inside the store one of my best friends, Stuart Barker, held sway at the back counter. He enjoyed the part of the job where he could watch his favourite fishing shows on the small TV he’d mounted on the wall. Since he was the owner, this was actually written into his job description, and it all worked out beautifully.

  “Irma!” he said, as bombastically as he always did.

  “Stu!” I replied in kind. We’d been doing this since we were seven and eight.

  His grin deepened the wrinkles on his tanned cheeks. His legendary beard, which usually rested on his chest, had been braided into two plaits, most likely the work of his four-and-a-half-year-old niece, a tiny tyrant in pink who, it must be said, I’d spent a not-insignificant amount of energy encouraging.

  “What can I do you for?” Stu said, charming as always.

  “I need to see my IV stand, please,” Julian said, almost in a stammer.

  Stu straightened up. “Everything all right, son?”

  “Is it in the back?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Stu said, gesturing with his thumb.

  Julian made his way to the workshop. I was about to follow him when Stu put his hand on my shoulder. “Charlotte Van Oot called for you. She wants you to call her back.”

  “Why did she call me here?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t reach you at home.”

  “Ah.”

  He handed me his phone, and I rang Charlotte’s number. “Van Oot residence.” Antoine Ellis, her major-domo, answered the phone.

  “Oh, hello, Antoine. It’s Irma.”