by Jaime Maddox
Reese headed quickly in the other direction, toward the trauma bays, where an elderly patient awaited her. “Mr. Park, your CT scans are all normal. I’m going to put two stitches in your forehead, and then your daughter will pick you up.”
“What about my car?” he asked for the fifth time.
Reese had seen the pictures, and Mr. Park was lucky to be alive. His car was barely recognizable. When she’d called his daughter, Reese had initiated a discussion about his ability to safely operate a vehicle at the age of eighty-five, and his daughter had seemed relieved to hear Reese’s opinion.
“I think you should rest for a few days, Mr. Park. No driving. And then you need to have a complete physical by your doctor, to make sure you can still safely drive.”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, the scowl on his face telling her exactly how he felt about any such discussion with his doctor.
As Reese prepped his skin and injected the anesthesia, she tuned out Mr. Park’s tirade. Every eighty-five-year-old thought they were the safest driver on the road, yet the statistics didn’t lie. People his age were involved in more collisions than any other group except teenagers, and much more likely to die from the injuries. It wasn’t something he wanted to hear, she knew that. But he needed to, and if she said it, and his daughter repeated it, and his family doctor reinforced it, perhaps they’d collectively help keep Mr. Park alive a while longer.
The skin came together beautifully, and Reese pulled the drape back from over his face to find his flecked-blue eyes squinting at her. “You’re not taking my car, Doctor.”
Reese bent and placed a playful kiss on his nose. “I have my own car, Mr. Park. And it doesn’t have any dents in it.”
He wiped away the kiss and brushed her away with his hand, and Reese laughed as she skipped out of the room and headed for the critical-care area. “You can leave as soon as your daughter gets here.”
The medics were just pushing a stretcher through the door, and when the crowd cleared she saw the familiar face of Millie Nathan.
Skirting the human traffic, Reese reached the stretcher and grabbed her hand. “What kind of trouble are you up to this time?”
Looking quite comfortable, Millie winked at Reese. “I’m so happy to see you, Christine. You always take such good care of me.”
Reese swallowed an unexpected tear. Indeed, she’d been taking care of Millie Nathan since she’d arrived in the ER in Scranton more than a decade earlier, but their relationship went back much further. Four decades. She’d known Mrs. Nathan her entire life.
“Do you realize you’re dating yourself by calling me Christine? Ever since Cass could talk, she’s called me Reese. No one calls me Christine anymore. Even my mom gave up.”
“It’s more feminine, so if you don’t mind, I’m going against the tide.”
Reese didn’t comment about her obvious lack of femininity, and she knew Mrs. Nathan wasn’t judging her. It was nothing personal, but professionally, she was pleased by their banter. Mrs. Nathan’s brain was working just fine, a sure sign that her oxygen level was adequate. “You don’t seem short of breath. Is the oxygen helping?” Reese asked, and when Millie nodded, she continued. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel right. I’m terribly tired, and weak. And then this morning, I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath.”
“No chest pain? Pain anywhere?” Reese asked as she glanced at the heart monitor.
“No.”
“Here’s the EKG,” the nurse said as she handed it to Reese. It showed damage, evidence of enlargement Reese knew toxic doses of chemotherapy had caused, but she saw nothing new on the EKG. Nothing to suggest a recent heart attack as the cause of her new symptoms.
“Looks good.” She returned the EKG to the nurse and began her exam. All the typical signs of heart failure were missing. She found no distention of the neck veins, no swelling of the legs, no congestion of the liver. And for someone with a bad heart, Millie’s oxygen level was pretty damn good. Her heart rate, though, was way too fast and her blood pressure a bit low.
Reese opened the room’s laptop computer and pulled up Millie’s chart. “Let me refresh my memory, here. Any changes to your medications?” Reese read the list, and Millie indicated that it was correct. “Allergic to penicillin?” she asked.
“Yes, since my bone-marrow transplant.” That was a quirky phenomenon, one of the wonders of the body that fascinated Reese. When bone marrow was transplanted, the recipient often developed the donor’s allergies, indicating that the allergic response was generated in the bone marrow. She’d first seen it as a student, when one of her patients celebrated her birthday, in the ICU, with a strawberry cake. She’d immediately developed hives. After investigating, she learned later that the donor was known to have an allergy to strawberries.
Reese gave the nurse some orders and then pulled a nasal canula from the wall basket, replacing the mask covering Millie’s face.
“Oh, thank you. That thing isn’t very comfortable.”
“Well, this is the penthouse suite, Mrs. Nathan. We aim for comfort.”
Millie squinted at her. “Are you being sarcastic? I can still call your mother and tattle on you, you know.”
“We can’t have that.”
“How is your mother? And your dad? And Cass?”
Reese smiled. Her parents had just reached retirement age and hadn’t wasted a moment enjoying it. Her sister was the happiest person she knew. “They’re great. They just got back from whale-watching and hiking glaciers in Alaska. I kept Cass while they were gone.”
“Alaska?”
“Yeah,” Reese said.
Reese saw Millie’s eyes cloud over for a moment, and she couldn’t help but feel badly for her. Mr. Nathan was barely forty when he’d fallen over, the victim of clogged coronaries and good health. If he’d ever been to a doctor, his high cholesterol might have been detected in time to save him. He’d never been sick, though, not until the day he died. She’d spent the next years focusing on her own health and her children, and lately her grandchildren, but she’d never remarried. Even though she projected a happy, upbeat image, Reese suspected Millie was lonely.
“How’s Josh?” she asked, knowing the topic of her son would cheer her. The light returned to her eyes.
“He’s good. Great. He’s optimistic about getting the gun-control bill passed. All the grassroots efforts are starting to pay off, and perhaps we’ll see an end to all these mass shootings with automatic weapons.”
Reese didn’t argue with Millie. She’d spent countless hours debating guns and shootings with Millie’s son, Senator Josh Nathan, and she knew they’d never completely agree. Josh thought the solution to the problem was completely eliminating guns from society. Reese thought the key was completely eliminating mental illness from society. Since the odds of curing mental illness were slim, she wasn’t hopeful. And since no one in America was giving up their guns without a fight, she feared the consequences of Josh’s proposal. If it passed, it was likely to spawn the next civil war.
“I’m happy to hear that. He’s a good senator, Mrs. Nathan. Now, I’m going to check on some other patients, and I’ll see you when the labs and chest X-ray are done.” Reese squeezed her hand and went back to work. Thirty minutes had passed when the nurse handed her a white sheet of computer paper showing the results of Millie’s blood work.
“Well, that explains it,” she said to herself as she headed back to the penthouse suite. En route, she pulled up Millie’s chest X-ray and examined it. The heart was markedly enlarged, but the lung fields were clear, giving absolutely no clues to explain her symptoms. That was okay, though. The answer was in Reese’s hand.
“Mrs. Nathan, I have to get to know you a little better,” Reese said as she walked into the room.
“What do you mean?”
“Your blood count’s low. That’s why you’re tired and weak, and also short of breath. I need to do a rectal to see if you’re
losing blood.”
“I haven’t noticed any.”
“Most people don’t.”
“Is it absolutely necessary?” she asked, and at that moment she sounded very much like the mother of one of the most important men in Washington.
“Absolutely,” Reese answered, not in the least bit intimidated.
After easing Millie onto her side, Reese procured her sample and smeared it onto a cardboard tester. After adding a few drops of developer, she watched the paper turn blue. Bingo.
“There’s blood in your stool,” she said simply.
“But why?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll leave that to the specialists to figure out. In the meantime, I’m going to order a transfusion for you. We have to give you the blood slowly, so it doesn’t overwhelm your heart.”
“That’s what happened when I had my bone-marrow transplant,” she said.
“What happened?”
“The bone-marrow transplant made me short of breath. The doctors said I had too much fluid in my lungs. Didn’t you read that in my chart?”
Reese shook her head. Millie’s medical chart was about two feet high, not counting the past few years, which had been recorded electronically.
“Yes. I was very sick. Josh saved me, though. He gave me his bone marrow.”
Reese nodded. “That, I remember.” Josh hadn’t been around during one of the darkest times of Reese’s life because he’d been in Philly with his mom. They’d talked every day, though, and cried about the loss of one of their classmates, a dear friend to them both.
“When can I go home?”
Now Reese laughed. It was one of the most common questions her patients asked, and the sickest of them most commonly asked it. “I’ll call your doctor, and should I let Josh know?”
“I don’t want to worry him. He’s very busy this week.”
“Nothing’s more important than you,” she said, simply because she knew it was true.
Reese ordered the blood and then pulled her cell phone from the pack she wore around her waist. It took only a second for her to find Josh’s number; he was in her favorites. Holding the phone with her shoulder, she began typing, listening for the rich timbre of her old friend’s voice. She was quickly rewarded.
“Hello, Doctor,” he said.
“Hello, Senator,” she replied with a smirk. She’d known Josh Nathan since kindergarten, and it was often hard to reconcile her image of him as a toothless playmate with the suit-clad political leader he’d become.
“Are you calling to beg for a spot in my foursome for the PMU golf tournament? If so, you’re too late. I’ve found some ringers, and this year, you’re going down.”
Reese laughed. “Maybe I should just withdraw. Save my money.”
“No. Don’t do that. I relish the thought of beating you, and it would break my heart if it’s by forfeit. Besides, it’s a good cause. Where would either of us be without PMU?”
“Josh, you could charm the habit off a nun. I suspect you’d have done fine if you got your degree online.”
“Aw, shucks. You’re so sweet, Reese. I should have married you when I had the chance.”
Reese shook her head and chuckled. “You never had a chance, Josh.”
“What?” he demanded with mock surprise in his voice. “What about our dance?”
“That was sixth grade!”
“Yeah, but it was special.”
“The entire time I was dancing with you, I was making eyes at Emily Baker.”
“Emily? I can see that. She was cute. So if you don’t want to seduce me, and you don’t want to golf with me, what’s up?”
Reese didn’t even laugh as she suddenly remembered the purpose of her call. This message wasn’t an easy one to deliver, and Josh was clearly not prepared for it. He and his mother were as close as could be. He had always been the doting son, since his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer during their senior year at Pocono Mountains Prep. Josh’s father had just died when his mother was diagnosed, and he’d given up a scholarship to Harvard, pushing aside his dreams so he could stay home and take care of her. He’d nursed her through her illness and only left four years later, when she was well and law school beckoned. He came back to the mountains to start his law practice, but politics took him away again. Somewhere in the suburbs of Washington he’d met his wife, and now he spent much less time at home. Even though he’d asked, his mother would never move, not even to be close to her son.
“It’s your mom. She’s really sick, Josh.”
Reese heard him suck in a breath. “How bad? Should I charter a helicopter? I can be there in two hours.”
“Not that sick. But she’s lost blood and needs a transfusion. There’s blood in her stool, so that’s likely the cause.”
“Why would there be blood in her stool? You know me. I was a history major. I know nothing about medicine.”
The lab results indicated a chronic loss of blood, probably from the colon. The most concerning cause in someone her age was cancer. Reese wouldn’t tell him that, though. It would only worry him. “Could be lots of things. She’s on an anti-inflammatory, which could cause it.”
“What else?”
“Infection, polyps, diverticulitis. It could be anything.”
“Okay, so what now? Can you just give her some blood or something?”
“Yes, I ordered a transfusion. I have to run the blood slowly, though. All that fluid could throw her into heart failure.”
Reese was in the electronic medical record checking on Millie’s heart as she spoke. Her last echocardiogram showed the heart wasn’t pumping very well. Of course it hadn’t been for some time. “Her echocardiogram sucks.”
“What’s that? The EKG?”
“No. That’s the one that tells how her heart is pumping. It’s not doing very well.”
“Fucking chemo,” he said.
“The chemo saved her, Josh. She was thirty-eight, with stage-four breast cancer. If they hadn’t given her that experimental stuff, she probably would have died back then.”
He was quiet, and Reese suspected she knew his thoughts. As grateful as he was for the doctors and treatment that saved her life, he blamed them for taking it away. Millie’s regimen had caused cardiomyopathy, and even though she’d lived, she’d been a slave to oxygen tanks and water pills. Josh’s first official act as an attorney had been to sue the hospital that had treated her, as well as all her doctors. He’d won, and the millions of dollars had helped Millie buy a condo with a bedroom on the first floor and all the help she needed to care for herself. At forty-six, she’d had all the money she could ever need, but essentially no life.
Even though he’d made his fortune in medical malpractice, and as a doctor, that might have bothered her, it didn’t. The cases he took were good ones, legitimate malpractice claims. And Reese understood his anger. Within the span of a year, and at the fragile age of eighteen, he’d lost one of his best friends, his father, and essentially his mother as well.
A message flashed onto Reese’s computer screen.
“Her blood’s ready, and I have to get back to work. Take your time, Josh. Get here safely. I’ll take good care of her.”
Chapter 3: A Room with a View
Ella picked up copies of the Pocono Record and the Scranton Times, along with a deli sandwich from Abe’s, and followed the map to Nay Aug Park. It had been many years since her last visit to the park, but she fondly remembered an elephant and hiking around the gorge with her sister and some friends from Lake Winola.
It had been thirty years since she’d been at the lake, but she still thought of those people. If her grandparents hadn’t died, she had no doubt those friendships would have lasted forever. Bucky Draper, who could hit a baseball to the moon but couldn’t catch one to save his life. Scoop Timlin, whose family had the biggest boat on the lake. It was housed in an appropriately sized boathouse, with a diving board anchored onto the roof and a slide at the end of the dock. They’d had so muc
h fun there. Vicky and Val, who lived across the street on a farm that provided acres and acres to run and play. Stephanie Gates, Ella’s dearest childhood friend.
When she was in high school and began to understand her sexuality, Ella began to appreciate the depth of her feelings for Stephanie. She’d had many friends, but none of them like her. Steph was special, the connection they enjoyed one of the greatest Ella had ever known. They talked and giggled as little girls do, ran and climbed, but sometimes just sat quietly together, or lay side by side in the grass, studying cloud formations by day and stars by night. It was all innocent—they were only children, after all—but Steph was the measure by which she judged all friendships since.
If it were a different time, when kids had cell phones and social-media accounts, they might have all still been friends. They’d known each other in the 1970s, though, when calling long distance cost money and meant she didn’t even have most of her friends’ numbers. When her grandparents died, her connection to all the people at the lake had ended.
Over the years, she’d wondered what became of her old friends, especially Steph. Google searches showed a gynecologist named Scott Timlin, who could have been Scoop. There was a local attorney named Warren Draper, practicing in the family law firm. She was sure they were her old friends. Ella hadn’t been able to locate the girls, though. No doubt they’d all married and taken their husbands’ names. The only way to find them would be at the lake, where, perhaps, their families still lived. It was a long shot, but she thought it worth a try. If she was going to live here, what better way to start her new life than by meeting up with old friends?
An abundance of parking spaces at the park seemed to be a good omen, and after changing in the restroom, Ella found a picnic table centered in a copse of trees and opened her sandwich and the newspapers. If she was going to work at PMU, she’d have to live here. Renting her town house in Philly would be easy, and practical. Why sell until she knew she’d like it at PMU? Why sell at all? The stock market scared her, and the property was a good investment. Buying a second place didn’t seem like a good idea, though, until she knew the area better and was sure she’d stay in the mountains.