Rocky smiled and looked out again at the valley. A plane was starting its descent into Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. Blinking lights, smooth line. People coming back home.
She kept hold of Mac’s hand. He didn’t let go.
8:19 p.m.
They want you to eat this.
Poison.
Don’t do it.
They won’t get to me.
It had to be this way.
Step by step, I had to do it all.
Arty, stop it! Get away.
If I hit the wall and bleed, that will be good. I can go to sleep that way.
I can bleed.
Tuesday
2:34 p.m.
This was not why Larry Mesa went into medicine.
He wanted to heal. He wanted to spend time with the sick. He wanted to be a doctor who made a difference.
What he didn’t want to be was part umpire, part politician, part circus ringmaster.
And only occasionally a doctor of medicine.
Dr. Larry Mesa had chosen LA County – USC Medical Center, with its fading green walls and yellowing ceilings, precisely because he could be where he was needed most: among the poor of the city, the ones most citizens would rather forget.
Here were the John and Jane Does, the homeless, and yes, even the gangbangers. He wanted to heal them all without judgment.
The higher-ups would not make it simple. Especially when there was a big county screwup. And especially when they told you, a doctor of medicine, how to handle a coma patient.
That was the game, when the politicians and lawyers got involved. They could crush you if you didn’t play.
Dr. Larry Mesa played, because he wanted to keep his job.
But all those concerns went away, for one sweet moment, when he saw his coma patient fluttering his eyes.
“Hello there,” Dr. Mesa said, hope swelling in his chest. To pull a patient out of a coma was one of the most awe-inspiring things a doctor could do.
The eyelids fluttered again.
“I’m Dr. Mesa. Can you hear me?”
The eyelids slowly opened, closed, opened again.
Dr. Mesa forgot all about potential lawsuits and politicians and life’s disappointments, and whispered a silent thanksgiving to God.
Right now, everything seemed worth it.
“You can hear me, can’t you?” Dr. Mesa said.
The eyelids blinked, this time with definite alertness.
Now it was just doctor and patient, man to man. The antiquated equipment and sour hospital smell could not stand between this transaction.
“Yes, yes, you’re back. Come all the way.”
“Muh . . .”
He was trying to speak! There was no uniformity about comas. Someone could be out for a day and never come all the way back. Others could be gone for a decade and one day wake up and recite the Gettysburg Address.
It was part of the marvel of biology and, perhaps, some Power beyond medical science’s limited ability to comprehend.
But there was no doubt here. This man was trying to communicate.
“I’m Dr. Mesa. Can you hear me?”
“Myn . . .”
Mine?
“Yes?” Dr. Mesa said.
“. . . name . . .”
“Yes?”
“Ar. Thur.”
So that was it. Arthur. The real name. The information Dr. Mesa now had to keep away from any other staff. The patient had an identity now. But who was he in the larger scheme of things? He’d come over as a John Doe, and there were no prints or DNA in the databases that matched.
One of the lawyers working for the county supervisors had filled Mesa in on what was at stake. This was a case of thanatomimesis, which had happened before in the chaos that was the county morgue. A body thought to be dead is discovered, just before an autopsy — or, horror of horrors, during it — to be alive.
Barely, but alive.
But there was more. They’d nabbed a medical assistant in some sort of bizarre scheme. A body switch. The lawyer didn’t give Dr. Mesa all the details — and he really didn’t want to know, to tell the truth — but whoever was behind the mess had put a false Doe tag on this Arthur.
Why? Did somebody discover he was alive and want to cover it up somehow? Then there was the other part of this strange tale. The lawyer wouldn’t say much, except that there was a pushed-through autopsy and a cremation that shouldn’t have happened. Some other poor John Doe had gone to the crematorium. Mesa had heard of the mortuary in question and knew it was not one of the more reputable in town.
If any of this broke, it would be major lawsuit time. 60 Minutes time. Geraldo on steroids.
Those were the lawyer’s exact words. Geraldo on steroids.
Mesa told himself to be very, very careful.
“Arthur?” Dr. Mesa said.
Eyelids blinked.
“I’m Dr. Mesa.”
“Arthur.”
“Yes?”
“Towne.”
“Town? You’re in Los Angeles.”
“No.”
“No? ”
“Arthur. Towne.”
“Arthur Towne? That’s your name?”
The patient’s eyes grew wider, life seeming to pour back into him by the second. “My wife,” he said. “Where’s my wife?”
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Deceived
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Saturday
Monday
Tuesday
About the Publisher
Share Your Thoughts
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Deceived Page 28