Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu

by Lee Goldberg

  “You can’t catch scurvy,” Julie said. “You get it from not eating enough oranges.”

  “That’s an old wives’ tale,” Monk said, handing out our garments. “From wives who later died of scurvy.”

  That was when the doctor came in. He had such a grim expression on his youthful face, I was afraid he was going to tell us Julie had a brain tumor.

  “I’m afraid you have a broken wrist,” the doctor said. “The good news is that it’s a clean break. You’ll only have to wear a cast for a couple of weeks.”

  If that was it, why did he have to look so serious? Maybe he thought it made him appear more learned and mature so he wouldn’t get a lot of flack from patients for being so young. Actually, it made him look like he’d eaten something for lunch that decided to fight back.

  “Do I get to pick the color for my cast?” Julie asked.

  “Absolutely,” he said and waved over an ER nurse.

  The nurse walked behind Monk and held up a chart with a dozen sample plaster colors for Julie to see. There was something vaguely familiar about the nurse, but I couldn’t place her.

  She had thick, curly brown hair with blond highlights, and stood with attitude. By that, I mean she had a certain rough confidence about her—the kind that’s like a scar. It’s a toughness you can only get on the streets, and not the ones you find in suburban housing tracts. Growing up in suburbia, you end up with a pampered confidence that comes from knowing you have mutual funds earning money for you.

  “We have a wide selection of colors to choose from,” the doctor said. “Or you can go with white and rent your arm out for advertising.”

  “Really?” Julie replied. “What does that pay?”

  I was taken aback by the question. When did Julie become so entrepreneurial?

  “I’m kidding,” the doctor said.

  “But it’s not a bad idea.” Julie looked at me. “We could go around to local businesses, like the pizza parlor or the bike shop, and see if they’d be interested in using my arm as a walking billboard.”

  This broken wrist was revealing a whole new side of my daughter to me.

  “You have a deal,” I said.

  “You could offer them a special rate to advertise on both arms,” Monk added.

  “But I don’t have a cast on my left arm,” Julie said.

  “You will,” he said, nodding.

  “No, I won’t,” she said.

  “It’s what they do in these situations.”

  The nurse was starting to fidget, tapping her foot on the floor in frustration.

  “But my left wrist isn’t broken,” Julie said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s standard medical procedure.”

  “You want me to put a cast on her left wrist?” the doctor asked Monk incredulously.

  “Doesn’t that go without saying?”

  “No,” the doctor said, “it doesn’t.”

  “You can’t put a cast on only one wrist,” Monk said. “She’ll be off-balance.”

  “The cast isn’t that heavy,” the doctor said. “I can assure you that her balance will be just fine.”

  “It will if she has a cast on both arms.” Monk turned to me. “Where did this guy go to medical school? If I were you, I’d get a second opinion.”

  The nurse’s face was growing tense, and a flush was rising on her cheeks. She looked like she might hit Monk with that display board she was holding.

  I knew what she was feeling all too well. I had to bring this ridiculous debate to an end before Monk needed medical attention.

  “Julie is not getting a cast on her left wrist, Mr. Monk,” I said, “because it’s not broken.”

  “You aren’t thinking rationally. You’re clearly in shock over Julie’s injury. You ought to have a doctor look at you.” Monk glanced dismissively at the doctor. “A real one.”

  “I don’t want a cast on both wrists,” Julie said to me.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” I said. “It’s not going to happen.”

  “Of course, it is,” Monk said. “She can’t leave here imbalanced.”

  “You mean unbalanced,” the doctor said, “not imbalanced.”

  “What do you know?” Monk said.

  “I know you’re imbalanced for thinking she’s unbalanced,” he said, smiling at his own cleverness.

  Monk was not amused. “You’re under arrest.”

  “For what?” the doctor asked.

  “Impersonating a doctor.”

  “Are you a police officer?”

  “I’m a consultant to the police,” Monk said. “I investigate homicides.”

  “I haven’t killed anyone,” the doctor said.

  “Not yet,” Monk said, “but if you keep practicing medicine like this, you will.”

  The nurse suddenly threw the display card against the wall in a fit of anger, startling us all.

  “That’s enough, Adrian,” she said. “Believe it or not, the whole world doesn’t revolve around you and your special needs. This poor girl has been through enough today without having to deal with you too. So shut up and let us do our jobs.”

  Monk jerked at the sound of her voice, his eyes going wide with shock.

  The nurse took a deep, calming breath and then looked at me. “I’m sorry about that, but this is an argument you can’t win. Trust me. The only way any of us is going to get any peace is if we put a cast on Julie’s left wrist.”

  Before I could object, the nurse stepped up to Julie. “Don’t worry, honey. After the cast dries, I’m going to cut it off, put some Velcro straps on it, and give it to you. That way, you can put it on whenever Adrian is around and take it off the instant he leaves. Problem solved.”

  Adrian? Hearing Monk addressed that way by a person I assumed was a complete stranger to him startled me a bit. I’d never heard anyone but Monk’s brother and his shrink refer to him by his first name. Perhaps assuming that familiarity was simply a calming and controlling technique nurses and other medical professionals used to deal with emotionally or psychologically disturbed individuals.

  “Or I could have this guy committed,” the doctor said, narrowing his eyes at Monk. “That would solve the problem too.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I think we’ll go with the second cast,” I said, turning to Julie. “If that’s okay with you.”

  “Yeah,” Julie said. “I just want to go home.”

  The nurse smiled. “Don’t we all. I’ll be right back.”

  She left to get whatever she needed to make the cast. Monk hadn’t moved since she’d spoken. I don’t think he’d even blinked. I was impressed with the decisive way she’d handled the situation, and I appreciated it, but I couldn’t figure out why her speaking up had shocked Monk into silence.

  The doctor said something about us coming back in a couple of weeks, gave me a prescription for painkillers for Julie, and then left to treat another patient.

  I looked at Monk. He seemed frozen in place.

  “Would you mind staying with Julie for a minute?” I asked him.

  Monk nodded ever so slightly. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  I caught up with the nurse at the supply cabinet. “Excuse me,” I said. “I just wanted to say thank you for helping out. Sometimes my friend can be difficult to handle.”

  “I’m used to it,” she said, her back to me as she scrounged around for her things.

  “You must meet a lot of people like Mr. Monk.”

  She sighed wearily. “There’s nobody like Adrian.”

  She’d done it again. She’d called him Adrian. There was something about the way she said it, with her strong New Jersey accent, that gave me a pang of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. I suddenly had an ominous inkling what the explanation for her familiarity with him might be.

  “You’ve obviously had some experience with him before,” I said, fishing.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” she said, turning to look at him again, almost affectionately. “I used to hav
e your job.”

  And that was when I saw the ID badge clipped to her uniform and my suspicions were confirmed. Sharona was back.