Stress Test

by Richard Mabry

  Matt plopped into the chair that faced the door and placed the folder he was carrying in the seat opposite it. A waitress hurried over, spotted the folder, and asked, “You meeting someone?”

  “She’ll be here in a moment,” Matt said. “One Coke and one Diet Coke. And leave the menus. We’ll be ready to order in a minute.”

  She huffed away, obviously aware that the quicker patrons ordered, the quicker they were served, paid, and vacated the table, leaving tips in their wake. Matt decided to make sure his tip reflected the waitress’s patience—or lack thereof.

  He was staring at the front door for what seemed like the hundredth time when Sandra breezed through it. Matt felt a strange sensation in his chest when Sandra eased into the chair opposite him, and wondered for a second if he’d developed a heart murmur. But he knew what it really represented: a heart problem, just not one that demanded an electrocardiogram or stress test.

  Sandra placed Matt’s folder on the edge of the table and covered it with her purse. “Sorry. I think I’m a few minutes late.”

  Matt took a long drink of his Coke. “No problem. Just glad we could get together.”

  “Before I forget, your neurosurgeon, Dr. Gordon, called me. He said you’d missed a post-op appointment. He wants you to be certain to reschedule.”

  Matt looked at his cell phone and punched a couple of buttons. “No record that he called me or sent a text. Why did he call you about it?”

  Sandra twisted in her chair. “I guess because . . .” She took a deep breath and started again. “Ken and I used to go out—were pretty close, in fact. I think he used that call as an excuse to talk with me.”

  Somehow, in his struggle to understand his feelings for her and cope with the drama in his life, Matt had managed to ignore the possibility that Sandra could be in a relationship. Should he try to find out if she still had an interest in Ken Gordon? It was none of Matt’s business, but picturing her dating another man was hard to take—which told him his own feelings were probably genuine, not just rebound or transference. He wanted to ask questions—a lot of them—but decided to keep silent. Right now Sandra was his attorney, and that’s all she could be until the shadow hanging over him was gone.

  Matt had a couple of hours to kill before going on shift. He decided to go back home and sneak in a short nap. Things had been busier in the ER recently, and he had a hunch he’d need the rest.

  It seemed he’d no more than stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes than his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked his watch and discovered he’d been asleep for a half hour—just long enough to get into sound sleep. That was the life of a doctor. Sleep when you can, and expect to be awakened before you’re ready.

  “Hello?”

  “Matt, this is Rick. Do you have a minute?”

  Matt stretched and yawned. “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I appreciate the time you spent with me yesterday.”

  “No problem. Have you talked with your wife?”

  “Yeah, I called her after I left your place. She says she’s happy I’ve taken that step of faith, but I want to show her I’m serious. I figured that getting involved in a church would be a good way to do that.”

  Matt rubbed his hand over his head, noting that the stubble was now turning into longer hair. “That’s a good idea, Rick. But you’ve already taken the only step that’s necessary. Attending church is definitely a way we can grow in the faith, but it’s not a requirement for being a Christian.”

  As he spoke, Matt realized he was a card-carrying, genuine hypocrite. He’d let his own church attendance, as well as anything else that would help him grow in the faith, slide, using the excuse of time pressure due to his profession. First it was because he was too busy in med school, then in his residency training, and most recently in his practice. Why hadn’t he made the time and exerted the effort? Other doctors did. And now Rick was looking to him, and he was ashamed of his example.

  Matt snapped out of his self-recrimination long enough to catch the tail end of what Rick was saying. “So I was wondering if I could go to church with you this Sunday. I think I’d feel better if I went with someone I know.”

  “Um, Rick, I have to confess that I haven’t been going regularly myself lately.” Lately? Try not for several years. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll ask around and get a recommendation. And I promise, we’ll go to church together soon.”

  “Great. I’ll probably see you at the hospital, but if we don’t connect, give me a call.”

  Matt signed off and returned the phone to his pocket, wondering what he’d gotten himself into. He thought he’d done his good deed for the decade by sharing with Rick about Christianity. Was he going to have to help the man every step of the way as he grew spiritually? Sort of like the Chinese philosophy that if you save a man’s life, you’re responsible for him from then on?

  Lord, I’m not sure why this is happening. I’m pretty sure I have enough on my plate right now. What would Joe do in a situation like this? Matt had no doubt on that account. Joe would say, “I can hardly wait to see what God has in mind.”

  The pain got Matt’s attention. He looked down and saw coffee cascading over the side of the cup he held, bathing his hand before forming a dark brown puddle on his kitchen table. He set both coffeepot and cup aside, then snatched a mass of paper towels from the roll on the countertop and dropped them on the coffee lake.

  Matt grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and held them to his throbbing hand. He was alone in his kitchen, which was both good and bad. Good, because no one had witnessed what might have been a petit mal seizure. Bad, since he had no way of knowing whether this was simply an instance of daydreaming or another absence spell.

  He remembered something his mother had told him about treating burns, a remedy his medical mind rejected as having no scientific basis. But he’d seen it work when Joe came home from the pool one day with sunburn. The burn on Matt’s hand was probably first degree, which was the same thing. Might as well give it a try.

  Matt opened his refrigerator and dug around until he found a half-full container of half-and-half. His mother had used cream, but this was the closest thing he had. Feeling foolish, Matt poured some of the liquid over his burned hand, then soaked a dishrag with more and wrapped it around the burn.

  He finished cleaning up the mess on his table, and was surprised to find that by the time he was done, the pain in his hand was almost gone. Maybe it was all in his mind, but then again, there were lots of things in life he didn’t understand but that still worked. He just took them on faith.

  Should he call Ken Gordon and set up an appointment for an EEG? Was he taking too big a chance by self-diagnosis and self-treatment? Maybe the episode was just a bit of daydreaming, easily cured by drinking some of that coffee he’d been pouring. Then again . . . No, don’t think about the alternative. Continue the medication and hope for the best.

  He looked at his watch. Time to get ready for his shift in the ER. But first he retrieved the amber pill bottle from its hiding place behind the spices in his kitchen cabinet. Matt had put his medicine in an inconspicuous place after replacing the bottle the police took. He doubted that anyone would be looking through his kitchen cabinets, but he wanted to keep his problem secret if he could.

  Matt tried to swallow the pill dry, but it stuck. The sensation of a lump in his throat was a familiar one to him, and it hadn’t always followed a pill lodging there. More often than not it came when the stress became too great. This time it cleared when he drank a glass of water. He wished he could get rid of the unpleasant feeling as easily at other times.

  With his eyes open, standing in the middle of his kitchen, Matt tried to summon the right words to pray about his seizures. As he’d come to do more and more often recently, he wished Joe were here. He’d know what to say, how to phrase it. Joe probably wouldn’t approve of trying to bargain with God, but that’s what Matt did. “Lord, if there’s another spell, I’ll go see Ken.
I promise. But please give me one more chance. Please.”

  Sandra pushed back from her desk and stretched her arms above her head. The morning had promised to be full of drudgery, slogging through a sea of legal opinions as she prepared to defend Matt Newman against the charge of possession of narcotics with intent to sell. But the phone call she’d just received changed all that.

  She needed to share her news with Matt, and the sooner the better. Sandra consulted her watch: nine thirty a.m. If Matt was still working the mid-shift and getting home after midnight, he might be asleep. On the other hand, if she were in his shoes, she’d want to hear this news, even if it meant cutting sleep short.

  She dialed a number she was coming to know by heart. Matt answered after four rings, and his voice confirmed that she’d roused him from sleep. “Hello?”

  “Matt, this is Sandra Murray. I’m sorry to wake you, but I think you’re going to want to hear this.”

  “Hang on.” She heard his footsteps thumping away, then the sounds of water running. He was back in a moment. “Okay, I’ve splashed some water on my face, and I think I’m almost awake. What’s the big news?”

  Sandra had rehearsed this in her mind but still wasn’t sure how to put it. She decided to plunge right in. “The police have dropped the narcotics charge.”

  “What . . . How . . . Why did they do that?”

  “Remember that Grimes told you about the packet of white powder found in your bedroom? His exact words were that their field tests ‘suggested’ heroin. As it turns out, they field-tested it three times onsite, and only one was faintly positive for heroin. That was enough for Grimes. He wanted to hold you and he did.”

  “I sense there’s more to the story.”

  “Absolutely,” Sandra said. “The police lab did a full analysis on the sample. And can you guess what they found?”

  “Apparently not heroin,” Matt said.

  “Bingo. It was almost pure lactose. There were a few faint traces of heroin on the inside of the plastic bag. My guess is that it once contained heroin, but someone removed it and replaced it with lactose, figuring no one would ever know the difference.”

  There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. She figured Matt was processing the information. When he spoke again, it was obvious he had reached the same conclusion she had. “Someone wanted to incriminate me by planting heroin in my bedroom. But they fouled up. How do you think it happened?”

  “Remember I’ve mentioned about the police property room, where things are filed and forgotten? It’s not out of the question that someone who needed some cash might get access to a bag of heroin from an old case, pour the drug into a new bag, and substitute a similar amount of lactose for it. And no one would ever know, unless that particular bag was later lifted from the property room and planted so it would be found in a search.”

  “So someone with access to the property room planted what they thought was heroin.” Matt cleared his throat. “Who do you think did it?”

  “Right now, there’s no way to know. The police would have access, of course. It’s not far-fetched to think a person from the DA’s office could get in there. But when you think about it, almost anyone could get it done if there was enough money involved.”

  “The police could have planted it while they searched my house,” Matt said.

  “True, but you’re gone for long stretches of time, and you’d be surprised at how easily some people can get past a locked door. The bag could have been put there anytime, waiting for the right time to phone in an anonymous tip to the police.” She frowned. “Honestly, we still don’t know who’s out to get you. But someone certainly is.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The elderly man lay on a gurney, his head elevated to make it easier for him to breathe. A middle-aged woman hovered beside him, fiddling with the two-pronged plastic tube feeding oxygen into his nostrils.

  Matt gave them what he hoped was an encouraging look. “Mr. Alexander, I’m pretty sure you have bronchitis, but we’ll do a chest X-ray and some lab work to be certain it’s nothing more serious. The nurse will arrange for those, and I’ll be back as soon as I’ve seen the results.”

  The woman followed him through the drawn curtains that marked off the cubicle. “Doctor . . .”

  “Mrs. . . .” Matt looked at the ER sheet and noted the next-of-kin name and relationship. “Mrs. Berry, I think your father is going to be fine. His oxygen saturation is good, his temperature is only slightly elevated, and he doesn’t seem to be in any distress. I’m going to check to make sure I didn’t miss an early pneumonia when I listened to his lungs. We’ll do a white blood count and a microscopic exam of his sputum. If it looks like he has a bacterial infection, I’ll get him on an antibiotic.”

  “Why not give him one anyway?” she said.

  “We need to know what we’re treating. If this is due to a virus, antibiotics won’t help. We have to give the right medicine.” He made a patting gesture. “Rest assured, we’ll take good care of your father.”

  After giving his orders to the nurse, Matt started away. As he passed a trash container, he inserted the first two fingers of his right hand under the cuff of his left glove and flipped it into the receptacle. He repeated the procedure with his other hand. As the gloves hit the trash can, the thought that had been tickling at the edge of Matt’s consciousness for days flashed into his mind as clearly as though it were projected on a screen. “I’ve got to make a quick phone call,” he said over his shoulder, and strode off toward the break room.

  In a moment Matt heard Sandra’s voice, heavy with sleep. “Don’t tell me the police have you in custody.”

  “No, and I’m sorry to call so late, but this has been rattling around in my brain just beyond my reach, and I had to act on it before it got away again.”

  Her sigh was audible. “Okay, what’s so important?”

  “Do you have any influence with the police lab? Can you get information about their tests?”

  “Probably. I have a few people over there that owe me favors. What do you want to know?”

  Matt hoped this didn’t sound silly once he voiced the words. “The police were going to test the gloves they found for gunshot residue. They may do this anyway, but make sure they turn the gloves inside out and look for fingerprints on the inside. I read somewhere that if the person isn’t sweating too much, it’s sometimes possible to get fingerprints off the inside of latex gloves.”

  He heard a drawer open and close, then the click of a ballpoint pen. “Okay, that’s usually pretty standard, but I’ll check to make sure they did it. Anything else?”

  Matt didn’t speak. There was another vision tickling his consciousness. The dark alley. Two figures intent on finding him, the largest of the two with one arm extended in front of him, a pistol in the other. The sound of the other man stumbling over a trash can, crying out in pain. And Hank Truong’s story of a man with a laceration on his shin.

  “Matt, are you there?”

  “Yeah. See if you can find out which glove had the gunshot residue on it. And check the autopsy report on the guy who was shot in my house. See if he had a recent injury to his leg. His right leg.”

  Sandra wiggled her stocking-covered toes under her desk. She longed to be back in law school, when the uniform of the day included sweats and oh-so-comfortable Reeboks. The shoes she wore these days were a lot more stylish, but by the end of the day, her feet screamed for relief.

  The silence on the other end of this phone call was stretching out much too long for comfort. “Jerry, are you there?” No answer.

  Matt’s phone call had kept her up most of the rest of the night pondering the ramifications of his requests. She was pretty sure the police lab would already have done the tests he wanted. The results might point to Matt as the shooter. If so, Grimes would undoubtedly charge Matt with murder. But suppose the tests favored Matt’s innocence. Maybe she could turn Detective Grimes away from her client before they brought such a charge. T
o this point, Grimes certainly seemed single-minded in his determination to put Matt behind bars. And he stubbornly refused to even consider Matt’s kidnapping story, investigating it in the most cursory of ways. She felt as though she were hitting her head against a wall.

  Jerry’s voice brought her back to the present. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” Sandra said. “Can you tell me what you found?”

  “Uh, yeah. I was thinking . . . I’m not sure I ought to do that,” Jerry Klipstein said. “You know the procedure is for me to send these to the detective in charge of the case. He gives them to the DA, and eventually you get the information.”

  “Jerry, I’ve known you since you were a kid. I used to babysit you and your little sister. I’d think that by now you’d trust me. You know I’ll get those results anyway. Why not let me have an advance peek at them?”

  “Well . . .”

  Sandra knew she was going to win this one. She just had to be patient now. “Tell you what. I’ll ask you a few simple questions. Just answer them. No paper trail. No one but us will ever know.”

  The silence stretched out, but eventually Jerry said, “Okay. Ask me. But just a few.”

  “Did you find fingerprints inside the gloves?”

  “We looked at the tips of the fingers, but it’s almost impossible to lift usable prints from inside latex gloves.”

  Maybe it was her legal training, programming her to look at how answers were phrased. Whatever the cause, Sandra’s next question was, “Did you find fingerprints anywhere else on the gloves?”

  “Good one,” Jerry said. “Yes. People tend to take rubber gloves off by pulling on the cuff. They use their dominant hand first, and since it is still gloved, there won’t be prints on the non-dominant glove. But a right-handed person will then use their bare left hand to peel off the right glove.”

  “And did you find prints on the cuff of one glove?”