Devil's Waltz

by Jonathan Kellerman

  I shook my head. “Been and returned.”

  “Didn’t know psychologists kept that kind of schedule.”

  “We don’t when we can avoid it.”

  He smiled. “Well, the fact that Cindy’s sleeping this early means Cassie must be getting healthy enough for her to relax. So that’s good.”

  “She told me she never leaves Cassie.”

  “Never.”

  “Must be hard on her.”

  “Unbelievably hard. At first I tried to ease her away from it, but after being here a few times and seeing other mothers, I realized it was normal. Rational, actually. It’s self-defense.”

  “Against what?”

  “Screw-ups.”

  “Cindy talked about that, too,” I said. “Have you seen a lot of medical error around here?”

  “As a parent or as Chuck Jones’s son?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  He gave a small, hard smile. “You bet there is. As Chuck Jones’s son, I think this place is pediatric paradise, and I’ll say so in the next banquet journal if they ask me. As a parent, I’ve seen things— the inevitable human errors. I’ll give you an example— one that really shook me. A couple of months ago, the whole fifth floor was buzzing. Seems there was this little boy being treated for some kind of cancer— getting an experimental drug, so maybe there wasn’t much hope anyway. But that’s not the point. Someone misread a decimal point and he got a massive overdose. Brain damage, coma, the whole bit. All the parents on the floor heard the resuscitation page and saw the emergency team rush in. Heard his mother screaming for help. Including us— I was out in the hall, actually heard his mother scream for help.”

  He winced. “I saw her a couple of days later, Dr. Delaware. When he was still being respirated. She looked like a concentration camp victim. That look of being beaten down and betrayed? All because of one decimal point. Now that kind of thing probably happens all the time, on a smaller scale— things that can be smoothed over. Or don’t even get picked up in the first place. So you can’t blame parents for wanting to keep an eye out, can you?”

  “No,” I said. “Sounds like you don’t have much confidence in this place.”

  “On the contrary, I do,” he said impatiently. “Before we decided to have Cassie treated here, we did research— Dad notwithstanding. So I know this is the best place in the city for sick kids. But when it’s your child, statistics don’t matter much, do they? And human error is inevitable.”

  I held the doors to Chappy Ward open for him and he carried the coffee in.

  Vicki’s chunky form was visible through the glass door of the supply room behind the nursing station. She was placing something on a high shelf. We passed her and went to Cassie’s room.

  Chip stuck his head in, retracted it, and said, “Still out.” Looking down at the cups, he held one out to me. “No sense wasting bad coffee.”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  He laughed softly. “The voice of experience, huh? Has it always been this bad?”

  “Always.”

  “Look at this— little Exxon Valdez we’ve got here.” A faint, rainbowed slick floated on the black surface. Grimacing, he raised the other cup to his lips. “Yum— essence of grad school. But I need it to keep conscious.”

  “Long day?”

  “On the contrary— too short. They seem to get shorter as you get older, don’t they? Short and crammed with busywork. Then there’s having to drive back and forth between work and home and here. Our glorious freeways— humanity at its nadir.”

  “Valley Hills means the Ventura Freeway,” I said. “That’s about as bad as it gets.”

  “Vile. When we were home-hunting, I purposely picked a place close to work to avoid commuting.” He shrugged. “Best-laid plans. Sometimes I sit bumper to bumper and imagine it’s what hell would be like.”

  He laughed again, sipped.

  I said, “I’ll be experiencing it firsthand in a couple of days— making a home visit.”

  “Yes, Cindy mentioned it. Ah, here comes Ms. Nightingale. . . . Hello, Vicki. Burning the midnight oil again?”

  I turned and saw the nurse marching toward us, smiling, cap bobbing.

  “Evening, Professor Jones.” She sucked in air, as if preparing to power-lift, then nodded at me.

  Chip handed her the untouched coffee. “Drink it or toss it.”

  “Thank you, Professor Jones.”

  He cocked his head at Cassie’s door. “How long have the Sleeping Beauties been snoozing?”

  “Cassie went down around eight. Mrs. Jones, around eight forty-five.”

  He looked at his watch. “Could you do me a favor, Vicki? I’m going to walk Dr. Delaware out, maybe get something to eat while I’m down there. Please have me paged if they wake up.”

  “If you like I can go down and get you something, Professor.”

  “No, thanks. I need to stretch— freewayitis.”

  Vicki clucked sympathetically. “Of course. I’ll let you know soon as someone’s up.”

  When we got to the other side of the teak doors, he stopped and said, “What do you think about the way we’re being handled?”

  “Handled in what way?”

  He resumed walking. “Handled medically— this current hospitalization. No real evaluation’s going on, as far as I can tell. No one’s really checking Cassie out physically. Not that I mind— thank God she doesn’t have to endure those godawful needles. But the message I’m starting to get is placebo. Hold our hands, send in a shrink— nothing personal— and let whatever’s going on with Cassie just wind itself down.”

  “Do you find that insulting?”

  “Not insulting— well, maybe a little. As if it’s all in our heads. Believe me, it isn’t. You people here haven’t seen what we have— the blood, the seizures.”

  “You’ve seen all of it?”

  “Not all of it. Cindy’s the one who gets up at night. I tend to be a solid sleeper. But I’ve seen enough. You can’t argue with blood. So why isn’t more being done?”

  “I can’t answer for anyone else,” I said. “But my best guess is, no one really knows what to do and they don’t want to be unnecessarily intrusive.”

  “I suppose so,” he said. “And, hey, for all I know it’s exactly the right approach to take. Dr. Eves seems smart enough. Maybe Cassie’s symptoms are— what’s the term— self-restricting?”

  “Self-limiting.”

  “Self-limiting.” He smiled. “Doctors propagate more euphemisms than anyone. . . . I pray to God it is self-limiting. Be more than happy to remain an unsolved medical mystery if Cassie finally stays healthy. But hope comes hard by now.”

  “Chip,” I said, “I haven’t been called in because anyone thinks Cassie’s problems are psychosomatic. My job is to help her deal with anxiety and pain. The reason I want to visit your home is to build up rapport with her in order to be useful for her when she needs me.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I understand.”

  He looked at the ceiling and tapped one foot. A couple of nurses walked by. His eyes followed their trail, absently.

  “I guess what I really have trouble handling is the irrationality,” he said. “As if we’re all floating around in some sea of random events. What the hell is making her sick?”

  He punched the wall.

  I sensed that anything I said would make matters worse, but I knew silence wouldn’t help much either.

  The elevator door opened and we stepped in.

  “Pissed-off parents,” he said, punching the DOWN button hard. “Pleasant way to end your day.”

  “My job.”

  “Some job.”

  “Beats honest labor.”

  He smiled.

  I pointed to the cup in his hand. “That’s got to be cold. How about we both get some fresh sludge?”

  He thought for a moment. “Sure, why not?”

  • • •

  The cafeteria was closed, so we went down the hall, past the
Residents’ Lounge, where a row of vending machines stood next to the locker room. A thin young woman in surgical scrubs was walking away with two handfuls of candy bars. Chip and I each bought black coffee and he purchased a plastic-wrapped packet containing two chocolate chip cookies.

  Farther down the corridor was a sitting area: orange plastic chairs arranged in an L, a low white table bearing food wrappers and out-of-date magazines. The Path Lab was a stone’s throw away. I thought of his little boy and wondered if he’d make the association. But he ambled over and sat down, yawning.

  Unwrapping the cookies, he dunked one in the coffee, said, “Health food,” and ate the soggy part.

  I sat perpendicular to him and sipped. The coffee was terrible but oddly comforting— like a favorite uncle’s stale breath.

  “So,” he said, dunking again, “let me tell you about my daughter. Terrific disposition, good eater, good sleeper— she slept through at five weeks. For anyone else, good news, right? After what happened to Chad, it scared the shit out of us. We wanted her awake— used to take turns going in there, waking her up, poor thing. But what amazes me is how resilient she is— the way she just keeps bouncing back. You wouldn’t think anything that small could be so tough.

  “I feel kind of ridiculous, even discussing her with a psychologist. She’s a baby, for God’s sake— what kind of neuroses could she have? Though I guess with all this she could end up with plenty, couldn’t she? All the stress. Are we talking major psychotherapy for the rest of her life?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone ever studied it?”

  “There’s been quite a bit of research,” I said. “Chronically ill children tend to do better than experts predict— people do, in general.”

  “Tend to?”

  “Most do.”

  He smiled. “I know. It’s not physics. Okay, I’ll allow myself some momentary optimism.”

  He tensed, then relaxed— deliberately, as if schooled in meditation. Letting his arms drop and dangle and stretching his legs. Dropping his head back and massaging his temples.

  “Doesn’t it get to you?” he said. “Listening to people all day? Having to nod and be sympathetic and tell them they’re okay.”

  “Sometimes,” I said. “But usually you get to know people, start to see their humanity.”

  “Well, this is sure the place to remind you of that—‘A rarer spirit never did steer humanity; but you, gods, will give us some faults to make us men.’ Words, Willy Shakespeare; italics, mine. I know it sounds pretentious, but I find the old bard reassures me— something for every situation. Wonder if he spent any time in hospitals.”

  “He may have. He lived during the height of the black plague, didn’t he?”

  “True . . . Well”— he sat up and unwrapped the second cookie—“all credit to you, I couldn’t do it. Give me something neat and clean and theoretical, anytime.”

  “I never thought of sociology as hard science.”

  “Most of it isn’t. But Formal Org has all sorts of nifty models and measurable hypotheses. The illusion of precision. I delude myself regularly.”

  “What kinds of things do you deal with? Industrial management? Systems analysis?”

  He shook his head. “No, that’s the applied side. I’m theoretical— setting up models of how groups and institutions function on a structural level, how components mesh, phenomenologically. Ivory tower stuff, but I find it great fun. I was schooled in the ivory tower.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Yale, undergrad; University of Connecticut, grad. Never finished my dissertation after I found out teaching turns me on a lot more than research.”

  He stared down the empty basement corridor, watching the occasional passage of wraithlike white-coated figures in the distance.

  “Scary,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “This place.” He yawned, glanced at his watch. “Think I’ll go up and check on the ladies. Thanks for your time.”

  We both stood.

  “If you ever need to talk to me,” he said, “here’s my office number.”

  He put his cup down, reached into a hip pocket, and pulled out an Indian silver money clasp inlaid with an irregular turquoise. Twenty-dollar bill on the outside, credit cards and assorted papers underneath. Removing the entire wad, he shuffled through it and found a white business card. Placing it on the table, he retrieved a blue Bic from another pocket and wrote something on the card, then handed it to me.

  Snarling tiger logo, WVCC TYGERS circling it. Below that:

  WEST VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

  DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

  (818) 509–3476 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (818) 509–3476 end_of_the_skype_highlighting

  Two lines at the bottom. He’d filled them in using dark block letters:

  CHIP JONES

  EXT. 23 59

  “If I’m in class,” he said, “this’ll connect you to the message center. If you want me around when you come visiting at the house, try to give me a day’s notice.”

  Before I could reply, heavy rapid footsteps from the far end of the hall made both of us turn. A figure came toward us. Athletic gait, dark jacket.

  Black leather jacket. Blue slacks and hat. One of the rent-a-cops patrolling the halls of Pediatric Paradise for signs of evil?

  He came closer. A mustachioed black man with a square face and brisk eyes. I got a look at his badge and realized he wasn’t Security. LAPD. Three stripes. A sergeant.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, speaking softly but giving us the once-over. His name tag read PERKINS.

  Chip said, “What is it?”

  The cop read my badge. It seemed to confuse him. “You’re a doctor?”

  I nodded.

  “How long have you gentlemen been out here in the hall?”

  Chip said, “Five or ten minutes. What’s wrong?”

  Perkins’s gaze shifted to Chip’s chest, taking in the beard, then the earring. “You a doctor too?”

  “He’s a parent,” I said. “Visiting his child.”

  “Got a visiting badge, sir?”

  Chip pulled one out and held it in front of Perkins’s face.

  Perkins chewed his cheek and swung back to me. He gave off a barbershop scent. “Have either of you seen anything unusual?”

  “Such as?” said Chip.

  “Anything out of the ordinary, sir. Someone who doesn’t belong.”

  “Doesn’t belong,” said Chip. “Like somebody healthy?”

  Perkins’s eyes became slits.

  I said, “We haven’t seen anything, Sergeant. It’s been quiet. Why?”

  Perkins said, “Thank you,” and left. I watched him slowing for a moment as he passed the pathology lab.

  • • •

  Chip and I took the stairs to the lobby. A crowd of night-shifters crowded the east end, pressing toward the glass doors that led outside. On the other side of the glass the darkness was cross-cut with the cherry-red pulse of police lights. White lights, too, refracting in starbursts.

  Chip said, “What’s going on?”

  Without turning her head, a nurse nearby said, “Someone got attacked. In the parking lot.”

  “Attacked? By whom?”

  The nurse looked at him, saw he was a civilian and moved away.

  I looked around for a familiar face. None. Too many years.

  A pale, thin orderly with short platinum hair and a white Fu Manchu said, “Enough, already,” in a nasal voice. “All I want to do is go home.”

  Someone groaned a chorus.

  Unintelligible whispers passed through the lobby. I saw a uniform on the other side of the glass, blocking the door. A burst of radio talk leaked through from the outside. Lots of movement. A vehicle swung its lights toward the glass, then turned away and sped off. I read a flash of letters: AMBULANCE. But no blinkers or siren.

  “Whyn’t they just bring her in here?” said someone.

  “Who says it’s a her?
”

  A woman said, “It’s always a her.”

  “Dinja hear? No howler,” someone answered. “Probably not an emergency.”

  “Or maybe,” said the blond man, “it’s too late.”

  The crowd rippled like gel in a petri dish.