by JA Schneider
The smiling pair stayed seated while the White Coats stood to welcome, shake hands, and say how happy they were to see Jill and David back and well. Ha, Jill thought. Faculty big shots so effusive to an intern? David was right about their P.R. intentions. There was even a big-screen monitor in the front of the room.
Introductions to the beaming P.R. pair came next: Kimberly (“call me Kim!”) Dean and Trey Raphael, photographer. Kim Dean had a glam manicure, a deep purple blouse with lots of ruffles, and clanky bracelets. Trey Raphael was dark-haired, about five eleven and muscled under his black tee shirt and jacket.
David and Jill took two seats facing Rosenberg and the P.R. pair. Rosenberg looked uncomfortable and edged his chair away from Kim.
Stryker opened the meeting, talking about how awful the past week had been. “Good came from it, of course,” he said, looking wearily at Jill. “But one of our NIH grants has fallen, ahem, under review…quaint term, and…” His voice faltered. “There are lawsuits, of course.”
He looked ashen and sunken-faced. In one week of worry he’d lost weight and seemed actually smaller, lower in his chair. Jill saw David swallow and look down.
But Simpson, his pointy little features lost behind spectacles and flesh, glanced expectantly across at Kim, who looked as if she’d taken a cue. Trey Raphael got up to turn off the lights. The room grew dim, but not before Jill noticed that Raphael was missing fingers on his left hand.
“Something to show you” Kim said brightly, opening her iPad. She clicked something and the large screen monitor came to life. Nice music, title FAMILIES, and then a video of women holding babies. Said the first mom: “We’d spent three years going to other hospitals, other doctors, and were pronounced incurably infertile. Only Madison Hospital helped us, and now I have my darling Teddy here. We owe our family to Madison!”
A second mom, holding toddler twins and looking radiant, said she’d been a habitual aborter until she’d come to Madison. “No other place could have helped my high-risk pregnancy!”
And a third woman, drably dressed, described the wonderful care she received at Madison’s free Ob/Gyn clinic. “Such kindness and patience…they answer my every question!”
The video stopped. Kim Dean closed her iPad, and Trey Raphael flipped the lights back on.
“That’s what we’ve got so far,” Kim said, “but it’s only been a week. We hope to combine it with other aspects of Madison’s superior care.”
As she spoke her glance swept the whole group, settled first on Jill; then, lingeringly, on David.
Jill gave her a sour look. Her blouse’s thick ruffles crowded her neck and ran down the front. “Nice blouse,” Jill said.
“Why thank you, I made it myself.” Kim flushed a little. “I love to sew.”
Then, quickly back to business as she leaned forward. “Doctors Raney and Levine, would you be willing to participate in this video project? It would be such a help to the hospital.”
Ta-dah! What a surprise.
They both just stared at her. Finally David said dryly, “What did you have in mind?”
“Well…” She smiled coquettishly, then looked at Trey, cueing him.
He folded his right hand over his missing-fingers left hand. “How would you feel about me videotaping you both as you care for people? Private patients, clinic patients, maybe even…in surgery?”
David said simply, “No.”
Kim Dean said, “But it would help so much. You’ve become the face of –“
“We’re already the face,” David said curtly, reaching down for the two plastic bags and dumping their contents onto the table. “Would you like to hear some of our fan mail? Here’s a nice one.”
He opened a doozy he’d kept on top and started reading its filth.
“That’s enough!” said Howard Graham, reddening.
Jill said, “I’ve got bushels like that.” She opened letters, laying them flat and pushing them down the table. “Do I like S&M? Would I like to play nurse? Lots of people in love with me, begging for my email address, my cell phone number, inviting me to chat rooms you don’t want to know about. There are bales more of these in the mail room.”
Rosenberg sank in his seat. “This is terrible. Get more security in the E.R. and Gyn clinic.”
“That’s been arranged,” Simpson snapped.
Kim Dean seemed or pretended to miss the point. “But people like that are on the outside. Trey would only tape you inside the hospital. Just going about your work, showing how wonderful and caring you are-“
“While you keep running this P.R. campaign?” David said coldly. “Prolonging what will hopefully die down without it? Are we never to walk the streets?”
He saw Simpson glance indifferently at one of the letters and slide it away. The swine. He glared at him. “What good does extra security do, anyway? Lots of people walking into the E.R. and clinic look unhinged. Security can only act after bad guys act, or slither up into the rest of the hospital.”
His beeper went off. Without apology he answered, listened, and said, “Be right there.”
Getting up he said, “We gotta go,” and touched Jill’s arm.
She followed him to the door. Glancing back, she saw Simpson look balefully at her, and Stryker, reading one of the awful letters, drop his head in his hand.
7
The rape victim was in her early twenties. No witnesses, no one with her, cops bringing her in had said. She’d been found in the basement laundry room of her old building. An IV was inserted into a vein on the back of her left hand and taped down.
A bad gash on her head had called first for a neurological exam. She was sobbing but knew her name, the date, and that she was in a hospital. Her pupils were equal and reacted to light. Both carotid pulses were strong and equal. Muscle movement and sensation in her arms and legs were normal, as were her reflexes. That part looked okay, but she was bleeding heavily from vaginal lacerations.
Two nurses and a first-year neurological resident looked up, relieved, as David pushed aside the E.R. curtain and entered, gloved and masked. Jill was behind him, pulling on her latex gloves.
“Neuro exam negative,” the younger resident said, moving aside. His name was Ken Lee, and he looked back worriedly at the patient. “Vital signs normal, pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temp. Chemistries normal too, but hemoglobin starting to drop a little from major injuries to the vagina.”
“Rape kit done?” David asked.
“Still getting done,” Lee said, indicating one of the nurses named Frannie, who was trained in rape kit procedure. “Smears, slides, hair, fiber, the works. Need anything else?”
“No thanks.”
“We can do a CT scan or MRI if anything neuro shows up.”
“Right. Thanks, Ken.”
Lee and the second nurse left.
The girl’s feet were in stirrups and she was draped with a blue sheet from her chin to past her knees. At the foot of the exam table Jill’s eyes welled painfully at the amount of blood. How can anyone do this to anybody?
Up by the pillow David bent to take the girl’s free hand and offer her comfort. “Hi, I’m Doctor Levine,” he said. “I’m going to take care of you. What’s your name?”
“L-Lainey.” A sob.
“Okay, Lainey, we’re going to check your injuries now.” He patted her cheek, then went to the foot of the exam table.
Jill whispered, “Look at this.” She and the nurse named Frannie were using gauze pads to wipe dried blood from the girl’s thighs. Heavy bruising became more and more visible.
David winced and drew air in under his teeth. Every Godforsaken time, he wanted to kill the guy who’d done this. Swearing softly, he sat on a stool and gently parted the vulva.
“Speculum.”
Frannie tore open a sterile paper pack, took out a small speculum, lubricated it, and handed it to him. Jill held a lamp for him as, very gently, he inserted the speculum, opening it just a little. Lacerations were visible near t
he front of the vagina, but the amount of blood still coming suggested lacerations higher up. David opened the speculum wider, gently spreading the vaginal walls to inspect them all the way up to the cervix. He saw more tears, fortunately not through the vaginal wall to the peritoneum, but one of them was bad.
Start with that one.
He removed the speculum. Frannie opened a second sterile speculum, which he used this time with a curved suture needle to sew several stitches along the tear. The sutures would re-absorb in about a week, which would be long enough for the tear to heal.
Jill had moved to the head of the exam table. She smiled gently at the traumatized girl.
“Did you see your attacker?” she asked
“Gray hair…dressed like…maintenance guy,” Lainey managed. “Didn’t get a good look…then he wore…ski mask.”
“Did he seem tall? Short?”
“Tallish. Came from behind. I couldn’t…” The stricken eyes filled. Tears spilled.
“Okay.” Jill squeezed the girl’s hand. “You rest. We’ll take care of you.”
Frannie took photos of the thigh bruising. Jill, taking a smaller sheet, covered the girl’s shoulders and chest, then pulled the blue drape down to her hips, leaving just the abdomen exposed.
She stared. The girl’s belly was caked with blood. Frannie swabbed samples. Jill reached for more gauze and started to wipe.
Moments passed.
“David?” she said softly.
He didn’t hear; was now finishing a pelvic exam to check the cervix, uterus, tubes, and ovaries. They were okay.
Jill swallowed hard. “David?”
He glanced up quizzically.
Jill was staring down at the patient’s abdomen.
He withdrew the speculum, put it into a metal bowl to go back for sterilization, and came to her.
Subtly, she pointed.
There were red letters on the patient’s belly. HID, scrawled big and shaky; the attacker had been in a hurry. Jill wiped with more moistened gauze. The letters looked scrawled with a felt-tipped pen and wouldn’t come off.
“HID?” Jill breathed. The patient moaned; hadn’t heard. “I started to wipe without realizing. It’s a word but it doesn’t make sense.”
David looked sickened. “Initials? Psycho braggy code?” he whispered. “He must’ve used a laundry marker. Wanted to make sure it didn’t dissolve in the blood.”
Frannie, shuddering, photographed the letters.
“Detectives coming?” David asked her.
Jill pulled out her cell phone and snapped the red letters too. The others looked at her quizzically, but distracted.
“Yes,” Frannie told David. “The uniforms said they were on their way.”
The patient moaned loudly, and he turned to her.
“My head!” she cried. “Aches so…”
He saw the seizure start. First the right hand, jerking slightly, then the whole right arm and leg jerking.
“Frannie, get Ken Lee back, stat!” he said. “Call an orderly too!”
Lee came running. “Oh jeez,” he said. “Gotta get her up for an MRI.” He injected phenobarbital into the IV tubing. David was on his cell phone, calling Radiology.
“We need a stat MRI. E.R. patient with head injury having seizure. Suspect acute subdural hematoma.”
“We’ll be waiting,” said a voice.
An orderly appeared and rolled a gurney alongside the exam table. “One, two three!” They all gently lifted Lainey onto the gurney.
In the elevator, Jill and David accompanied the orderly and the gurney. The seizure had lessened slightly. Spontaneous or because of the phenobarb?
Jill said, “Frannie couldn’t finish the rape kit.”
David nodded. “Got most of it.” But he looked grave.
HID, HID! The red words tore at Jill. What could they mean?
She had one hand on the patient’s shoulder, wanting with all her heart to comfort. Her other hand was on her cell phone in her pocket.
8
Elaine Wheeler, the girl’s name was. Twenty-two years old. Arrived from a small town in Maine just five weeks before; found a part-time job to start. One acquaintance she’d made in her East 36th Street building said her only next of kin was her grandmother, who had early Alzheimer’s. Someone else saw a gray-haired guy in maintenance duds leave the building moving fast, like an athletic, much younger man. Sunglasses and baseball cap pulled low. Definitely not the building’s regular maintenance guy, who was short and overweight. Police were still canvassing the building and the neighborhood.
It was 4:30. From a fourth floor scrub room, Jill covered her face with a surgical mask, opened the door to the O.R. and asked, “How’s it going?”
Muffled replies from the neurosurgeons.
She returned to the busy hall of the surgical suite. David had been called back to OB to deliver twins, so she stood alone speaking with two detectives.
“Her brain membrane is still bleeding,” Jill told them. “They’ve taken off a bone flap to evacuate the clot and are still tying off bleeders. There’s no telling how long the surgery will take, and then she’ll need at least four hours in the recovery room.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry you had to wait.”
“We wanted to talk to you too,” one detective said. Alex Brand, his name was. Nice looking in his late thirties. Like his partner he wore a light jacket over a polo shirt.
The second detective, named Connor, said low, “She isn’t the first victim like this. There was a similar rape two nights ago. Guy in gloves and a mask, long sleeves in 90 degree heat. Pulled his victim into an alley.”
Jill frowned slightly. “Similar? Don’t other attackers wear masks, gloves and cover themselves?”
The cops traded looks.
“There’s more to it,” Connor said. “Before you got here, one of the doctors…”
He stopped, looking impatient, as an orderly maneuvering a laden gurney moved by.
“Need a quieter place?” Jill asked.
Minutes later, in a corner of the surgical lounge, the detectives described an intern who’d come out of the O.R. and told them that Ms. Wheeler had writing on her. Red letters.
Jill stared.
Brand continued as Connor flipped a notebook page. “Can you describe the red letters on Ms. Wheeler? You and Doctor Levine treated her.”
A feeling of dread rolled though Jill. Was this what they meant by ‘similar?’ “On Elaine’s abdomen,” she said slowly. “HID scrawled in red, capital letters.”
“Bingo,” said Brand. “Same on both women.”
Jill’s lips parted. It took a moment to really absorb this.
Connor scribbled and Brand hunched closer in his chair. “We’ve kept that detail under wraps, which eliminates a copycat, so this makes two rapes by the same attacker. Problem is, forensics found nothing on the first victim. No hairs, DNA, nothing. He must have worn a condom and shaved himself top to bottom.”
Jill looked at him, dry-lipped.
Brand said, “The only fibers found on the first woman were…this maniac is creative…dried grass from some kind of painted cloth mask. She described it as black with white-painted circles for the eyes and mouth, and dried grass coming out of …What? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Jill’s hand was to her mouth, pressing hard. When she took it away, she’d gone very pale.
They saw her reaction. Connor hunched closer too.
The door opened and one of the surgical residents entered.
“Hey Jill,” he smiled. “Glad you’re back and okay.”
Weak-voiced, she thanked him. He headed for the locker room beyond.
She swallowed, breathing shallowly. A metal door slammed in the next room and a shower turned on.
“The mask?” Brand prompted. “That seemed to throw you more than the red letters.”
A slow nod. She saw it again, all of it… Where to begin?
“You saw it?” she asked both men. “The roof, Arnett,
the guy David shot?”
They had, of course. Over and over. They’d watched the police tape, read the statements taken afterward. Also read the rap sheet of David’s second assailant, a violent druggie named Sonny Sears.
“Sonny Sears,” Jill said shakily. “My other nightmare…”
Their silence prompted her.
She pulled in a deep breath. “Obstetrical tragedies… I’d started just studying patient charts, looking through microscopes, but when an OB patient was kidnapped…“
“Sayers,” Connor said. “Mary Jo Sayers.”
“Right.” Jill’s throat felt like parchment. “I went to where she worked, the Madison Museum of Anthropology, to inquire about her. I got my answers. I also got mugged…”
She described the museum’s side gallery devoted to the Art of Oceania. “Gruesome stuff,” she faltered. “Shrunken heads, necklaces of human teeth, grotesque masks made of grass…” She paused, unconsciously clenching her fists. “A guy in a floor-length grass funeral mask mugged me, probably wanted to kill me but I got away. He turned out to be Sonny Sears, who apparently did dirty work for Arnett, like murdering that pregnant sixteen-year-old, trying to kill me again at 4 a.m. down in the hospital records room, other things….”
Connor scribbled.
In the other room the shower turned off.
Jill unclenched her hands, rubbed them on her scrub pants. “Everyone here knew I’d been mugged in the museum, probably heard the wild story that it was some creep in a grass mask. E.R. people certainly heard about it when I was brought into Emergency. A different detective questioned me about it. Detective Pappas, it was. In a conference room with staff, lots of other people there. They could have repeated the story, or one lab tech tells another, or an orderly in a bar feels creeped out and talks.”
Connor stopped writing, staring at his page.